Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 22:34:14 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Aug19.210204.29868@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu 
(Neil Rickert) writes:
>PART I
>
>Usually we think of free will as the ability to [1] make a decision, and
>[2] have that decision affect what we do in the future.  That is, we make a
>choice, and can stick to that choice.

To assist clarity I've numbered the two parts of your definition of free
will above.

>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.  

That's part [2].  What happened to part [1]?  It's my intuition that the
"question of free will" is over [1] (whether our choices are determined),
not [2] (whether our decisions are carried out).

>Now this, surely, is what determinism is all about.
>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.

Yes, free will as it's usually conceived does depend on our choices
determining our actions.  But I don't think that's what we generally
mean by "determinism."  Besides, if our choices do determine our actions,
this no offers no support for the claim that our choices are determined.

>PART II
>
>You might now ask about your thoughts.  Perhaps it is correct that
>decisions affect future behavior deterministically.  But what about
>your decision.  Were you really free to make that decision?  Or does
>determinism somehow mean that your decision is determined in advance?
>Is free will a sham?  Is life just a charade? [...]

Before we get to these exciting questions I think we have to have a clearer
idea of what we mean by "free will" and "determined."

In some formulations of free will we have an immaterial soul whose action
is influenced but not bound by matter.  Presumably this view has few
adherents in comp.ai.philo.  

On the other hand, some formulations of determinism state that given the
present state of the universe, every future state (including those within
our skulls) is predictable.  I think this view is pretty much ruled out
by quantum mechanics.

But once these extremes have been ruled out, what is left of the opposition 
between free will and determinism?  It certainly makes no sense to deny that
our decisions are determined by physical events in our brains: our decisions,
and indeed "we", *are* physical events in our brains.

Perhaps the question is whether the decision-making process we feel we go
through has any meaning or effect?  My own opinion is that it does--
in fact, that part of the whole purpose of consciousness is this
process of mental simulation and choice.  However, I also think we're not
set up for very insightful analysis of our own cognition, and that we're
not as free as we think we are.  We can see the unfreedom in *other* people's
decision-making; there we call it "prejudice"!

Or perhaps we're asking if our decision-making process is externally 
predictable?  Here I think there are good physical reasons to say no:
not only does quantum unpredictability affect our brain, but the
impossibility of ascertaining or replicating the initial conditions
derails our simulation device.