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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: External Influences
Message-ID: <512@spar.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 14:57:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.512
Posted: Tue Sep 10 14:57:47 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Sep-85 23:19:27 EDT
References: <3518@decwrl.UUCP> <1451@pyuxd.UUCP> <661@psivax.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 46

>>
>>    But the past DOES NOT EXIST any more. The past has turned into the
>>    present moment...
>>    ...
>>    Now Mr. Friesen is speaking in instantaneous terms; therefore, Rich,
>>    your comments about past experiences are irrelevant, unless you 
>>    restate them in present-moment terms (eg - memories, habits, momentum,
>>    impinging causes..). [ME]
>
>Yes, one can get a consistent definition of free will in this way.  But you
>don't want it.  It obliges to grant that my computer, which is a running a
>program I entered and commanded it to run some time ago, is exhibiting free
>will. [Frank Adams]

    Sorry about any confusion -- the part you quoted from my article was
    hardly an argument for free will. It was only an attempt to clarify a
    disagreement about effects and past events that, I believe, arose from
    Sarima's (3-D timeslice) and Rich's (4-D worldtube) differing
    viewpoints.

>... on the other hand, if you are going to allow memories of past events to
>count as external factors, you have given away the whole argument.

    Sorry again -- I'll try once more...

	What remains of past experiences has been incorporated into one's
	memory, habits, etc...  They were only external influences when they
	crossed from external to internal.
    
	Exactly where they `cross the boundary' and become integrated into
	the person is arbitrary, though I suggested later in the same
	article that this point occurs at the moment of one first
	becomes aware of the experience. 

    Anyway, external or not, pleasant memories, knowledge, skills, good
    habits, etc, increase one's freedom by opening the mind to healthy and
    varied interests. 

    In fact, LACK of past experiences -- parental neglect, poor education,
    insufficient human contact, boredom, etc -- is probably as constraining to
    personal freedom as traumatic or bitter experience. 

    Finally, the strict Behaviorist belief that past experience totally
    determines one's actions is NOT fact.

-michael