Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!AI.AI.MIT.EDU!MINSKY
From: MINSKY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: AIList V6 #91 - Philosophy
Message-ID: <373033.880507.MINSKY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Date: 8 May 88 03:39:41 GMT
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Brian Yamauchi correctly paraphrases 30.6 of Society of Mind:

|Everything, including that which happens in our brains,
|depends on these and only fixed, deterministic laws or random accidents.
| There is no room on either side for any third alternative.

He agrees, and goes on to suggest that free will is a decision making
process. But that doesn't explain why we feel that we're free.  I
claim that we feel free when we decide to not try further to
understand how we make the decisions: the sense of freedom comes from
a particular act - in which one part of the mind STOPs deciding, and
accepts what another part has done.  I think the "mystery" of free will
is clarified only when we realize that it is not a form of decision making
at all - but another kind of action or attitude entirely, namely, of how
we stop deciding.