From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: FREE WILL 2: Neither a Determinist nor an Indeterminist be.
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1992 03:12:38 GMT

In article <1992Nov14.000056.10867@leland.Stanford.EDU> ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards) writes:
>In article <1992Nov13.165608.21531@guinness.idbsu.edu>, holmes@garnet.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

>|> I am
>|> arguing that the actual physical facts of indeterminism/determinism
>|> are _irrelevant_ to our free will.  Our free will and responsibility
>|> is relative to our state of knowledge; pure determinism would indicate
>|> that we were not responsible for our actions relative to God (say) but
>|> it would not change our position relative to each other.
>
>If you change "Our free will and responsibility" to "Our impression of free
>will and responsibility" then I am with you ...

The point here is that there may be no distinction between "our free
will" and "our impression of free will".  That is to say, if you wish
to make the distinction, you must posit a view from outside our universe
which can see the "true situation".  But if there is such an externally
viewable truth we shall never see it.  That is, there is no experiment
you can perform within our universe which will distinguish between an
apparent free will and an actually externally visible free will.  If
the knowledge of such a view of externally visible free will is forever
denied to us, then in what sense is it reasonable to pretend that such
a view even makes legitimate sense?

>|> But I think that our free will in the sense I have outlined is
>|> intrinsic; I don't think that it is possible for us to predict _our
>|> own_ behaviour.
>
>I agree with you here because, to humans at least, the universe is for all
>intents and purposes non-deterministic (I realize this rational is probably
>different from yours).

This is surely wrong.  To humans the world is, for all intents and
purposes deterministic, and we humans are often the determiners.  This
may not be a mechanically correct view, but it is the commonly perceived
view.

>|> I think that this is real free will; I am not really concerned
>|> if others won't recognize it as such.
>
>Ahhh, here's where we differ. I find it quite intriguing that we feel we have
>this thing called free will which under close examination appears to be
>meaningless. The interesting thing for me is why did we evolve such
>a deep feeling of free will and responsibility.

In what sense does it become meaningless on close examination?  To
rephrase this question, isn't it true that if, on close examination we
found we did not have free will, then we would also find we were incapable
of doing this close examination?  This is, of course, somewhat paradoxical.

>|> we have free will because we make choices using our own judgment
>|> from the alternatives we see before us.  All of this is relative to
>|> our state of knowledge, a fact which ethical theory takes into
>|> account; we are not responsible for consequences of our actions which
>|> our knowledge could not allow us to foresee. Similarly, we are not
>|> relieved of responsibility by causes of our actions which are beyond
>|> the scope of our possible knowledge.
>
>The notion of responsibility is just a practical method for deciding whom
>or what to punish. That is, to stop something negative from
>happening society must make some change ... responsibility just
>targets what change should be made (IMO of course).

But if there were no free will, society would be unable to set these targets
and introduce the notion of responsibility.  That is to say, the notions of
resonsibility would be equally predetermined and not a society choice at
all.

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