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- Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
- Path: sparky!uunet!das.wang.com!wang!lee
- From: lee@wang.com (Lee Story)
- Subject: Re: Free will
- Organization: Wang Laboratories, Inc.
- Distribution: usa
- Date: 22 Jul 92 13:36:55
- Message-ID: <LEE.92Jul22133655@meercat.wang.com>
- In-Reply-To: cash@convex.com's message of Tue, 21 Jul 1992 20:09:56 GMT
- References: <1992Jul19.014518.13885@pellns.alleg.edu>
- <1992Jul20.051558.14985@news.eng.convex.com>
- <LEE.92Jul21150620@meercat.wang.com>
- <1992Jul21.200956.13790@news.eng.convex.com>
- Sender: news@wang.com
- Lines: 81
-
- In article <1992Jul21.200956.13790@news.eng.convex.com> cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
-
- (Lee Story) writes:
- >(Peter Cash) writes:
- ...
- > Yes, I share your puzzlement. I simply don't understand how people can
- > discuss "free will" in this thread without ever telling anyone what it is,
- > and I have no idea whatever what physics has to do with this "free will".
-
- >Is this an in-joke about definition (or word-games, or
- >deconstruction)? Well if it isn't, I have the same problem with
- >"share" and "puzzlement", to say nothing of "understand" and "tell"
- >and "idea" and "do". And what the hell is this "physics" stuff? (If
- >Peter Cash merely feels that more terminological clarity is needed, he
- >should attempt to provide it, rather than just Socratically---and
- >rather pompously---complaining.)
-
- Well if the question is so simple, then why don't you answer it? What _is_
- "free will"? I've already admitted that _I_ don't know what you're talking
- about--could it be you don't either?
-
- The original post was not mine, so I presume the "what you're talking about"
- doesn't refer to me.
-
- If Peter's questions are simply rhetorical statements to the effect that
- he finds the term "free will" to be contentless, without predicate, or
- whatever, I think he should say so with more forthrightness. That was
- my (rather un-forthright) complaint, and the reason for my sarcasm.
-
- On the other hand, he may really feel the need for definition, or at
- least clarification. Do I claim an adequate definition of "free will"
- to be a simple matter? Indeed it may be impossible. (Perhaps if one
- were omniscient, but [aside] omniscience seems self-contradictory to
- me.) Actually, Charles Onstott made a pretty good stab at it, but
- when he ended up recommending 300 pages of _Being_and_Time_ I lost
- interest (though maybe I _should_ make it further into MH than I
- have). I'll make the rather strong (and pre-logical) statement that
- concepts which appear fundamental should either be primitives or have
- agreeably simple definitions. Of course I was more than half serious
- in questioning the other words ("share", etc.) for the same reason: is
- there reason to expect that we can do better than a Quine-ean web of
- mutually-supporting concepts? It seems clear that one cannot define a
- few primitive terms and axiom schema and deduce answers to most
- significant philosophical questions.
-
- DESPITE all of the above, I'll try:
-
- Free will: A property (which may never exist!) of a subsystem whereby it
- takes conscious, goal-directed, non-random, nondeterministic actions to
- modify the behavior of its subsuming (enclosing) system.
-
- Property: <primitive>
-
- Goal-directed: <subcategory of "conscious"---define that first, then
- return to this. The difference between social and biological evolution
- would seem to point to an example; maybe it's just the difference
- between "conscious" and "non-conscious".>
-
- Random: <see Kolmogorov and others for attempts to define this; also
- "probability">
-
- Deterministic: When one experiment has precisely one outcome,
- predictable given complete knowledge of the inputs and the
- experimental structure.
-
- Experiment: <refer to the whole field of epistemology>
-
- Conscious: <Perhaps a better term to accept as primitive than "free
- will". Note that _some_ theoretical physicists do this.>
-
- This is grossly unsatisfying. Perhaps the only reasonable approach is
- an etymological one---"define" intuitively essential terms like "free
- will" by incomplete inference from synonyms gleaned from literary
- citations, as is done in the OED. (With all the interest that
- philosophy has shown in language, it seems there should be an accepted
- academic name for this approach; is there?)
- --
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
- (Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-