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From: dennisf@teklabs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Does Brain Science Contradict Free Will?
Message-ID: <2388@teklabs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Aug-83 15:03:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: teklabs.2388
Posted: Mon Aug 29 15:03:38 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Aug-83 08:44:49 EDT
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
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Recent discussion of free will has prompted me to bring up Donald MacKay's
argument, which I've not seen yet on the net.  

First, as a parenthetical comment, I see little hope in arguing the
possibility of free will from Heisenberg Uncertainty since:

1. Brain function occurs at a macro level, and apparently does not
require quantum explanations any more than satisfactorily complete
physical explanations of other common physical phenomena.

2. Freedom of the will is recognized by us as conscious agents and it
is at the level of agency rather than the molecular level of organization
that freedom of the will is normally attributed.  For all we know,
molecular or sub-atomic randomness would reduce our freedom, which
requires reliable brain operation, not enhance it.

Now for MacKay's argument: this argument is based on logic, not
brain physiology, and deals with what would follow from the assumption
that our conscious experience correlates with the activity of our
cognitive mechanism (or, loosely speaking, our brain).  MacKay shows
that even if our brains were as mechanical as cash registers, it
would still be incorrect for us to assume that we were *not* free
in a certain precise sense.  That is, if by freedom we mean that there
cannot exist predictions of our willful behavior which
we would be both correct to believe and incorrect to disbelieve, then
MacKay's argument shows that such freedom is simply a logical fact.

Suppose some super-scientist were able to make entirely reliable
predictions on the basis of brain science, etc. of our mental activity
that we associate with freedom of the will.  He makes the predictions
and watches ... and every time, they are correct.

Now, what would be the logical status of those predictions if he
were to offer them to us.  Would we be correct to believe them just
as he was correct to believe them when he kept them to himself?
For the super-scientist they are necessarily true, but for us they
would not be since these predictions fail to take into account all of the
data; namely, they fail to account for our believing them.  So that
once we believe such a prediction, we invalidate it as necessarily true.
We end up believing something which, upon believing it, becomes false.

Ah, you say, if the super-scientist were to take into account our
believing the prediction before he offers it to us, then when we believe
it, it *will* necessarily be true for us also.  Yes, but we then would
not be incorrect to disbelieve it, for in disbelieving it we fail to
satisfy one of the assumptions upon which the prediction was based, namely,
our believing it.  The "you" predicted in that case would not be the
"you" who disbelieves it.

Therefore, there cannot exist a  prediction of our choices which
is inevitable for us; that is, is true for us whether we believe it or not,
if only we knew it.  The truth of the prediction depends upon whether
we believe the prediction or not, and that choice is up to us.

So if you accept this definition of freedom of the will, it is simply
a logical fact that we are free, and it has nothing to do with the
determinateness or not of our brains.  You see, the confusion comes in
assuming that predictablity-by-an-observer is logically the same as
inevitability-for-the-agent described by the prediction.  For more on
this argument, see Donald MacKay's book *The Clockwork Image* or
his more recent one: *Brains, Machines, and Persons*, the first put out
by IVP, the second, I recall, by Eerdmans.

Dennis Feucht
Tek Labs