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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Free will - some new reading..
Message-ID: <1527@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Aug-85 08:23:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1527
Posted: Sat Aug 17 08:23:09 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 07:07:31 EDT
References: <217@yetti.UUCP> <> <106@gargoyle.UUCP> <1427@pyuxd.UUCP> <463@spar.UUCP>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
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>     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'.

I "evidently view" it that way because that's the definition of the term.
Imagine that.  "Threatening"?  You'd have to have evidence to make it
seem threatening, and none has been presented, thus no need to feel threatened.
Since the term does imply certain religious points of view as it stands,
perhaps there is SOME OTHER phenomenon (maybe REA, maybe something else)
which DOES happen and thus should have ANOTHER NAME from the thing we were
originally discussing.

>     "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.

Well, titles are generally hooks for the book itself, and if a title doesn't
convey what is inside, it probably isn't a good title.  Nonetheless,
the sections Carnes quoted (rather than speaking his own mind) show very
hole-filled thinking.  If it was taken completely out of context (after
a section in which he proves that it was OK to do that after all), wouldn't
THAT other section have been a good section to reproduce?  Why wasn't
it?  More importantly, why didn't Carnes just explain what he learned from it?

>     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? ...

Thank you.  Now that's a good extract, and well introduced too.

>     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?

So, chuck the word deterministic and ask "How can free will be meaningful
even in a quantum 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.

I never said it wasn't on my list.  Carnes, though, succeeded in pushing it
down on the list because he "confirmed" my suspicions about it through his
choice of extracts.  I already mentioned that I've read some Dennett (including
an interview in Johnathan Miller's "States of Mind") and am not unfamiliar
with what he espouses.

>     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. 
    
Am I to be burned at the stake for being able to write quickly on my seat?

>     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.

Do I "not demonstrate understanding", or do I keep debunking the same point
over and over because it's reiterated over and over?  In an effort to
"show Rosen the truth about free will"?  (That's the tone of more than half
of the rebuttals.)

>     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.

If you won't listen to me, why pretend your interested in the real truth?
Did that sound crass?  That's actually a much shorter version of your
paragraph above.  I apologize deeply if I find holes in other models while
their proponents do not successfully find holes of substance in mine.
(What's a "hole of substance"?)
-- 
"iY AHORA, INFORMACION INTERESANTE ACERCA DE... LA LLAMA!"
	Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr