Put it away, that boy at the back. Now pay attention and
you may learn something...
SOPHIST's CHOICE
Determinism, free will and the reason why
Skiv's disciplinary record is so awful this season
There's no getting away from it. Our skipper Glen Skivington has a pretty terrible disciplinary record this season really, hasn't he? But unfortunately, there isn't a great deal he can do about it. It's way beyond his control, for he no more has free will than the rest of us. If he found an advocate smart enough to pursue this line of argument at his next disciplinary hearing, we're sure he'd get off the hook, but as usual it's up to us at Beans! to carry the philosophical can. Here we go again...
When you were at school, didn't the teacher tell you that God is omnipresent and all knowing? If God knows everything, then He must also know what is going to happen in the future. If He knows what happens, then for Him, that future must already exist. Put another way, you could say that the future isn't something that happens to us; we're something that happens to the future. More or less buggers up the argument for free will, doesn't it?
And there's no wriggling out of it by denying the existence of God. You've all seen Him playing at Holker St. enough times now to know better than to try that old one. But, just in case, we'll even put our argument slightly differently, without having recourse to God. This time we're resorting to gambling.
As you're all no doubt aware, the whole point of gambling is to win large amounts of money by predicting the outcome of an event which could have several possibilities. Say you fancy a flutter on the horses: you could simply pick a horse with a name you liked and win, but you'd have more chance if you made your selection by studying the previous form, knowing who the jockeys are, what the conditions are like, any number of things. What you are doing, of course, is trying to discount some possibilities by discovering as many relevant factors as you can about the event. The more you know, the better chance you have of making a successful prediction of its outcome.
Now, for the sake of argument, just say you knew absolutely everything there was to know about all the factors influencing the race. The outcome would then be utterly predictable. Even such seemingly random accidents as the favourite falling at the first fence could be foreseen. Of course, nobody can know all the factors, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. So it is with life itself. If you have perfect knowledge of the past, then it follows you will have perfect knowledge of the future and again, any notion of free will goes into the trash with all those old betting slips.
So it follows that all those bookings really weren't Skiv's fault. The circumstances of his past life all conspired to lead him into situations where the yellow card was inevitable. A sociologist might point to harsh treatment in his formative years at Victoria Juniors as a mitigating factor, a psychologist to a genetic make-up which makes him prone to acts of dissent, even a meteorologist to terrible weather conditions softening up the pitches to such an extent that some of those late tackles were absolutely unavoidable.
Of course, this whole argument applies only to our Skiv and not to players on other teams facing their quota of disciplinary points. We'd simply argue that they were all dirty, spiteful, vindictive ß@$*@®¶$, who deserve all the punishment they get.
Issue 011 - April 1992
