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From: flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul Torek)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Belated (4/22) reply to Rosen ("free choice")
Message-ID: <6155@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-May-85 01:33:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.6155
Posted: Thu May 30 01:33:24 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 30-May-85 20:47:37 EDT
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Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 62

Even no. of >'s = me, Odd no. = Rich Rosen.

> Agreed, free choice is exactly what people are concerned about in the notion
> of free will.  Now, demonstrate to all that what you describe as free choice
> (again, I assume you continue using "rational evaluative analysis") is an
> example of actual freedom.  Can you?  I doubt it.  Note the dependencies of
> the actions leading to r-e-a.  You can only make such r-e-a if your 
> experience up to that point has not been fraught with inhibitive
> preconceptions that impede the incorporation of useful knowledge into your
> "stored constructs".

So?

> Could you have chosen not to have had a traumatic experience as a child that
> tainted the way you look at the world and incorporate knowledge about it?

But, in point of fact, I didn't have such an experience.

> Could you have had the choice to have ignored that experience and not 
> fomented the preconceptions that would lay dormant in your brain throughout
> your life? With this in mind, one cannot have free choice in any sense of
> the word, no matter what words you choose to use. 

Wrong.  You assume (at least, what you say makes sense only on the assumption
that) being free now requires as a prerequisite that one was free to choose
the influences on one's character in the past.  Not so!  One might just as 
well assume, that having language ability now requires that one was able to
use language in the past.  In either case, one can trace the origins of
the ability back to a point where the ability didn't exist, but so what?
It only shows that free choice, like language ability, is something we
acquire during our childhood in the learning process.  Big news!

> Mind you, the degree to which one can circumvent preconceptions/
> ihnibitions is in fact the degree of one's freedom.

No, the degree to which one can circumvent them OR TO WHICH ONE LACKS THEM
IN THE FIRST PLACE.
------------------------------------
>>  And to say that one ought to avoid
>> error is to say that one *can* avoid error: "ought" implies "can".

> "Can" through addition of new knowledge into one's mind.  

Yes.  And if she can do so, she is FREE to do so -- it's a tautology.

>> Now suppose Laura believes she is free.  Could it be that she ought to have
>> believed the opposite?  No:  her belief is either true or false.  If 
>> false, then she *couldn't* have come to the true conclusion (that she
>> was not free).  If true, then she believed what she ought.  So her belief
>> that she is free cannot be criticized (even if false).

> If the belief is false (that free will does not exist), she could very well
> have come to the conclusion that free will DOES exist because of the way she
> individually interprets her information based on her experiences, her pre-
> conceptions, etc.

True, in which case her belief would be false but she could not rationally be
criticized for it, since she would not be responsible for it, and my point
is borne out again--believing one has free will is a can't-lose proposition.

				--The blooming iconoclast,
				Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec2!pvt1047