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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Open Letter to Professor Penrose
Message-ID: <jqbDLyt3C.JGr@netcom.com>
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References: <4bncj5$a94@panix3.panix.com> <4ddpj0$ef3@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <jqbDLpAB2.7v@netcom.com> <4eehon$ms7@nuke.csu.net>
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Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 22:57:11 GMT
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In article <4eehon$ms7@nuke.csu.net>,
ilias kastanas 08-14-90 <ikastan@sol.uucp> wrote:
>In article <jqbDLpAB2.7v@netcom.com>, Jim Balter <jqb@netcom.com> wrote:
>>In article <4ddpj0$ef3@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>,
>>Edward LaBonte  <elabonte@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>>In <4d8evv$jdd@gap.cco.caltech.edu> ikastan@alumnae.caltech.edu (Ilias
>>>Kastanas) writes: 
>>>
>>>>	Sartre: "You can do whatever you want, but you cannot want
>>>>whatever you want"
>>>>
>>>
>>>Thank you for that quote. I was under the impression that Sartre was a
>>>big defender of free will. How does he reconcile those two ideas?
>>
>>Like most factual statements in this group, the claim that this quote is from
>
>
>	self-reference is part of the subject-matter, right?

There's always someone who doesn't get the joke.

>>Sartre is false.  The quote, which Einstein credited for changing his life,
>>freeing him of a burden and instilling humility, was penned by a different
>>20th century philosopher whose name stated with S.
>
>
>
>
>	Indeed.
>
>
>	J.P. SARTRE, "L' etre et le neant", Gallimard 1943, 1980 printing.
>   All quotes from the Fourth Part.
>
>	p. 532
>
>   "..par la volonte, nous pouvons nous construire entierement...  mais la
>   volonte trouve elle-meme sons sens dans le projet originel... et elle
>   ne modifiera jamais le projet originel dont elle est issue..."
>
>		and continues, interestingly enough,
>
>   "pas plus que les consequences d' un theoreme ne peuvent se retourner
>    contre lui et le changer" !
>
>
>	p. 541
>
>   "...nous sommes une liberte qui choisit mais nous ne choisissons pas d'
>    etre libres..."
>
>
>	p. 589
>
>   "La liberte est totale et infinie, ce qui ne veut pas dire qu' elle n'
>    ait pas de limites mais qu' elle ne les rencontre jamais."

Nowhere in the above set of tokens do I see anything resembling the given
quote.  Perhaps in some alternate encoding?  (Where is Quine when you need
him?)  I don't know, since I'm not fluent in French.  I do hope you won't
consider that to have some ad hominem relevancy.

>	Einstein may well have seen such a quote in the writings of myste-
>   rious S.

There's nothing mysterious about it; S. is George Santayana. Thanks for asking
:-(

> ... whose identity should not be revealed to the riff-raff of
>   this newsgroup, busy getting their facts wrong all the time;  one does
>   not cast pearls before swine.

Ilias seesm to be suffering from paranoid delusions.

>  Whether S. picked it up from Sartre, or
>   Sartre from S., or both from someone else, or neither, is a question
>   also unworthy of consideration.

Some people make careers out of such considerations.  What is worthy of
consideration is an unsettled normative question.

>	It would be ridiculous to spend time reading Sartre's book, where
>   Part Four contains analysis and elaboration on the topic.

Sorry you think so.

>  Jim simply
>   feels the need to belittle everybody else, and will not bother with such
>   trifles. 

Ilias appears to be set upon a course of personal attack.  He makes claims
about my felt needs and the bounds of my future efforts that he cannot
possibly substantiate.  Perhaps he is a methodological solipsist.

>	Pi-1 statements, "for all x", like Goedel's theorem or Jim's nega-
>   tion of what I said, can be tricky.

Perhaps the joke is about to be gotten.

>  Anyway, Jim, I am not the newsgroup,
>   I am just me, and I get things right or wrong by myself, obviously enough.
>   Criticism is welcome, even if couched in sweeping generalizations, as
>   long as there is some semblance of basis to it.

Methinks I detect a strain of undue defensiveness.

-- 
<J Q B>

