Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness
Message-ID: <940@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 88 02:57:46 GMT
References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 43
Keywords: randomness responsibility

In article <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>, vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes:
> In article <4543@super.upenn.edu> lloyd@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (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.
> 
> Consider the concept of Freedom in the most general sense.  It is
> opposed by the concept of Determinism.

For what it is worth, my "feeling" of "free will" is strongest when I
act in accord with my own character / value system &c. That is, when I
act in a relatively predictable way.  There is a strong philosophical
and theological tradition of regarding free will and some sort of
determinism as compatible.  If I find myself acting in "random" or
unpredictable ways, I look for causes outside myself ("oh, I brought the
wrong book because someone has shuffled the books on my shelf").
Randomness is *NOT* freedom, it is the antithesis of freedom.
If something else controls my behaviour, the randomness of the
something else cannot make _me_ free.

I suppose the philosophical position I can accept most readily is the
one which identifies "free will" with being SELF-determined.  That is,
an agent possesses free will to the extent that its actions are
explicable in terms of the agent's own beliefs and values.
For example, I give money to beggars.  This is not at all random; it is
quite predictable.  But I don't do it because someone else makes me do it,
but because my own values and beliefs make it appropriate to do so.
A perfectly good person, someone who always does the morally appropriate
thing because that's what he likes best, might well be both predictable
and as free as it is possible for a human being to be.

> There has been a great debate as to whether quantum uncertainty was
> subjective or objective.  The subjectivists espoused "hidden variables"
> theories (i.e.: there are determining factors going on, we just don't
> know them yet, the variables are hidden).  These theories can be tested.
> Recently they have been shown to be false.

Hidden variables theories are not "subjectivist" in the usual meaning of
the term; they ascribe quantum uncertainty to objective physical processes.
They haven't been shown false.  It has been shown that **LOCAL** hidden
variables theories are not consistent with observation, but NON-local
theories (I believe there are at least two current) have not been falsified.