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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: External Influences
Message-ID: <531@spar.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 06:10:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.531
Posted: Fri Sep 20 06:10:01 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 05:47:16 EDT
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Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 92

>>..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
>
>Nay, there's a difference.  An act of "free will" is caused by a *conscious
>mind*.  (By the way, I've thought about T. Dave Hudson's argument that
>free will should be *defined* via the notion of activity caused by a
>conscious mind; and that r-e-a should not be built into the definition of
>free will but should be part of the explanation of it, as one of the 
>conditions for it.  (I hope I represent his views accurately.)  Mr. Hudson,
>take a bow:  you've convinced me (no easy feat! :->).)
> Paul V Torek

    Rational decision by a conscious mind. Sounds familiar. Oh yes..

>    Kant: 
>	..But the very same subject, being on the other hand conscious
>	of himself as a thing-in-itself, considers his existence also in so
>	far as it is not subject to time-conditions, and he regards himself
>	as determinable only through laws which he gives himself through
>	reason. And to be determinable through self-imposed laws is to be
>	free. [History of Philosophy, Copleston]

   Still, I have a problem with the notion that freedom is self-conscious
   rational choice. All that logic-chopping can be numbing, and, in excess,
   may become yet another constraint on personal freedom.

   The freest minds I know can be brutally self-scrutinizing as appropriate,
   yet otherwise follow spontaneous impulse as effortlessly as a frog might
   splash into an old pond.

   These additional definitions may help to clarify the issue:

    Chuang Tzu: 
	Freedom derives from the abandonment of fixed goals, the dissolution
	of rigid categories and launching out of the confines of self so
	that one may respond anew to the totality of every new situation
	[Inner Chapters, AC Graham]
    Bergson: 
	Free will is the breathing manifestation and unpredictable
	creativity of evolution: Evolution is truly creative, like the
	work of an artist. An impulse to action, as undefined want, exists
	beforehand, but until the want is satisfied, it is impossible to
	know how nature will satisfy it. For example, we may suppose some
	vague desire in sightless animals to be able to be aware of objects 
	before theywere in contact with them. This led to efforts which
	finally which finally resulted in the creation of eyes. Sight could
	not have been imagined beforehand. For this reason, evolution 
	[even within an individual] is unpredictable, and determinism cannot
	refute advocates of free will. 
	[History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell]
    Sartre: 
        The characteristic of the for-itself implies that it is being which
	finds no help, no pillar of support in what it WAS. The for-itself
	is free and can make the world exist because the for-itself is the
        being which has to be what it is in light of what will be. Therefore
	the freedom of the for-itself appears as its being.. We shall never
	experience ourselves except as choice in making. Freedom is simply
	the fact that this choice is always unconditioned.. Such choice
	without basis yet dictating its own purposes is absurd.
	[20th Century to Wittgenstein and Sartre, WT Jones]
    Feyerabend:
	Who needs free will? Freedom entails absence of elitist control
	and the encouragement of cultural pluralism -- separate religion
	(including science) from state!
    Smullyan:
        Once you can see the so-called "you" and the so-called "nature" as a
	continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such
	questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature
	who is controlling you. [contributed by Richard Carnes]
    Campbell:
	Free will irreduceably exists without rationale; to account for it 
	would be a contradiction in terms, it is ex hypothesi the sort of
	thing for which an explanation is absurd.
    Pu Jen:
	Enjoy that which you despise -- you don't exist anyway.
    Compton: 
	Free will is plastic control: not just chance, but rather the result
	of a subtle interplay between something almost random or haphazard, 
	and something like a restrictive or selective control -- such as a
	goal or a standard -- though certainly not a cast-iron control.
	[Objective Knowledge, Karl Popper]
    Gandhi: 
	The first thing of all and the most important of all is the inner 
	unity, the overcoming and healing of inner division, the consequent
	spiritual and personal freedom, of which autonomy and liberty would
	be consequences. [Gandhi on NonViolence, Thomas Merton]

    "Carry data chop logic"
     Ordinary men are so bright and intelligent!

-michael


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