Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!ur-tut!sunybcs!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
Message-ID: <1174@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 4 May 88 12:55:36 GMT
References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1029@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <17424@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <5717@sigi.Colorado.EDU> <30800@linus.UUCP>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 30

In article <30800@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort) writes:
>The essential idea that
>individual behavior is generated by a mix of causal elements (agency
>motivated by awareness of the state-of-affairs vis-a-vis one's value system)
>and chance (random selection among equal-valued alternatives).

This is a central tennet of Systems Science.  Absolute determinism is
possible and relatively common; absolute freedom is impossible; relative
freedom is possible and relatively common.  Most (all?) real systems
involve mixes of relatively free and determined elements operating at
multiple levels of interaction/complexity.

It should be emphasized that this is not just true of mental systems,
but also of biological and even physical systems.  As one moves from the
physical to the biological and finally to the mental, the relative
importance of the free components grows.  Intelligent organisms are more
free than unintelligent organisms; which are more free than
non-organisms.  

None of the above are absolutely free.  No-one even knows what it might
mean to be absolutely free. 

>--Barry Kort


-- 
O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large
| Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .