Dear Hal.
I usually keep away from responding to your posts, I am not up to most and
my positions are rather 'peculiar' (nice understatement).
Now I have an extra tuppence in this topic:
1. Definition I could understand as identification and it may be 6 volumes.
If we don't agree in the well defined topic we are talking about we have an
unending chance to debate (see: consciousness).
I would cut out the 'trivial' 14 lb ball called freewill.
*
I find your examples flat and one-plane thinking. In our recent level of
considerations there are more complex possibilities than just "a causal
indication" for an action. Yes, if you DID something, this was the ONLY
outcome and it might have had a single cause for an origination. But in the
decision there is a - maybe sub-un-conscious pondering of many diverse
arguments - many ways, in the past experience, genetic structure of the
thinking, goals, rules, etc. and the final outcome is personal - yet based
on the personal mindset (ie. mind-background and makeup).
So 'free' we are within our options. Not beyond them.
*
You also wrote the words: "moral liberty". It is highly cultural. You may be
hanged for killing a person or get a medal for it. Furthermore:
>"... It ramifies into ethics, theology, metaphysics, and psychology. "<
None of them can survive an objective (unbiased?) scrutiny.
I agree fully with your closing par, just wonder, why "state" what the
problem is, is better than 'define it".
Cheers
John Mikes
----- Original Message -----
From: ""Hal Finney"" <hal.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: "Free Will Theorem"
> Stathis Papaioannou writes
> > Here is my definition: a decision I make is "free" when I feel that I
could
> > have decided otherwise.
>
> Is the question of "free will" just a matter of definitions? Definitional
> arguments are sterile and have no meaning. If I define "free will" to be
> a 14 pound bowling ball, then there, I've proven that free will exists.
> But it's not a very useful approach.
>
> It is important to understand that there is more to the free will problem
> than just definitions. Before trying to define away the problem, it is
> necessary to clearly state it and understand it. The page I pointed to,
> <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/>, goes on to do so in
> the very next paragraph after the one I quoted:
>
> : 1.5 The Free Will Problem
> :
> : If we are to understand compatibilism as a solution to the free
> : will problem, it would be useful to have some sense of the problem
> : itself. Unfortunately, just as there is no single notion of free will
> : that unifies all of the work philosophers have devoted to it, there is
> : no single specification of the free will problem. In fact, it might be
> : more helpful to think in terms of a range of problems. Regardless, any
> : formulation of the problem can be understood as arising from a troubling
> : sort of entanglement of our concepts, an entanglement that seems to lead
> : to contradictions, and thus that cries out for a sort of disentangling.
In
> : this regard, the free will problem is a classic philosophical problem;
> : we are, it seems, committed in our thought and talk to a set of concepts
> : which, under scrutiny, appear to comprise a mutually inconsistent
> : set. Formally, to settle the problem - to disentangle the set - we must
> : either reject some concepts, or instead, we must demonstrate that the
> : set is indeed consistent despite its appearance to the contrary.
> : Just to illustrate, consider this set of propositions as an historically
> : very well known means of formulating the free will problem. Call it the
> : Classical Formulation:
> :
> : 1. Some person (qua agent), at some time, could have acted otherwise
> : than she did.
> : 2. Actions are events.
> : 3. Every event has a cause.
> : 4. If an event is caused, then it is causally determined.
> : 5. If an event is an act that is causally determined, then the agent
> : of the act could not have acted otherwise than in the way that
> : she did.
>
>
> If you google on 'free will problem' you will find other
> definitions and analyses which are similar. Here is one from
> the religious perspective, where these problems originally arose,
> often in the context of God's omniscient knowledge of the future,
> <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm>:
>
> : The question of free will, moral liberty, or the liberum arbitrium of
the
> : Schoolmen, ranks amongst the three or four most important philosophical
> : problems of all time. It ramifies into ethics, theology, metaphysics,
> : and psychology. The view adopted in response to it will determine a
man's
> : position in regard to the most momentous issues that present themselves
> : to the human mind. On the one hand, does man possess genuine moral
> : freedom, power of real choice, true ability to determine the course
> : of his thoughts and volitions, to decide which motives shall prevail
> : within his mind, to modify and mould his own character? Or, on the
other,
> : are man's thoughts and volitions, his character and external actions,
> : all merely the inevitable outcome of his circumstances? Are they all
> : inexorably predetermined in every detail along rigid lines by events of
> : the past, over which he himself has had no sort of control? This is the
> : real import of the free-will problem.
>
> Another one, from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
> <http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/V014>:
>
> : ... [I]n many human beings, the experience of choice gives rise to a
> : conviction of absolute responsibility that is untouched by philosophical
> : arguments. This conviction is the deep and inexhaustible source of the
> : free will problem: powerful arguments that seem to show that we cannot
> : be morally responsible in the ultimate way that we suppose keep coming
> : up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we continue to
> : believe that we are ultimately morally responsible.
>
> Maybe we don't like this way of formulating the problem, but if we are
> going to continue to debate it, we ought to at least state what the
> problem is.
>
> Hal Finney
>
Received on Wed Apr 13 2005 - 17:08:06 PDT