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From: jim@ism780b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Time and Free Will
Message-ID: <44@ism780b.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 00:22:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780b.44
Posted: Wed Aug  8 00:22:01 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Aug-84 01:34:44 EDT
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Nf-ID: #R:ism780:20200016:ism780b:27500032:000:3355
Nf-From: ism780b!jim    Jul 31 12:03:00 1984

>>Could you please explain how this works?
>
>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.  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.
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.

> 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.  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;
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.

-- Jim Balter, INTERACTIVE Systems (ima!jim)