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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.religion
Subject: Re: Pfui
Message-ID: <1474@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 09:24:40 EDT
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Posted: Mon Aug 12 09:24:40 1985
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>>Can you give an example from your personal experience of something you
>>didn't like that you chose to like.  Try it.  Take something you absolutely
>>despise, and decide to like it.  Remember, no conditioning to change your
>>behavior toward that thing will be allowed.  After all, you can do it
>>without "new experiences"...  [ROSEN]

> 	Oh great! Now you want to say that free will in your
> definition requires that only certain methods be used to accomplish
> a decision! [FRIESEN]

Those "certain methods" being freedom from externals.  If you have to alter
your mind(set) using external modification, if you cannot simply WILL
the change to occur, you have struck a death blow to the notion of free will.
You do have the power to accomplish this decision, but it is not decided
freely.

> I am *sorry*, but if I make a decision to do something
> I see no reason why I cannot be free to accomplish that goal in any
> manner that works. If I decide to like something and I conclude that
> self-conditioning is the most effective way of doing this, then why
> is that contrary to free-will, since the conditioning process was
> initiated by *my* decision, not external control.

Because the decision to do that was in fact based on external control!!!
Because the only reason you decided to choose that was because of the
way your mind happened to be set up at the time.  YOU had the opportunity
to choose that self-conditioning therapy of sorts because you had the
fortuitousness to have your mind set up to be able to make such a decision.
Others in your situation, who want to change the way things are for them,
may not be amenable to making such a decision.  They might choose to pray
for the change to happen, or to just forget about it and "accept" the way
things are.  But whatever decision is made is going to be based on your
previous conditioning and experiences.  You were just lucky enough to have
learned to realize a way in which you can achieve change.  But the way in
which that decision was made was not free.

> And if this sort of thing *isn't* possible, I might as well stop going to
> therapy and save myself a lot of money every month!

If you say so.  It seems to me that a decision to choose such therapy, if
its purpose is indeed to cause new conditioning or elimination of negative
learned conditioned responses, is a very good one.  It just wasn't made
"freely".  What's wrong with that?  What decision IS made freely?
-- 
"Do I just cut 'em up like regular chickens?"    Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr