tdh@frog.UUCP (T. Dave Hudson) (11/02/84)
I heard a liberating idea a year or so ago. The idea was that determinism and free will do not conflict. To sound unhinged for a moment, it means different things to say that you cannot do other than you do and to say that you cannot control your own behavior. The first statement is not about determinism but about non-contradiction, or that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respects. In other words, you cannot do other than what you will do. Does that at all imply that you can't choose among the options available what you will do? How does it make you any freer to have some uncontrollable universal glitch determine your behavior rather than processes the infinitesimal and infinite character of which you cannot possibly know the particulars? Is your choice somehow thereby improved? How?? What could free will possibly mean in the one case that it would not also mean in the other, except the freedom to be unable to control your destiny at all? What the hell is wrong with determinism? Is it to be convicted on the guilt of those who pretentiously claim beyond their knowledge, where they are not speaking with conditions implied rather than of particulars, where they are not speaking with scientifically validated causal connections but some whimsical ones, that the future must be so, that someone cannot rise above his (you name the group)? I am ignorant of the past dialogue in this group. I hope this article has not been redundant. A co-worker of mine says before he dropped out of a net.philosophy that no longer discussed philosophy, he did not see this point raised. David Hudson