Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!oddjob!ncar!ames!oliveb!felix!dhw68k!feedme!doug
From: doug@feedme.UUCP (Doug Salot)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness
Message-ID: <31@feedme.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 88 20:19:03 GMT
References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <10942@sunybcs.UUCP> <4543@super.upenn.edu> <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Reply-To: doug@feedme.UUCP (Doug Salot)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Feedme Microsystems, Orange County, CA
Lines: 24
Keywords: randomness responsibility

In article <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> Cliff Joslyn writes:
>In article <4543@super.upenn.edu> 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.
>
>[good points about QM vs Classical vs Ignorance as views of Freedom deleted]

I don't believe randomness (in the quantum mechanical sense) is important
to a sense of free will.  The illusion of free will is what's important,
and when dealing with a computing machine (the brain) which makes state
changes on the time order of milliseconds, it is simply impossible for
that machine, self-aware or not, to view its state changes as
deterministic when its state changes are based on finer-grained state
changes that occur at or near the speed of light.  It seems to me
that it would be straight-forward to give a computer program with
the ability to monitor its *behavior* without giving it the ability to
find causal relations between its holistic state and its behavior.


-- 
Doug Salot || doug@feedme.UUCP || {trwrb,hplabs}!felix!dhw68k!feedme!doug
Feedme Microsystems:Inventors of the Snarf->Grok->Munge Development Cycle