From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Date: 29 Sep 92 20:49:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: mp.1992Sep29.204929.421
Organization: Northern Illinois University

In article <7598@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1992Sep15.215156.29721@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>In article <7516@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>>
>>>                                           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. 
>
>Why not?  If thoughts take place as physical processes in the brain,
>that doesn't mean all physical processes in the brain are thoughts.
>So there's a distinction.

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

>>In the strictest sense there is no such thing as a decision, or a choice,
>>or a thought.
>
>That is a matter of debate.  See, eg, the "dualism" discussion
>in sci.philosophy.tech.  (I'm not saying th ealternative is
>dualism, only that that's the subject of a discussion worth
>looking at.)

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

>>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.
>
>What does it mean to say a meaning is impossible?

In the sense that the meaning is only an interpretation of brain events,
and has no independent existence.

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

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

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

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