rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (10/10/84)
>> Others have proposed the notion that the "mind" is not >> a physical or extraphysical entity, but is analogous to a program (software) >> running on the hardware (brain). [ROSEN] > As one of those "others", I'd like to point out that the notion of > mind-as-program is more a metaphor than an precise analogy. I used it > months ago as the easiest way to express to an audience of (mostly) > computer-oriented people the notion of organization versus substance. > Rich seems to have taken the notion rather too literally. [BABA] I simply used the same analogy in reverse. Whether or not brains are exactly like computers or minds are exactly like programs is irrelevant. I wasn't saying that they were. They are simply analogous. > Well, what is free will? The best definition I've seen put forth on the net > is the inability to consistently and deductively predict the behavior of an > entity, no matter how much is known about the entity and its environment. If that's all free will is, then by Heisenberg everything has free will. And a quality that exists in everything is not a "quality" at all. Thus free will would be a non-issue, since it's a non-entity. By this definition, describe an entity that doesn't have free will. It vanishes as an issue and as an entity. > By this definition, electrons have free will, which may be OK, but I would > add the further restriction that the entity be self-aware. I always thought that free will meant, at its lowest level, the ability of an entity to choose between two or more alternatives on its own without any influence from the outside world, its chemical makeup, etc. Thus at any time an entity could "choose", regardless of what's going on in and around it, to do whatever it "liked". Free will to me implies free choice independent of the "chooser's" surroundings, which of necessity implies an external agent doing the "choosing". If the surroundings make the choice for the entity, then it's not free will, because there was no free choice involved. If someone has a different definition of free will, let's hear it, since it seems (especially between me and Torek) that most of the bickering is rooted in semantics. -- "Come with me now to that secret place where the eyes of man have never set foot." Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr