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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