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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Non sequitur about free will
Message-ID: <293@spar.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Jun-85 05:27:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.293
Posted: Thu Jun  6 05:27:50 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Jun-85 01:40:41 EDT
References: <1039@pyuxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 48

>{Rich Rosen}

>I just witnessed (by accident) the tail end of a discussion between Ray
>Smullyan and Mortimer Adler on Buckley's "Firing Line" program.  Adler
>concluded by talking about free will, and claiming that belief in free will
>is impeded in so-called determinists because they fail to understand the
>possibility of non-materialist non-causational "causes" for decisions.
>It would seem that he is thus implying that free will requires a
>non-material, non-"cause-and-effect"-al basis for our decisions.  

    An acausal connecting principal -- seems I've encountered that before..

>One that I can only surmise would be described as "external" to "our"
>(so-called) material universe.  (Whatever "external to all things"
>means?----do we define the material universe to be arbitrarily limited by
>our limits of observation, or do we define it to mean EVERYTHING...
>.. thus debunking the whole notion of "non-material", making the word
>"material" a redundancy?

    Individual subjective experience is by definition external to
    the universe of science, since the scientific method involves
    by definition phenomena that are verifiable by independent
    observers.

    Materialists who point out that all subjective phenomena are in
    principle manifested by `chemical reactions' should note that,
    should weird quantum effects play a major role in the chemistry
    of human awareness, they are dealing with some fairly spooky
    chemicals.     

    Notably, the constituents of the chemicals behave `randomly'
    {leaving room for the agent to make a selection} and, apparently,
    in a way that thwarts reductionism. 

>What exactly is this boundary between physical and non-physical, material
>and immaterial, if not arbitrary anthropocentric ones, and if this is true
>what is the basis for making them distinct?)

     It seems clear to me that the objective and subjective realms are
     but two viewpoints of the same underlying phenomenon. Each view
     perceives its own kinds of things more clearly than the other.

     We keep them distinct because of the necessity of our situation.
     It is our `architecture' as human beings that cleaves the universe.

     SMASH CAUSALITY!!

-michael