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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Free will - some new reading..
Message-ID: <112@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Aug-85 14:13:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.112
Posted: Thu Aug  8 14:13:41 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 21:39:33 EDT
References: <108@gargoyle.UUCP> <1438@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: U. Chicago, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 45
Summary: non-hostile reply to Rosen

Rich, (no sarcasm now) you're clearly an intelligent guy who can make
valuable contributions, and I tend to agree with you more often than
not.  But I don't think you realize what a pain in the ass you can
be.

The free will problem goes to the heart of some basic human concerns
and cannot be settled for all time merely by drawing an parallel
between free will and unicorns.  This analogy, to which you
persistently appeal, has been challenged in this newsgroup (notably
by Todd Moody, by implication).  Your point is also addressed, and in
my opinion demolished, by Dennett in *Elbow Room*.  That's at least
part of the reason why he subtitled his book *The Varieties of Free
Will Worth Wanting.*  Hence my annoyance with your flip dismissal of
the book.  (*Elbow Room*, BTW, is about the nature of philosophy as
much as it is about the free will question.)

Dennett writes (p. 49):

	I take it that we already have an abundance of reasons
	for believing both that we are physical entities and that
	we are rational.  So we need to understand *how* it might
	be so, and how it might have come about....We have hardly
	begun to see how much of what we want to be true about
	ourselves can be illuminated -- not threatened -- by an
	application of the scientific, naturalistic vision.

And he adds, in a footnote:

	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.

Before you respond to these quotes, Rich, make sure you understand
exactly what Dennett and Nozick are talking about.  I can't find any
evidence in your postings so far that you have read even the first
chapter ("Please Don't Feed the Bugbears") of *Elbow Room*.  Please
give us some incontrovertible evidence that you have.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
"No one has ever announced that because determinism is true
thermostats do not control temperature." -- R. Nozick, *P.E.*, p. 315.