Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!ames!ncar!boulder!sunybcs!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: More Free Will
Summary: Last word? -- Why is this so tough?
Message-ID: <1201@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 14 May 88 17:16:38 GMT
References: <3200017@uiucdcsm> <730@papaya.bbn.com> <2@iisat.UUCP>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 50

In article <2@iisat.UUCP> paulg@iisat.UUCP (Paul Gauthier) writes:
> I am partially wrong there, as long as you don't WANT to do the impossible
>you can have a sort of free will. But as soon as you feel that you want to
>do something that cannot be done then your free will is gone.
>
> [ other good comments deleted ]

I'm totally perplexed why the concept of *RELATIVE FREEDOM* is so
difficult for people to adhere to.

Can someone *please* rebut the following:

1) Absolute freedom is theoretically impossible.  Absolute freedom is
perhaps best characterized as a uniform distribution on the real line. 
This distribution is not well formed.  The concept of *absolute
randomness* is not well defined.  For example, it is *determined* that
the six sided die cannot roll a seven.

2) Absolute determinism, while theoretically possible, is both
physically impossible and theoretically unobservable.  Computers are one
of the most determined systems we have, but a variety of low-level
errors, up to and including quantum effects, pollute its pure
determinism.  Further, any sufficiently large determined system will
yield to chaotic processes, so that its determinism is itself
undeterminable. 

3) Therefore all real systems are *RELATIVELY FREE*, and *RELATIVELY
DETERMINED*, some more, some less, depending on their nature, and on how
they are observed and modeled.  Certainly all organisms, including
people, fall into this range.

4) Since when we qualify an adjective, the adjective still holds
(something a little hot is still hot), therefore, it *IS TRUE* that
*PEOPLE ARE FREE* and it *IS TRUE* that *PEOPLE ARE DETERMINED*.  No
problem. 

5) As biological systems evolve, their freedom increases, so that, e.g. 
people are more free than cats or snails.  When people project this
relatively more freedom into their own absolute freedom they are
committing arrogance and folly.  When people project ideological
(naive?) ideas about causality, and conclude that we are completely
determined, they are also commiting folly.

Any takers?

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