rlh@cvl.UUCP (Ralph L. Hartley) (01/17/85)
>> > ...If you believe you have free will and you're wrong, it was out of >> > your power to be correct anyway so you haven't lost anything. But if >> > you're right, you have gained something by exercising your power >> > correctly. Therefore, anything that implies lack of free will can be >> > dismissed right there. > Well, perhaps you can help me with my problem; here it is: if > I "believe" something, that means I think it's *true* (rightly or wrongly). > Now, as far as I can see, the desirability, or lack of it, possessed > by the notion of "free will", has no bearing on the likelihood of its > being *true*. So what I get from your argument, is either that "believing" > something DOESN'T mean thinking it's true, or that the desirability of > a proposition (like free will) constitutes evidence for its being true. > Are we arguing about either of the above propositions? If so, > which one? And, if not, what did I miss? The problem here is that there are realy more than two choices: believe in free will, believe there is no free will, or believe that you don't know. Regardless of wether free will exists or not the last choice gets you closest to the truth. Knowing with any certianty wether one has free will or not is like proving within a system that the system is consistent (Godel's therom shows that this is posible only in systems that are NOT consistent). If you have no free will your belief is forced on you and could be wrong. If you do have free will then you were free to make the wrong choice. One must be very careful when useing logic to prove propositions that have a direct bearing on your ability to use logic. On the other hand there may be an advantage to ACTING as though you believe in free will. When it comes to actions cost-benifit certianly DOES play a role. Ralph Hartley siesmo!rlgvax!cvl!rlh rlh@cvl.ARPA