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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 12:49:25 GMT
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References: <3997dq$857@ecom2.ecn.bgu.edu> <MARCUS.94Nov8015942@jetsam.cs.pdx.edu> <39o3e8$o8s@mp.cs.niu.edu> <jqbCyzD83.4sv@netcom.com>
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In article <jqbCyzD83.4sv@netcom.com>, Jim Balter <jqb@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <39o3e8$o8s@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>In <MARCUS.94Nov8015942@jetsam.cs.pdx.edu> marcus@jetsam.cs.pdx.edu (Marcus Daniels) writes:
>>
>>>Causality is implied by absolute determinism.
>>>Causality is not denied by the lack of absolute determinism.
>>>Free will is denied by causality.
>>
>>>Therefore, the *possibility* of Free Will requires denying causality,
>>>and, furthermore, introducing notions of "action at a distance",
>>>and "self measuring".
>>
>>Utter nonsense.
>
>Oh balderdash.  (:-)/2).
>
>>All you are really saying, is that if you define "free will" to be
>>something logically impossible, then in consequence of your
>>definition, free will is logically impossible.
------------------------------------------
No, we're saying that "free-will" never HAS had a definition that makes any
sense, and sounds a lot like the crap they spew on commercials like
incomplete comparisons and meaningless words that everybody makes fun of!
Awareness is the process of the generation of the illusion of "free-will".
It makes the sense of being here now and having the "adventure" called "life"
possible, but it's really just an arbitrary insistence that whatever is
done by the body or as a part of its doing, the brain, that there is a
ratiocinary process which takes credit for it and wants to conclude that
"IT" is WHAT "concludes, and that "IT" could have irrationally changed its
mind right before a given act, just to prove its own "control"! It is
actually testably unable to do this, and in fact would not ever do
something on a bet, like change its mind or its religion or something
intrinsic to the current causational state, actually because deep down it
KNOWS that it cannot be other than it is, even in its defiant and ludicrous
assertion that it "controls" without regard for the experiential past, and
that it is somehow NOT bound by the past to act so as to do precisely what
it will inevitably do next, anyway! It doesn't even know or have awareness
of all causes that govern the next thing it will "think" and yet, this
awareness is but a thought itself! It is no different than any of the
things it asserts are under its "control" allegedly!!! What these poor
entities who simply MUST have control get the itch and the flaming
heebie-jeebies about are actually trivial to most of us and only a few of
them ever entertain the notion for a while. It is a cultural construct,
particularly, and it can be shown that in asian cultures unaffected by the
horrors of so-called christianity, which was supposedly founded upon a
"nicer" "kinder" "more forgiving" "supreme being", who will be rational in
its decision whether to send a "you" to either a happy or sad place after
death, if the universe is bigger and weirder than it appears or we have any
right to think, that these strange asian people don't seem to have need of
free-will or the self as controller, and instead are perfectly happy to
feel that they are merely along for the ride and that whatever they get
involved in as the movie of life, that they still don't HAVE to take it so
personally, whereas christians get the night sweats and the tremors just
worrying whethere they have done all the 'right" things to get into this
"nice" place after they "die", when dying as a process is not demonstrable
even to EXIST after death the event! It could be that there are things to
experience after death, but the nature of this meta-world or worlds does
not in any way need to be a situation that requires the guilt-ridden
christian "self" and its horribly victim blaming (mirror image of our
society) "free-will" and its dreadfully horrible consequences!!! The
construct called the "ego" seems to be a western phenomenon based on terror
of being held responsible for all the countless things it has no power over
in life and punished by an "eternal afterlife of torment and pain!!"
Truly weird if you ask me, as *I* don't fear what I cannot control with
mortal terror, nor do I fear any "supreme being"! If some entity really is
in charge around here, then everything that happened was up to IT anyway,
and not something I could have stopped! And I trust that such a being would
understand that and is probably simply having adventures vicariously by
existing through US and watching the show, while we are blocked from its
perfect knowing so we can get involved in the plot! Christians are simply
people who have developed a paranoid delusion about the "movie" and the
whole situation that passes before them! That's all. Their "free-will" is
NOT even a necessary structure in the mind! That should tell us that them
trying to make it a universal in their so-called contribution to philosophy
is just a paranoid trying to sustain their delusion by involving others in
it, a common feature to paranoia and schizophrenia!!!
-Steve Walz

>So give us a logically possible definition.  Keep in mind, though, that
>the notion of an autonomous self may well be an illusion.
>
>And what if "free will" really is illusory, and there is *no* coherent
>definition?  Then of course *any* attempt to define it will be to define it as
>something logically impossible.  Your criticism here is really rather
>circular, based upon your *belief* that the term *can* be given a consistent
>definition, and that therefore any attempt to define it otherwise displays
>some sort of bad faith.  But in fact there is no bad faith (or "utter
>nonsense" or "arbitrar"iness) here, since definitions of free will that
>require denying causality have a long tradition in the philosophical
>literature, and thus Marcus is justified in his statement.  He may be
>mistaken, but he certainly not "really saying" what you claim him to be; that
>is what *you* are saying.
>
>>Stop trying to arbitrarily define free will, and instead try to work
>>out what it is that people are talking about when they claim that
>>they have free will.
--------------------------------------
Check my mega-paragraph above. I JUST DID!!!
-Steve Walz

>The only people I know who claim to have it are confused philosophers.
>When I bring up the subject with others, all I get is "Lighten up, Jim;
>have another drink".
>
>>Meaning is usage, and the meaning of "free
>>will" is to be found in those human actions which are said to exhibit
>>free will.
>
>So what are the meanings of "luminous ether", "phlogiston", "immortal soul",
>"elan vital", "noumenon", "phainesthai", "the meaning of life",
>"our purpose on Earth", "autonomous self", "family values"?  The mere fact
>that a term is used doesn't necessarily imply that it has a coherent meaning.
-----------------------------------
Or as I have said so many times: Just because you can put words together in
a string does not mean they correctly model reality!
-Steve Walz

>Are you saying that some human actions exhibit free will, but others don't?
>Or only that certain human actions are *said* to exhibit free will?  I can
>certainly accede to *ascriptions* of free will without granting "free will"
>a coherent meaning.  I once heard someone on LSD claim to have an experience
>of "flowing purply".  When I questioned whether that meant anything, another
>tripper exclaimed "I know exactly what he means; your problem is that you
>didn't drop". Is that the problem here, that people who "know" what "free
>will" means are on a high that I'm missing out on?  Perhaps I *should*
>light[en] up.
>-- 
><J Q B>
-------------------------------------
No, it's like a lot of social control in obsolete cultures. You don't think
that the Egyptians stopped pyramid building because they ran out of
material, did you? No, they finally found a way around thinking that they
wouldn't join their Pharoah in the next life if they didn't build those
things, and so they said "fuck it" and told their bosses to take a flying
fuck! I'm sure that their whole sense of guilt in that culture, and
probably the central american pyramids as well, revolved around their
pyramid building and their obligation to getting everyone else over to the
other side with the Pharoah! Enough experience and they figured it was a
con game and quit! Same with free-will. Victim blaming is the nastiest form
of social control ever devised! Wait till the republicans try to roll back
the clock only to find that the mainspring is gone!!! Amusing, these next
two years! They want "family values" when that was what screwed up the
culture and caused the shitty cities! That was what they tried to subdue
the working class with from the start of the industrial revolution, AFTER
they destroyed the deeper and more long-proven TRIBAL values, which they
conned us out of to use us as slaves. Tribes were the enemy of bankers and
commercialists and political bosses, because they honored people taking
care of each other without needing them and their towns!! Whenever someone
wants to become the middle man when you never needed one before, smell con
game!!! That's what the rich are running, and I think they are beginning to
run scared! They co-opted the churches to develop careful methods of social
control by metaphysical guilt and terror. These things in your head that
are scared? They aren't natural features of the mental terrain, they're
artificial!!! It doesn't matter if you control what you do, or if you're
back a bit watching it all just happen for countless reasons. You're still
there, and the same thing will happen!!! That you should try to distort
the ride is just an effort to rob you!!! This shit is politics, not
religion!!!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

