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From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Mechanism and Determinism and Subsidized Will
Message-ID: <478@spar.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Aug-85 05:14:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.478
Posted: Thu Aug 22 05:14:18 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 18:59:28 EDT
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Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
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The brain is a physical system, and consciousness seems to be a brain
function, so conscious choice must then be subject to physical laws. 
Does this make the notion of "free will" meaningless?  I think not.

How accurately can we predict human behavior?  To the extent that a 
situation constrains the number of choices that are consistent with 
personal survival etc. we may do reasonably well.  But even then we 
are not always be able to predict with confidence how an individual will
behave.  The relative values of conflicting proirities and the relative 
strengths of association between memories vary over time due to changes 
in the brain that cannot be predicted.  Some of these changes may be due 
to "acausal" quantum behavior, others to "normal" physical events whose
investigation is prohibited by either Heisenberg or Hippocrates.  Until 
we have a predictive (and nondestructive) science of human behavior, 
people will use phrases like "free will" to describe these unobservable 
and/or unpredicatable processes and their consequences.

						Baba