Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!TAURUS.BITNET!shani
From: shani@TAURUS.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
Message-ID: <725@taurus.BITNET>
Date: 8 May 88 09:52:18 GMT
References: <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <2070013@otter.hple.hp.com>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: 
Organization: Tel-Aviv Univesity Math and CS school, Israel
Lines: 32

In article <2070013@otter.hple.hp.com>, cwp@otter.BITNET writes:

> Did my value system exist before my conception? I doubt it. I learnt it,
> through interaction with the environment and other people. Similarly, a
> (possibly deterministic) program MAY be able to learn a value system, as
> well as what an arch looks like. Simply because we have values, does not
> mean we are free.

  Try to look at it this way: even assumeing that you did learn your values
from other people (pearents, teachers, TV etc.) and did not make anything up,
how did you decide, what to adupt from who? randomly? or by some pre-determent
factors? doesn't it make values worthless, if you can always blame chance,
heritage or some teachers in your school, for your decisions?

There is one mistake (In my opinion, ofcourse), which repeat in many of the
postings on this subject. You must make difference, between values as
themselfes (Like which is your favorite color, whether you belive in god or
not), from the practicing of your system-of-values (or alignment as I prefer to
machine), is the given realm, you 'play' on, because 'real' things (in the
manner of things that exist in the given realm), are the only things which
have a common (more or less...) meaning to all of us. Now, if you will think of
values, as theyre pure self, and not as theyre practice in realety, you will
see that they are not 'real' in this manner, and therfore cannot be learnt or
'given'. Maybe one day we will be able to create machines that will have this
uniqe human abielty to give a personal meaning to things... Infact, we can
do it already, and could for thousands of years - we create new human beings.

O.S.

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I think that I think, and therfore I think that I am...
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