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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: What do people mean by free will?
Message-ID: <475@spar.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Aug-85 11:58:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.475
Posted: Mon Aug 19 11:58:36 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 02:08:02 EDT
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Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
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Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
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> (Frank Adams)   >> (Charley Wingate) 

>>The oldest notion seems to be of souls: beings of pure will.  I think that
>>at this time we can reject this hypothesis, or at least set it aside until
>>there is better evidence.

    If we decide that only verifiable physical phenomena are to be taken as
    evidence, and if the only allowable existent entities are defined as
    stable physical objects (like rocks) or recognizable confluences of
    causal chains (like flames, whirlpools), or somewhere in between
    (rivers, frogs) then we must admit that we have declared souls (and any
    other purely nonphysical entities) out of existence simply as a matter
    of definition.

    Arguments between Christians and Materialists on such issues would
    therefore seem to be pointless religious confrontations with little
    substance beyond dogmatic assertions of faith.    

>>Once we have set aside this notion of pure will, the whole question of will
>>becomes a problem.  It would seem reasonable to make analogies to present
>>day computers, which I think we can all agree do not have free will.

    There are several totally different aspects of the free will question
    here that must be separated:

    1) How can one speak of freedom if behavior is totally determined?
    2) What are the outward physical manifestations of what some people
       call `free will'?
    3) How do those who subjectively perceive free will use it as a
       meaningful descriptor of internal mental reality?
    4) Can (2) and (3) be united into a single entity, like pain, for
       instance, which has distinctive subjective and objective
       manifestations?

    Computers would not appear to have free will in the sense of #1, but if
    arguments from QM are accepted, I think we can say #1 is a dead issue,
    since the behavior of humans is arguably not fully determined by a
    person's physical state at any moment, unlike a purely digital computer.
  
    The other issues are clearly open, and I agree that analogies with
    computers, which can understood as possessing many levels of
    explanation, may be valuable regardless of one's opinion about #1.
   
>I'm afraid I don't see randomness as being any closer to freedom than
>determinism is.  If I flip a coin, is it "free" to come up either heads
>or tails?  (Leave aside the question of whether it's movement is truly
>random; assume it is.)  There is some sense of the word free in which it
>is -- it is not externally constrained.  But it makes no choices; it
>is just random.

    But what does random mean?

    As far as I can tell, behavior is called `random' whenever the observer
    is unable to discern a predictable pattern beyond statistical 
    distributions in the evidence.

    I suppose then, that `truly random' must mean that the pattern is not
    just unknowable for the time being (due to present lack of knowledge),
    but that complete explanation (causal or otherwise) will forever be
    unknowable.

    But what is `knowable'? 

    If we discard subjective experience as a source of knowledge, which
    seems to be the case if we insist on verifiable scientific evidence,
    then any spontaneous decisions supposedly attributed to free will
    (rather than determined by knowable external physical determinations)
    become as unknowable as `truly random' ones. We have denied the only
    possible means of determining whether the choice was `truly random' or
    by `conscious decision of free will'.

>Ultimately, this gets down to the question of subjective reality --
>a debate raging right now (that's raging, as in raging forest fire).
>Perhaps I will express my opinions on that later, if I can figure out
>what they are.

    The entire question of subjective reality is pointless, since even those
    who insist that physical entities are the only `real' ones are rapidly
    diverging from any consensus whatsoever on the so-called absolute nature
    of physical reality.

    Consequently, what some call `true physical reality', is but a subjective
    delusion. I would therefore change the question from:
    
         Does free will `really exist'?
    ..to:
         Whatever are people talking about when they use the term `free will'?

    Explaining free will then becomes a problem of providing adequate
    descriptions within several different philosophical worldviews (if
    possible).  Since each worldview `sees' some phenomena more clearly than
    others, it would seem to be impossible to establish parallel
    descriptions with perfect agreement.

    For example, to the extent that materialism rejects subjective
    entities, it invalidates its own ability to successfully grasp
    any subjective distinctions whatsoever.

    In my opinion, the existence of a truly free agent implies at some
    intrinsic unknowability -- and in the physical sciences, this is called
    `randomness'. Thus, I see randomness not as an explanation of free will,
    but rather as, perhaps, the only possible physical evidence for it.

    What distinguishes the unpredictability of free will from the blind
    randomness of a coin flip? 

    Meaning and purpose.

-michael