[lit-ideas] Re: Do You Have Free Will?
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 10:49:16 -0500
THE PRICE OF FREE WILL.
An excerpt from a lecture on the freedom free will by Michael Geary in
Freedom Hall. Admission was free to those willing to freely admit they have
no free will. Others were not admitted.
Excerpts: "Free at last, free at last! Thank God almighty, I'm free at
last!" But will it last? That's the question. Freedom's not free, they
say. Ah! But do they say so of their own free will? There's the rub. We
all like a good rub down, but no one likes to be rubbed the wrong way.
Wrong? The word makes me think of "right". Notice I said: "*makes* me
think." The key phoneme here is "ke". KE is what turns the potentiality
[the MA(Y)] of make into the done deal. What is it that makes me think
anything? Right or wrong, I think. I think Decartes said that. We can't
not think. Not even for a second. I've tried. Everybody here, in this
hall, try right now, empty your mind of all thoughts. Don't think anything
for ten seconds. Ready. Start....one.......[4 second
delay]................................ two............[5 second
delay...................three....... [A shout from the audience: "That's
too slow."] Too slow, the man says. A show of hands -- how many of you
thought I was counting slower than a second? [all in the audience raise
their hands] Thank you for proving my point. You people have no control
over your own minds. You do not have free will. Will has free-you.
Will uses you freely to effect its own desires and devices. You're not YOU,
you're the servant, nay, the slave of Will. Where do you think the term
"willy-nilly" comes from? Nil, means none in Latin. To go about
willy-nilly is to go around and without any will. Willy-nillyitis is the
itch to "do" but with no controling agent. It's like being in a car with a
broken steering wheel, but you don't know it's broken because you don't have
a destination. I think that about sums it up. Or divides it down the
middle or maybe it's all total loss. Is life a zero divisor? Who knows?
Who cares?
End of Lecture. Go home.
Mike Geary
(nee Fred Freeman)
Memphis Motivational Ministry
On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 10:13 PM, <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> In a message dated 4/1/2011 12:51:17, Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
> What will happen if people stop believing that they are choosing? Perhaps
> the scientists should keep it to themselves.
>
> Or perhaps they want to sell it for a charge!
>
> -----
>
> see Geary, "The price of free will".
>
> Oddly, it was A. G. N. Flew, who using Urmson's expression (1951 --
> "Notions concerning validity), "the argument of the paradigm case") applied
> it to
> 'free will' in "Crime or disease" (1954, British Journal of Sociology). The
> cases they discussed, along with, in later years, H. Frankfurt, include
> drug-addicts.
>
> Watson ("Free agency") criticised such Griceian analyses:
>
> The drug addict may feel he is not acting freely. He may have a desire to
> take drugs, and a higher desire not to have this ground or first-floor
> desire. Is he acting 'akratically' when he takes drugs? Frankfurt argues
> that in
> a way, the drug-addict is acting _freely_ and Watson recognises that:
> Watson goes on to claim that first-floor desires constitutes a person in
> ways
> that higher-order desires don't. Bratman, a disciple of Grice, extended
> the
> analysis to the draft and alcoholism. Bratman's example involves eating a
> candy-bar. The desire is in the agent that perhaps he shouldn't eat the
> candy bar. Or strictly, that he shouldn't DESIRE to eat the candy bar. As
> it
> happens, Bratman does eat the candy bar, and says he has acted freely as
> long
> as he recognised that while he did fulfil the desire to eat the candy bar
> "he could have acted otherwise".
>
> ------- And so on.
>
> Speranza
> ----- The Swimming-Pool Library
> "Have Free Will. Will Travel"
>
>
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