🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <spurrett.23.720960465@superbowl.und.ac.za> spurrett@superbowl.und.ac.za (David Spurrett) writes:
>DETERMINISM 1: `Refutation' number one.

>    The argument  starts from  a factual  observation.   Our legal  systems
>  (this is not  a modern Western  point, it seems  universal) acknowledge a
>  distinction between  `do-ers' and  `do-ees' in  a fundamental  and strong
>  way.

The legal system is designed by people with the intention that it will
affect the behavior of people.  You cannot use it to draw conclusions
about inanimate objects.  The legal system is an expression of our
culture, so cannot easily be applied to questions such as the validity
of determinism.

>        For example when one  person pushes another over a cliff  we direct
>  our criticism/ revenge/ abuse/ rehabilitation/ whatever at the person who
>  `did' the pushing.  Some archaic legal systems had different economies of
>  `do-ers' and, for example, tried crows for crop damage.  NO LEGAL  SYSTEM
>  HAS EVER `TRIED' A LAW OF NATURE, OR A MECHANICAL DEVICE.

This is simply not true.  Mechanical devices are sometimes subjected to
scientific and engineering tests, and the results of these tests are
brought to a court for decision.  The decision might, in effect, be a
judgment of summary execution (perhaps in the form of a product recall).
Certainly the treatment of mechanical devices is different, but this is
because mechanical devices are presumed not to have free will, and thus
unable to change their behavior.

>    An  analysis  of  the  workings  of  the proceedings shows that what is
>  presupposed of a `doer', what  defines him/her is that there  is believed
>  to be someting like a `possibility for having done otherwise.'  (ie  Free
>  Will)   Indeed if  it is  possible to  prove that  the person who did the

You seem to be arguing that "based on a presupposition that inanimate
objects do not have free will, we conclude that determism is false."
This does not strike me as valid reasoning.