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From: ellis@chips2.sri.com (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free will and responsibility.
Keywords: Behaviorism, materialism, dogma, science
Message-ID: <470@unix.SRI.COM>
Date: 28 Jun 89 02:14:05 GMT
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Reply-To: ellis@chips2.sri.com.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: SRI International
Lines: 75

> Chris Malcolm >> Michael Ellis

>>  QM is quantum mechanics.
>>
>>  Without QM, one could still assert that things are *really* deterministic,
>>  however it is not humanly possible to perform the computations or acquire
>>  knowledge of all the variables. This is to say, metaphysically we would be
>>  deterministic, but there would be overwhelming epistemic problems in making
>>  any prediction.

>Ah. A subtle point. 

>"Hey Bert! D'you think the cognitive police are onto us?"

>"Metaphysically speaking we are liable to arrest and imprisonment, but
>the cognitive police suffer from such overwhelming epistemic problems
>that we needn't worry."

    I notice your failure to offer equally cynical remarks to those 
    metaphysicists against whom my argument was directed, namely the
    "scientific" metaphysicists who argue "the complexity of human behavior
    only appears random, but it's *really* determined, even if we could
    never carry out the prediction in practice." That's as metaphysical
    as you can get!

>But all this came up in the context of (ahem) free will, the suggestion
>being that since free will is incompatible with determinism, then only
>if human behaviour can be shown to be undetermined can free will,
>responsibility, rational choice, civilisation as we know it, etc., be
>saved. I know that to lots of people free will is so _obviously_
>incompatible with determinism that it need not even be argued.

    There are those who have metaphysical worldviews, that is,
    those who see things made out of mental and/or physical substances that
    operate according to strictly deterministic causal laws. This includes
    a whole lot of people in the scientific community. See for yourself how
    many hardcore determinists you will find among computer science types.

>My problem is that I don't see any incompatibility, and I've never seen a
>good argument for it. I see no problem in having free will even without
>QM, chaos, or any other indeterministic insect in the clockwork of a
>completely (metaphysically) predictable Universe. I see even less
>problem in having free will in a Universe which simply _seems_ to be
>completely determined. I honestly don't know what all the fuss is about.

    Ever since Newton, philosophers have turned out a fair number of elegant
    arguments that free will and determinism are *not* contradictory. For some
    people, a nondeterministic universe takes all the fun out of free will.
    And I happen to enjoy shredding up classical deterministic arguments,
    which reopens the possibility of alternative "swerving of the atoms"
    accounts of free will.

    Otherwise, I think we agree. For the most part, I think metaphysical
    determinism is irrelevant to any meaningful notion of free will. 

>I find the suggestion that my freedom of will depends upon some kind of
>random die in my head...

    Now you're being a reductionist. What makes you think the higher levels
    depend  on the lower levels? Why not vice versa? Or some other
    possibility? Why can't the "randomness" that appears at one given
    level be due to the autonomy of other levels? 

>... rather insultingly trivialising of the freedom of will. 

    Why would you be insulted if you found out freedom of the will depended
    on something random rather than something deterministic? Even if your
    choice does "depend on" randomness, it doesn't "depend on" it in any
    meaningful way. Why should you care?

>Don't we lock up unpredictable people in prisons and nuthouses?

    Sometimes it is the predictable ones who are more dangerous.

-michael