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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Knowledge and Free Will
Message-ID: <1995Feb28.161222.10808@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
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Date: Tue, 28 Feb 95 16:12:22 GMT
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In <3iubu9$i46@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In <3iu8ml$92e@lucy.infi.net> jbroyles@infi.net writes:

>>                                                                 Can one 
>>achieve knowledge (a state of knowing) in the absence of freewill?

>I don't see why not.  Even a prisoner can gain knowledge.  But there
>would be far less opportunity to acquire knowledge.

>>                                                                   Or, is all 
>>knowledge already predetermined, and the act of knowing simply the discovery 
>>of this relationship? 

>This depends a lot on what you mean by 'predetermined'.  If you
>assume that the universe is completely deterministic, then there may
>be a sense in which you would have to assume that everything is
>predetermined.  If, on the other hand, you are asking whether all
>knowledge is encoded in the genes, the answer surely is no.

This also depends on what you consider "knowledge."  Some philosophers
and biologists (and anthropologists, such as Bateson) have found it
convenient to think of knowledge in terms of appropriate action,
or the embodiment in an organism of a mechanism for appropriate action
for survival, etc.  In this sense, trees know how to grow towards
light and our eyeballs are evidence that we innately KNOW that perception
of radiation at certain wavelengths is useful.

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

