Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!umd5!uvaarpa!virginia!uvacs!cfh6r From: cfh6r@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Carl F. Huber) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness Message-ID: <2485@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> Date: 21 Jun 88 15:28:15 GMT References: <8805151907.AA01702@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <445@aiva.ed.ac.uk> <463@aiva.ed.ac.uk> <306@proxftl.UUCP> Reply-To: cfh6r@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu.UUCP (Carl F. Huber) Organization: U.Va. CS dept. Charlottesville, VA Lines: 27 In article <306@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes: >Let's consider a relatively uncontroversial example. Say I have >a hot stove and a pan over it. At the entity level, the stove >heats the pan. At the process level, the molecules in the stove >transfer energy to the molecules in the pan. > ... >Now, I can actually try to answer your question. At the entity >level, the question "how do I cause it" does not really have an >answer; like the hot stove, it just does it. However, at the >process level, one can look at the mechanisms of consciousness; >these constitute the answer to "how". I do not yet see your distinction in this example. What is the difference between saying the stove _heats_ or the molecules _transfer_energy_? The distinction must be made in the way we describe what's happening. In each case above, you seem to be giving the pan and the molecules volition. The stove does not heat the pan. The stove is hot. The pan later becomes hot. Molecules do not transfer energy. The molecules in the stove have energy s+e. Then the molecules in the pan have energy p+e and the molecules in the stove have energy s. So it seems that both cases here are entity level, since the answer to "how do I cause it" is the same. If I have totally missed the point, could you please try again? -carl