Elements of Style in English
in [Lisp]
|
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 24 May 2010 11:11 On 2010-05-24 00:32:24 -0400, Jerry Friedman said: >> >> "river rock erosion (past)" > > Then how do you tell "Dog bites man" from "Man bites dog"? By grammatical convention? "dog-teeth in man (present)" v. "man-teeth in dog (present)" > >> "Pollen in air toward Jerry (past)" > > Doesn't distinguish between diffusion and being carried by the wind. "Pollen in moving air toward Jerry (past)" You can keep coming up with refinements, I can keep coming up with new sentences. Agency isn't necessary for the expression of any meaning, unless that meaning is explicitly that of agency itself. > I don't think that's true for English or any language I know anything > about. As far as I can see, nothing in "Snow covered the rock" or > "The river eroded the rock" or "The wind blew the pollen toward me" > implies conceiving of the agents as having free will. Call it purpose or choice if you wish - it amounts to much the same thing grammatically. My point is that the grammatical model comes from purposive, choosing agents, and was extended from there to things like the wind. Not coincidentally, things like the wind were, for most of human history, conceived as being (or being the results of the actions of), supernatural agents like humans, only more powerful. warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: Nick on 25 May 2010 15:07 Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> writes: > On 2010-05-16 07:37:36 -0400, Nicolas Neuss said: > >> So, by Occam's razor, I am in favor of free >> will. > > Occam's razor only applies when theories have equal explanatory > power. The theory of free will cannot explain these experiments at > all: > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will> They're fascinating experiments, and deeply counter intuitive, but I'm not convinced they knock free will on the head[*]. I seems to me quite possible to have a multi-layered system in my head - so it's not just "me", then the hardware, there's an abstraction layer in between to which I can give instructions like "twitch a finger when you feel like it". I know, for example, that I can be lying in bed at a weekend and think - I ought to get up in a few minutes, and ten minutes later I'm getting dressed. I don't have any memory of making a conscious decision to get up /at a particular moment/ but I certainly made one to get up. Of course, we often confabulate motive behind automatic processes - we are not as in control as we think we are - but to go from that to "there is no free will" seems an over extension. [*] - I'd love there to be an explanation. Free will in the big sense still remains to me the most difficult question there is. It doesn't matter if the universe is deterministic or random, in neither case is their volition or responsibility. Most perplexing. -- Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk
From: Peter Duncanson (BrE) on 25 May 2010 15:51 On Tue, 25 May 2010 20:07:43 +0100, Nick <3-nospam(a)temporary-address.org.uk> wrote: >Free will in the big sense >still remains to me the most difficult question there is. It doesn't >matter if the universe is deterministic or random, in neither case is >their volition or responsibility. Most perplexing. Indeed. And experimenting with the concept of a soul that is not part of the physical universe only moves the problem to a different place. Either the soul is completely deterministic or it is deterministic with some randomness. Is there something beyond human comprehension that is totally different from cause-and-effect as we know it? (I'm assuming that there is actual randomness in the universe and not just what appears to us to be randomness.) -- Peter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english)
From: lekktu on 30 May 2010 19:42
On May 13, 8:28 pm, p...(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) wrote: > The fact that you don't write the subject doesn't mean it doesn't exist. > > It's the water droplets who are raining. Well, no. In Spanish, "llueve" is strictly "impersonal", a non-subject verb. There's no implicit subject in that sentence. Even if you said "llueven gotas" (it's raining water droplets), the water droplets wouldn't be the subject, but the object. It's not that "water droplets are raining", but that "water droplets are being rained" (sorry about mangling English for informative purposes ;-) |