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From: philo@pnet51.cts.com (Scott Burke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: free will
Message-ID: <896@orbit.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 89 06:25:06 GMT
Sender: root@orbit.UUCP
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
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atdcad@prls.UUCP (Ron Cline) writes:
>>...  It is therefore my conclusion
>>that an actual "thinking" machine lies in the exploitation of some other
>>physical phenomenon by which an element of nondeterminism can be injected.
>>Such is the nature of the human brain.
>
>As far as microcircuitry is concerned, I believe it will be *necessary*
>at some point in the future to include such a quantum-based decision maker
>within computational hardware, based solely on system needs.  Note that
 
  I'm sure that QM and chaos both play a part in the behavior of the human
brain -- but I hardly hold out any hopes of it playing the role that many
people want to make it fill, that of savior for the doctrine of free will.    
A case in point, the above.  The actions of a "free agent", from all
appearances and our ability to describe them, appear to be the result of some
"random chooser".  Put in a different light, all we are saying is that this
incredibly complex "system" appears to display "random" behavior.  But the
chaos theory itself is both savior and devil here, for it is the central idea
of chaos theory that perfectly determinate systems (such as the weather)
display what appears to be "random" behavior, by virtue of their complexity*. 
It is not that complex systems defy the laws of determinism -- they don't --
they defy our ability to conceptualize the deterministic chain of causes in
such complex systems.  Technically, there is no random-ness whatsoever -- it
is completely "pseudo random" in the same sense that a computer random number
generator creates "pseudo random" numbers -- it is nothing more than a series
for which the pattern of numbers OVER SOME LIMITED FRAME OF REFERENCE take on
the quality of true random numbers.  The same is true of the weather, we can't
determine for certain whether it will rain tomorrow, or what the temperature
will be at midnight in Topeka -- in this small window on the process, our
frame of reference is far too limited, and the phenomena are AT THAT LEVEL
random and indeterminate; but we all know that the jet stream will keep on
flowing, summer and winter aren't going to disappear, and the larger features
are pretty much predictable, non-random events.  There is a similar behavior
in chaotic systems of other kinds as well -- the individual behavior of a
chaotic system may be unpredictable, but many chaotic systems can be
characterized by "chaotic attractors", regions and patterns of behavior which
the system as a whole follows.  There is no reason to believe that the
ultimately highly* complex system of the mind is any less chaotic in that it's
behavior "appears random" but is not, exhibits stable patterns at higher
levels (eg. "predictable people", morality itself, the internal consistency of
consciousness and intelligence and choosing), and is at rock bottom COMPLETELY
DETERMINED.  Chaos is not the science of random systems -- the systems
themselves are quite determinate -- it is the science of non-random systems
that exhibit* random behavior (by virtue of the complex interaction of
sub-processes in the whole of the system).


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