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