From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Date: 15 Sep 92 20:04:56 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Aug19.210204.29868@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

>Usually we think of free will as the ability to make a decision, and
>have that decision affect what we do in the future.  That is, we make a
>choice, and can stick to that choice.
>
>Now keep in mind what it means to "make a choice".  This choice is
>something that happens in your thoughts.  Your thoughts are not
>something etherial and mystical which happens in some never never land
>far away; your thoughts are events that occur in your brain.  Neurons
>are activated; electro-chemical actions occur.
>
>So, the question of free will is just the question of whether this
>event in your brain - the decision event - can influence future events
>in your brain. 

Wait a minute.  You said "this choice" (which I take it is the
decision event) "happens in your thoughts" and that thoughts take
place as physical processes in the brain.  Fair enough, but does it
really look like the key decisions take place in thoughts rather than
in other brain processes below or outside our awareness?  You have
a thought.  Did you decide to have that thought rather than some
other?  Was that decision another thought?  How did you decide to
have that other thought?  And so on.

In short, either our thoughts aren't free or the key choices
in free will take place outside thoughts.

>Free will requires a high degree of deterministic behavior in the
>functioning of your brain.  Our sense that we have free will is really
>a strong argument for determinism.

For _some_ determinism.  

>Well, yes, your decision is determined in advance, but no, free will is
>not a sham, and life is not a charade. 

This sort of compatiblist argument must be taken seriously, but I'm
not sure that it's convincing in the end.

>    "Whom did you vote for in the last election?"
>
>         "I voted for A."
>
>    "Could you have voted for B?"
>
>         "I have free will.  Of course I could have voted for B if I
>         wished."
>
>    "That's not quite what I mean.  Think back to the way you felt
>    during that election.  Now, could you really have voted for B?"
>
>         "Well, no.  There is no way I could have voted for B.  I have
>         very strong principles, and his policies violated those
>         principles."

(BTW, it's almost certainly false that there's no way he could have
voted for B.)

>Now think for a moment about what those principles might be.  They are
>not something mystical or etherial.  The principles consist of
>something which is encoded in your brain.

It may well be true that the principles are encoded in my brain, but
that doesn't mean they consist of something that is coded in my brain.
That axioms of arithmetic might well be encoded in my brain, since I
know what they are.  But if someone asked "what are the axioms of
arithmetic" and I answered "they consist of ..." and them proceeded to
read out a description of part of my brain, one would think me mad.

>  This physical substance
>which represents your principles is part of the universe, and is part
>of what determines your action.  So, yes, you decision on how to vote
>was indeed predetermined.  But it was not a sham; your reasoning was
>not a charade.  The physical conditions which predetermined your vote
>was that physical substance in your brain which represents your
>principles.  Your reasoning was completely correct.  It was your
>principles, or their physical embodiment, which determined your vote.

This is a very prejudicial way of looking at it.  What if the
reasoning was wrong?  What if B didn't violate the principles and
the voter was just mistaken?  (This is part of the problem with
identifying principles too closely with their brain encoding --
presumably the reasoning did follow the encoding of the principles,
of logic, etc.)  What if the voter is mistaken about what his
principles imply and cannot be made to realize his mistake no
matter how carefully it is explained?  (Think of the net.)

What if instead of invoking principles the voter instead said
something like "I just couldn't bring myself to do it"?  (After
all, why couldn't the voter bring himself to violate a principle?
Just couldn't do it?)

So what says the reasoning wasn't a charade?  It could involve
mistakes without the voter being able to realize they were mistakes.
The voter had to vote against B even if all the reasons were
completely bogus.  The voter had no choice and was just riding
along on a deterministic wave.

-- jd
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy