Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!bill
From: bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free will does not require nondeterminism.
Summary: clarification
Keywords: free will, determinism, cause
Message-ID: <303@proxftl.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jun 88 16:36:40 GMT
References: <185@proxftl.UUCP> <461@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Proximity Technology, Ft. Lauderdale
Lines: 30

In article <461@aiva.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
> In article <185@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
> ]The absolute minimum required for free will is that there exists
> ]at least one action a thing can perform for which there is no
> ]external phenomena which are a sufficient cause.
>
> I have a suspicion that you may be getting too much from this
> "external".

You (and several others) seemed to have missed the point.  I did
not post that message in order to defend a particular view of why
free will does not require determinism.  Rather, I posted it so
that those of various philosophical persuasions could adapt it to
their own system.

For example, I am an Objectivist.  This measn that I have a
particular notion of what the difference between external and
internal is.  I also can assign some coherent meaning to the rest
of the posting, and voila!, I have an assertion that makes sense
to an Objectivist.

You can do the same, but that is up to you.

> It must also be considered that everything internal to me might
> ultimately be caused by things external.

It is precisely the possibility that this does not have to be
true, even given that things can do only one thing, that makes
free will something to consider, even in a determinist
philosophy.