From: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Economic Discrimination was Outgrowing Libertarianism...
Date: 29 Sep 92 22:55:26 GMT
Reply-To: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pyramid Technologies, Mt. View, California.

In article <BvCq78.Gzq@apollo.hp.com>, nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter
Nelson) writes:
|> In article <exukjb.269.717783543@exu.ericsson.se>
exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell) writes:
|> 
|> >
|> >(a)	"If you had a different historical experience and development
|> >	 you would not believe p".
|> >
|> >(b)	 "Hence, that fact you believe p is a foregone conclusion for
|> >	  from your causal history"
|> >
|

(b) does not necessarily follow from (a).  There is a difference between
having a "conditioned" belief and pre-determinism.  I have worked
extensively, over the last ten years, facilitating people's examination
of their belief systems.  They introspect, illuminate, examine, and assess
whether the belief system works and is worth keeping.  I have worked with
thousands of people.  I have *NEVER* found anyone, who does not possess
literally an entire rats nests of beliefs that were formed over time
when the individual mis-interpreted his experience and arrived at a
false conclusion -- a conclusion that he or she admits as now being
invalid, though it may have been a proper conclusion formed AT THE TIME
the experience or experiences occurred.

Young children are not rational.  They do not learn through rational
mechanisms.  Before the rational mechanism can assess and apply logic
the child is filled with sensory, kinesthetic, and emotive data much of which
are the basis for visceral, emotive "gut" reactions  later on.  Even as
"rationalizing" adults we are not automatically entitled to be free of
those effects though we are now free to choose our beliefs and behavior.
We are not free to choose our memory, though we can alter its effects on
our behavior.  
  
|> >  On the determinists own view (a) itself is not something that could
|> >  have been arrived at by a rational consideration of evidence. So,
|> >  he has to say that his reasons for believing (a) having nothing
|> >  whatever to do with his evaluation of the evidence, and so are no
|> >  more worthy of belief than anyone elses, since his believing (a)
|> >  was just as predetermined by his causal history as anyone else's
|> >  beliefs.
|> 
|>   Nope, incorrect.  The determinist would not say that his *belief" is
|>   predetermined, but rather his *epistemology* is.  His "belief" or
|>   more correctly his conclusion, simply follows from his epistemology.
|>   He simply applies the tools, say logical empiricism, that he has been
|>   deterministically programmed with, to the universe around him and
|>   arrives at whatever conclusions those tools produce.  So if you
|>   believe logical empiricism produces correct results then you don't
|>   need free will anywhere in this process.
|> 

Actually, the mechanism by which he gathers and assimilates experience
is determined.  The experiences provided by life to gather and
assimilate are what determine the different beliefs.  In certain
Spiritual belief systems, there are also "initial conditions" to be
considered.  To the extent that Marx observed that different men
subjected to different conditions formed different beliefs, he was right
-- so long as he made no specific reference to a set belief as the
*necessary* outcome of a set particular experience.

What he left out is that we can choose the contents of our
consciousness.  It is a lot of work, but it can be done.  We can
re-create our belief systems.

In that sense we are both condition-able and free-able.

Paul Collacchi
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory