Free will
in [Lisp]
|
From: Nick Keighley on 21 May 2010 03:34 On 20 May, 21:33, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavall...(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-05-20 13:15:34 -0400, RG said: > > > Retribution is not pointless. The point is to assuage the negative > > emotions of anger and helplessness that people feel when they are > > victims of a crime. This is true regardless of whether or not you > > believe in free will or dualism. One can certainly argue that > > retribution is cruel, or that the benefits are not worth the costs. But > > under no circumstances is it pointless. obviously it can be taken too far. We don't break spammers on the wheel (more's the pity...) > "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." > > M.K. Gandhi this should be taken to mean "/only/ an eye for an eye", it was actually a plea for moderation
From: Nick Keighley on 21 May 2010 03:41 On 20 May, 14:09, w...(a)stablecross.com (Bob Felts) wrote: > RG <rNOSPA...(a)flownet.com> wrote: <snip> > > Quantum randomness does not rule out the possibility of classical > > determinism under the right circumstances. Computers are a pretty good > > example of this. > > So would an AI with a decision making module based on quantum randomness > with an extremely large state space be considered determined or free? false dichotomy. Is a radium atom "free".? You need to explain what "free" means and I think for any conventional meaning of "free" you're just wrong.
From: Nick Keighley on 21 May 2010 03:57 On 20 May, 15:37, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavall...(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-05-20 07:52:57 -0400, Nicolas Neuss said: > > I'm somehow lost how anyone can believe as firmly > > as Raffael in determinism nowadays. > > I don't believe in hard determinism (i.e., I do accept that quantum > indeterminacy exists). However, there is no existing evidence that > quantum indeterminacy operating in the brain is equivalent to free > will. yes. And a quite logical chain of reasoning that it doesn't. Instead of being a deterministic robot I become a deterministic robot with a random number generator. > Moreover, as Ron points out elsewhere in this subthread, quantum > indeterminacy in the brain may very well amount to the equivalent of > classical determinism. not so sure. > On the contrary, we have a great deal of evidence that our subjective > evaluation of the freeness of our choices is wildly inaccurate. now we're beginning to repeat ourselves. I simply don't accept your evidence shows what you think it shows.
From: Vend on 21 May 2010 08:41 On 20 Mag, 13:22, RG <rNOSPA...(a)flownet.com> wrote: > In article <85k743Fal...(a)mid.individual.net>, > Pascal Costanza <p...(a)p-cos.net> wrote: > > > > > On 20/05/2010 08:06, RG wrote: > > > In article<87wruzqj5w....(a)mail.geddis.org>, > > > Don Geddis<d...(a)geddis.org> wrote: > > > >> "Free choice" is not necessarily incompatible with determinism. > > > > That's news to me. How is that possible? > > > Just because something is determined at one level doesn't mean it's > > determined at the higher levels as well. For example, Google's search > > algorithm is most certainly a deterministic algorithm, but that doesn't > > mean that the search results will be deterministic as well. > > > Same with "free will": Just because the neurons in your brain act > > according to deterministic principles doesn't mean that the decisions > > you make are deterministic. > > > Hofstadter had a good example: If you have to make the decision to > > choose between a Pizza Margherita and a Pizza Hawaii doesn't mean that > > your neurons are oscillating between Margherita-ness and Hawaii-ness. > > They just act independent of what's going on at that level decision making. > > > "Free will" can be seen as an emergent property of your body functions. > > Is there really a substantive difference between "emergent property" and > "illusion"? (Feel free to treat that as a rhetorical question.) Yes. Volume is an emergent property, not an illusion.
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 21 May 2010 09:38
On 2010-05-20 20:52:51 -0400, RG said: > In article <ht4704$s96$2(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > Raffael Cavallaro > <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > >> Again, what matters is evidence, not speculation. Evidence indicates >> free will is an illusion; evidence indicates that fostering retribution >> makes people more violent, not more calm. > > If evidence shows that fostering retribution makes people more violent > then why bring free will into it at all? You can argue against > retribution on the purely empirical grounds that reducing retribution > will reduce violence. No need to get metaphysical. (Your argument will > fail on other grounds, but we're already pretty far afield here.) > > rg You made a similar argument about our susceptibility to priming. The reason we need to bring free will into the discussion is that both of these conclusions directly contradict our naive subjective experience of the world. People are quite reluctant to agree to policies that contradict their naive subjective experience of the world - we want retribution, for example, because it is consistent with how we naivley, subjectively feel the world. In order to implement these - redesigning environments to take advantage of our extreme susceptibility to priming, elimination of retribution from moral and legal systems - we need to convince people that thier subjective experience of the world is distorted or illusory in significant ways. One thing that Jefferson saw clearly is that for democracy to function, the whole population must be enlightened, not just an elite. The idea that we can just leave the masses to their naive illusions can only work in a hierarchical society, not a democracy. This is why your refutation of Dawkins misses the mark - leaving people to their traditional collective illusions has very real implications for the teaching of science, history (cf. Texas's attempt to recast American History w/o Jefferson), and for criminal justice. It is no accident that the state pushing most agressively to recast science and history education in religious terms is also the state that invokes the death penalty most frequently.[1] Finally, as regards compassion, you've quoted the famous zen story involving Hui-Neng, the 6th patriarch, pointing to the fact that nothing - understood as "no (separate) thing" - really exists - the only thing that can truly be said to exist is mind (or information if you prefer). But when you actually experience this directly, you realize that you and others are one, as the limbs of your body are one in you. This understanding leads to compassion because when you see others as one with yourself, you are no more moved to retribution when wronged than you are moved to shoot your own foot for tripping you. warmest regards, Ralph [1] as the innocence project <http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/> has shown, our criminal justice system gets things wrong with a fair degree of frequency, so any state that excercises the death penalty as frequently as Texas is more or less guaranteed to kill innocent victims in its desire for retribution. -- Raffael Cavallaro |