esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) (04/11/85)
Lines beginning with a > are from tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) > If I'm tied up in a chair and gagged in some other world, my constitution > might be the same but I would lack free will. "Agency" implies a agent > whom a world reacts to. It implies some means of control over the world; I think you're eliminating a useful distinction here between "free will" or agency on the one hand, and political/economic/bodily freedom on the other. Being tied to the chair deprives you of the latter, but not the former. The difference can perhaps best be expressed this way: obstacles to the second kind of freedom are external; obstacles to free will are internal. (External = outside your skin; internal = inside it.) Examples of diminished free will are brain damage, and compulsive desires. > As an Aristotelian naturalist, creating useful distinctions such as a > pragmatic definition of free will is what I take to be the business of > good philosophy. I agree; that's why I want to preserve the distinction between "free will" and other kinds of freedom (political, economic, etc.). --The developing iconoclast, Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec2!pvt1047