rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (03/14/85)
[Though it doesn't sound that way from the start...] >>What you describe, the ability to make a decision based upon alternatives, >>I'll agree, does exist. ... Do you believe the phenomenon that *I* refer >>to as free will does/does not exist? > Does not. Thank you. Thus you don't believe in free will as the notion is defined (with regard to "the ongoing debate"). I didn't think that you did. >>The chemicals in "me" that "are" "me" do not have free will, either. They >>may CAUSE rational analysis and action *IF* I happen to be predisposed to >>that analysis/action based on the REST of my chemical make-up, but there >>exists no power of "decision" to "decide" which course to take... > Sure there does, look at the high-level operations where experience and > memory are used rationally to pick out an option and execute it -- all > these mental operations have physical correspondents (at least you and I > agree on this). The power is in the brain insofar as its operations are > the basis/instantiation of the corresponding mental operations that we > introspect when we do what we call "choosing". First, you agree with me ("free will" as defined above doesn't exist), now I agree with you. These operations you describe would seem to exist. (I don't know about the use of the word "rationally" though; the operation may or may not involve what you might, after the fact, call rationality.) I'll go only so far as to say that the brain's biochemistry induces "choices", based on experience, memory, current sensory input, what you ate for lunch, how sick you are, etc. To ask you another question: Do you think that this process involving "choice" via a form of chemical decision making, as opposed to what may be (perhaps poorly) described as "direct" chemical choices not necessarily involve stored knowledge constructs, etc., is the same as what I defined *above* as free will, or is it different from it and how so? >>It's funny you should ask [about] "ordinary language user"[s]... [One] >>blurted out "But doesn't the notion of free will imply a spirit that is >>separate from the chemicals?" I couldn't have asked for more, could I >>have? I doubt that he's alone in that. > Looks like the situation is even worse (the Dogma is even more widespread) > than I thought. Is this the depiction of some sort of conspiracy theory? :-) > But yes, there is more we can ask for from ordinary > language users. Like, if they were to discover that no such spirit exists > (note the way more and more mental phenomena are being explained quite well > as being based in the physical brain), would they give up the practice of > trying to make intelligent decisions? Would they say "It's no use trying > to act anymore, it's all fated anyway", etc.? If not, they have an > understanding of free will apart from such "spirits" -- and rightly so. > They need to realize this (that they can understand free choice apart > from "spirits" etc.) in order to shed the uncritically swallowed Dogma. It sounds like you mean "would they stop using reasoned thinking in making decisions?" Why should the presence or absence of such a spirit matter to making such a decision? (In a rational way---of course, we are always "free" to "choose" not to make decisions based on rational analysis :-?) This ability exists in our chemical makeup: the decisions come about as a result of the processes you describe above. One doesn't "choose" to use them or not, but one doesn't have the power to choose how they will be used. Inadvertently, I may have blurted out something along the lines of a "boundary" between organisms of "choice" as Paul would see them and organisms of "non-choice". The "rational evaluative capabilities" you have been discussing (which I have continually claimed are NOT the same as "free will") come about through the chemical processes you describe above, but they differ from the chemical processes in "lower animals" in that they involve a means of processing and analyzing stored knowledge/experience constructs, and acting upon the results of that analysis, whereas the "lower animals/organisms" either have no ability in this area or their ability is more limited than that of humans. I don't think that it's a very clear "boundary", but I'm interested in how you think your categorizations might fit into this scheme. -- "Right now it's only a notion, but I'm hoping to turn it into an idea, and if I get enough money I can make it into a concept." Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr