brian@digi-g.UUCP (Merlyn Leroy) (04/03/85)
References:
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OK, enough of this free will stuff. The impasse is basically this:
1) Person 'L' says "I feel like I have free will, and besides, if I don't,
what's the use of living?"
2) Person 'R' says "There is no evidence that your brain can act non-
deterministically, so where is the free will in that? The burden of
proof (of free will) is on you."
3) Person 'P' uses an argument (similar to Pascal's wager) that says
"Not believing in free will gains nothing, while believing in free will
gains Good Stuff. Also, if you really have free will, believing in it
is correct; if you don't have free will, you have NO CONTROL in your
erroneous belief, so you have lost nothing anyway. Therefore, I believe
I have free will."
Now, argument (3) is fine for your personal philosophy (which is about
what I go by), and should satisfy 'L'. However, argument (3) proves nothing
at all, and can't be used to prove the existence of free will. This
should satisfy 'R', since no proof to refute (2) is offered. This leaves
the larger question of whether free will REALLY exists unanswered, and
presumed false.
OK, new question: Would you say a sufficiently complex AI program had
free will? No kludgy "randomizers" to make it non-deterministic, just
complexity of mind & environment. Would IT think it had free will?
My answer: At this point it is equivalent to the human free will question,
with the same answers.
Merlyn Leroy
"...a dimension between shallow and substance, between science and
superficial, a place we call...The Usenet Zone"