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From: gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Free will - some new reading..
Message-ID: <504@qantel.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 19:57:23 EDT
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Posted: Mon Aug 12 19:57:23 1985
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Dennett quoting Nozick, courtesy of Rich Carnes:

>	Nozick [in *Philosophical Explanations*] urges philosophers
>	to consider abandoning formal proof in favor of a particular
>	sort of philosophical explanation, in which we bring ourselves
>	to see how something we want to believe in could be possible.
>	This is excellent advice, in my opinion, and I take my project
>	in this chapter (and indeed in the entire book) to be an 
>	exercise in Nozick's brand of explanation.

Of course Rich Rosen will reply that this is religion, not science:
you start from the desired conclusion and retrofit your definitions
and arguments. [How do I know what Rich Rosen's reply will be, you
ask? I derived it from Rich's chemical makeup, an easy exercise left
to the reader. Hint: use the Scientific Method.]

I sometimes wonder if Rich Rosen has ever observed actual live 
scientists at work. The linear progression from definitions to
theorems is characteristic of the EXPOSITION of scientific results.
It is a stylistic convention for scientific publications. It is
emphatically not the way scientists go about discovering things.
Scientists formulate hypotheses, attempt to prove them, fail,
adjust their definitions and hypotheses and try again ad infinitum.
Science is a teleological activity. There are always things you
wish you could prove but cannot, just yet.

So it is with philosophy. We have a lot riding on the concept of
autonomous human choice (I'll avoid the dreaded notion of 'free will').
Our concepts of guilt, innocence, morality, conscience and human purpose
are among the most obvious examples. The existence of autonomous human
choice is a working hypothesis in which we have invested a great deal.
The evidence for it may look shaky to Rich Rosen but that does not
make it into an article of faith.

Maybe a more constructive direction for Rich would be to tell us where
the concepts of guilt, innocence, morality, conscience, etc. come from
in a universe where autonomous human choice does not exist. Come to
think of it, where does the notion of 'inalienable rights' come from?
How come Rich has inalienable rights and his toaster doesn't?

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Gabor Fencsik               {ihnp4,dual,nsc,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor