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From: egs@epsilon.UUCP (Ed Sheppard)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: freedom and reason (attn russ, rich, & laura)
Message-ID: <52@epsilon.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Apr-85 03:05:17 EST
Article-I.D.: epsilon.52
Posted: Mon Apr  8 03:05:17 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 8-Apr-85 06:48:17 EST
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Organization: BELLCORE, Livingston, NJ
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> If I'm tied up in a chair and gagged in some other world, my constitution
> might be the same but I would lack free will.  "Agency" implies a agent
> whom a world reacts to.  It implies some means of control over the world;
> as Nozick said, "Just because determinism is true doesn't mean thermostats
> don't control temperature."  If an agent is bound from reacting to the
> world in a manner meaningful and significant to the agent, then that agent
> lacks free will.  Free will thus depends on the structure of the world.

Tony:

I think you've run two concepts together, namely will and capacity. Being
bound does not necessarily imply a lack of will, simply a lack of the
ability to carry out that will.

There is a third component also: desire.

						Ed Sheppard
						Bellcore