[MD] Free Will

[John Carl]

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