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From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Science & Philosophy vs Rosenism
Message-ID: <569@spar.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 04:31:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.569
Posted: Mon Oct  7 04:31:56 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Oct-85 07:35:48 EDT
References: <1495@pyuxd.UUCP> <2197@pucc-h> <1510@pyuxd.UUCP>
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ct 85 08:31:56 GMT
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7 Oct 85 08:31:56 GMT
Organization: The Institute of Impure Science
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>>>Free will means the ability
>>>to act independently of physical constraints, whether from the surrounding
>>>environment, or the insides of one's own body.  [Rich Rosen]
>
>> Again, I must question the inclusion of "the insides of one's own body" as a
>> physical constraint on one's decisions.  If we assume pure materialism, any 
>> decision not only *depends* on body-state, it *is* body state, like memory, 
>> consciousness, and most of the other good things in life.  How can one talk
>> about making decisions independently of everything that one experiences, 
>> remembers, and *is*?  Acting contrary to one's physical desire is not
>> at all the same thing as acting contrary to one's physical make-up. [BABA]
> 
> Then, at last, you understand the implicit self-contradiction that makes
> free will impossible unless there is an external agent of some sort that
> represents the "you", the "will", that is unencumbered by current physical
> states. [Rosen]

Yes, at last, it is clear that your definition is absurd, and hence cannot
be satisfied by any phenomenon of nature.  What I still don't understand is
why you think anyone would use it.  Now that you've retired "free will"
from the vocabulary of philosophy, how do you distinguish between coerced and 
uncoerced behavior?  What do you call the difference between involuntary 
manslaughter and premeditated murder?  What do you call the difference between
a mistake and a lie?  You may not see any difference, but most of the rest of
us do, and see a common thread to it for which the phrase "free will" serves 
as a label.  People certainly disagree as to what the physical (or ethereal)
basis of this perception.  But they agree that they are talking *about* 
something.  The distinction between mind and body was made in language and
philosophical thought at a time when physics and medicine were scarcely
conceived.  It is unsurprising that people as recently as 300 years ago should 
have associated volition with the immaterial (and, they hoped, immortal) 
spirit, but the inadequacy of their *explanation* doesn't invalidate the 
phenomenon.

Saying that "free will" cannot exist without an immaterial component is like 
saying that "light" cannot exist because there is no luminiferous ether. 


>           Unfotunately, your "I must question the inclusion of..." statement
> sounds an awful lot like someone saying "I must question the inclusion of
> Einstein's relativity model in these equations because it makes our elegant
> simple equations go 'poof!'".

Einstein's equations don't contradict *themselves*.  
Your "definition", by your own admission, does.

						Baba