Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site spar.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!decwrl!spar!ellis From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: Free will - some new reading.. Message-ID: <463@spar.UUCP> Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 07:38:29 EDT Article-I.D.: spar.463 Posted: Tue Aug 13 07:38:29 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 23:02:45 EDT References: <217@yetti.UUCP> <> <106@gargoyle.UUCP> <1427@pyuxd.UUCP> Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA Lines: 95 >> Could any response be more revealing than this? Instead of reading >> at least the first and last chapters of Dennett's book, which address >> precisely the objections that Rich is making and go a hundred miles >> beyond him, Rich decides he knows all he needs to know from the >> book's title. I'm not sure at this point why anyone continues this >> "debate" with Rosen. [CARNES] > >Could any response be more revealing than this? Instead of describing >what he learned from this brilliant book's first and last chapters, >Carnes decides al he has to do is point me to them. I wonder whether >some people who spend their time pointing people to books have actually >learned anything from them that they have actually integrated into >their knowledge base and can use in discussion. Sometimes I thnk such >people look for books like this that they hear will support their point >of view... [RICH ROSEN] I think you have missed Mr. Carnes' point, Rich. You evidently view `free will' as an entity whose `existence' would favor certain religious points of view, and as most definitely threatening to your preconceptions about the `real' causal nature everything. Consequently, you have publically dismissed the entire book `propaganda' of the enemy, who must obviously be `wishful thinkers'. "Look at the title", you say, `Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting', "See, they are wishful thinkers!". And with that perceptive analysis, you conclude that there is nothing worthwhile in the book. Dennett's viewpoint strikes me as more in line with recent attempts in AI and CogSci to model internal mental phenomena with computers than as a desperate religious justification for souls. I cannot see why someone with your causal reductionist approach should find anything offensive in its pages. In fact, to the extent that his arguments successfully capture the essence of what some of us call `free will', Dennett validates the causal worldview to which you cling. As further indication of the book's `political correctness', I'd like to mention that Dennett does not validate any of my `pet theories'. He avoids traditional metaphysics, souls, religion, and other holistic excesses. He poo-poos the relevancy of quantum indeterminacy to the free will question: "Question: in the actual world of hardware computers, does it make "any difference whether the computer uses a genuinely random sequence "or a pseudo-random sequence? That is, if one wrote Rabin's program "to run on a computer that didn't have a radium randomizer but relied "instead on a pseudo-random number generating algorithm, would this "cheap shortcut work? ... The most obvious contribution of QM to the free will debate is to banish to oblivion the question: How can Free Will be meaningful in a fully deterministic world? Having disposed of this question, Dennett goes on to argue that even in a deterministic world (based on classical causal concepts) one can investigate deeper aspects of the free will issue. In spite of my dissatisfaction with many of Dennett's arguments, I still highly recommend his book to anyone who has a strong opinion this topic, or a genuine interest in philosophy. ======================================================================== Consider your overwhelming presence in this newsgroup, Rich. Of the last 154 articles we received in net.philosophy, the top 16 contributors break down as below: rlr@pyuxd 48 mangoe@umcp-cs 18 ellis@spar 13 williams@kirk 11 flink@umcp-cs 8 tmoody@sjuvax 6 daemon@mit-herm 6 carnes@gargoyle 5 tdh@frog 4 franka@mmintl 4 aeq@pucc-h 4 rap@oliven 3 padraig@utastro 3 beth@sphinx 3 mrh@cybvax0 2 bjanz@watarts 2 Your interest is commendable. But the enormous volume you have contributed to the free will debate, in which you persistently present identical arguments without demonstrating any understanding of the points raised by others, discredits the causes of `rigorous analysis' and `objective scientific evidence' which you so ardently wish to justify. If you will not read current ideas that have aroused the interest of others who are interested in philosophy, if you refuse to temporarily drop your frozen preconceptions about `the real world' for purposes of understanding the philosophical points of other people, why keep the pretense of interest in philosophical discourse? Net.flame is an excellent public depository for those who must `overwhelm' their `adversaries' with astonishing keyboard virtuosity and rigid adherence to dogma. -michael