Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[tbassett AT acsu.buffalo.edu]

I don't see why that's the case.  Why can't actions still occur, but on
grounds very different than those we would attribute the actions to if the
conscious will were involved in the action coming to be?  That is, a
'conversion' might still occur in the sense that a person holds beliefs and
engages in actions consistent with what we would mean by 'conversion', but
it wasn't the result of conscious will.  If you respond that it can't be a
'conversion' because a 'conversion' *means* holding beliefs and performing
actions as a result of applying your conscious will, then while your
argument is true by definition, I don't know why that's so interesting.
After all, Wegner's b ook -- which I haven't read -- seems to be about
calling into question whether a definition like that is so useful.
Reasserting the definition doesn't, therefore, seem like much of a
response.  If you don't take that option, then I don't see why actions like
'conversion' can't occur, but being the result of a different causal chain
than what we describe when saying that a person converted as a result of
her conscious will.



--On Friday, April 26, 2002, 11:12 AM -0400 Ken Armstrong
<armstron AT ohiou.edu> wrote:

> At 08:14 AM 04/26/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> In fact it went even
> deeper than the conscious will/determinism debate.  For even if we have
> a conscious will, so what!
>   Well, for sure, if no Conscious Will, then no conversation (& no
>   converts...), just for starters.
> 
>  Ken A.
> --
> An archive of all list discussion is available at
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> Project at <http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy>.