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Saturday, February 6, 2010

"free will" as a redundancy -- implicaturally

Surely Grice was no behaviourist. He was an intentionalist.

Consider the abused phrase, 'free will'. Surely a redundancy. And the sad of it, of Graeco-Latin pedigree!


From the OED

liber

Lat. phr. (occurring in Livy 4. 43. 5): full power to decide, freedom of
action.

1652 N. CULVERWEL Act of Oblivion in Lt. Nature [II.] 38
The great Creator of Heaven and Earth, must wait upon mans liberum
arbitrium.

[where, by implicature, it is _denied_ that *animals* _do_ have such -- they
don't attend religious services, and we don't expect religious or
theological views from them]

1880 W. JAMES Coll. Ess. & Rev. (1920) 194
Shall I move my index finger or my little finger to show my ‘liberum
arbitrium indifferentiae’?

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