On Sep 21, 2011, at 1:58 PM, david buchanan wrote:
>
>
> Marsha said to dmb:
>> So, dmb, is your argument that William James says free-will is real,
>> therefore it is Real? Or is it that William James and a dozen philosophers
>> and scientists say free-will (two-stage model) is real, therefore it i s
>> Real? What is your argument? Have you presented any argument at all? No?
>> Are you folding?
>
> dmb says:
> My claim is that Steve is misreading James. The quotes provide evidence for
> that claim. Steve says that James's indeterminism is a kind of determinism
> but the evidence shows that James's indeterminism is meant to oppose
> determinism. The quotes provide evidence that Steve is misusing these terms
> and that he has misunderstood the meaning of James's essay. He brought it up,
> by the way, not realizing that this essay does not support his position at
> all. Quite the opposite.
>
> But you didn't ask the questions to elicit any real answers, did you? That's
> why you're called Lucy, after all. That's why I usually don't bother to
> answer them - or even read them in the first place.
>
>
Marsha:
Of course, it is so much easier to lapse into calling me Lucy (a child's trick)
than supplying answers to the actual questions, which you didn't, which is why
I called you evasive. And of course, you evaded responding to my other post
also.
Marsha
>>
>>
>> On Sep 20, 2011, at 5:08 PM, david buchanan wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> It remained for William James, Peirce's close friend, to assert that CHANCE
>>> CAN PROVIDE unpredictable alternatives from which THE WILL CAN CHOOSE or
>>> determine one alternative. James was the first thinker to enunciate clearly
>>> a two-stage decision process, with CHANCE in a present time of random
>>> alternatives, LEADING TO A CHOICE which selects one alternative and
>>> transforms an equivocal ambiguous future into an unalterable determined
>>> past. There are undetermined alternatives followed by adequately determined
>>> choices."The stronghold of the determinist argument is the antipathy to the
>>> idea of chance...This notion of alternative possibility, this admission
>>> that any one of several things may come to pass is, after all, only a
>>> roundabout name for CHANCE...What is meant by saying that my CHOICE of
>>> which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of
>>> chance?...It means that both Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called
>>> but only one, and that one either one, shall be CHOSEN." (James, The
>>> Dilemma of Determinism, in The Will to Believe, 1897, p.155)
>>>
>>>
>>> We find that William James was the first of a dozen philosophers and
>>> scientists who have proposed a two-stage model for free will and
>>> creativity. The first stage involves chance that generates alternative
>>> possibilities for action. The second stage is an adequately determined
>>> choice by the will. First chance, then choice. First "free," then "will."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> JAMESIAN FREE WILL, THE TWO-STAGE MODEL OF WILLIAM JAMES
>>> __________________________________________________________________BOB
>>> DOYLEABSTRACT Research into two-stage models of “free will” – first “free”
>>> random generation of alternativepossibilities, followed by “willed”
>>> adequately determined decisions consistent with character, values, and
>>> desires – suggests that William James was in 1884 the first of a dozen
>>> philosophers and scientists to propose such a two-stage model for free
>>> will. We review the later work to establish James’s priority.By limiting
>>> chance to the generation of alternative possibilities, James was the first
>>> to overcome the standard two-part argument against free will, i.e., that
>>> the will is either determined or random. James gave it elements of both, to
>>> establish freedom but preserve responsibility. We show that James was
>>> influenced by Darwin’s model of natural selection, as were most recent
>>> thinkers with a two-stage model.In view of James’s famous decision to make
>>> his first act of freedom a choice to believe that his will is free, it is
>>> most fitting to celebrate James’s priority in the free will debates by
>>> naming the two-stage model – first chance, then choice -“Jamesian” free
>>> will.
>>>
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