[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2006 14:35:05 -0700
Peter Junger wrote;
But could he have chosen to choose other that he chose, or was his
choice determened? The fact that choices are "inside" rather than
"outside" does not mean that they are not determined.
I did not sufficiently spell out the distinction Moore makes in my
earlier post.
Let me quote part of what I quoted from him in the subsequent post.
'It is impossible to exaggerate the frequency of the occasions on which we all
of us make a distinction between two things, neither of which did happen, a
distinction which we express by saying, that whereas the one could have
happened, the other could not. No distinction is commoner than this. And no
one, I think, who fairly examines the instances in which we make it, can doubt
about three things: namely (1) that very often there really is some
distinction
between the two things, corresponding to the language which we use; (2) that
this distinction, which really does subsist between the things, is the one
which we mean to express by saying that the one was possible and the other
impossible; and (3) that this way of expressing it is a perfectly proper and
legitimate way. But if so, it absolutely follows that one of the commonest and
most legitimate usages of the phrases could and could not is to express a
difference, which often really does hold between two things neither of which
did actually happen.'
Let me attribute to the Determinist the view that there is no difference here;
that if neither A nor B happened, then neither of them could have
happened (for
what happens happens because of antecedent conditions--beginning with
the origin
of the kosmos--which determine it to happen). Moore is pointing out that the
Determinist has failed to distinguish between two things we mean when
we say of
two things that did not happen that one of them could have (although it
did not)
and the other did not and could not have). Thus the Determinist fails
to account
for a distinction that is plainly real. It would be real no matter what
makes it
true that one 'chooses' to do something, i.e., whether the choice is
'determined' or 'free.'
Isn't the issue at this level about what the "self" that choses
is? And whether it is caused? (Does it make any difference
whether the cause is inside or outside the self?)
I'd rather not talk about 'selves' at all, even though I was willing to take
part in the discussion of Taylor that has fallen by the wayside. If I
choose, I
choose; there isn't an intermediate step in which my 'self' has to be engaged
before I can choose. Who or what is this 'I'? Well, it's not you. If I did
it--threw the stone that made the splash and then the ripples in the pond--I
was the agent, not somebody else. The 'I' here is just an indexical that picks
out who did what. It isn't the name of anything (as Descartes thought).
It makes a difference for Aristotle whether the cause is 'inside' the
agent, for
that is just the definition of voluntariness: 'the moving principle is within
the agent.' This is why compatibalists depend on a notion of causation
in which
human agency can make things happen just as, although not in the same
way as, a
gear if turned can turn another gear. If there were no causation not
only would
there be no determinism; there would be no free agency.
Robert Paul
School of Cosmic Engineering
Mutton College
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