From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:02:31 GMT
Organization: Northern Illinois University

In article <7614@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>nr = rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>jd = jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)

jd>                                A person's thoughts are given
jd>to them (in effect) by unconscious processes.  If they're sane,
jd>their thoughts will make sense, seem like their thoughts, connect
jd>when appropriate to previous thoughts, etc.

You don't have to be insane to have thoughts which don't make sense.

jd>                                             But people don't
jd>(at least not normally) _decide_ to give their thoughts these
jd>properties.

jd>It's often said that it feels like, or seems like, we have free will.
jd>That's certainly true, in a sense.  But I think it takes only a small
jd>shift of perspective before it seems a lot less like we have free will.
jd>Thoughts occur.  We don't decide what thoughts to have like we might
jd>decide whether or not to go shopping.

I don't agree with that analogy.  I do agree that our thoughts are
constrained, just as when we are shopping, our choices of what to buy
are constrained by what is on the shelf.

jd>                                       We don't really understand how
jd>thoughts are produced or what factors influence them.  Perhaps if we
jd>looked further into the processes involved it would seem that they
jd>were "free", and perhaps it wouldn't.

I agree we don't know this, and can't until much more is known about
the brain.  I'm inclined to believe that thoughts are free, though, in
the sense that there is no outside force rigidly controlling them.  It
looks more to me to be somewhat like the behavior of a system with
positive feedback at just below the level where oscillations will occur.
That means it is chaotic in the sense that very small input variations
can cause dramatic changes in output.

jd>I can agree that thoughts happen in the (physical) brain.  But I
jd>don't agree that the decision event happens in thoughts.  Instead,
jd>the decision is _given to_ your consciousness in thoughts.  The actual
jd>decision is determined by some unconscious process.

I disagree, but perhaps this is a quibble about words.  I would say that
the decision is made in your thoughts, but the unconscious processes
have constrained the choices available in that decision.

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

Hmm.  These robots are sounding very much like my neighbors, except we
call it the Republican Party here.  If the robots uniformly voted
Conservative, we would be very suspicious.  But if there was a variation
of voting, with only a preponderance of Conservative votes, and if the
extent to which they voted Conservative were to change from election to
election, you might not be seeing anything much different from the
influences of educational background, religion, parental influence, etc,
on human voters.