One more thing on free will & AIDs

Steve Mizrach (SEEKER1@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU)
Sun, 5 Jun 1994 16:00:15 -0400

As usual, though I didn't start this tussle, I got caught up in it. I would
like to make one final point.

Choices are made by individuals. People who believe that people make
choices on the basis of group membership (being HIV seropositive, for
example) are determinists, and perhaps determinists of the worst kind.

Though I am am believer (of sorts) in memes, I also think that one of the
facts of human existence is that they are not a composting pile for memes,
and are not completely driven by external programming.

If an individual who is knowingly HIV positive has unprotected sex with a
partner and does not inform them of their status, that has everything to do
with their choice as an individual, and nothing to do with their being HIV
positive.

Indeed, to think that there is a category of people who are somehow driven
by HIV to be "AIDs spreaders" is the worst kind of determinism. I would
never think such a thing.

I would reiterate also something John O' Brien pointed out - a
deterministic view of human life fits well into a Hobbesian vision of
society. Hobbes, who was certain that there was no such thing as free will
and that people were at the mercy of various drives, thought that the only
way to have social order was to have a powerful, all-knowing sovereign to
keep them in check...

If the capacity to choose is an illusion, then so is freedom. But then
that's what B.F. Skinner and the behaviorists were trying to tell us. Why
fool ourselves into thinking our choices are authentic? Clearly, they are
determined before we made them. Let therefore all our choices be determined
by something other than ourselves; why not have the State make them for us?



Seeker1 [@Nervm.Nerdc.Ufl.Edu] (real info available on request)
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