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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Science & Philosophy vs Rosenism (Skinnerist Moral Philosophy)
Message-ID: <232@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 3-Nov-85 17:19:35 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.232
Posted: Sun Nov  3 17:19:35 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 20:44:07 EST
References: <1663@pyuxd.UUCP> <1820@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1907@pyuxd.UUCP> <619@spar.UUCP> <1993@pyuxd.UUCP> <630@spar.UUCP> <2011@pyuxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 38

>>     Hume no doubt believed that past history determined present state
>>     (incidentally, he did not believe in free will ... [ELLIS]
>
>Perhaps because he understood The Definition?  [ROSEN]

Hume well understood that there is an "essential ambiguity" in the
term "liberty" (or words to that effect -- I don't have my copy
handy).  In Hume's view, that is why the dispute had not been
resolved -- there is no The Definition.  He described a common
understanding of "liberty" as "a power of acting or not acting,
according to our will:  which is universally allowed [i.e.
acknowledged to be the case]" (approximate quote).  So the statement
that Hume did not believe in free will is not true without
qualification.  

[ROSEN]
>(I shouldn't be belittling
>you, Michael, for definition-changing games.  If anything, you are one of the
>few people here who understands such things.  Rather than changing the
>definition to "get" what you want, which is a dishonest rhetorical trick, you
>change the premises to get to "acausality".  What you miss, however, is
>that acausality cannot get you free will.  Free will requires an active
>agent of first cause making the choices, unaffected by other causes of the
>material world.  Yet it must be a WILLFUL agent, one of deliberateness
>that causes other things to happen.  

Once again:  Rich Rosen is the only person in this newsgroup, to my
knowledge, who is claiming either that people possess or that they do
not possess "free will."  In other words, he is the only person who
is doing what he accuses everyone else of doing, namely, arbitrarily
defining "free will" in order to "get [rid of]" free will.

When writing future articles, Rich, please ask yourself whether your
article arbitrarily defines free will in order to obtain a wished-for
conclusion (the nonexistence of free will).  If so, commit it then to
net.flame:  for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
-- 
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes