baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS) (08/22/85)
The brain is a physical system, and consciousness seems to be a brain function, so conscious choice must then be subject to physical laws. Does this make the notion of "free will" meaningless? I think not. How accurately can we predict human behavior? To the extent that a situation constrains the number of choices that are consistent with personal survival etc. we may do reasonably well. But even then we are not always be able to predict with confidence how an individual will behave. The relative values of conflicting proirities and the relative strengths of association between memories vary over time due to changes in the brain that cannot be predicted. Some of these changes may be due to "acausal" quantum behavior, others to "normal" physical events whose investigation is prohibited by either Heisenberg or Hippocrates. Until we have a predictive (and nondestructive) science of human behavior, people will use phrases like "free will" to describe these unobservable and/or unpredicatable processes and their consequences. Baba