From: andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Free will
Date: 27 Jul 92 22:06:17 GMT
Organization: Renaissance Technologies Corp., Setauket, NY.

In article <zlsiida.1039@fs1.mcc.ac.uk> zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd) writes:
>It doesn't matter whether I or anybody else can predict what you will do 
>next, all that matters is whether your choice of what to do next is entirely 
>unconstrained.

I would have thought the question was if what you do next is entirely 
constrained or not.

Entirely unconstrained seems to imply that you could choose to spontaneously
combust, etc... I think everyone would be likely to agree that there are
some constraints on choice.

>Are not biological systems ultimately constructed from atomic or sub-atomic 
>particles?  Are not these particles subject to the laws of physics?  are not 
>the laws of physics deterministic?  (excepting *possibly* quantum theories)


But if the laws of physics are essentially statistical in nature, then there
is possibility of free will.

Note that living things are 'reliable mechanisms' - i.e. they are large
enough ensembles to keep the statistical fluctuations of quantum mechanics
from _interfering_ with most normal processes. However, the law of large
numbers is not a complete escape from statistics.

Now one of the things we usually mean when we talk about free will is the
conscious control over our limbs, etc. There doesn't seem to be anything
'statistical' about it when we will our arms to move, (barring diseases, etc.)
when you want to raise your hand, up it goes. So this is not where the
statistics seems to be important. In this sense, the numbers are large enough.

But whence came this impulse to raise the hand? We can trace back through the
causal linkage in the nerves, but then the picture becomes scientifically very
blurry. There are significant involuntary motions, and not all the things we
do with our bodies are clearly intentional. But surely _some_ of the things
we do _seem for all the world to be intentional_, and this is what choice
seems to be about. The physics underlying the origin of intentional choices
may or may not be a huge nonlinear amplification of quantum noise. It might
be a high dimensional chaotic, but essentially deterministic system.

It is quite important to keep in mind that extrapolating human intentional
behavior from first physical principles is not a serious option today.

Recently, it has been noticed that a deterministic chaotic system can be
very effectively controlled by a tiny input, strategically placed. In which
case there is almost no practical hope of proving the human to be deterministic
by finding a good deterministic model - essentially because the source of
choice in the picture can be made arbitrarily small.

Similar arguments can be based on computability. (Chaitin's omega number),
and we should expect this, by the same token that we observed that the
relatively orderly nature of life is connected to the fact that living things
consist of considerable numbers of statistically connected objects. The
organization of life entails low entropy. The low entropy means that all the
essential information can be carried by a small part of the organism. Nature
being efficient, we tend to observe this.

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt



Xref: sparky talk.philosophy.misc:1497 talk.politics.misc:36519 talk.politics.theory:3104