Free will
in [Lisp]
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From: Nick Keighley on 27 May 2010 04:34 On 26 May, 21:07, Don Geddis <d...(a)geddis.org> wrote: > > On 2010-05-26 11:20:46 -0400, Bob Felts said: > >> I understand that. However, what makes the choice is, IMO, irrelevant, > >> whether it is an "immortal non-physical soul", or a meat machine > >> containing a random number generator. very odd thing to say I thought... <snip> > > I think the crux of this discussion is this: Although it doesn't matter to > > you (and others in this discussion) whether it is an "immortal non-physical > > soul," or a meat machine containing a random number generator, I think it > > matters very much to those people who do believe in non-deterministic, > > immortal souls. > > Sure, of course it matters to a lot of those people. There are plenty > of important consequences to life, depending on whether humans have > immortal souls or not. I never meant to suggest that was not an > important question. Only that it was not the question we were > discussing. environmentalism (who cares what happens to the world, we'll be in heaven) treatment of the dead (attitude to autopsies, organ transplants) maybe attitude to GE, cloning, abortion, "artificial life", AI attitude to cultural destruction by missionaries (who cares they'll all go to heaven) <snip>
From: Nick Keighley on 27 May 2010 04:57 On 27 May, 06:22, Don Geddis <d...(a)geddis.org> wrote: > w...(a)stablecross.com (Bob Felts) wrote on Wed, 26 May 2010: > > Don Geddis <d...(a)geddis.org> wrote: > >> > On 2010-05-26 11:20:46 -0400, Bob Felts said: > >> >> I understand that. However, what makes the choice is, IMO, irrelevant, > >> >> whether it is an "immortal non-physical soul", or a meat machine > >> >> containing a random number generator. > > >> Bob, you need to keep in mind that there are more alternatives than just > >> either a soul, or a random number generator. [...] > To be clear, then: my point is that, when considering entities that may > be capable of free will, one possible choice is a soul (Ralph's); > another possible choice is a random number generator (your's); and a > THIRD possible choice is an ordinary deterministic algorithm that > happens to implement a decision procedure which operates on beliefs and > goals to produce action plans. > > My criticism above was that you basically wrote, "it doesn't matter > whether free will comes from a soul or from a random number", while > completely leaving out my preferred alternative for free will (a > deterministic decision algorithm). I think his problem is he doesn't consider something based on a deterministic process to be *really* free will. If it's determined it isn't free. I on the other hand have much more problem with a random number generator as a source of freedom! <snip> > > I know, from self-reflection, that our moral sense is based on some > > kind of "distance" measurement between "is" and "ought", and that > > "ought" resides in the realm of imagination. I'm not sure how you can know this. I'm not sure I'd trust *my* imagination to decide right from wrong. There's some deceidely dodgy stuff floats up from the subconcious in dreams. (one of our major political parties is composed entirely of demons) > I think you trust your introspection far too much. You don't actually > know much about how you got the "moral sense" that you have. <snip>
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 27 May 2010 09:08 On 2010-05-27 02:15:33 -0400, His kennyness said: > So by your definition what we take to be a free-will choice must have > no cause, meaning it must follow from some form of roll of the dice, > which is not at all what anyone takes free will to be. I agree with you - when people say they have free will they don't mean that when faced with a moral choice some physical process just rolls some metaphorical dice. They mean that something inherent in them, unconstrained and undetermined, causes that moral choice. There are (at least) two kinds of philosophical non-determinism: randomness, and extra-physical cause. People who believe in free will have traditionally believed in extra-physical cause. Only those who want to rescue the concept of free will from extra-physical cause (i.e., not me) try to reinvent free will in terms of randomness. I don't consider randomness free will, and I don't believe in extra-physical cause (e.g., souls). So If the universe is deterministic, there's no free will, and if it contains an element of inherent randomness, that alone is still not enough to give us free will. warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 27 May 2010 09:20 On 2010-05-26 16:21:13 -0400, Vend said: > At most you can say that in Catholic theology, free will is a property > of the soul. Not quite all; because there are over a billion people who are required to believe this, and because the whole western philosophical concept of free will evolved in the context of catholic theology (with its non-physical soul), I can say that this idea of non-physical causality is what is traditionally meant, and for many still is meant, by the term free will. And once again, we haven't even started counting adherents to other religions that believe in non-physical souls. warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: His kennyness on 27 May 2010 09:38
On 05/27/2010 09:08 AM, Raffael Cavallaro wrote: > On 2010-05-27 02:15:33 -0400, His kennyness said: > >> So by your definition what we take to be a free-will choice must have >> no cause, meaning it must follow from some form of roll of the dice, >> which is not at all what anyone takes free will to be. > > I agree with you - when people say they have free will they don't mean > that when faced with a moral choice some physical process just rolls > some metaphorical dice. They mean that something inherent in them, > unconstrained and undetermined, causes that moral choice. > > There are (at least) two kinds of philosophical non-determinism: > randomness, and extra-physical cause. > > People who believe in free will have traditionally believed in > extra-physical cause. Ah, but now things are confused by a completely different undecidable debate: the mind-body problem. Great, this thread may reach the end of the universe. Your problem is the same as Searle's when he came up with the Chinese room: people are indeed making choices all the time, and the room was indeed passing the Turing test. In the latter case one can argue as much as one likes, but something somewhere is understanding Chinese (it's the only way to pass the Turing test). In the present case, break it down any way you like but the person who thinks they are choosing something from a menu really is freely choosing something (no way exists to determine the choice without waiting for them to make it). kt Only those who want to rescue the concept of free > will from extra-physical cause (i.e., not me) try to reinvent free will > in terms of randomness. > > I don't consider randomness free will, and I don't believe in > extra-physical cause (e.g., souls). So If the universe is deterministic, > there's no free will, and if it contains an element of inherent > randomness, that alone is still not enough to give us free will. > > warmest regards, > > Ralph > |