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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: free will (1 more try before I give up ...)
Message-ID: <881@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Apr-85 12:29:04 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.881
Posted: Tue Apr  9 12:29:04 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 10-Apr-85 06:52:15 EST
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An even better example more related to my own experience.  As a musician,
I not only appreciate songs/compositions as a listening experience, but
also as something to marvel at from a perspective of awe at the process
of composition/creation/performance.  When I listen to Debussy's "Footprints
in the Snow", or Partch's "Daphne of the Dunes", or Lennon and McCartney
singing "If I Fell", I can marvel not only the experience of listening but
the form and craft of the composition itself.  "If I Fell" may be a
primordial Beatles tearjerker, but I can appreciate it as both a listening
experience AND an admiration of its craft, having learned and studied it to
understand what went into making that piece what it is.

Again, the same goes for living life.  Attempting to know and understand
the mechanisms of life, of thought, of action, does not impede appreciating
life as it happens.  It's not necessary to forcefit notions of free will
just to placate your own need not to believe in those mechanisms.  You can
have both an appreciation of the mechanisms and an appreciation of their
results.  Your point that you choose to believe in free will because otherwise
you would feel no purpose in living is contradicted by the fact that other
people do feel purpose without assuming free will.  You had claimed that for
you this is an impossibility.  I hope for your sake that it is not, and that
this provides an alternative to that.
-- 
"Wait a minute.  '*WE*' decided???   *MY* best interests????"
					Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr