Re: Free Will FWIW

From: JPL Verhey (matterDELminds_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/14/04

  • Next message: JPL Verhey: "Re: Free Will FWIW" 
    Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 01:19:51 +0200

    "Lester Zick" <lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
    news:416e8b0f.87181312@netnews.att.net...
    > On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:31:02 +0200, "JPL Verhey"
    > <matterDELminds@hotmail.com> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
    >
    >>
    >>"Lester Zick" <lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
    >>news:416dd5b5.85130071@netnews.att.net...
    >>> On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 23:59:40 +0200, "JPL Verhey"
    >>> <matterDELminds@hotmail.com> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
    >>>
    >>>>
    >>>>"Lester Zick" <lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
    >>>>news:416d93b2.82422121@netnews.att.net...
    >>>>>
    >>>>> Free Will FWIW
    >>>>> ---------
    >>>>>
    >>>>> Let's put the issue of free will to rest once and for all. It
    >>>>> doesn't
    >>>>> really matter what people think they mean in using the term, nor
    >>>>> does
    >>>>> it matter very much what people have thought they meant in using
    >>>>> the
    >>>>> term. It only matters what people can demonstrate of the term
    >>>>> itself.
    >>>>>
    >>>>> What justifies putting the two words together, "free" and "will"?
    >>>>> This
    >>>>> is only justifiable if "free will" represents a subspecies of
    >>>>> "will".
    >>>>> Otherwise, we're dealing with "free, will" or some kind of
    >>>>> "willful
    >>>>> freedom", the meaning of which would be anybody's guess.
    >>>>
    >>>>Well, I don't think there is much to this issue - "free will" is
    >>>>simply
    >>>>what it means to most people when they use the term, and this can be
    >>>>investigated by polling enough people. Then you probably get a
    >>>>fairly
    >>>>accurate picture of what "free will" means.
    >>>
    >>> Apart from behaviorism science rarely solicits popular opinion to
    >>> define its subject matter. Me, I deal in explanations and not
    >>> majority
    >>> logic. Free will is not simply what anybody or everybody thinks it
    >>> is,
    >>> at least as a matter of science.
    >>
    >>Perhaps - but science has, unfortunately, one down side: it negates
    >>the
    >>way things are by "explaining them" in other terms where the
    >>explanation
    >>is *believed* to be ontologically of higher ranking than the phenomena
    >>itself. A simple example, but the list is endless:
    >
    >
    >
    >>Green. That's how we name a certain visual experience of color. Now
    >>comes in science that offers different explanations, negating the
    >>original:
    >>
    >>"Green"??
    >>- No! It's an EM wavelength that we just "experience" as green.
    >>- No! It's just a word we learned to attach to a visual experience in
    >>which there is no "green" at all.
    >>- No! It's brain activity.
    >>- No! "Green" is the result of non-Green differences due to paralel
    >>mechanics in the brain and elsewhere.
    >>- No! It's just brainphysiology that mediates *behavior*.
    >>
    >>In the mean time, of course, Green has died. Not officially, and
    >>scientist will probably acknowledge that Green is still there, but the
    >>effect of this obsession with science, which you appear to have too,
    >>mesmerizes the eye of the beholder into the "hypnosis of knowlegde"
    >>resulting in a loss of ability to just see.. Green.
    >
    > My obsession is with life, JPL. Science is just a means to an end.
    > What would you prefer then, the philosopher stone? Then we could just
    > talk on forever about life's little mysteries that we couldn't quite
    > be bothered to solve.
    >
    > This is the age old controversy between knowledge and mystery, JPL.
    > Some prefer to know and some prefer ignorance. Those who prefer to
    > know become scientists and those who don't become mystics.

    I'm not talking about mysteries at all, Lester. Nor against science. I
    talk about a side effect of science that is perhaps worth taking notice
    of. I used the example of Green. Or take the mind - maybe it is easier
    for you to agree. Isn't there a tendency to deny the mind, the reality
    of experience? The most extreme science that does this, is behaviorism -
    in itself nothing wrong with behaviorism, since indeed behavior can be
    studied and in different ways. Won't you agree that it is behaviorism in
    fact, that turns the mind into a mystery by denying it? Isn't Green made
    into a mystery by translation it into something else?

    >
    >>>
    >>>>I am getting a bit sceptical, Lester, on the efforts here to "look
    >>>>behind the curtain" hoping to know what things "really are"
    >>>>behaviorally, mechanically or otherwise.
    >>>
    >>> What would you have science do instead? Fiddle with its experimental
    >>> apparatus, mope along with the status quo, and faint echoes of
    >>> "better
    >>> luck next time, old boy"? The British disease.
    >>
    >>I'm against the obsession with science and knowledge.
    >
    > Then you're a mystic.

    I don't see the connection.

    >
    >>
    >> It is not
    >>different from a religious obsession.
    >
    > So, knowledge and religious belief are functionally equivalent? Hooey!

    No, science and knowledge are not relgion - the obsession with them is.
    It is the idea that if we don't understand the mechanics involved in
    seeing Green.. the Devil is ready to leave us ignorent and lost, and the
    *belief* that somehow a mechanical explanation or description give you
    the "satisfying sense" to know "what Green really is".. thusly
    devaluating, artificially, the ontological reality of Green itself and
    artificially inflating the ontological value of the explanatory
    conceptions *about* Green. Thusly an illusion is created that knowledge
    supercedes - even to the point of denial - the existence of Green
    itself. This (as un unintended sideffect of science), turns Green into a
    mystery, while promoting knowledge into the solid, and comfortable thing
    , a victory over Green to be cashed in. It is shooting ducks and every
    dead duck that ends up on the trophy bar gives the hunter a sense of
    security and victory.

    > Anyone can make up quaint little stories and analogize to their hearts
    > content. Not so many people can answer questions unambiguously.
    >
    >> Science
    >> is about creating tools
    >>that solve some of our problems and serve our basic needs.
    >
    > Knowledge is a basic need. Perhaps the basic need. And science is
    > about the knowledge that allows us to create tools to solve problems
    > and serve our basic needs.
    >
    >>
    >> Obsession
    >>leeds to analysing to death and negating into nothingness the facts
    >>and
    >>quality of our lives - it becomes a religion.
    >
    > So, you prefer endless philosophizing? Seems to me philosophy morphs
    > into religion much faster than science because it doesn't even know
    > how to address questions definitively much less answer them.Philosophy
    > just makes up answers as it goes along and pretends it's done the job.
    > Science can be held accountable for its answers. Philosophy can't.
    > Witness behaviorism, platonism, and a host of mystic philosophies.

    Philosophy is just thinking and talking about things. It can be science
    or the weather. Sometimes it leads to advances in sciences when the
    subjects are scientific. Sometimes thinking about science leads to
    observations on the effects of science on culture and the way we think
    about things. I pretend to do science when I say I observe something -
    lets look at it.

    I see an obsession with science and rational thought in our Western
    culture, like they are the first of the Ten Commandments and doom awaits
    if you don't marry yourself to them. I also observe that explanations
    science constructed for a variety of things, tend to negate the original
    phenomena into a lower ontological level of value, whereas the
    explanation (the original in terms of something-else) is believed to be
    the real thing. It's really all over the place. People have the
    experience of falling in love? "Nah... it's just your hormones". My
    point is not to deny hormones and all the physiology involved in the
    experience of falling in love, but that the physiology is believed to be
    the real thing whereas the experience, which was the reality and
    starting point, is "explained away", or maybe forgotten - to say it more
    friendly. I also observe that this actually turns the original into a
    mystery. Did we think Green when we were young? Of course not. Only
    after all those explanations were constructed, and ironically, it became
    one.

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