esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) (03/13/85)
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) writes: > This is just an assertion that rational choice is "freer" than choice > made FOR an organism by circumstances (chemicals, environment, etc.) > Both sets are in fact made FOR the organism. Choice, however, is a > bad word because it implies and assumes an agent of choosing. Yes!, that's exactly what I'm asserting. Rational choice is made *by* the organism. Yes, choice implies an agent, and that is where rationality comes in -- it is precisely that which makes us agents. Daniel Dennett has a good point about freedom made in terms of the concept of control. To be a controller, something has to have beliefs and desires/ goals. To be free is to have self-control ... but see Dennett for more. My point here in bringing his argument up is that rationality and evaluation are closely connected to beliefs and goals. > > [Free will] is something that is (supposed to be) worth wanting. [me] > Like the existence of a benevolent god, or ultimate justice, or a rewarding > afterlife? Lots of things are worth wanting. The point is that being worth wanting is a *necessary* (not sufficient) condition of something's being equivalent to free will. Your definition fails this condition... > As I said once before, our argument is totally based on the fact that we both > define free will differently. It is my contention that you simply define it > the way you like so that it (thus) WILL exist. Yes to the first point, no to the second. I could just as well say that you define it so that it (thus) WON'T exist. In fact (though probably not in intention) you do precisely that {see below}. But on the first point, I do want to focus on the definition of "free will" (i.e. agency). I contend that my definition captures the *extension* of the term "free will" -- that is, it agrees with most of our "ordinary language users" judgements about which things have free will and which don't, and which may have some but not as much as others (highly intelligent animals). Furthermore my definition *follows from* the *intension* (meaning) of the term. When you look up "free will" in the dictionary, you find an unhelpful list of synonyms -- choice, decisionmaking, etc. But when you consider logical aspects of these things -- that choice implies an evaluation of options, etc. -- you find the features that appear in my definition. I didn't just pull it out of the air; it plausibly explains the judgements that ordinary language users make about free will. And I say your definition doesn't... > > Compare your statement above [omitted for brevity this time around --pvt] > > with: "But the very notion of free will implies an ability to choose > > regardless of any ghost-in-the-machine". > > What makes your statement any more plausible than this? > That's the entire point. Even an external agent of "will" or a "ghost in the > machine", in turn, must have some mechanism itself that is causing it to > "want" to, to "decide" to do certain things, thus IT does not have free will. Well now you have an absurdity -- you define free will in such a way that *a priori* it can't exist; you make it self-contradictory. Whatever free will is, it is not a self-contradictory notion. Note that my definition makes the existence of free will an empirical issue (and when one looks in the real world, one finds that there *are* creatures that have it); it neither rules free will in nor rules it out *a priori*. > What you describe, the ability to make a decision based upon alternatives, > I'll agree, does exist. ... Do you believe the phenomenon that *I* refer > to as free will does/does not exist? Does not. > The chemicals in "me" that "are" "me" do not have free will, either. They > may CAUSE rational analysis and action *IF* I happen to be predisposed to > that analysis/action based on the REST of my chemical make-up, but there > exists no power of "decision" to "decide" which course to take... Sure there does, look at the high-level operations where experience and memory are used rationally to pick out an option and execute it -- all these mental operations have physical correspondents (at least you and I agree on this). The power is in the brain insofar as its operations are the basis/instantiation of the corresponding mental operations that we introspect when we do what we call "choosing". > It's funny you should ask [about] "ordinary language user"[s]... [One] > blurted out "But doesn't the notion of free will imply a spirit that is > separate from the chemicals?" I couldn't have asked for more, could I > have? I doubt that he's alone in that. Looks like the situation is even worse (the Dogma is even more widespread) than I thought. But yes, there is more we can ask for from ordinary language users. Like, if they were to discover that no such spirit exists (note the way more and more mental phenomena are being explained quite well as being based in the physical brain), would they give up the practice of trying to make intelligent decisions? Would they say "It's no use trying to act anymore, it's all fated anyway", etc.? If not, they have an understanding of free will apart from such "spirits" -- and rightly so. They need to realize this (that they can understand free choice apart from "spirits" etc.) in order to shed the uncritically swallowed Dogma. --Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047