Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!sri-spam!sri-unix!teknowledge-vaxc!wlieberm
From: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Free Will-Randomness and Question-Structure
Message-ID: <22533@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Date: 16 May 88 16:15:32 GMT
Reply-To: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP (William Lieberman)
Distribution: comp.ai
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA
Lines: 54
Posted: Mon May 16 09:15:32 1988

12-May-88 15:36:36-PDT,2503;000000000000
Date: Thu, 12 May 88 15:33:21 pdt
From: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman)
Message-Id: <8805122233.AA28641@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness
Newsgroups: comp.ai
In-Reply-To: <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <10942@sunybcs.UUCP> <4543@super.upenn.edu>
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA
Cc: wlieberm@vaxc


Re: Free Will and Determinism.


This most interesting kind of discussion reminds me of the old question,

   " What happens when the irresistable cannonball hits the irremovable post? "

The answer lies in the question, not in other parts of the outside world.

If you remember your Immanual Kant and his distinction between analytic and
synthetic statements, the cannonball question would be an analytic statement, 
of the form, " The red barn is red." - A totally useless statement, because
nothing new about the outside world is implied in the statement. Similarly,
I would say the cannonball question, since it is internally contradictory,
wastes the questioner's time if he tries to hook it to the outside world.

A concept like 'random' similarly may be thought of in terms simply of
worldly unpredictability TO THE QUESTIONER.  If he comes from a society where
they get differing results every time they add two oranges to two oranges,
TO THEM addition of real numbers is random. (Also wouldn't an example of
a non-recurring expansion of decimals, but certainly not random, be any
irrational number, such as pi?)

The concept of inherent randomness implies there is no conceivable system
that will ever or can ever be found that could describe what will happen in
a given system with a predefined envelope of precision. Is it possible to
prove such a conjecture? It's almost like Fermat's Last Theorem.

To me, the concept of randomness has to do with the subject's ability to
descibe events forthcoming, not with the forthcoming events themselves.
That is, randomness only exists as long as there are beings around who
perceive their imprecise or limited predictions as incomplete. The events
don't care, and occur regardless. It's important to not forget that the
subjects themselves (us, e.g.) are part of the world, too.

My main point here is that very often, questions that seem impossible to
resolve often need to have the structure of the question looked at, rather
than the rest of the outside world for empirical data to support or refute
the question.

Bill Lieberman