Posted by Darth Dobbin at 208-58-251-96.s96.tnt2.nwhv.ct.dialup.rcn.com on June 19, 2000 at 20:54:22:
In Reply to: The meaning of free will & muses in "Dogma"? posted by Isis on June 19, 2000 at 18:36:13:
Let me point out at the onset how wonderful a tool the Internet is. In Jack Kirby NEW GODS terms, it is a MotherBox, a machine capable of any answer. In less geeky terms, it is something of a magical djinni; whatever you ask for, if you phrase the question correctly, it will deliver, from theology to music to games to information to directions to news to entertainment to science to nasty porn pictuires of men opening wide their hiney as the last board showed us. In any case, FREE WILL, as defined by the SKEPTICS DICTIONARY is:
Free will is a concept in traditional philosophy used to refer to the belief that human behavior is not absolutely determined by external causes, but is the result of choices made by an act of will by the agent. Such choices are themselves not determined by external causes, but are determined by the motives and intentions of the agent, which themselves are not absolutely determined by external causes.
....In the Christian tradition, which has framed the issues surrounding free will, the belief hinges on a metaphysical belief in non-physical reality. The will is seen as a faculty of the soul or mind, which is understood as standing outside of the physical world and its governing laws.
However, if you want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth as to the catholic viewpoint on the subject, who better to ask than Saint Thomas Aquinas his-own-self, who said:
"It is written (Ecclus. 15:14): "God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel"; and the gloss adds: "That is of his free-will."
(Full text can be found at http://www.newadvent.org/summa/108301.htm )
"I answer that, Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. In order to make this evident, we must observe that some things act without judgment; as a stone moves downwards; and in like manner all things which lack knowledge. And some act from judgment, but not a free judgment; as brute animals. For the sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned, from a natural and not a free judgment, because it judges, not from reason, but from natural instinct. And the same thing is to be said of any judgment of brute animals. But man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will."
Heading more toward the Deist/Rationalist school, John Locke on the subject: (full text at http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/academic/digitexts/locke/understanding/chapter0221.html)
Every one, I think, finds in himself a power to begin or forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself. From the consideration of the extent of this power of the mind over the actions of the man, which everyone finds in himself, arise the ideas of liberty and necessity.
8. Liberty, what. All the actions that we have any idea of reducing themselves, as has been said, to these two, viz. thinking and motion; so far as a man has power to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man's power; wherever doing or not doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there he is not free, though perhaps the action may be voluntary. So that the idea of liberty is, the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other: where either of them is not in the power of the agent to be produced by him according to his volition, there he is not at liberty; that agent is under necessity. So that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty. A little consideration of an obvious instance or two may make this clear.
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All that said, no one with an internet connection has ANY excuse to ever fail a research paper.