Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gargoyle.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!houxm!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: Free will - some new reading.. Message-ID: <108@gargoyle.UUCP> Date: Tue, 6-Aug-85 19:45:43 EDT Article-I.D.: gargoyle.108 Posted: Tue Aug 6 19:45:43 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 01:40:19 EDT Organization: U. Chicago, Astronomy & Astrophysics Lines: 41 Rosen writes: > I hope you all get to read MY new book, >"You Don't Know Your Ass From Your Unicorn: The Varieties of Unicorns > Worth Wanting". After you've finished that one, here's another book I would like to see from you: PHILOSOPHY MADE SIMPLE, by Richard Rosen. Synopsis: No longer will you have to spend long hours studying boring books or spend years at an expensive university in order to understand philosophy. Just follow these quick 'n easy steps, and soon your friends will be listening to you with new respect: 1. Select a concept that has been much discussed in the philosophical tradition. 2. Look up this term in a dictionary. Select one definition. 3. With all the pig-headed intransigence you can command, defend this definition against all comers as The One True Definition of the concept. If necessary, claim that the definition was established by a committee of philosophers in the dim and distant past, and this definition has been preserved down through the ages in dictionaries. 4. Refuse to be sidetracked by any points anyone else makes about epistemology, ontology, logic, the nature of definitions, etc. These people are only trying to confuse you, and you are inviting disaster if you once swerve from tireless repetition of The Definition. If it occurs to you that definitions are made up of other concepts, and if in moments of weakness you doubt that all concepts are fixed in self-identity for all eternity from the Big Bang to the Final Whimper, resolutely dismiss these thoughts from your mind. 5. Clog any seminars in which you participate (such as net.philosophy) with 500 lines/day of change-ringing on the same themes, so that everyone's n-finger will be worn down to a nub and everyone will be ready to give up on net.philosophy as a forum for enjoyable and enlightening discussion. Let me know when the book becomes available. R. Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes