Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert
From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
Message-ID: <1115@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 9 May 88 08:50:08 GMT
References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1029@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <912@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <5404@venera.isi.edu>
Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 34

In art. <5404@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) writes
>a rule-based or other mechanical account of cognition and decision making
>is at odds with the doctrine of free will which underpins most Western morality

>Cockton should either prepare a brief substantiation or relegate it to the 
>cellar of outrageous vacuities crafted solely to attract attention!

Hey, that vacuity's sparked off a really interesting debate, from
which I'm learning a lot.  Don't put it in the cellar yet.
Apologies to anyone who doesn't like polemic, but I've always found it a great
way of getting the ball rolling - I would use extreme statements as a classroom
teacher to get discussion going, hope no-one's bothered by the transfer of this
behaviour to the adult USENET.

Anyway, the simplified, and thus inadeqaute argument is:

	machine intelligence => determinism
	determinism => lack of responsibility
	lack of responsibility => no moral blame
	no moral blame => do whatever your rulebase says.

Now we could view morality as just another rulebase applied to output 1 of the
decision-process, a pruning operator as it were.

Unfortunately, all attempts to date to present a moral rule-base have
failed, so the chances of morality being rule-based are slim. Note that
in the study of humanity, we have few better tools now than we had in
Classical times, so there are no good reasons for expecting major advances
in our understanding of ourselves.  Hence Skinner's dismay that while Physics
had advanced much since classical times, Psychology has hardly advanced at all.
Skinner accordingly stocked his lab with high-tech rats and pidgeons in an 
attempt to push back the frontiers of learning theory.

At least you don't have to clean out the computer's cage :-)