From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Subject: Re: Economic Discrimination was Outgrowing Libertarianism...
Organization: Quake Public Access
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 11:24:07 GMT

In article <BvE76B.AI4@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>In article <qff6e1g@zola.esd.sgi.com> thant@void.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman) writes:
>>In article <BvCq78.Gzq@apollo.hp.com>, nelson_p@apollo.hp.com writes:
>>>   The bottom line is this: Mr. Yoder has made a positive assertion
>>>   that free will exists.   In logic the onus is on the one making 
>>>   positive assertion to support it.  I'm under no logical obligation
>>>   to try to "disprove" free will; my role in this is merely to point
>>>   out that there is no apparent mechanism to account for it in the
>>>   universe as I am aware of it, and to demand that Mr. Yoder either
>>>   produce (or at least suggest) one, or stop talking nonsesne.

>>In other words, determinism is logically useless in describing
>>human behavior.  One might not be able to prove the existence of
>>free-will (as if that wasn't itself a contradiction in terms)

>  Why is it a contradiction?

Well, to make an observation about the world and choose the rational
interpretation of the data, you have to have the ability to make choices...
to have free will.  If that is not the case, then any statement, even 
ones about whether or not we have free will, cannot be rationaly chosen.
Any statement about reality rests on an implicit assumption that one can
choose between the right answers and the wrong ones.  Have you ever heard
of reaffirmation through denial?  Do you know what an axiom is?

>>  but free-will is unavoidable as an operating premise.

>  Only as a semantic shorthand.  If I say, "I intend to vote
>  Marrou/Lord this November as a protest", the implication
>  is, ". . . as if I have free will".  

That's like saying "That chair exists...as if it exists.".  The fact that 
you are able to state the question requires the premise that you can
choose between right and wrong ideas.  To deny it, requires that one assume
it true.

>  But Yoder went over 
>  the line of this pragmat to actually claim that he DID have
>  free will.  He made the claim that he was above cultural and
>  genetic conditioning.   And that flies in the face of science.

What science says this?  What science is not based on the premise of the
free will of the scientist to choose what evidence to look at, what
experiments to perform, and how to interpret the results?  Any scientist 
worth his title knows that a result that contradicts it's premises proves
the presence of error.  Thus, there can be no scientific disproval of
free will.

>  An analogy:  We say "the sun rises".  This is a perfectly 
>  reasonable expression that describes the way it appears to 
>  us on a daily basis and using a "sunrise"/"sunset" model as
>  a pragmat works perfectly well for ordinary daily activities
>  that involve referense to the sun or its position in the sky.
>  But the moment we're forced to regard the sun in some more
>  precise manner, as in astronomical study, it breaks down and
>  we are required to confront the actual mechanics of the 
>  Earth's rotation.

What does that have to do with free will?  Do you think that the fact
that one can define a context in which a statement which was true in 
another context becomes false or meaningless makes that first fact
invalid?  I see people making use of this kind of fallacy all the time,
and it amazes me that more people don't spot it as the nonsense it is.

--Brian

Newsgroups: sci.econ,talk.politics.theory