flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul Torek) (12/29/84)
From: -- Jeff Sargent (quoting C.S. Lewis) > Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will: for free will > would mean that human beings have the power of independent action, the > power of doing something more or other than what was involved by the > total series of events. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG! I present to you a thoroughgoing naturalist who believes in free will: myself. FREE WILL DOES NOT, NOT AT ALL, BY NO STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION, NIL, ZIP, ZERO, NEGATION, NEGATIVITY, NEVER, NO WAY mean the power of doing something "more or other than" what was involved in the total causal network of events!!! It means the power to rationally evaluate one's prospective actions and choose accordingly, that is all, and if this ability and one's excercise of it have a deterministic causal explanation, THAT'S GREAT! > ... Hence every theory of the universe which makes the human mind a > result of irrational causes is inadmissible, for it would be a proof that > there are no such things as proofs. Which is nonsense. > "But Naturalism, as commonly held, is precisely a theory of this sort. > The mind, like every other particular thing or event, is supposed to be > simply the product of the Total System. It is supposed to be that and > nothing more, to have no power whatever of 'going on its own accord'. And > THE TOTAL SYSTEM IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE RATIONAL [emphasis Sargent's]. But PARTS OF IT MAY BE!!! Get ready folks here comes the NON SEQUITUR... > All thoughts whatever are THEREFORE the results of irrational causes, and > nothing more than that. The finest piece of scientific reasoning is caused > in just the same irrational way as the thoughts a man has because a bit of > bone is pressing on his brain. [emphasis added - pvt] NON SEQUITUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is plainly a good scientific explanation for the obvious fact that the finest piece of scientific reasoning is a lot more rational than the symptoms of bone-on-brain. Lewis's argument fails MISERABLY. And now, on to a Lewis critic who does EVEN WORSE! (Aaaauuuuggghhh!) From Rich Rosen: > In a naturalist system there could not be free will. And we want for there > to be free will, right? [despite whatever evidence we've seen and ignored] > Thus, the naturalists are wrong!! Boy, thanks, Mr. Lewis, for 'clearing > that up' for me!" Now you've heard the sound of one knee jerking! Rosen, if you would put aside your ideological blinders for a second you might see that believing in free will is a can't-lose proposition, and disbelieving in it is can't- win! 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. There- fore, anything that implies lack of free will can be dismissed right there. Lewis was right about that much! > What a highly anthropocentric view of the universe this is. "Science" > can not be true unless human thought can be explained to follow certain > rules. [but science IS part of human thought! Aarrggh! --pvt] What > does human thought have to do with the physical state of the universe? > The universe exists whether or not we perceive or understand it. An imperceptible, incomprehensible universe would be completely uninteresting! If the physical state of the universe had no relevance for human life, which should we pay attention to? THREE CHEERS FOR ANTHROPOCENTRISM if that's what it is to answer, "humanity"! > ... In what way is the total system NOT RATIONAL? What does > such a statement mean? Rational to whom? Rational thinking takes into > account THE WAY THE SYSTEM WORKS. How could the way the system works NOT > BE RATIONAL when "rational" is defined to take into account how the system > is (perceived to be) working? ... > ...ALL thoughts seem to stem from the same very rational causes. Even > those of wishful thinkers and presupposers. (No :-) intended!!) The > rational causes? Chemical actions of the brain. You're doing this just to annoy me, right? HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THE DIFFERENCE? The thoughts of wishful thinkers do NOT stem from rational causes, that's why they're irrational! You seem to be twisting the word rational to mean "predictable", etc. What it means is reasoning validly, and learning from experience (at least these anyway). From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) > What Lewis's argument claims is that it is impossible to make any claim > stronger than utility for rational argument without appeals to authority > outside of human rationality ... No, what the passage that was quoted by Sargent claimed (and that was what started this debate) was exactly what Huybensz said it claimed. I think you have either been reading your own views into Lewis, or else remembering a different part of Lewis's writings than the passage which the rest of us are talking about. From: Kenneth Almquist > The problem is that it is not possible > to argue that rational argument is valid because you can't begin to > argue unless you *first* concede that rational argument is valid. Thus > you must accept as a postulate that rational argument is valid. > ... There is no way I can argue with someone who refuses to accept the > validity of reason. To recognize an argument as rational IS to recognize it as valid; as being normatively binding on one's own thought. Furthermore there is nothing viciously circular or otherwise improper about using reason to argue for reason. Reason is not a premise in any argument but rather the way of getting from premises to conclusions; and only by using the conclusion as one of the premises can the question be begged. That oughta make y'all think -- for once! --the untiring iconoclast, Paul V. Torek, umcp-cs!flink (until 1/11 then back to wucs!wucec1!pvt1047)
barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (01/03/85)
[] From umcp-cs!flink (Paul V. Torek): > Now you've heard the sound of one knee jerking! Rosen, if you would put > aside your ideological blinders for a second you might see that believing > in free will is a can't-lose proposition, and disbelieving in it is can't- > win! 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. There- > fore, anything that implies lack of free will can be dismissed right there. > Lewis was right about that much! Essentially, this is a reworking of Pascal's argument for belief in God. If you believe in Him, and are wrong, you lose nothing, since there is no Heaven or Hell; if you *disbelieve* and are wrong, however, you do hard time in the flamey place. Unfortunately, it shares the same flaw as Pascal's reasoning, namely, that we do not believe or disbelieve in things based on the belief's utility. I base my beliefs on reason, and believe in them because they seem correct, not convenient. And if the fatalists are right then I believe what I believe because I have no choice. But either way, I don't believe in something because the cost-benefit analysis of believing looks favorable. - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USENET: {ihnp4,vortex,dual,hao,menlo70,hplabs}!ames!barry SOURCE: ST7891
hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) (01/03/85)
Please excuse me if I am duplicating comments made before. Our machine has just come onto netnews, so I saw the end of a discussion. As you may guess, reconciling free will, causality, and responsibility is a classic problem in the philosophy of religion. As with many other philosophical questions, a real solution is likely to hinge on a careful examination of what you mean by the terms. Many people (including some contributors to this group) think free will means the following: You are free only if your decision is not determined by any outside agency. If you accept this, then free will is by definition incompatible with a deterministic (or even partially deterministic) model of the universe. However this is probably not a sensible definition. In common discourse the term "free" is used to describe a decision which is not subject to outside constraint. If a person is tied up, or if a gun is held to his head, we say he was not free. If a person is not so constrained, we say that he was free. This is a simple enough distinction to observe, and has useful consequences. For example, we do not want to blame someone for doing something when he had no choice in the matter. However some analysts (who for convenience I will call Arminians) want to go further than this. They say that even if a person had no constraints on his behavior, there can be more subtle kinds of unfreedom. Suppose his decision followed from his own desires and his moral principles, but those desires and moral principles were influenced by his heredity and his environment. Then his decision is still indirectly determined by an outside agency, and is not free. By an Arminian analysis free will must not only be free of constraint. It must also have no determining influences from outside. I do not want to turn this posting into a full-scale treatise, so I will not give a complete discussion of these alternatives. However I am convinced that the Arminian definition of free will is not justified. It is no longer observable, and the resulting distinction is not as useful in practical matters as the simpler one. It would lead to the conclusion that people who are insane or random are the most free, because their decisions have the least connection with the outside. I prefer to think of freedom as a sort of "transparency". A decision-maker is most free when his decisions most accurately reflect his own principles and the inherent logic of the situation. In some cases (where we know the person, and the logic of the situation is clear) this may mean that the freest decisions are the easiest to predict. I do not think C.S. Lewis would disagree with this. You just happened to catch him when he was not thinking carefully. In fact in a number of places he has commented on this paradox that when you are the most free your decision has this transparent obviousness. (See in particular his discussion of his conversion experience, in Surprised by Joy.) [The arguments in this posting are based directly on an elegant treatise by Jonathan Edwards written sometime in the 18th Century. It has some obvious title, like On Freedom of the Will. The basic outline of the argument was laid down by the time of Augustine, in his various discussions of predestination. (Note that predestination was never intended to deny freedom of the will, when freedom is properly analyzed.)]