Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2011 sci.philosophy.tech:671 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!bill From: bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: How to dispose of the free will issue (long) Summary: Old argument, new bottle, same irrelevance Keywords: free will architecture terminology Message-ID: <445@proxftl.UUCP> Date: 10 Jul 88 22:04:43 GMT References: <483@cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk> <794@l.cc.purdue.edu> <488@aiva.ed.ac.uk> <5384@sdcrdcf.UUCP> Organization: Proximity Technology, Ft. Lauderdale Lines: 39 In article <5384@sdcrdcf.UUCP>, markb@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Mark Biggar) writes: > In article <488@aiva.ed.ac.uk> jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton,E26 SB x206E,,2295119) writes: > >In article <794@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: > >>Whether or not we have free will, we should behave as if we do, > >>because if we don't, it doesn't matter. > >If that is true -- if it doesn't matter -- then we will do just as well > >to behave as if we do not have free will. > > Not so, believing in free will is a no lose situation; while > believing that you don't have free is a no win situation. > In the first case either your right or it doesn't matter, in the second > case either your wrong or it doesn't matter. Game theory (assuming > you put more value on being right then wrong (if it doesn't matter > there are no values anyway)) says the believing and acting like you > have free will is the way that has the most expected return. Pascal, I think it was, advanced essentially the same argument in order to defend the proposition that one should believe in god. However, both sides of the argument agree that the issue at hand has no satisfactory resolution, and thus we are free to be religious about it; both are also forgetting that the answer to this question has practical consequences. Pick your favorite definition of free will. Unless it is one where the "free will" has no causal relationship with the rest of the world (but then why does it matter?), the existence or lack of existence of free will will have measurable consequences. For example, my own definition of free will has consequences that, among many other things, includes the proposition that, under normal circumstances, an initiation of physical force is harmful both to the agent and the patient. (Do not argue this proposition in this newsgroup, PLEASE.) It also entails a definition of the debatable terms like `normal' and `harm' by means of which this statement can be interpreted. This means that I can test the validity of my definition of free will by normal scientific means and thus takes the problem of free will out of the religious and into the practical.