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From: dsaker@iuvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: moRE Omniscience and Freedom
Message-ID: <1600009@iuvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Oct-84 13:49:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: iuvax.1600009
Posted: Tue Oct 16 13:49:00 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Oct-84 06:52:24 EDT
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Nf-From: iuvax!dsaker    Oct 16 12:49:00 1984


[]
>I mean best according the ultimate criterion; best overall.  Hopefully,
>that's exactly the same as what you most want to do, but if not, either
>your wants or your value judgements or both (usually both!) need to be
>changed.  I think my use agrees with ordinary usage.

I still think that we can meaningfully talk of doing what we consider not to
be best.  Indeed, I would say that the discrepancy between our actions and
what we consider to be best is the basis of a moral tension that most of
us have experienced.  Furthermore, even when we do do what we consider to be
best, few of us would claim that it was the best overall.  Few of us would 
claim to have any idea as to what is best overall.

One other observation on what is best.  We often have before us several
choices between which we cannot decide what is best.  So that our final
choice of action is not the choice of what we consider to be best.

Paul Torek seems to be offering the following resolution of how one could
have free will and also foreknow that one was going to, say, sit in one's
lounge chair at 10am :-
     One would have a belief that at 10am one was going to sit in one's
lounge chair, and one's choice of actions would culminate in one's choosing 
to sit in that lounge chair come 10am.  Even if one firmly decided at 9am
not to sit in that chair at 10am, one would change one's mind and by 10am
would choose to sit in the lounge chair.

This person is certainly free in the sense that they are acting on their
choices, but that doesn't capture my conception of free will.  Although I
can't define what I understand by free will, I can say that there seems to
me to be a compulsive element in this hypothetical person's decisions with
respect to his lounge chair that is antithetical to my notion of free will.

Daryel Akerlind
...ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!dsaker
"Your ignorance makes me ill and angry.  This savagery must cease."