Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site wucs.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!wucs!esk
From: esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Useful Distinction on free will
Message-ID: <885@wucs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Apr-85 00:29:38 EST
Article-I.D.: wucs.885
Posted: Thu Apr 11 00:29:38 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Apr-85 05:11:14 EST
Reply-To: pvt1047@wucec2.UUCP (Paul V. Torek)
Organization: Washington U. in St. Louis, CS Dept.
Lines: 22

Lines beginning with a > are from tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)

> If I'm tied up in a chair and gagged in some other world, my constitution
> might be the same but I would lack free will.  "Agency" implies a agent
> whom a world reacts to.  It implies some means of control over the world;

I think you're eliminating a useful distinction here between "free will" or
agency on the one hand, and political/economic/bodily freedom on the other.
Being tied to the chair deprives you of the latter, but not the former.  The
difference can perhaps best be expressed this way:  obstacles to the second
kind of freedom are external; obstacles to free will are internal.  (External
= outside your skin; internal = inside it.)  Examples of diminished free will
are brain damage, and compulsive desires.

> As an Aristotelian naturalist, creating useful distinctions such as a 
> pragmatic definition of free will is what I take to be the business of 
> good philosophy.

I agree; that's why I want to preserve the distinction between "free will"
and other kinds of freedom (political, economic, etc.).
				--The developing iconoclast,
				Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec2!pvt1047