Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!linus!mbunix!bwk From: bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness Message-ID: <31150@linus.UUCP> Date: 6 May 88 18:00:42 GMT References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> Sender: news@linus.UUCP Reply-To: bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort) Distribution: comp Organization: International Teleport & Telepath, Beantown, Mass. Lines: 33 Keywords: Feedback Loops, Goal States, Prediction, Desire Summary: Is Free Will an Emergent Property of Cause+Chance? James Anderson writes: >If the world is deterministic I am denied free will because I can >not determine the outcome of a decision. On the other hand, if >the world is random, I am denied free will because I can not >determine the outcome of a decision. Either element, determinancy >or randomness, denies me free will, so no mixture of a >deterministic world or a non-deterministic world will allow me >free will. It is not clear to me that a mixture of determinism and randomness could not jointly create free will. A Thermostat with no Furnace cannot control the room temperature. A Furnace with no Thermostat cannot control the room temperature. But join the two in a feedback loop, and together they give rise to an emergent property: the ability to control the room temperature to a desired value, notwithstanding unpredicted changes in the outside weather. Similarly, could it not be the case that Free Will emerges from a balanced mixture of determinism (which permits us to predict the likely outcome of our choices) and freedom (which allows us to make arbitrary choices)? Just as the Furnace+Thermostat can drive the room temperature to a desired value, Cause+Chance gives us the power to drive the future state-of-affairs toward a desired goal. If you buy this line of reasoning, then perhaps we can get on to the next level, which is: How do we select goal states which we imagine to be desirable? --Barry Kort