HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: pgf@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick G. Frank)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: haiku poetry/Zen philosophy
Date: 9 Sep 92 00:42:20 GMT
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

I am a published haiku poet who would like to discuss aesthetics with
folks--from the Zen perspective. I am not--at base--a philosopher; I
am basically a poet who has been deeply influenced by Eastern
philosophy. To date, I have written about 800 haiku and senryu; I have
also gradually developed an aesthetic philosophy--and committed it to
paper. Would any aesthetic philosophers out there be willing to
informally critique the philosophical writing I have done? I will also
share a sample of my haiku/senryu with anyone who would like to see
it. It would be nice to dialogue with anyone who would be interested.

   Patrick Frank
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: simonson@cs.washington.edu (Kevin Simonson)
Subject: Re: Aquinas' proof on the Existence of God
Keywords: St.Thomas Aquinas God
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Distribution: talk
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 17:53:55 GMT

     In article <1227@kepler1.rentec.com> andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
writes:

=For all questions about proofs/disproofs/refutations of the existence of God,
=I tend to recommend checking out Hans Kung's theological view of the question
=_Does God Exist?_. Otherwise you can fall for grown-up refutations of childish
=notions of God (e.g. Freud).

     What would you (or Kung) consider to be a "grown-up" notion of God?

                                     ---Kevin Simonson
From: jtchern@ocf.berkeley.edu (Joseph Hernandez)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Causality and exceptions
Date: 14 Sep 92 00:12:15 GMT
Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility

Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Causality and exceptions
Summary: 
Expires: 
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
Keywords: 

In article <10708@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> dekorte@scrinext.scri.fsu.edu (Stephen L. DeKorte) writes:
>In article <44728@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jtchern@ocf.berkeley.edu (Joseph  
>Hernandez) writes:
>In article <1992Sep4.121542.659@bernina.ethz.ch> stettbac@isibee5 (Juerg  
>Stettbacher) writes:
>> >[deleted] Do you know an exemple of an effect without cause?
>
>> If the English philosopher David Hume is correct, then the concept of 
>> cause and effect is actually rather empty. We call something a cause of
>> something else only because we are accustomed to that particular set of  
>> circumstances immediately preceding another set of different 
>> circumstances, which we call an effect. That is, there is no logically
>> necessary reason why when one billiasrd ball strikes another that the
>> other billiard ball must fly off according to the so-called laws of 
>> physics. [stuff deleted] There is no reason why it couldn't be
>> otherwise.
>
>If Hume truly believed that, then he would have no reason to tell
>anyone- and for that matter, to do anything at all.
>
>
>SD





Hume wrote that "only the fool or the madman" would doubt the dictates of experience. That is, Hume did not operate thinking that nothing he ever did wold cause anything. Rather, he felt that there was nothing logically necessary about causality. His great contribution to the philosophical tradition was to point out the leap of faith that we humans all take when we "expect" one thing to bring about another. 
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Joseph TeleCommunications Enterprises World Headquarters
*****  *****  *****  jtchern@ocf.Berkeley.EDU          jtcent@soda.Berkeley.EDU
    *    *    *      jhernand@nyx.cs.DU.EDU                    josephhz@IDS.NET
    *    *    *      cb085@cleveland.Freenet.EDU      jph@m-net.ann-arbor.MI.US
*****    *    *****  University of California, Berkeley, California, USA  94720
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ai245@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Chris Thomas)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: the meaning of "freewill"
Date: 9 Sep 1992 13:39:04 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: ai245@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Chris Thomas)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc4.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, ak254@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ralph A. Gardner-Chavis) says:

>I claim that people really do not believe in freewill.  When considering
>someones action, after asking what happened, the next question is,  "Why
>did he/she do that?"  This question in itself precludes the concept of
>freewill in the questioners mind for an answer is expected.  Furthermore, 
>I have never heard anyone in commenting on someones actions say he/she 
>did it because of his/her freewill,have you? 
>
>

Quite an astute observation!  :)

To quote Earl Babbie's book "Social Research for Consumers" (a book used
to teach empirical methodology to undergrads):
 	Similiarly, social scientists find environmental
	explanations for why women did or didn't have babies, why
	workers were employed or unemployed, why voters went for
	Reagan or Carter.  Women have babies, for example, because of
	cultural norms, peer pressure, and so forth.  You will never
	find a social scientist concluding that "17 percent of the
	women had babies because they wanted to".

I recently read these comments made on another BB which are quite
succinct and I concur:

"However, we do tend to act as though we believe that others act out of
their "natures" or "essences" (Marily Quayle's misguided comment on the
convention stage).  We tend to find environmental reasons for our own
actions while attributing the actions of others to their natures.  This
unsupportable difference in attributions is called the "Fundamental
Attribution Error."  For examples, look at the proceedings of almost
ANY divorce.  You will find each party claiming to have been forced
into her/his own petty actions while labeling the other party AS
petty (inherently).
From: andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Aquinas' proof on the Existence of God
Keywords: St.Thomas Aquinas God
Date: 10 Sep 92 18:45:42 GMT
Distribution: talk
Organization: Renaissance Technologies Corp., Setauket, NY.

In article <1992Sep8.175355.18141@beaver.cs.washington.edu> simonson@cs.washington.edu (Kevin Simonson) writes:
>
>     In article <1227@kepler1.rentec.com> andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
>writes:
>
>=For all questions about proofs/disproofs/refutations of the existence of God,
>=I tend to recommend checking out Hans Kung's theological view of the question
>=_Does God Exist?_. Otherwise you can fall for grown-up refutations of childish
>=notions of God (e.g. Freud).
>
>     What would you (or Kung) consider to be a "grown-up" notion of God?

There isn't a short answer to this which is very satisfying. You can get
an indication of what's involved by making a few observations about what
isn't a grown-up notion of God. Among these are the idea that God is the
residual required to complete the present understanding of science, or
that God can be controlled, manipulated, or delimited by man. In particular
the notion that man can be the arbiter of the _word_ of God is not grown-up.

Kung takes the point of view that you can arrive at an understanding of God
by refining a preliminary notion, but that this notion is only refined to
a certain extent. In other words, the understanding of God is at best a
process, which one can _hope_ becomes more and more clarified. The process
can be compared to the history of theology which reveals that what seem
to be advances in one age must be retraced in another- in some sense a grown
up notion of God is one which survives the confusion of theological history,
One particular grown-up notion of God is atheism - it cannot (according to
Kung) be refuted or proved.

In _On Being a Christian_, Kung elaborates the problematical connotations of
the term God - (the bloody historical baggage) and expresses respect for
those who avoid the term altogether. 

Adler deals with this difficulty in his putative existence proof of God, by
not _defining_ God, but by arriving at a "specification" of God - i.e. a
property which could not attach to anything but God. Although philosophically
reasonable, there are theological problems with this approach - the idea that
God can be pinned down by a single question - (a property which could only
belong to God) is not universally agreed to by theologians. (In particular
some important ones absolutely deny this possibility, e.g. Karl Barth).

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: the meaning of "freewill"
Date: 6 Sep 92 19:47:03 GMT
Organization: ARL Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging, University of
	Arizona

bf479@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Russell Jackson II) writes:

   > I am new here so don't flame me if I'm saying something that has
   > already been noted. 

This is not a flame, but please try not to use lines longer than 80
characters.  Thank you.

   > Freewill is a will that is free. Free from what? Obstruction? No,
   > freewill is a will that is free from cause. 

No, free will is a will that is free from *control*.  The problem of
free will is way too tangled to discuss productively at an elementary
level on the net.  I recommend that you -- and anyone else interested
in this topic -- get hold of Daniel Dennett's book "Elbow Room: The
Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting".  Even if you don't agree with
his conclusions, at least the issues will be clarified.

	-- Bill
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: ai245@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Chris Thomas)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: the meaning of "freewill"
Date: 9 Sep 1992 17:08:37 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: ai245@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Chris Thomas)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc10.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, simonson@cs.washington.edu (Kevin Simonson) says:


>
>     I think we all agree that there are times when it can be said that
>our choices are caused by our environment, or our nature.  But it certain-
>ly can be said that free will exists if there is even one single act that
>cannot be said to have a cause.

>
>     Whether such an act exists is a very interesting question, but with
>all deference to the views set out above, I must point out that a study by
>the Smithsonian Institute into the question of "why dogs bark" finally
>came to the conclusion that they bark "for the hell of it."

I always thought it was because they couldn't talk!  :)  Seriously, I would
consider barking a form of communication, as any dog owner would certainly
attest.   You may think the dog is barking without a cause, but the dog may
not think so (oftime proven by the puddle on the floor).




Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: the meaning of "freewill"
Date: 7 Sep 92 18:10:27 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <BILL.92Sep6124703@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>
>   > Freewill is a will that is free. Free from what? Obstruction? No,
>   > freewill is a will that is free from cause. 
>
>No, free will is a will that is free from *control*. 

Well, maybe.  I thought Dennett's _Elbow Room_ became somewhat
suspect just about where he started to go into control.

> The problem of
>free will is way too tangled to discuss productively at an elementary
>level on the net. 

I agree.  But that's the net for you.

> I recommend that you -- and anyone else interested
>in this topic -- get hold of Daniel Dennett's book "Elbow Room: The
>Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting".  Even if you don't agree with
>his conclusions, at least the issues will be clarified.

I second this recommendation.  Another excellent source is the
collection of papers entitled _Free Will_ edited by Gary Watson
(Oxford University Press).

-- jd
From: cjenning@terapin.com (Craig Jennings)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: the meaning of "freewill"
Date: 15 Sep 92 00:41:07 PST
Organization: BBS

In article <0096075D.6F4145A0@Msu.oscs.montana.edu>,
uphrrmk@Msu.oscs.montana.edu (Me) writes:
>
>      I find it an untennable position to deny the existance of
> Free Will. To say that you have no free will implies that only
> outside events affect your actions. In this case, "you" do not
> have any impact on anything. If a thing has no influence what-
> soever, it may as well not exist, as you can never say anything
> about it.  You effectively commit suicide.
>
>      Hard to discuss philosophy if you don't exist, therefore
> I must have free will (yours optional).  QED
>

The problem I have with this is mainly in your statement "if a thing has no
influence whatsoever, it may as well not exist, as you can never say anything
about it." Your "as" indicates that "you can never say anything about it" is a
reason for saying "it may as well not exist." But so things exist without our
ability to say things about them? Not being able to say anything about X has
nothing to do with whether X exists or not. But maybe this "as" indicates the
phrase is an afterthought, an elaboration as the "as" functions in this
sentence.

The rest of the premise looks shaky: "if a thing has no influence whatsoever,
it may as well not exist." But the picture this suggests doesn't look right for
Determinism. In my interpretation of not having any free will, we become a tool
for the controlling forces of, asy, genetics and responses to our environment.
So it is not necessary to *I* be here to type in this post, I am doing it only
because of causal forces stretching backwards beyond my control. BUT what IS
necessary is someone wiht relevant genetics in the right environment. I have
become a cog in the machine, even a replaceable one. So in this sense, I may as
well have not existed, but this does not mean that I have effectively committed
suicide.

"Hard to discuss philosophy if you don't exist", then, doesn't follow. I do
exist, even if as a replaceable cog, and philosophy is discussed because even
this too has been determined long before.

I want to say that I agree with some of this argument, that Determinism has no
place in it for a person with decision-making powers, a person with a real
choice. I just don't know where to find the room. 

All responses, flames, whatever are welcome.

-Craig Jennings
e-mail cjenning@terapin.com
From: bf479@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Russell Jackson II)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: the meaning of "freewill"
Date: 6 Sep 1992 00:25:42 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


I am new here so don't flame me if I'm saying something that has already been noted.

There appears to be the question of the meaning of "freewill."
 
Freewill is a will that is free. Free from what? Obstruction? No, freewill is a will that is free from cause.
 
What does it mean to be free from cause. It means spontaneaous generation. It means something from nothing. Who could ever offer the slightest proof of such nonsense?
 
Russell Jackson II
bf479@cleveland.freenet.edu
From: dekorte@scrinext.scri.fsu.edu (Stephen L. DeKorte)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Freewill-a few questions
Date: 12 Sep 92 03:31:03 GMT

I have a few questions
For those who claim to believe in 'Freewill':

1) If people have freewill, do chimps? do dogs? do fish? insects? 
     plants? bacteria? molecules? atoms? particles?

Where is the line drawn(roughly or otherwise) and why?

1A) if you say only humans have freewill, then what % of human DNA
       would need to be changed for this not to be the case?

1B) if you say freewill extends too or below bacteria, then the same  
should
       of any cell. If so, then since higher organisms(such as us)  
are 
       multicellular, how is our cell's freewill reconsiled with are  
own?

1C) if you do not extend freewill to particles and/or below then
       how is it that a collection of such particles/things can have  
freewill???

Similar arguments to those above can be applied to any division of  
and
object which is thought to have freewill. 
Ex: If your cells don't have freewill, do your organs, do your limbs?
If freewill is only in the brain- how many neurons would need to be
removed before freewill would not be present?
 
SD 

-- NewsGrazer, a NeXTstep(tm) news reader, posting --
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From: dekorte@scrinext.scri.fsu.edu (Stephen L. DeKorte)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Causality and exceptions
Date: 13 Sep 92 02:44:47 GMT

In article <44728@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jtchern@ocf.berkeley.edu (Joseph  
Hernandez) writes:
In article <1992Sep4.121542.659@bernina.ethz.ch> stettbac@isibee5 (Juerg  
Stettbacher) writes:
> >[deleted] Do you know an exemple of an effect without cause?

> If the English philosopher David Hume is correct, then the concept of 
> cause and effect is actually rather empty. We call something a cause of
> something else only because we are accustomed to that particular set of  
> circumstances immediately preceding another set of different 
> circumstances, which we call an effect. That is, there is no logically
> necessary reason why when one billiasrd ball strikes another that the
> other billiard ball must fly off according to the so-called laws of 
> physics. [stuff deleted] There is no reason why it couldn't be
> otherwise.

If Hume truly believed that, then he would have no reason to tell
anyone- and for that matter, to do anything at all.


SD

Xref: sparky talk.philosophy.misc:1709 sci.philosophy.meta:1794
From: kbrooks@ut-emx.uucp (kevin brooks)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: basis for knowledge
Keywords: kant western philosophy rhetoric
Date: 3 Sep 92 19:17:48 GMT
Followup-To: send
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas

in his _critique of pure reason_ kant defines the faculty of knowledge
as a case where a representation is related to an object from the 
standpoint of agreement or conformity with it.  this sounds like a
definition of metaphor or classical mimesis.  my question is: do theories
of knowledge today still rely on such a concept of representation?  and 
if so, what authorized the agreement/conformity/correspondence between
a representation and an object?

thank you,

kevin brooks
kbrooks@emx.utexas.edu
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: the meaning of "freewill"
Keywords: free will cause study
Date: 9 Sep 92 17:17:02 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Sep9.144216.26039@beaver.cs.washington.edu> simonson@cs.washington.edu (Kevin Simonson) writes:
>
>     I think we all agree that there are times when it can be said that
>our choices are caused by our environment, or our nature.  But it certain-
>ly can be said that free will exists if there is even one single act that
>cannot be said to have a cause.

If all that's required for free will is that an action be uncaused,
then radnom actions would count as free, privided that they were
uncaused.  But this can't be what we think of as free will.  Imagine
that you started doing random things (eg, suddenly leaping against
the wall, typing lower case "a"s at random times for no reason).
This wouldn't be evidence of your free will, and I don't think you
would regard it as such.  It would be evidence that there was
something wrong with you.

It would be convenient if the problem of free will could be reduced
to something about uncaused actions or to unpredictability (both of
which have been fairly popular of late in this newsgroup), but I
don't think it can be that simple.

-- jd
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Causality and exceptions
Date: 5 Sep 92 13:46:28 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1992Sep4.121542.659@bernina.ethz.ch>, stettbac@isibee5 (Juerg Stettbacher) writes:
> 
> Hello world
> 
> Does anyone now about any event, thing or what ever, that happens,
> exists, or simply is, with no cause. 
> In other words: Do you know an exemple of an effect without cause?
> 
> 
> Thanks for any ideas.
> juerg at ethz switzerland

Someone (John Davies?) once said that the universe is the world's
greatest free lunch... I guess for a straight materialist, it had no
cause that we can comprehend.  So the answer is--Everything!
-- 
********************************** +.............................+
*- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>* :All opinions expressed herein:
*There is no privileged position.* :are my own and are not to be :
*	-God, Derrida, others    * : attributed to my employer   :
********************************** +.............................+