flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul Torek) (08/22/84)
AUGH! Do I have to write this on little pieces of paper, tie the paper
around nails, and pound the nails into your thick skulls??
OK Kids, here's your True-False Quiz:
1. If the view of strict determinism is true, then there obviously can be
no free will. [stated by D. Gary Grady]
2. If our actions are a result of biochemical/physical processes, they
can't be a result of our "choosing" or "willing". [implied by Rich
Rosen]
3. The degree to which you have free will is the degree to which your
future actions cannot be predicted. [stated by Jim Balter]
OK kids: if you said "True" for any one or more of these, then YOU'RE
DEAD WRONG!
Roger B. comes close to the truth when he says:
What is free will? ... All we can say is that options get evaluated
... and a choice is somehow selected.
EXACTLY -- OPTIONS GET EVALUATED. Agency is the possession of a capacity
for rational normative evaluation of prospective behavior. And freedom is
the possession and excercise of an optimal degree of that capacity.
Determinism and predictability have nothing to do with it.
Too bad Roger B. misses this, saying that a "deterministic thinking process"
would "deny the accepted meaning of free will". This is true only if one
builds a false assumption into the "accepted meaning".
Making enemies and infuriating people,
The aspiring iconoclast,
--Paul Torek, umcp-cs!flink