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From: martin@ism780.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Time and Free Will - (nf)
Message-ID: <351@ism780.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Aug-84 00:06:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780.351
Posted: Thu Aug  2 00:06:49 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Aug-84 02:08:29 EDT
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#R:ism780:20200016:ism780:20200020:000:4946
ism780!martin    Jul 31 15:14:00 1984

>>No.  When you ask how something works, you are asking for the cause of an
>>effect.  Since even our language assumes Cause and Effect, I cannot use
>>this language to explain a concept that says there is no Cause and Effect.

>Gee, I guess the lord works in mysterious ways.  It may be true, but it makes
>for pretty dull conversation.  What you are essentially saying is that
>you are choosing meanings for words which makes it impossible to speak
>rationally with them.

I don't wish to change the meanings of words.  What I mean to say is we
cannot talk about free will in a language that assumes Cause and Effect.
You say the word *because* implies Cause and Effect, but I say it
assumes it.  Does this make it impossible for me to speak rationally with
the word *because*?

>You may freely choose to do so, but I prefer to choose
>meanings for words which *do* allow exchange of ideas.  Besides, I think
>you have merely made an analytical mistake and are refusing to defend it.

Perhaps I have made an analytical mistake, but if so, I'm certainly not
going to defend it.  That would be a waste of time.

>In many conversations, this manifests itself with the statement
>"I have a right to my opinion".  This statement is only interesting when
>discussing methods to coerce people to change their opinions against their
>will.  Otherwise, it just means that the person is no longer willing to have
>his position challenged, usually because the challenge is too powerful
>for him to deal with.

My position is that I can't explain what a free choice is or how I go about
choosing, because (there's that word again) the tool I have at my disposal,
language, is based on the concepts of Cause and Effect and Time Marching On.
If language were based on the concepts of objective as cause and time moving
from present to past, then I believe this discussion would be about why
I couldn't explain what I meant by Determinism.

>> While philosophy and science at first seem to be limitless, they are
>> restricted by their base.  Perhaps we have hit this limit when we try to
>> describe a black hole or a mind.  If Cause and Effect is the underlying
>> assumption of the scientific method, then it is also the underlying limit
>> of our understanding of things.

>But our understanding of things is all there is.  Conceptualization is
>based upon induction.  There is not a single concept you have which does
>not rest upon other concepts and words the implicit meanings of which
>were obtained through induction.  Black holes and the mind certainly are
>not beyond *my* understanding.

I also don't think black holes and the mind are beyond your understanding.
But I don't think you understand them.  The tools that we have to study
these things are not adequate.  They are based on Cause and Effect, and
they seem to be breaking down.  Aren't Physicists beginning to say that
Cause and Effect doesn't work the same in a black hole?

>You may think there is something that is
>beyond anyone's understanding, but I dare you to express it.  By
>understanding something I do not mean determining the truth about it;

I think everything in the universe can be understood, because the tool
that we use to understand, the mind, is, I think, outside the universe,
but has access to information inside the universe.

>determining the truth about black holes is problematic and the determination
>of what happened before the Big Bang is impossible, but it is possible
>to *understand* these things to the degree that they can be expressed.
>To quote Wittgenstein, "in order to draw a limit to thinking, we should
>have to think both sides of this limit".

>> I haven't shown it.  But I think I have shown that I can't show it when
>> our system of showing things assumes that I can't show it.
>> That would be like discussing the existance of God with Jerry Falwell.  But don't worry,
>> I'm gonna think s'more (because I freely choose to).

>One of the problems of merely thinking about things is that the formation
>of new concepts based upon old concepts is non-trivial.  While Socrates
>showed that his subjects already "had" the knowledge, they certainly would
>not have been able to access it as readily without his guidance.
>Far greater thinkers than either of us have already spent lifetimes thinking
>about these things and analyzing what other philosophers thought about these
>things, and I suggest following that pattern.

>I suggest the works of A. J. Ayers for a particularly deep treatment of
>the problems of language and semantics.  Some other interesting philosophers
>to read are George Berkeley, Rudolf Carnap, Rene Descartes, David Hume,
>I. Kant, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and L. Wittgenstein.

I admit that I am not well-read in this area even though I have read things
by some of the above.  I will read more, but I hate to ruin a mind that I
have labored so long to keep pristine.

		    martin smith, INTERACTIVE Systems