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From: jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free will does not require nondeterminism.
Keywords: free will, determinism, cause
Message-ID: <461@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 May 88 02:20:40 GMT
References: <185@proxftl.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 41

In article <185@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
]The absolute minimum required for free will is that there exists
]at least one action a thing can perform for which there is no
]external phenomena which are a sufficient cause.

I have a suspicion that you may be getting too much from this
"external".  If I decide to eat some chocolate ice cream when
I go home, there may well not be anything currently outside myself
that causes me to do so (although the presence of ice cream allows
me to do so).  Nonetheless, it might be that entirely deterministic
events inside myself caused me to eat the ice cream and that my
impression that I made the decision freely was just an illusion.

It must also be considered that everything internal to me might
ultimately be caused by things external.

]For if this is the case, then it is invalid to say that
]everything that the thing does is caused by external phenomena.
]Therefore, the thing itself must be considered as the cause of
]what it does (unless you admit the existence of uncaused
]action).

I am also doubtful about "the thing itself".  What is that
when referring to a person?  If you include the body and not
just the consciousness, say, you may well be right that "the
thing itself" was the cause, but it would not be a case of
free will in the way people normally understand it.  If I
have some inbuilt liking for chocolate ice cream it is no
more a case of free will than that I'm nearsighted.

]This does not require that the thing could have done other than
]what it did, though it does not prohibit this, either.  Thus free
]will (a specific kind of action supposed to be not determined by
]external phenomena) could exist even in a deterministic
]universe.

If the action is not determined by external causes, and it
is not uncaused, what is the nature of the internal cause that
you suppose might remain and how does it count as free will?

-- Jeff