Free will
in [Lisp]
|
From: Nicolas Neuss on 27 May 2010 10:07 Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> writes: > 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. What means "required"? Are Catholics excommunicated if they don't believe it? Can you point me to a _single_ Catholic who believes all what the church wants them to believe? Nicolas
From: Bob Felts on 27 May 2010 11:29 Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> 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. That's what they mean, but it might be the product of wishful thinking. > > 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. Then again, there's me, who doesn't hold to free will of the creator/created form; but does hold to free will of the independent agent form, who is muddying the water with randomness. Partly, because I have to. If I want to create an AI that mimics humans, I strongly suspect that randomness will enter the picture. I don't know any other way to implement imagination (which may be solely to a lack of my own imagination), since the only tools I have to work with are determinism and randomness. Partly, because this quote from Knuth resonates with me: | Indeed, computer scientists have proved that certain important | computational tasks can be done much more efficiently with random | numbers than they could possibly ever be done by an deterministic | procedure. Many of today's best computational algorithms, like | methods for searching the Internet, are based on randomization. If | Einstein's assertion ("God does not play dice with the universe" --ed) | were true, God would be prohibited from using the most powerful | methods. | | "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About, pg. 184; | ISBN 1-57586-326-X > > 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. Contradiction is not argument. _Why_ don't you consider randomness free will? Think of yourself as software + hardware, where the software uses deterministic algorithms to harness the power of a true random number generator. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus held to strict materialism. Man was the product of the motion and interaction of "atoms" in empty space. But he also thought that man nevertheless had free will, because "atoms" had freedom to occasionally deviate from straight lines ("clinamen"). Note that I learned about Epicurus after having read Knuth. One, an atheist; the other, a Christian -- both with very similar ideas.
From: Bob Felts on 27 May 2010 11:34 Pascal J. Bourguignon <pjb(a)informatimago.com> wrote: [...] > > Now of course, there are always people to object to one of these > things or another, however silly it is, not to believe it. For > example, the lutherians don't believe Mary was Virgin. If they > believe in God, how hard is it to believe God disposed things so that > Mary was indeed Virgin, so that Jesus could be born without Man's Sin? > (And if you believe God created the universe, how hard would it be for > Him to create a spermatozoid and to put it at the right place at the > right time? Notice that Craig Venter's team already created the first > artificial cell (a bacteria), so if we can do it, why would you think > it's impossible for God to make such a cell to have Mary give birth > being a virgin in addition to being Virgin? Oh, come on, Pascal. Don't chum the water any futher. The free will thread is already tough enough, now you want to get into a discussion between big-V and little-v Christians? ;-)
From: Pascal Costanza on 27 May 2010 11:41 On 27/05/2010 15:08, 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. 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. There is also the possibility that free will is an emergent property, where it doesn't matter whether there is determinism in the university or not, or whether there are extra-physical causes or not. Pascal -- My website: http://p-cos.net Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
From: Bob Felts on 27 May 2010 12:53
Don Geddis <don(a)geddis.org> wrote: > wrf3(a)stablecross.com (Bob Felts) wrote on Wed, 26 May 2010: > > Because, to the best of my knowledge, no experiment has been performed > > that confirms MWI over Copenhagen. > > I refer you again to > http://lesswrong.com/lw/q6/collapse_postulates/ > > Or, by analogy: you can keep patching epicycles upon epicycles in an > attempt to save your favorite theory, but at some point you need to > realize that planets probably just orbit in ellipses, not circles. But ellipses are not circles and observation can show the difference between ellipses and circles. > > Given that both are _interpretations_ of QM equations, and it is the > equations that make predictions, it's actually pretty hard to conceive > of an experiment that even has the potential to "confirm MWI over > Copenhagen". > But fortunately, science has more tools than just direct experimental > evidence. > I had lunch with a PhD astrophysicist many years ago and we happened to touch on this. I may be totally befuddled, but I thought he said that there were possible experiments, that just couldn't be performed at that time, but the state of the art was advancing rapidly enough that it shouldn't have been to much longer. In any case, I'll take indirect experimental evidence. ;-) Without experiments, it's not science -- it's philosophy. And usually bad philosophy at that (e.g. dependence on Occam's Razor, which ends up depending on our notions of good and evil). > > I never said that intelligence was a simple binary property. Are you > > intelligent? Is Ron? > > Are those yes-or-no questions? > For you and Ron, I would have thought yes. You're the fourth person I've asked this question, and I'm 4 for 4 on not getting an answer. (http://stablecross.com/files/category-dialogs.html) This is just absolutely fascinating. One would think that you wouldn't hesitate a bit in answering "yes" to the question "are you intelligent?" > > At some level, intelligence includes the ability to refuse to submit > > to experiments. I look forward to see how science deals with that. > > Observation in the wild, natural experiments, etc etc etc. > So if you were going to answer the question "are you, Don Geddis, intelligent" what observations or natual experiments or etc. etc. etc. would you use? > (E.g., how does macroeconomics test their theories? National economies > also "refuse to submit to experiments".) > National economies don't have free will. > You seem to have quite a limited view of what science is. I would say that I have a high view of science, but a limited view of (some) scientists. If you can't answer whether or not you are intelligent and, having answered "yes", provided the scientific evidence for same, then I would conclude: 1) There is some true knowledge which is inaccessible to science, or 2) Science doesn't have a good handle on either a scientific definition of and/or scientific tests for intelligence. There's a direct corollary to 1 & 2 which is left as an exercise. |