Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!dan-hankins
From: dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Making fires and making minds - the laws of physics prevail
Message-ID: <17473@cup.portal.com>
Date: 22 Apr 89 06:57:41 GMT
References: <10992@bcsaic.UUCP> <16878@cup.portal.com> <2792@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <17374@cup.portal.com> <10268@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
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In article <10268@ihlpb.ATT.COM> arm@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Macalalad) writes:

>[...] any effective arguments against free will must tackle the issue of
>responsibility.

     This is one of the major reasons why the notion of free will is held
onto so strongly by a great many people.  Without free will, responsibility
(per se) goes out the window.  Unable to imagine any effective alternative
to responsibility/recognition/punishment for controlling human behavior,
many see a lack of the notion of free will as leading to fatalism and
criminal anarchy.

     Instead, what those who deny free will do is to point to the
possibility of a science of human behavior as an alternative to those
ancient and often ineffective methods of control.  Instead of punishing the
criminal (which suppresses the behavior in the short term but reinforces
the criminal tendencies), the determinist advocates finding ways to
permanently modify that behavior, or remove the behavior's source (capital
punishment/banishment).  Once in full swing, such approaches to suppressing
behavior unwanted by society would lead to far more effective deterrents to
crime.


>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.

     Depends on which laws of physics are the important ones and whether
the other universe shares the important ones.  That aspect of particles
called _position_, for instance, is vital to playing a game of chess.

     There's a limit to how different those laws could be.


Dan Hankins