Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!ncar!boulder!sunybcs!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness
Message-ID: <1182@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 7 May 88 16:12:55 GMT
References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <940@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Distribution: comp
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 90
Keywords: randomness responsibility

In article <940@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>, vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes:
>> In article <4543@super.upenn.edu> lloyd@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Lloyd Greenwald) writes:
>> >This is a good point.  It seems that some people are associating free will
>> >closely with randomness.  
>> 
>> Yes, I do so.  I think this is a necessary definition.
>> 
>> Consider the concept of Freedom in the most general sense.  It is
>> opposed by the concept of Determinism.
>
>For what it is worth, my "feeling" of "free will" is strongest when I
>act in accord with my own character / value system &c. That is, when I
>act in a relatively predictable way.  

Yes, it is more complicated, isn't it? What if, instead of having a
"value system", you were rather in the grip of some hideous, controlling
"ideology." Let's say you're Ronald Raegan, or Botha, or Gorbachev.  I
wouldn't want to deny them free will, but would say that their
ideologies are highly determining (at least on political issues).  On
the other hand, let's say that I am an intelligent, impressionable child
in an "ideas bazarre," say a super-progressive, highly integrated school
in New York.  Then my value system will be in constant flux. 

Also, don't confuse predictibility with determinism.  There are degrees
of predictibility.  If I know the distribution of a random variable, I
can make some degree of prediction.

>Randomness is *NOT* freedom, it is the antithesis of freedom.
>If something else controls my behaviour, the randomness of the
>something else cannot make _me_ free.

Yes, it is critical to keep the levels of analysis clear.  If something
external *determines* your behavior (for example, a value system), then
your behavior is *determined* no matter what.  The *cause* of your
behavior being free in no way implies you are free.  But we aren't
talking about something controlling you, we are talking about whether
you are controlled.  My assertion is that if you are completely
controlled, then you cannot act randomly.  If you are free, than you
can. 

Try this: freedom implies the possibility of randomness, not its
necessity?

>That is,
>an agent possesses free will to the extent that its actions are
>explicable in terms of the agent's own beliefs and values.
>For example, I give money to beggars.  This is not at all random; it is
>quite predictable.  But I don't do it because someone else makes me do it,
>but because my own values and beliefs make it appropriate to do so.

In order for something to be not at all random, it must not just be
quite predictible, but rather completely predictible.  To that extent,
it is determined. 

Again, we're talking at different levels (probably a
subjective/objective problem).  Let's try this: if you are free, that
means it is possible for you to make a choice.  That is, you are free to
scrap your value system.  At each choice you make, there is a small
chance that you will do something different, something unpredictible
given your past behavior/current value system.  If, on the other hand,
you *always* adhere to that value system, then from my perspective, that
value system (as an *external cause*) is determining your behavior, and
you are not free.  The problem here may be one of observation: if a coin
"chooses" to come up heads each time, I will say that it's necessary
that it does, as an inductive inference.

There's a lot of issues here.  I don't either of us have thought through
it very clearly.

>A perfectly good person, someone who always does the morally appropriate
>thing because that's what he likes best, might well be both predictable
>and as free as it is possible for a human being to be.

He is not free so long as it is not possible for him to act imorally.  I
say it is then impossible to distinguish between someone who is free to
act imorally, and chooses not to, and someone who is determined to act
morally. 

>It has been shown that **LOCAL** hidden
>variables theories are not consistent with observation, but NON-local
>theories (I believe there are at least two current) have not been falsified.  

Thanks for the clarification.

-- 
O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large
| Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .