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From: AIList-REQUEST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (AIList Moderator Nick Papadakis)
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Subject: AIList Digest   V7 #6 [sunybcs!stewart@boulder.colorado.edu: Re: Free Will]
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Date: 24 May 88 19:10:28 GMT
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Date: 14 May 88 22:46:42 GMT
From: sunybcs!stewart@boulder.colorado.edu  (Norman R. Stewart)
Subject: Re: Free Will
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>From: paulg@iisat.UUCP (Paul Gauthier)

writes:
> I'm sorry, but there is no free will. Every one of us is bound by the
>laws of physics. No one can lift a 2000 tonne block of concrete with his
>bare hands. No one can do the impossible, and in this sense none of us have
>free will.
 
     I don't believe we're concerned with what we are capable of doing,
but rather our capacity to desire to do it.  Free will is a mental, not
a physical phenomenom.  What we're concerned with is if the brain (nervous
system, organism, aggregation of organisms and objects) is just so many
atoms (sub-atomic particles?, sub-sub-atomic particles) bouncing around 
according to the laws of physics, and behavior simply the unalterable
manifestion of the movement of these particles.              /|\
                                                              |
                                                      Note: in a closed system.





Norman R. Stewart Jr.             *
C.S. Grad - SUNYAB                *  If you want peace, demand justice.
internet: stewart@cs.buffalo.edu  *                  (of unknown origin)  
bitnet:   stewart@sunybcs.bitnet  *