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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: A New Theory of Free Will -- continuation of an Open Letter to Professor Penrose
Message-ID: <Dn8vKy.Kwx@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <4el6ee$4t6@brtph500.bnr.ca> <4gcehp$8an@amenti.rutgers.edu> <Dn52o0.J6I@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <4ghr5r$ad4@amenti.rutgers.edu>
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Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 20:00:34 GMT
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In article <4ghr5r$ad4@amenti.rutgers.edu>,
Michael Huemer <owl@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>
>>whatever decision the "free will" is making (say 'a' instead of 'b')
>>there is always a question if this dacision was made for a reason or not.
>>If for a reason, then this reason determined the decision and the word "free"
>>does not apply.
>
>I don't see that.  First, you're assuming that any reason must
>*determine* the action to occur.  I don't know that that's the case.

If you looked further down you'd notice that I do not assume this. One can
also entertain a possibility that the action is random.

>Consider cases of weakness of the will, for example:  these are cases
>in which you have the best reason to do A, but you don't do it.

This is meaningless. We are trying to determine what "free will" might be 
so you cannot introduce "weakness of will" as an explanation! If you have
"the best reason to do A, but don't do it" how is this "the best reason"?
Could you define what you mean by this? What is the reason that you do not
choose this "best reason"?

>   Second, you're assuming freedom is incompatible with an action
>being determined by something.  This hasn't been shown.  See my

It does not have to be shown, this is implicit in my (and I believe most 
people's) meaning of the word "free". If "free" is compatible with "being
determined by something", what is "not-free"? Please provide a criterion to
differentiate between "free" and "not-free" in such case.

>message to Aaron Boyden.  (Some would even say that freedom ENTAIL the
>action having been determined by something.)
>
How does this then differ form a lack of freedom?

>> If there was no reason, then the decision was random and
>>the word "will" does not apply.
>
>I don't see this either.  Let's suppose the will sometimes acts
>randomly.  What's the problem with that?  Why do you say the word
>"will" wouldn't apply?
>
If to decide between A and B you throw a coin, would you say that the choice
was made by _your_ will? Perhaps you would, but I am sure most people would
not consider the above to be a willful choice. If I rigged a robot to a 
radioactive source and it moved left or right depending wheter in a given 
period of time ther was a nuclear decay registered or not, would you say 
that the robot moved by free will? Whose will?

>> Hopefully you will not raise the point that
>>you were 'free" to ignore the reason, because this just pushes the issue 
>>one step back: was the decision to ignore the reason (to choose 'a' and not 
>>'b') made for a reason or not?
>
>This doesn't work either, because you're assuming that there was a
>decision.  From the fact that I could have ignored a reason, it
>doesn't follow that there was a separate choice to ignore the reason.

You seem to reason (!) in strange ways. If you could have ignored
the reason or not, wasn't there a choice? Isn't this what the word "choice"
means? There were two options "ignore" or "not ignore", then following one
is called "a choice", is it not? Otherwise, what sense would it have to say 
that there were "two" options?

>Consider weakness of the will again:  When you decide to play video
>games instead of writing that paper for your class, you are ignoring
>the reasons you have for writing the paper.  But that doesn't entail a
>separate choice between paying attention to and ignoring the reason;
>you only make one choice:  the choice to play video games instead of
>writing the paper.
>
Well, what makes you then to ignore the reasons and play the video game?
Please indicate a third possibility to there being a reason or the decision
being random. None of these two justify the term "free will", at least in
my understanding of the words. If you disagree, please explain what would
then be "not-free" and/or what you call "will". My very strong impression
(and it is supported by dictionary definitions of the words) is that most
people understand these words in the similar way.

>>>Greeks.  I'd wager people in every society understand the distinction
>>>between what they could have done and what they couldn't have done.
>>>
>>That you will make the above wager only proves that you are a gambler :-),
>>but does not say anything convincing about the issue. What is the evidence
>>that "people in every society ...."?
>
>Oh, come on.  Don't tell me to go out and do a scientific study.  Use
>your common sense.  Do you ever deliberate, impute responsibility,

Common sense is a very poor substitute for scientific study. What would you
say if having challenged someone's claim that the earth is flat, s/he gave
you a reply like above? And I did not ask you to do a scientific study, just
provide any shred of evidence, I do not care who collected it.

>praise or blame others, apologize, feel regret or pride, give reasons
>for or against anything, ask for advice ...?  All of these actions
>presupose free will.  I've already discussed this on another thread,
>so I'm not going to go into detail.  Let's just take one example:
>deliberation.  Say you're deliberating about whether to do A or not.
>Then you must think you can do A or not; otherwise, what's there to
>deliberate over?  If you don't have FW, then you are deliberating
>about whether to do the impossible or to do the unavoidable.  Wouldn't
>make much sense, would it?

What does not make sense is your reasoning above. That I think that I can do
A or B does not mean at all that this is the case. And of course it becomes
crucial what "I" is. "I" may not be aware of brain/mind processes which 
will finally determine the decision.

>   The practice of deliberation, advice, praise, etc., etc., is not a
>strange cultural artifact of our society or of Christian theology.
>
I think that you are too centered on the present western culture. I have been
brought up in it too, but learning about other cultures I attempted not
to view them as being in 1-to-1 correspondence to ours. I do not know if
you know reasonably well any other language (I am bilingual, but have also
some knowledge of three other languages), but if you do you must have noticed
that you cannot translate form one to the other by just replacing the words,
even allowing for differences in grammars. They may in fact have concepts
which are so culture specific that they cannot be properly translated.
FW may be such concept.

>>>(c) What makes you think that such determination is incompatible with
>>>free will?
>>>
>>Such determination puts in doubt the 'free' component of "free will", except
>>if it is meant in the compatibilist sense.
>
>See my previous message to Aaron.  There is no such thing as "the
>compatibilist sense" or "the incompatibilist sense".  This is a
>confusion.  FW either is compatible with or is incompatible with
>determinism.  

First of all, there is also a third possibility - that the concept is 
incoherent, as I have argued. 
Secondly, whatever the case, you cannot prevent people to mean by FW either
one or the other. It is silly to refuse to recognize that people can have
differrent meanings in mind when they utter (or write) these words.

>..............You can't just ignore or table that issue and still have
>a meaningful debate about FW.
>
Well, you cannot have any meaningful debate if you do not realise that there
is no unique (God given ?) meaning of the words we use. Hence the first step
should always be to establish if the meanings used by various participants
have enough overlap to warrant the exchange of arguments. Otherwise the result
may be "talking past each other", which in fact happens all too often.

>>Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
>>University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
>>Information Commons                   what they think and not what they see.
>>pindor@breeze.hprc.utoronto.ca                      Huang Po
>
>I wholeheartedly agree with your .sig quotation (whoever Huang Po is),
>and I only hope that you will apply it.  I take it what he is saying
>is that when you come up with theories & arguments that seem to show
>that something you've observed is 'impossible' (like Zeno's 'proofs'
>of the impossibility of motion, the skeptic's 'proofs' of the
>impossibility of knowledge, and your 'proof' of the impossibility of
>free will), then there's something wrong with your theories.

You take the above qotation exactly the same way as I do. However, you
seem to refuse to 'see' that different people use the term FW in a diferent
sense. And, btw., I am not attemting to "prove" that FW is impossible (such
proof is impossible itself), I am just trying to point out that, considering
the usual meanings of "free" and "will", the term is logically incoherent.
>-- 
>                                                         ^-----^ 
>   Michael Huemer <owl@rci.rutgers.edu>                 / O   O \ 

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Information Commons                   what they think and not what they see.
pindor@breeze.hprc.utoronto.ca                      Huang Po
