NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/talk/philosop/misc/1447

Text File | 1992-07-23 | 6.2 KB | 137 lines

Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Path: sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!convex!convex!cash
From: [e-mail] (Peter Cash)
Subject: Re: Free will
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Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 22:05:46 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lee Story) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter Cash) writes:
...
>   Well if the question is so simple, then why don't you answer it? What _is_
>   "free will"?
...
>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.

Look, I don't know any more forthright way to say it: I don't know what
these guys who have been talking about "free will" mean by the term. What's
more, I feel that one ought to explain what one means before one gets into
such a discussion. Sure, I'm aware of the long history of the literature
concerning "free will" in philosophy. However, a simple reference to the
literature won't do to clear up what one means when one makes assertions
like, "Modern physics has shown that free will is impossible."

First of all, philosophers have meant different things when they talk about
the problem of "free will vs. determinism". (For example, some philosophers
have said that everything is determined because saying otherwise would
contradict the assertion that God is omnipotent. Somehow, I don't think
that these guys are arguing that modern physics has shown God to be
omnipotent.)  Second, I'm not a great fan of settling philosophical
disputes by an appeal to tradition: for all I know,
<you_favorite_philosopher_here> may not have been that clear about what
"free will" is either. So I'd like to know what _you_ think it is. Is that
so unreasonable?

Now, I may be mistaken about your role in this discussion; by the way you
responded to my original complaint about not understanding what all this
"free will" talk was about, I got the impression that you think you _do_
understand it. If I'm wrong, I beg your pardon, and I'll go bug someone
else.

>On the other hand, he may really feel the need for definition, or at
>least clarification.

Ahhh!

>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

I assumed he was joking. Wasn't he????
...
>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.

Well, as you yourself say,

>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?)

Well, I think you're interpreting my question to be much more technical
than it really is. I'm not asking for an analysis of the term "free will".
If we had to provide such rigorous definitions of all our terms, we'd never
get anything said. I'm just asking you to help me understand what you're
thinking when you say it. One thing that might be helpful here is to
provide some examples or analogies to clarify things. Another would be
start from the ordinary language meaning of "free will", and go from there.

Well, what _is_ the ordinary language meaning of "free will"? ...

I suppose a question might come up in court about whether someone had done
something of his own free will. For example, Patty Hearst (remember her?)
was accused of participating in a bank robbery with her kidnappers (a.k.a.
the Symbionese Liberation Army). I don't know how the argument actually
went in court, but I think it must have partly turned on whether she
participated of her own free will, or not.

Here are various arguments that I can imagine her defense might have made.
(I present them without regard for historical fact or even plausibility.)

1. One of her captors was holding a gun on her during the entire robbery,
and threatened to shoot her if she didn't make it look as though she was a
willing participant.

2. Her captors promised her a share of the loot, and she went along because
her desire for money overcame her good judgment.

3. She was in love with one of her captors, and did it to impress him.

4. She had been "brainwashed", and was in such a state of confusion that
she could not rationally evaluate her actions.

5. She was deceived into thinking that this was a skit put on by the San
Francisco Mime Troupe, and was just acting a part.

Now, some of these cases are ones in which Patty Hearst would not have been
acting out of free will (e.g., # 1 and 4), others are cases in which she
was definitely acting out of free will (# 2 and 3), and one in which she
acted out of free will, but still isn't guilty (# 5.).

These cases show a contrast between free and un-free will. Is this what you
are thinking of?






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             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |[e-mail]
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