From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 21:51:56 GMT

In article <7516@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1992Aug19.210204.29868@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>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?

I don't see this as a meaningful distinction.  The brain processes
are electro-chemical reactions, all of which occur outside our awareness.
Our thoughts are not atomic events, but surely composed of complex
combinations of such physical events.  Perhaps no individual brain event
can be considered "key".

In the strictest sense there is no such thing as a decision, or a choice,
or a thought.  There are electro-chemical reactions.  Terms such as
"decision", "choice" and "thought" are interpretations of these reactions.
The best we can ask is that these be reasonable interpretations.

>                                                          You have
>a thought.  Did you decide to have that thought rather than some
>other?

Yes, or at least this is a reasonable interpretation of events.  But at
some level the decision is not a conscious one.

>        Was that decision another thought?

If it was not a conscious decision, it was not another thought, at least
with common ideas about what constitutes 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.

You want to use the term "free will" in a strict absolutist sense.  But
such a meaning is impossible.  Even the idea of "will" is only an
interpretation of electro-chemical reactions.

>>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.

>>    "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.

[Who says we don't think you mad anyway?]  Notice that there is quite
a difference between saying "the axioms of arithmetic are encoded in my
brain" and "the axioms of arithmetic are recorded in my brain".  If you
asked a stenographer to read back a memo, and he/she began "squiggle
squoggle ..." you would have the same effect.  If the information is in
some manner encoded rather than directly recorded, then a question "what
are the axioms .." is a request for you to do the appropriate decoding.

>>  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?

People make such mistakes all the time.  I'm not sure what is your
point, or why the possibility of a mistake makes it prejudicial.

>                              (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.)

It would probably be more accurate to say that the principles are
an interpretation of brain structures than to say that the brain
structures are an encoding of the principles.

>                 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.)

This happens all the time.  What of it?  The voter can use his free will
to make the wrong decision if he wishes.

>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?)

This happens all the time too.  Often an explanation in terms of principles
is just an ex post facto rationalization.  But that changes nothing.
The final action was still a reflection of the thought processes.

>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.

Absolute notions of free will vs. predestination are inventions, and
have no reality.  In a sense, YOU, yourself, have no reality.  There
are various fundamental particles and forces, and YOU are an interpretation
of the configuration of some of those particles and forces.  My argument
was meant to show that free will is a reasonable interpretation (those
things which, according to your thoughts, influenced your action, really
did influence your action), while ideas of predestination (some entity
is pulling strings and controlling you like a puppet, and your own
thoughts are irrelevant) is a much poorer interpretation.

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