wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman) (05/16/88)
12-May-88 15:36:36-PDT,2503;000000000000 Date: Thu, 12 May 88 15:33:21 pdt From: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman) Message-Id: <8805122233.AA28641@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness Newsgroups: comp.ai In-Reply-To: <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <10942@sunybcs.UUCP> <4543@super.upenn.edu> Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA Cc: wlieberm@vaxc Re: Free Will and Determinism. This most interesting kind of discussion reminds me of the old question, " What happens when the irresistable cannonball hits the irremovable post? " The answer lies in the question, not in other parts of the outside world. If you remember your Immanual Kant and his distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, the cannonball question would be an analytic statement, of the form, " The red barn is red." - A totally useless statement, because nothing new about the outside world is implied in the statement. Similarly, I would say the cannonball question, since it is internally contradictory, wastes the questioner's time if he tries to hook it to the outside world. A concept like 'random' similarly may be thought of in terms simply of worldly unpredictability TO THE QUESTIONER. If he comes from a society where they get differing results every time they add two oranges to two oranges, TO THEM addition of real numbers is random. (Also wouldn't an example of a non-recurring expansion of decimals, but certainly not random, be any irrational number, such as pi?) The concept of inherent randomness implies there is no conceivable system that will ever or can ever be found that could describe what will happen in a given system with a predefined envelope of precision. Is it possible to prove such a conjecture? It's almost like Fermat's Last Theorem. To me, the concept of randomness has to do with the subject's ability to descibe events forthcoming, not with the forthcoming events themselves. That is, randomness only exists as long as there are beings around who perceive their imprecise or limited predictions as incomplete. The events don't care, and occur regardless. It's important to not forget that the subjects themselves (us, e.g.) are part of the world, too. My main point here is that very often, questions that seem impossible to resolve often need to have the structure of the question looked at, rather than the rest of the outside world for empirical data to support or refute the question. Bill Lieberman
bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) (05/20/88)
In article <22533@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>, wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman) writes: > Re: Free Will and Determinism. > > > This most interesting kind of discussion reminds me of the old question, > > " What happens when the irresistable cannonball hits the irremovable post? " > > The answer lies in the question, not in other parts of the outside world. > > If you remember your Immanual Kant and his distinction between analytic and > synthetic statements, the cannonball question would be an analytic statement, > of the form, " The red barn is red." - A totally useless statement, because > nothing new about the outside world is implied in the statement. Similarly, > I would say the cannonball question, since it is internally contradictory, > wastes the questioner's time if he tries to hook it to the outside world. This really made me laugh. Not because of what I think is wrong with it, but because of two things: One is that many people have come down hard on Ayn Rand because she so routinely attacked Kant, when, in their opinion, that was beating a dead horse; but here he is, alive again. The other is the spectacle of someone arriving at the same conclusion I would have by a means that contradicts the way I reached my own conclusion. Foolishness aside, I would abandon the question, not because it contains an internal inconsistency in presuming that the described situation can exist, but because the presumed interacting entities are wholly imaginary constructs. Statements about imaginary constructs (please, differentiate these from possibly existing ones) have NO truth value, since, said truth value implies some kind of relationship between the statement's constituents and reality. (N.B. The mathematician's "true" is not the same thing as the epistemologist's "true".) > A concept like 'random' similarly may be thought of in terms simply of > worldly unpredictability TO THE QUESTIONER. If he comes from a society where > they get differing results every time they add two oranges to two oranges, > TO THEM addition of real numbers is random. (Also wouldn't an example of > a non-recurring expansion of decimals, but certainly not random, be any > irrational number, such as pi?) Be careful: while, because of your next paragraph, you obviously know of the difference between unpredictability and randomness, you should avoid using the word `random' where you mean `unpredictable'. Doing so seems to cause confusion (and other random, I mean unpredictable, behaviors) on the part of those who do not understand the difference. And, your first example is another `immovable object': It cannot be real, so you cannot reason with it. > To me, the concept of randomness has to do with the subject's ability to > descibe events forthcoming, not with the forthcoming events themselves. > That is, randomness only exists as long as there are beings around who > perceive their imprecise or limited predictions as incomplete. The events > don't care, and occur regardless. It's important to not forget that the > subjects themselves (us, e.g.) are part of the world, too. Um, I would put more precisely as: randomness is a concept, not a characteristic of an existent. This concept is used to describe a system which has known limits of action but whose determinants are not wholly known. > My main point here is that very often, questions that seem impossible to > resolve often need to have the structure of the question looked at, rather > than the rest of the outside world for empirical data to support or refute > the question. > > Bill Lieberman Agreed.
gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (05/23/88)
In article <194@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes: >(N.B. The mathematician's "true" is not the same thing as the > epistemologist's "true". Which epistemologist? The reality and truth of mathematical objects has been a major concern in many branches of philosophy. Many would see mathematics, when it succeeds in formalising proof, as one form of truth. Perhaps consistency is a better word, and we should reserve truth for the real thing :-) This of course would make AI programs true models by correspondence, rather than internal elegance. Verification of these models is an important issue that I'm sure our mathematical idealists are pursuing with great vigour to the neglect of all else :-) -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert The proper object of the study of humanity is humans, not machines
bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) (06/12/88)
In article <1214@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: > In article <194@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes: > >(N.B. The mathematician's "true" is not the same thing as the > > epistemologist's "true". > Which epistemologist? The reality and truth of mathematical objects > has been a major concern in many branches of philosophy. Many would > see mathematics, when it succeeds in formalising proof, as one form of > truth. Perhaps consistency is a better word, and we should reserve > truth for the real thing :-) Actually, the point was just that: when I say that something is true in a mathematical sense, I mean just one thing: the thing follows from the chosen axioms; when I say that something is epistemologically true (sorry about the neologism), I mean one thing, someone else means something else, and a third declares the idea meaningless. Thus the two kinds of truth need to be considered separately.
jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) (07/07/88)
In article <304@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
] Actually, the point was just that: when I say that something is
] true in a mathematical sense, I mean just one thing: the thing
] follows from the chosen axioms;
"True" is not the same as "follows from the axioms". See Godel et al.