NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/sci/philosop/tech/3958

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-08 | 6.1 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!psgrain!hippo!shrike.und.ac.za!pc14.superbowl.und.ac.za!spurrett
From: [e-mail] (David Spurrett)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: DETERMINISM 1: `Refutation' the first
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 18:40:46 GMT
Organization: University Of Natal (Durban)
Lines: 95
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pc14.superbowl.und.ac.za

REPLY TO ABUSE OF DETERMINISM 1:

SUMMARY: The first wave of postings following my original <spurrett.23.
[e-mail]> all included some criticism/abuse of my
argument form.  This posting attempts to clarify and respond.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Svein Olav G. Nyberg) writes:
>The legal systems are based on beliefs about the world,
>and cannot therefore itself justify the world as being
>as was believed, merely on the ground that it was believed.

In article <?> [e-mail] (Neil Rickert) writes:
>The legal system is designed by people with the intention that it will
>affect the behavior of people.  You cannot use it to draw conclusions
>about inanimate objects.  The legal system is an expression of our
>culture, so cannot easily be applied to questions such as the validity
>of determinism.

  I will begin by pointing out that the form of my argument was intended to
be _transcendental_.  This is not to say that I meditated, or shaved my head
and walked around in an orange sheet playing the tambourine while formulating
it.  I use the word in a well understood technical sense made current by
Kant.  For those not in the know, a transcendetal argument in one which
(roughly) argues from the properties of some thing/property etc. known to
exist/be experienced etc. to a conclusion about the nature of the world.
The essential assumption behind any transcedental argument can be stated as
`however the world is, it _cannot_ be in some way such that thing/property
etc which we started from is impossible.'  For example any argument which
had the conclusion that there was no such thing as consciousness, _whatever_
else its merits, (consistency, agreement with religious dogma, etc) could be
shown to be false on the basis of elementary transcendental reasoning.  (In
the case of this explanatory example common sense should be enough.)

  That point made, for now, in what way was my argument transcendetal?  The
initial datum from which I attempted to reason was the experience of
choosing, and the distinction we (as far as I can tell universally)
acknowledge between `do-ers' and `do-ees', particularly as manifest in
legal systems and procedures.  The analysis which followed attempted to show
that belief in this distinction involves disbelief in determinism with
respect to do-ers.  If the analysis is correct (and it has not been
criticised in this thread yet) then the only avenue for attack is the
interpretation of the datum.

  In this regard Cosma Shalizi has a very low opinion of my position on
precisely that issue:

In article <> [e-mail] (Cosma Shalizi) writes:
>2. I'm not sure the reasoning is any better than the following argument
>   (circa 500 B.C.): "All known religions, regardless of their differences
>   on Who Is In Charge, What They Like and Whom To Kill, agree in teaching
>   that the Earth is flat. Even the philosophers have agreed to this,
>   which after all is nothing more than what is obvious to perception.
>   Thus, to refute these new round-Earth scoffers, nothing more is
>   required than that our religion and philosophy be based on truth."
>   Short form: What reason - what _shred_ of a reason - do we have for
>   thinking our legal systems are based on truth on this issue?

  Before any details it is _not_ a fact that all religions (even circa
500 B.C.) regarded the earth as flat.  There were many cosmologies with
wildly differing views, including various heliocentrisms, and the one-time
Pythagorean view that the earth was a cylinder, with us on the one flat end
and some other folks on the other, with the whole contraption moving around
the sun.  It is also not `obvious to perception' since ancient persons had
used simple mathematics to calculate the curvature of the earth (although
_not_ following this through to regarding the earth as fully spherical in
most cases.)

  What I think is essentiall different about the datum of the satire above
and my premiss is that the `do-er'/`do-ee' distinction (the DoDoDi) seems
intellectually indespensible.  I firmly believe that the earth is an oblate
spheroid (more or less).  _BUT_ I can quite clearly imagine what it would be
like to be me on a flat earth, or a cube, or inside a hollow earth, or any
other shape you care to name.  In some I would want to have more velcro on
my footwear, but in none would I think (except for practical reasons) that
my existence would be in principle impossible.

  With the DoDoDi it is different.  When I am feeling offensively
mechanistic I can just about manage to think of almost everybody (including
family members) as being do-ees.  Almost everyone, that is, except for
myself.  With myself it is, as far as I can tell, a _theoretical_
impossibilty in the same way as doubting `I exist' was for Descartes.  I
cannot entertain the negation of the DoDoDi without also having to think of
the attendant impossibility of the conscious agency which enables me to
think of the possibility at all.

  The question, therefore, is:  `Is there some argument capable of
dispensing with the DoDoDi without also rendering the conscious agency which
I feel myself to have impossible?'  [Or which gives me some _convincing_
redescription of it which enables me to understand myself in another way.]

o------------------------------------------o------------------------------o
| David Spurrett, department of Philosophy |  `I have seen the truth, and |
| University of Natal, Durban              |   it makes no sense.'        |
| email: [e-mail]      |              - OFFICIAL!     |
o------------------------------------------o------------------------------o