Brian D Harper writes
in message <4.2.2.20000504131353.03fd66e0@pop.service.ohio-state.edu>:
<snip>
> Oh, that reminds me. I've always wanted to ask a determinist
> the following type of question (I hope you won't think I'm
> picking on you, I'm just dreadfully curious :). Recently you
> criticized someone for deleting words in a quotation that resulted
> in an alteration of the meaning of the person quoted. Well, I
> didn't look myself at the details of this allegation, so I'm
> not going to take sides. My question is whether you believe this
> person freely chose to delete those words.
I find myself increasingly leaning towards determinism, so I'll
offer an answer. The word "determined' is subtly but powerfully
misleading and contributes much to the confusion of free will
versus determiniation. Determinism implies that a person's
actions or decisions are in accordance with the laws of nature,
but to say they are "determined" by the laws of nature introduces
a totally misleading pyschological image which is that your will
could be conflict with the laws of nature or that the latter
is more powerful than you and could "determine" your acts whether
you liked it or not. But determinism has assumed up front
that it is simply impossible for your will to ever conflict with
natural law -- you and natural law are the same. So, stating
that someone actions are determined by the laws of the nature
already implies that determinism is in some way false; thus, it's
an incoherent statement.
As a determinist, I would believe that a person freely chose to
delete words from a quotation since the only possible definition
of "free" in this context would mean freedom from cohersion from
other persons. To say that a person is not free from natural
law reduces to an incoherent statement:
1. I am not free from natural law.
2. But I am part of natural law according to determinism.
Therefore, we can substitute "natural law" for "I" in step
1. and we get
3. Natural law is not free from natural law.
But that's an incoherent statement.
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