From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Date: 30 Sep 92 18:40:57 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

nr = rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
jd = jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)

jd> ... does it really look like the key decisions take place in thoughts
jd> rather than in other brain processes below or outside our awareness?

nr> I don't see this as a meaningful distinction. 

jd> Why not?  If thoughts take place as physical processes in the brain,
jd> that doesn't mean all physical processes in the brain are thoughts.
jd> So there's a distinction.

nr> I agree that not all physical processes are thoughts.  Indeed most
nr> are not thoughts.

Ok.  And presumably we can agree that there are physical processes
in the brain that aren't thoughts either?  Because my basic point
here is that there are things going on behind the scenes that
determine what thoughts occur.  A person's thoughts are given
to them (in effect) by unconscious processes.  If they're sane,
their thoughts will make sense, seem like their thoughts, connect
when appropriate to previous thoughts, etc.  But people don't
(at least not normally) _decide_ to give their thoughts these
properties.

It's often said that it feels like, or seems like, we have free will.
That's certainly true, in a sense.  But I think it takes only a small
shift of perspective before it seems a lot less like we have free will.
Thoughts occur.  We don't decide what thoughts to have like we might
decide whether or not to go shopping.  We don't really understand how
thoughts are produced or what factors influence them.  Perhaps if we
looked further into the processes involved it would seem that they
were "free", and perhaps it wouldn't.

Here's an example.  Ask yourself something like "what are the
advantages of going shopping right now rather than staying in and
reading more News?"  Some reasons might occur to you -- you'll think
something like, say, "it might be raining later" or "the shops will
soon be closed" (at least those are the reasons someone might well
have if sitting here with me) -- or maybe reasons won't occur.  Maybe
you "won't be able to think of anything", and then your thoughts will
move on to something else.

This is the stuff of your rational decision about whether or not
to go shopping, and yet the reasons that occur to you aren't under
your control.  From your (conscious) point of view, the thoughts
just occur.  The contents of your deliberations -- the reasons you
come up with and the conclusions you reach -- are given to you by
processes that you don't know very much about.

So here are your thoughts: "It's going to rain, so I'd better go now."
"My eyes are a mess, can't keep looking at this screen all day".
But the "decisions" about what thoughts to have are at some other
level.

Now of course it can still be that the things you think influence
your decision (your knowledge of the weather, a desire not to get
wet, etc) are what actually do influence your decision.  But they
may not be the only, nor the deciding factors involved.  Moreover,
the possibility that the things you think influence your decision
are what actually do influence your decision isn't really enough.
Do they _actually_ influence the decision?

You wrote:

  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.

I can agree that thoughts happen in the (physical) brain.  But I
don't agree that the decision event happens in thoughts.  Instead,
the decision is _given to_ your consciousness in thoughts.  The actual
decision is determined by some unconscious process.  Typically it
takes into account some other things that have also been presented
as thoughts.  That our thoughts "involve processes which are outside
our awareness" would not show that the decision is in those brain
processes that are (part of?) thoughts ("involved in thoughts" might
include almost anything) rather than in some other brain processes.

Moreover, I don't agree that the quesition of free will is just
the question of whether decision events in the brain can influence
future events in the brain.  I'm pretty sure they can influence
future events.  But why would that alone make the decision free?

nr> But your question presupposes that a "key decision" in an atomic act
nr> which occurs at one level.  We are aware of our thoughts, but even our
nr> thoughts involve processes which are outside our awareness.
nr> This is why I said your distinction was not meaningful.

In your articles you've said things like "decision event" and:

  Now keep in mind what it means to "make a choice".  This choice is
  something that happens in your thoughts.

I'm not trying to suggest anything more atomic than that.

nr> Again, the terms "decision" and "choice" suggest unitary atomic events,
nr> but more likely these are just labels we apply to far more complex
nr> phenomena.

I can agree with that.

jd> My point was simply that people do not decide what thoughts to have
jd> except in a very limited way, because otherwise there'd be an infinite
jd> regress of decisions.  So there's a sense in which they do not have
jd> free will.

nr> I have no important disagreement with this.  My only claim was that free
nr> will is a reasonable interpretation of what happens.

Well, I can't think of any important disagreements with that, so 
maybe we've converged on this point.

jd> So we conclude what?  That there's sometimes free will, when
jd> what someone thinks influences their actions happens to match
jd> what did influence their actions?

nr> I would guess that usually what someone thinks influences his actions
nr> actually does influence his actions.  But please note that what a person
nr> thinks, and what a person reports, may be quite different.  It is
nr> certainly the case that there are other influences that we are not aware
nr> of, and indeed these may be in the preponderance in many cases.  But
nr> even so, these factors outside our awareness are probably in our past
nr> experience and education.  In that sense, our free will is much less
nr> free than we like to think, for we are creatures of our culture and our
nr> experience, and we are much more subject to "brain washing" than we
nr> would prefer to admit.

I can pretty much agree with all of that.  However, here is a thought
experiment.  Robots have been developed that can pass the Turing Test.
Indeed, we've decided that they can be considered persons and we've
even given them voting rights.  The True Blue Robot Company starts
making robots.  Now suppose it turns out that these robots tend to
vote for the Conservative Party (which has blue as its colour).

These robots might think all ther things we think about how the things
that seem to influence our decisions are what really does influence
our decisions, and so forth.  They can read Dennett and know about
verieties of free will worth wanting.  Nonetheless, it seems to me
that there is still a real question about whether their voting choices
are "free".  We have suspicions, and rightly so.  Maybe the bias
is due to nothing more than the colour blue.  (The robots know they're
True Blue robots and, in most of them, this helps lead them to think
favorably of the colout blue.)  But maybe not.

-- jd