Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!esosun!jackson
From: jackson@esosun.UUCP (Jerry Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: More Free Will
Message-ID: <145@vor.esosun.UUCP>
Date: 12 May 88 15:18:37 GMT
References: <3200017@uiucdcsm>
Organization: SAIC, San Diego
Lines: 59
In-reply-to: channic@uiucdcsm.cs.uiuc.edu's message of 11 May 88 17:24:00 GMT



>If so, no one can be held responsible or need to feel responsible for his/her
>actions.  I cannot accept that.


>> }The attack is over.  The following is a plea to all AI researchers.  Please
>> }do not try to persuade anyone, especially impressionable students, that s\he
>> }does not have free will.  Everyone has the ability to choose to bring peace
>> }to his or her own life and to the rest of society, and has the ability to
>> }MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the world.  Free will should not be compromised for the
>> }mere prospect of creating an intelligent machine.
>> 
>> Believe it or not, Minsky makes a similar plea in his discussion of free will
>> in _The Society of Mind_. He says that we may not be able to figure out where
>> free will comes from, but it is so deeply ingrained in us that we cannot deny
>> it or ignore it.
>
>Since it can't be denied, let's go one step further.  Free will has created
>civilization as we know it.  People, using their individual free wills,
>chose to make the world the way it is.  Minsky chose to write his book,


Is this intended to be a convincing argument?  The fact that you cannot
accept something is hardly a valid reason for me to reject it.  Saying
it's so doesn't make it so.  I agree that if free will is unreal, the 
foundations of our society in terms of laws, praise, blame and responsibility
in general fall apart... This seems to me (initially anyway) to be a bad
thing. That's not, however, a good reason to ignore the problem.  I think
it is clear that within the standard causal model of the world that most
science-oriented folks have adopted, there is no room for free will.  Sure,
one can introduce "quantum uncertainty" into the picture, but I don't think
having a decision made by a sub-atomic event is really what people like to
think of as "free will"... 

If events actually do have causes (What a novel idea!), then free will must
somehow come from outside the causal stream (from some *non-physical* realm?).
So, I contend, belief in free will constitutes belief in some sort of
non-physical entity interacting with the physical body.  I'm certainly not
about to say this is wrong; I just wish the free will proponents would admit
where they are coming from.

On a different note, consider what is meant by making a 'choice'.. 
I submit that when the options presented to a 'chooser' differ greatly in
value, there is really no choice to be made -- it makes itself.  However,
when the options are very close in value, the choice becomes difficult 
(exactly when it makes the least difference).  In fact, the most difficult
choices occur when the options at hand are virtually equal in value. At that
point one might as well roll the dice anyway.

Finally, to be honest, I think the question of free will/determinism is
illusory.  It pre-supposes a rigid separation between the 'actor' and the
'outside world'.  Within a causal framework, the only 'entity' that can
possibly act on its own is the universe itself (of which we are not so
separate parts).  So, to really experience free will, try to identify with
a greater and greater piece of the whole pie, instead of some arbitrary
individual.

--Jerry Jackson