Hi Steve, You seem to me to be missing a very important point. Is this a choice on your part or is it the end-result of a long chain of causes over which you have no choice and no say? Hmmm... I guess the answer to that question would determine how hard I work to persuade you rather than trying to change the causes of your condition. Or maybe, in the end, that's all the same thing. I guess it depends on how you want to look at it. I mean, everything does.
> > > Steve: > No doubt people change their minds. But are they _free_ to change > their minds, or do their minds change because of forces beyond their > control or for reasons that can't be explained? > > John: Which hypothetical offers us the most good? The most freedom of action and moral culpability? It seems to me on pragmatic basis alone, the idea of being completely constrained would lead to a sort of intellectual dead-endedness. Why strive or attempt to learn? What reason for even living? If it's all pre-determined by cosmic inputs and causes, then all you are doing is unrolling your robotic existence as planned, and you have no reason to try and make any real effort. That's what one hypothetical position leads to, in my analysis. Who cares if its true or not if it leads to such a dead end? I operate on the assumption that my will is free - that this is me, and on that assumption I am able to be far more effective than if I just waited for the universe to deal my causal cards. > > > > [Craig] > > But a person can decide what s/he wants. > > Steve: > Ok, but one again beside the point. Does a person freely will > him/herself to want or not want something or is what they want > determined by forces beyond their control or for reasons that can't be > explained? John: Explained? Since when does explanation become a component of freedom? I'd say anything explainable has already been figured out, and thus is more on the continuum of constraint than freedom. "reasons that can't be explained" and the ability to act upon those reasons, is the essence of why freedom is so important. If it could all just be explained, then we could simply go by the book and there wouldn't be any need for freedom. There obviously is. You do believe that more freedom is a good thing, doncha Steve? Steve: > You assert that we are free to act upon our values, but I > read the MOQ to be saying that someone can't help but to act upon his > values. John: Yes, but the MoQ also opens our eyes to the fact that we CHOOSE our values. There are, granted, all kinds of values and value-systems which want to give us the easy way out and show us how to think and value, but in the end, even the guy who has given his mind away to some system or god, has made a choice in the matter. Maybe he was born into those patterns, but in modern times, men still have choices in the panoply of thought available even to the most distant societies on the planet. So you can of course, continue in the idea that you don't have free will - and that will be absolute truth - for you. Because of a choice you made and now deny. But its a relatively small truth you explicate then. Steve: > In fact all a person is is a bunch of values, so it is even > wrong to say that they are _his_ values. Lila doesn't have Quality, > Quality has Lila. > > John: Right. All a person is is a bunch of choices, is another way of saying the same thing. Choice is as fundamental as Value. duh. John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
