<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:tahoma, new york, times, serif;font-size:10pt"><div style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto">I think it would only be strange if<VAR id=yui-ie-cursor></VAR> the word "<SPAN style="RIGHT: auto" id=misspell-0><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto">knowledge"</SPAN></SPAN> didn't change in definition and meaning from generation to generation and from culture to culture as all words do. </SPAN></div>
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<div style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto">"Free will", or lack there of, is one of the most exciting concepts to me. Every event that occurs must do so because preceding events force it to. We think we have free will only because we comprehend the sequence of actions that are taken to get where we are now. We often don't even truly know why we do them. There is however, the <SPAN style="RIGHT: auto" id=misspell-1><SPAN>possibility</SPAN></SPAN> that a God could give free will, and change the direction, speed, and actions of subatomic particles which would in turn change events and the universe undetected. </SPAN></div>
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<div style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto">Donovan J. Arnold</SPAN></div>
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<DIV style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ccc 1px solid; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LINE-HEIGHT: 0; MARGIN: 5px 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; HEIGHT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 0px; BORDER-TOP: #ccc 1px solid; BORDER-RIGHT: #ccc 1px solid; PADDING-TOP: 0px" class=hr contentEditable=false readonly="true"></DIV><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe@gmail.com><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020@moscow.com> <BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Tuesday, July 31, 2012 11:49 PM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> [Vision2020] Philosophical question<BR></FONT></DIV><BR>I find it interesting that in the history of philosophy some terms<BR>have undergone substantive change while others meet with resistance<BR>and folks <SPAN id=misspell-0 class=mark>clammer</SPAN> for their expulsion. For instance,
"knowledge" had<BR>gone substantive change. Back in Descartes day it meant infallible<BR>certainty but few understand it that way now. Before we made the move<BR>from an infallible to a fallible conception of knowledge -- where<BR>evidence no longer entailed that something was known, just made it<BR>highly probable -- no one suggested that we jettison the term because<BR>infallible knowledge was deemed improbable. We merely changed our<BR>conception of knowledge, grew to adopt a better, more realistic<BR>understanding of what knowledge really is.<BR><BR>Yet with other terms this is not so. For instance, everyone and his<BR>brother is writing a book about the end of free will (see Sam Harris<BR>for instance). But if you read closely it is pretty clear that they<BR>straddle the term "free will" with a set of unobtainable qualities. In<BR>order to have free will, the entire causal sequence must trace back to<BR>the agent; determinism (or even universal
causation) must be false;<BR>influence must be entirely from within the agent, and have no causal<BR>link to the outside world; a free act can't even have a <SPAN id=misspell-1 class=mark>proponderence</SPAN><BR>of reason in its favor, for reasons too have a compulsive feature to<BR>them. How isn't this just has much of a pipe dream as the Cartesian<BR>concept of knowledge?<BR><BR>Why in the one case do we keep the term and change our conception of<BR>it yet in the latter we want to get rid of them both? And once we get<BR>rid of the term "free will" what will we replace it with? What term<BR>will we know use to try to distinguish those of us who have control<BR>over our actions from those of us that don't? Surely this is a helpful<BR>distinction.<BR><BR>=======================================================<BR>List services made available by First Step Internet,<BR>serving the communities of the <SPAN id=misspell-2 class=mark>Palouse</SPAN> since
1994.<BR> http://www.fsr.net<BR> <SPAN id=misspell-3 class=mark>mailto</SPAN>:<A href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com" ymailto="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">Vision2020@moscow.com</A><BR>=======================================================<BR><BR><BR></DIV></DIV></div></body></html>