Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!aiva!jeff
From: jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
Message-ID: <463@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 May 88 21:07:35 GMT
References: <8805151907.AA01702@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <445@aiva.ed.ac.uk> <205@proxftl.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 51

In article <205@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
]The Objectivist version of free will asserts that there are (for
]a normally functioning human being) no sufficient causes for what
]he thinks.  There are, however, necessary causes for it.

That is, as you indicated, just an assertion.  It does not seem
a particularly bad account of what having free will might mean.
The question is whether the assertion is corret.  How do you know
there are no sufficient causes?

]In terms of the actual process, what happens is this: various
]entities provide the material which you base your thinking on
](and are thus necessary causes for what you think), but an
]action, not necessitated by other entities, is necessary to
]direct your thinking.  This action, which you cause, is
]volition.

Well, how do I cause it?  Am I caused to cause it, or does it
just happen out of nothing?  Note that it does not amount to
having free will just because some of the causes are inside
my body.  (Again, I am not sure what you mean by "other entities".)

]] But where does the "subject of your own choice" come from?  I wasn't
]] thinking of letting one's thoughts wander, although what I said might
]] be interpreted that way.  When you decide what to think about, did
]] you decide to decide to think about *that thing*, and if so how did
]] you decide to decide to decide, and so on?
]
]Shades of Zeno!  One does not "decide to decide" except when one
]does so in an explicit sense.

My point was precisely that one could not decide to decide, and so
on, so that the initial step (and it might just be the decision,
without any decision to decide) was not something arrived at by
conscious reasoning.

]("I was waffling all day; later
]that evening I put my mental foot down and decided to decide once
]and for all.") Rather, you perform an act on your thoughts to
]direct them in some way; the name for that act is "decision".

Yes, but what determines the way in which I direct them, or even
whether I bother to direct them (right then) at all?  I have no
problem (or at least not one I can think of right now) with calling
that act a decision.  But why do I make that decision rather than
do something else?

By the way, we do not get talk.philosophy.misc, so if you answer
me there I will never see it.

-- Jeff