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From: arm@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Macalalad)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Making fires and making minds - the laws of physics prevail
Message-ID: <10268@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
Date: 20 Apr 89 15:03:09 GMT
References: <10992@bcsaic.UUCP> <16878@cup.portal.com> <2792@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <17374@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: arm@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Macalalad,A.R.)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 73

Dan-

I basically agree with your argument, but there are a couple of side
issues which I want to explore.  First, the area of free will.

In article <17374@cup.portal.com> dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) writes:
>     Given enough processing power, one could in theory predict the
>action of every particle in the universe, and therefore the behavior of
>every system, whether human or not, in that universe.

I think that there is a little more to the debate of free will.  For
example, just because we are able in principle to predict the movement
of the sun does not imply that we in any way *cause* that movement.
True, the movement of the sun can be predicted by our scientific laws,
but the movement is caused by properties intrinsic to the sun, such as
its mass, velocity, etc.  Its "actions" are a function of its composition.
In this sense, then, every object has a "will," based on its composition,
which determine its actions, given an "input."  Now this is probably
diluting our everyday use of "will," but I think the meaning is still
useful.

What, then, is a free will?  It certainly is not something unpredictable,
since free will was embraced by a culture which also embraced the
notion that a deity knew every event in a person's life even before
that person was born.  No, free will pertained more to the responsibility
of a person's actions.  Traditionally, all things in the universe
followed God's will, so they were not responsible for their actions.
God was.  But God gave humans free will, to choose to do His will or
go their own way, and to be responsible for their choices.  Of course,
science has little to say on this subject, since it cannot measure
God's will, whatever that is.

As our culture grew more and more secularized, the notion of God and
God's will made less and less sense, and the notion of free will drifted
from moral choices to merely choices.  Here, then, free will becomes
susceptible to scientific arguments that choice is an illusion.  But I
don't think that the notion of free will has lost its emphasis on
responsibility.  The courts, for one, are thinking of responsibility
when they take into account whether criminals are acting out of their
own free will, or whether they were insane or under the influence of
drugs.  Thus, any effective arguments against free will must tackle
the issue of responsibility.

This topic has drifted quite a bit, and probably isn't appropriate
for this newsgroup.  I would suggest followups to a religious newsgroup,
but I don't read any.  Email any replies to me.

Getting back to AI,

>>Other branches which require MORE THAN physics to explain them are
>>biology (the originator of systems thinking) and, I am told,
>>Chemistry.  Chess doesn't obey the laws of physics either.
>
>     All of these obey the laws of physics.  Perhaps your point is that
>they obey other laws.  This is true, to some extent.  But these other
>laws are either approximations of combinations of simpler laws, or are
>directly reducible to simpler laws.  The simpler laws themselves are
>amenable to the same kind of decomposition, and so on, until one reaches
>the particle level.

The rules of chess are independent of the laws of physics.  An
implementation of chess in our universe (i.e. a chess game :-) must
follow the laws of physics, if only by virtue of being in our
universe.  But I can certainly imagine a chess game being played in
an alternate universe where the laws of physics are very different.
This would not be possible if the laws of chess were ultimately the
laws of physics.

Sorry for the digression.

>Dan Hankins

-Alex Macalalad