HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: seiffe@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Erica Seiffert)
Subject: Re: Critisizing the victim?
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 16:15:39 GMT


	DC,
	
		I understand your position, however I am trying to point
	out that it is practically impossible for a woman in this socieity
	to avoid a "high risk" situation. ANY situation where in she is
	alone with a man (generally speaking...) can be a "high risk"
	situation for that woman. The point is that the "way the world
	is" a woman can be sexually assulted by her husband, her brother,
	her clegyman, her doctor, her teacher, her boss..etc.  
		A woman has to learn to appraise every situation and every
	person. DC do you ever worry that your placing yourself at risk 
	when you talk with a Professor alone? Do you ever wonder if you
	shouldn't have some one with you when the maintenance man comes
	by to fix something? Do you ever set up a little  emergency "code" 
	system with your friends when you go out on a first date?
		Yes, when I was involved with a rape education program,
	we talked about how alcohol affects one's behavior and seriously
	impairs one's capactiy for decision making. We talked about the
	high rates rape among frat parties and athelitc events. We also
	talked about what attitudes demonstrated by your date that might
	indicate a potential problem with him.
		However, a person shouldn't HAVE to worry about every 
	situation. A person shouldn't HAVE to view every other person
	person as a possible threat.
		The sad fact is that every person and every situation is
	suspect, not just when a woman is dressed in a mini-skirt in a bar
	full of ex-jocks.
		At some point as well, a woman has to decide whom she
	"trusts" and what situations feel safe. However, if that trusted
	person or that safe situation suddenly becomes a nightmare of 
	sexual assault, the last thing a woman needs to hear is that she
	should have been more aware. She doesn't need to hear that that
	situation was obviously a high risk situation, because some where
	down the line she weighed the circumstances and her knowledged on
	the person or situation and decided that they were "safe."
		Rape can not only destroy (at least temporarily..Hopefully
	all survivors will/can recover) a person't ability to trust others,
	but also to destroy their ability to trust themselves and their 
	decision making process.

Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld)
Subject: Re: Assasination
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 16:34:25 GMT

In article <1192@kepler1.rentec.com> andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>In article <1992Aug20.010305.17888@ccu.umanitoba.ca> feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:
>>In short: why not let the good guys win one for once?
>
>You mean like James Earl Ray?
>
>Assasination is not high on my list of persuasive arguments to present in
>a court of justice. Are we not now treated to the 'justifications' of the
>Chinese regime for their Tienanmen murders? Given that China could very well
>end up economically worse than the former USSR, and with starvation a much
>closer danger, is there not an argument that the democracy movement _had_ to
>be extinguished for the sake of millions of lives? Surely this is something
>to worry about when we consider killing Saddam Hussein for the sake of the
>Shiites, Kuwaitis and Kurds.
>
>Later,
>Andrew Mullhaut


Context ain't everything, but it counts for some, and since you've
taken my name in vain, howevermuch in passing, let me remind you of
what we were discussing:

Suppose that under some conditions (typically, we invoke the Generals'
plot against Hitler), assassination were morally licit; what further
conditions would obtain.  I was arguing against the suggestion that
virtuous assassins, like civil disobeyers, would be morally obliged to
let the baddies put them on trial; hence, let the good guys get away
with it for once.

But you were being satyrical, yes, and I fell for it?
I mean, you don't really thing that a military attack on unarmed civil
protesters counts as "assassination", on account you got a dictionary,
just like the rest of us?
-- 
Michael Feld                         | E-mail:  <feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Philosophy                  | FAX:     (204) 261-0021
University of Manitoba               | Voice:   (204) 474-9136
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M8, Canada
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: free will
Date: 14 Aug 92 17:33:04 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <14910003@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM> ric@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Ric Peregrino) writes:

>    Thus I can't prove to you that you have no free will
>by confronting you with a choice that you have no choice but to make.

The whole idea of such a proof seems a bit strange.

It might be possible to show that the subject didn't have a free
choice in that one case, but something more than such a confrontation
would be needed if the aim was to show that the person didn't have
free will at all.

Still, I think a reasonable way to proceed is too look for constraints
and limitations on free will and then see what (if anything) is left.

-- jd
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price)
Subject: Re: Reincarnation and Linear Time
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 18:53:05 GMT

In article <1992Aug10.165615.16382@news.eng.convex.com> cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
>
>Absolutely. In fact, Ockham's Razor requires us to discard the redundant
>hypothesis that there is or ever has been more than one soul. For reasons
>of economy, only one soul was ever created; that soul has been recycled
>some 7 billion times throughout our time space continuum.
>

See Raymond Smullyan's _5000 B.C._ for a nice elaboration of several
variants on solipsism such as this one.

Tom

******************************************************************************
 Tom Price  |  Obscure Dropout  |  tp0x@cs.cmu.edu  |  Simplicity, simplicity
******************************************************************************
From: zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: free will
Date: 13 Aug 92 09:36:57 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre
Originator: netnews@uts.mcc.ac.uk

In article <14910003@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM> ric@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Ric Peregrino) writes:


>Dave Budd writes:

>>Neither do I have to know the laws of physics to make them deterministic.
>>They either are or they aren't.  My knowledge, and yours, is irrelevant.

>Certainly your statement that the physics is either deterministic or
>not is obvious. This could be applied to anything. But I disagree that our
>knowledge of the fact is irrelevant. It has consequences on the experimental
>verification of the fact. For instance, say there is determinism. But say
>that some particles can go at infinite velocity and say that there are an
>infinite number of these particles in the universe, then there is no way
>to make a prediction. Thus I can't prove to you that you have no free will
>by confronting you with a choice that you have no choice but to make.

I didn't mean irrelevant to us - I meant that any knowledge or ignorance of 
the laws of physics doen't affect what those laws are.
Some philosophers will probably be able to argue about that......

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  The trouble with having an open mind is that people come along and |
|  put things in it.   {attribution? I nicked it from Readers Digest} |
|  Dave Budd, MCC, Oxford Rd, Manchester, England   (44)061-275-6033  |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
From: feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Philosophy Dept. in Konigsber/Kaliningrad?
Date: 12 Aug 92 22:57:18 GMT
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Can anyone supply an address for a department of philosophy in the
city of Konigsberg/Kaliningrad?
-- 
Michael Feld                         | E-mail:  <feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Philosophy                  | FAX:     (204) 261-0021
University of Manitoba               | Voice:   (204) 474-9136
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M8, Canada	                     
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld)
Subject: Re: free will
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 17:58:09 GMT

In article <14910005@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM> ric@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Ric Peregrino) writes:
>
>>So what? Knowledge is still irrelevant to the argument that dave
>>was responding to.
>
>So what? The point I made was that even if God knows that there is determinism,
>there may be no way He can prove it to you.
>
>I think a precise definition of free will is required. I won't try too make
>one, but point out some possible directions.
>
>1. Free will exists if there is no way to make predictions.
>2. Free will doesn't exist if there is a deterministic physics, and
>   free will does exist if there isn't a deterministic physics.
>
>1. may seem silly, but consider the chocolate vs. vanilla question. If one
>can know which you will choose, then you certainly don't have free will.
>If no one but you can know which, then you have this free will.
>
>2. is black or white, and, like you point out above, one's knowledge is
>irrelevant.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Ric Peregrino     c/o Hewlett Packard Co.        I represent only myself
>ric@spd.hp.com    1501 Page Mill Rd. Bldg. 5M    Buy low, sell high
>415-857-7526      Palo Alto, CA 94304            Eat your wheaties
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Silly season stuff, boychik.
Given chaos theory, even a deterministic U, since unguessable, would
count as "free";
Given QM, electrons have f.w.

Not that you are to be blamed for this little lapse, what with
heredity and environment at work (grin).
-- 
Michael Feld                         | E-mail:  <feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Philosophy                  | FAX:     (204) 261-0021
University of Manitoba               | Voice:   (204) 474-9136
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M8, Canada
From: TANAKA Tomoyuki <tanaka@copper.ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: a quote from "Alice"
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 20:51:01 GMT
X-Mts: smtp


	"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the
	moral of that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' --
	or, if you'd like it put more simply --
		`Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than
		what it might appear to others that what you
		were or might have been was not otherwise than
		what you had been would have appeared to them to
		be otherwise.'"
				-- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

First time I read this, I thought this (`Never imagine ...
otherwise.') was a complex logical expression that reduces to
`Be what you would seem to be'.  Then I thought otherwise.  Or
does it realy reduce to that?  Seems like it, but I'm not sure.

Martin Gardner's "Annotated Alice" had no comments on this.

TT

;;; (Mr.) TANAKA Tomoyuki (Tanaka is my family name.)
;;;
;;; Physical address:	Eigenmann Hall 393
;;; Phone: (812) 857-2603
;;; 
;;; E-mail address: <tanaka@copper.ucs.indiana.edu>
From: dekorte@scrinext.scri.fsu.edu (Stephen L. DeKorte)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: free will
Date: 18 Aug 92 03:14:48 GMT

In article <14910003@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM> ric@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Ric  
Peregrino) writes:
> 
> Dave Budd writes:
> 
> >Neither do I have to know the laws of physics to make them  
deterministic.
> >They either are or they aren't.  My knowledge, and yours, is  
irrelevant.
> 
> Certainly your statement that the physics is either deterministic or
> not is obvious. This could be applied to anything. 
> But I disagree that our knowledge of the fact is irrelevant. 
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> It has consequences on the experimental
> verification of the fact. For instance, say there is determinism. But  
say
> that some particles can go at infinite velocity and say that there are  
an
> infinite number of these particles in the universe, then there is no way
> to make a prediction.
> Thus I can't prove to you that you have no free will
> by confronting you with a choice that you have no choice but to make.

So what? Knowledge is still irrelevant to the argument that dave
was responding to.

The argument was (if I remeber correctly) :

 Since 
1: we can't know/prove whether nature is deterministic 
 then 
4: we must have free will.

This argument basicly uses the implicit assumptions:
2: if can't prove X true then not X must be true.
3: free will and determinism cannot exist simultaniously.

But of course, the fact that you can't prove X (determinism) to be true
is not sufficient to demonstrate that it's false. 
So since 2 is false, 1 is 'irrelevant to'/(cannot be use in this 
argument to demonstrate) 4.

SD
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: foy@aero.org (Richard Foy)
Subject: Re: Assasination
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:54:58 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.181238.14909@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>In a recent discussion I noted the legitimacy of assasination as the last
>recourse for obtaining justice, as witnessed by the German and French court
>decisions in the cases of Tehlirian's 1921 killing of Talaat Bey and
>Schwartsbard's 1927 killing of Petliura.  It is my considered opinion that
>such a course of action may be morally justified, *provided that* no other
>
>cordially,
>mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu


My suggestion would be somewhat different. I suggest that the person that
one considers worthy of assasination should be tried in absentia before the
World Court. If convicted of a capital crime an adaquet reward could be
offered for his capture dead or alive.

Richard Foy           Standard Disclaimer
From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Assasination
Date: 20 Aug 92 03:55:47 GMT
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Aug20.010305.17888@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:

>You link assassination with civil disobedience when you demand that
>the morally sensitive assassin agree to stand trial for what otherwise
>you conceed to be justified homicide.  Why?  Why ask that the generals
>plotting against Hitler, or anyone, especially more humbly situated
>but otherwise analagous, agree to sucide?  Is publicity the key?  Do
>you think God unable to visit final vengeance?
>In short: why not let the good guys win one for once?

Good point, Michael.  I can't say that my reasoning is perfectly coherent
on this issue, but I will make the following remarks.  Aside from classical
inspiration (mostly _Les Justes_ by Camus), I am influenced by the
consideration of the need to retain a passing respect for, if not the human
law (for I am not at all sure of the existense of a moral obligation to
follow it), then the urgent need that the good guy avoid becoming what
Locke called "a Judge in his own Case".  Accordingly, I feel that although
this may not be possible to do in advance, there remains a need to submit
oneself to an impartial judgment of one's peers, after transgressing the
laws commonly accepted as binding them.  In the case of the generals, I
think this sort of judgment would have come automatically, had they
succeeded.

>-- 
>Michael Feld                         | E-mail:  <feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
>Dept. of Philosophy                  | FAX:     (204) 261-0021
>University of Manitoba               | Voice:   (204) 474-9136
>Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M8, Canada	                     

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman)
Subject: free will
Reply-To: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU
Organization: UMASS DARTMOUTH, NO. DARTMOUTH, MA.
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 18:10:01 GMT

I would appreciate a copy of my message of about a week ago. Stephen Grossman 
From: ric@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Ric Peregrino)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 18:34:27 GMT
Subject: Re: free will
Organization: HP Stanford Park - Palo Alto, CA
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc


Dave Budd writes:

>Neither do I have to know the laws of physics to make them deterministic.
>They either are or they aren't.  My knowledge, and yours, is irrelevant.

Certainly your statement that the physics is either deterministic or
not is obvious. This could be applied to anything. But I disagree that our
knowledge of the fact is irrelevant. It has consequences on the experimental
verification of the fact. For instance, say there is determinism. But say
that some particles can go at infinite velocity and say that there are an
infinite number of these particles in the universe, then there is no way
to make a prediction. Thus I can't prove to you that you have no free will
by confronting you with a choice that you have no choice but to make.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ric Peregrino     c/o Hewlett Packard Co.        I represent only myself
ric@spd.hp.com    1501 Page Mill Rd. Bldg. 5M    Buy low, sell high
415-857-7526      Palo Alto, CA 94304            Eat your vegetables
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: karlr@think.com (Karl Rotstan)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Assasination
Date: 20 Aug 1992 18:52:48 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: custard.think.com

In article <1992Aug19.181238.14909@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
(stuff deleted)
>me doubt the soundness of my reasoning.  Accordingly, I would like to hear
>some calm arguments from people interested in history, legal theory, and
>political philosophy.  I suggest that all participants observe the followup
>line, and attempt to keep this discussion reasonably noise-free.
>
>cordially,
>mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
>"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
>

I think there are a few issues to be addressed.  First, what is the purpose
of assassinating the individual?  If it is to "obtain justice", then I
would be highly dubious of the action, for it allows the accused no chance
to defend himself in court.  Also, when we start talking of justice, we
need to be very careful of definitions.  Even within the universe of
parliamentary democracies there are many variegated interpretations of
justice, due process, and individual rights.

As for moral justification, I choose to avoid entering into this kind of
debate.  Strong cases can be made that attempting an assassination is
sometimes good (Hitler) and that it is always immoral, since it involves
killing a person.  Almost every assassin asserts that what he/she does is
morally correct, so I wonder whether morality is really the issue.

Also, there is a danger that the assassination will backfire, as happened
to the young Polish jew who assassinated the German Vice-Consul (I think
that was the rank) in Paris in 1938.  This led directly to Kristallnacht,
which, I suggest, is not exactly what the assassin wanted.

Additionally, assassination doesn't necessarily solve the injustice
perpetrated by the person assassinated.  It seems, rather, like a way to
exact vengeance instead of justice.

My 2 cents worth
karl...
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.logic,cs.logic
From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: a quote from "Alice"
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 92 22:44:47 GMT

In article <1992Aug21.095445.9730@eskimo.celestial.com> ericj@eskimo.celestial.com (Eric Jorgensen) writes:
<tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow) writes:
<> > TANAKA Tomoyuki <tanaka@copper.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
<> 
<> >		`Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than
<> >		what it might appear to others that what you
<> >		were or might have been was not otherwise than
<> >		what you had been would have appeared to them to
<> >		be otherwise.'"
<
<'Imagine yourself to be otherwise than it appears to others.'  All the rest
<seems to contradict itself.

How do you get this?  It looks like you dropped the first "what."

I think I probably wasn't clear enough in my previous article.  The sentence
makes sense if we delete everything after the "was."  To see the structure
of the resulting sentence, observe that "what you were or might have been"
is a noun phrase.  Replace it with "the queen of England."  Then we get:

	`Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might
	appear to others that the queen of England was.'

Now note that "what it might appear to others that the queen of England was"
is a noun phrase, and may be replaced by, say, "a great woman."  So we get:

	`Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than a great woman.'

We can drop the "not otherwise than" without much harm.

	`Never imagine yourself to be a great woman.'

So, if we delete everything after the "was" the command is approximately,
"Don't let others' opinions of your past influence your self-image."

We can actually retain the "not" after the "was" and apply a similar
analysis.

The sentence relies on confusing the listener enough so that when the end of
the sentence appears it is not recognized as such.  Locally, "was not" looks
like the middle of a sentence so the speaker takes advantage of this to
continue the sentence in a superficially plausible way.
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 16:05:21 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: The philosophical basis for Affirmative Action (was Re: ...at the Y
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: a quote from "Alice"
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 00:24:35 GMT

In article <Bt3GL8.800@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> TANAKA Tomoyuki <tanaka@copper.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:

>		`Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than
>		what it might appear to others that what you
>		were or might have been was not otherwise than
>		what you had been would have appeared to them to
>		be otherwise.'"
>				-- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

This doesn't seem to be a well-formed sentence.  It makes sense if you stop
after the "was."  To get some sense for the sentence, remove "not otherwise
than" and "or might have been," and replace "might appear to others" with
"seems."  We get:

	`Never imagine yourself to be what it seems that what you
	were was what you had been would have seemed to be otherwise.'

In this sentence it is clearer that the sentence ends after "was."

-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949