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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: freedom and reason (attn russ, rich, & laura)
Message-ID: <734@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Mar-85 22:45:42 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.734
Posted: Wed Mar 20 22:45:42 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Mar-85 04:16:07 EST
References: <362@aesat.UUCP> <5272@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: Huxley College
Lines: 78

> But, I am very
> interested in demonstrating that I have free will. If I do not have
> free will then there is no point in me bothering with ethics, politics,
> doing a good job at work, using casts appropriately so that lint
> passes my code, trying to treat the people I love with more respect and
> in other ways trying to live a better life. I mean -- who cares? I can't
> choose to improve myself, I can't choose to be evil, I can't sin and
> I can't accomplish anything. All I can claim is that sins, accomplishments
> and everything else happens -- I have no credit one way of another.
> 
> If I actually believed that I had no free will then I would go kill
> myself tomorrow. What ever would be the use of anything?

This is truly sad, because I fail to see why Laura (or anyone) should kill
themselves because they don't have free will?  I feel quite glad that I am
fortunate enough to be alive and to experience life and live through and
gain from and enjoy those experiences.  Regardless of whether I "will"
the things I do or not.  The danger is not in denying free will (for good
reason, I'd say) causing despondency and despair owing to "lack of ???";
the danger is in allowing such a notion, that without "free will", I am
nothing, to be perpetuated!

> Now, the implications that one can draw from the existence of free will (that
> we have souls, that God cares about ethics) may be entirely bogus.

I'll say!!  Where do you get such derivations of implications?

> But I do not think that
> it is possible to explain why human beings try to find out about the truth
> without either assuming that they have free will, or that it happened by
> chance. I suppsoe it could be chance .. but it is a rather long shot,
> wouldn't you say?

Isn't everything?  (And isn't that the argument against evolution, too?)

> For instance, take the proposition ``knowledge is good''. Try to refute it.
> If you say ``Knowledge is bad for you'' then you are making a statement.
> That statement is, in itself, knowledge. Thus, you are forced to admit that
> certain knowlege is good. 

Take the statement "Snerdfelb is good".  Please.  By making assertions and
defining things after the fact, you are not really saying anything at all.

> I do not think that you can ask the question ``does man have free will''
> without using the free will whose existence you are questioning.

If I program a machine to ask the question, does it have free will?

> The question implies that there is a true answer to the question and that
> you would like this knowledge. 

Questions are just words strung together.  They don't necessarily "imply"
anything.  The question above "implies" no more than the words it strings
together.  It is only if you assume that asking such a question represents
an instance of free will that this "implication" presents itself.  But that's
some assumption...

> But why should knowledge interest you?
> Because it is possible to make mistakes, and you are trying to avoid
> making them. Aha! By your own effort, in searching for the truth, it
> is possible to influence your actions so that you will make fewer
> mistakes! ... This is an implicit assumption in asking any question. So,
> in asking the question you are either performing another meaningless
> action, or you are demonstrating the free will whose existence you
> are trying to prove.

What am I demonstrating when I ask "Does man have snerdfelb?"  It's no more
or less meaningless than asking "Does man have ANYTHING ELSE?"  Only the
answer provides a means of saying whether it was a meaningless action or
a worthwhile effort to ask the question.  If, in asking a question, you
are seeking knowledge about something, asking alone has no bearing on the
nature of the answer.  Obviously one is searching for information when
asking a question.  But if the answer to the question you ask is "no",
the action was hardly meaningless:  you have gained information that you
can use in the future.
-- 
"Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end."
						Rich Rosen   pyuxd!rlr