eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) (05/10/88)
In article <726@taurus.BITNET>, shani@TAURUS.BITNET writes: >In article <402@aiva.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiva.BITNET writes: >> Is this an Ayn Rand point? It sure sounds like one. Note the use >> of `self-contradicting'. > >I bet you will not belive me, but I'm not sure I know who Ayn Rand is... I didn't see anything in Shani's message that looks like it's based on Ayn Rand (she certainly wasn't the only philosopher to oppose self-contradiction), but I do agree with Jeff that Ayn Rand's writings can shed light on the free will issue. To those who haven't heard of her, Ayn Rand was a novelist and a philosopher, and both her novels and her philosophy books are highly recommended. I think there are two main ways in which Ayn Rand was relevant to the free will issue: 1. Her basic approach, of basing philosophical theories on observation of facts rather than on assumptions about what the world should be like, is an approach that all those who discuss the issue of free will should learn. Specifically, we have to realize that free will is a fact, perceived directly by introspection, and it is therefore wrong to reject it just because we would like all natural processes to conform to the model of physics. 2. Ayn Rand has identified the exact nature of free will, in a way that is consistent with the facts, does not suffer from the philosophical problems of other free will theories, and demonstrates why free will is not connected to, and is actually incompatible with, randomness. Man's free will lies in the act of focusing his consciousness, in his choice to think or not and what to think about. This means that free will is consistent with having reasons that determine your thoughts and your actions, because, by your choice in focusing your consciousness, it is you who chose those reasons. Eyal Mozes BITNET: eyal%coyote@stanford ARPA: eyal@coyote.stanford.edu
nienart@turing.arc.nasa.gov (john nienart) (05/10/88)
In article <8805091739.AA27922@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) writes: > > Specifically, we have to realize that free will is a >fact, perceived directly by introspection, and it is therefore wrong to >reject it just because we would like all natural processes to conform >to the model of physics. What makes you so certain that _anything_ perceived be introspection is fact? Introspection provides me with the "fact" that there is, in fact, a "me" to do the introspecting, but there are a number of philosophies and religions (mostly of the Eastern variety) which insist that this is _not_ a fact, but rather simply an illusion we impose on ourselves, essentially through habit, and that through the proper discipline, we can train ourselves to note the absence of this self. After this process is complete (no claim is being made here as to personal success in this), introspection apparently confirms a hypothesis which directly contradicts our previous introspective belief. Which introspection is correct? > >Man's >free will lies in the act of focusing his consciousness, in his choice >to think or not and what to think about. This means that free will is >consistent with having reasons that determine your thoughts and your >actions, because, by your choice in focusing your consciousness, it is >you who chose those reasons. Maybe its just me, but I find rather frequently that I'm thinking about something that I'm _sure_ I'd rather not think about (or humming a trashy pop song I hate, etc.). It certainly feels at these times that I don't have complete control over that upon which my consciousness is focussed. So would you say that I _dont_ have free will (despite my introspective belief in it), or that the (introspectively motivated) "fact" of my lack of control is false? --John
eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) (05/10/88)
In article <796@hydra.riacs.edu>, nienart@turing.arc.nasa.gov (john nienart) writes: >What makes you so certain that _anything_ perceived be introspection is >fact? Introspection provides me with the "fact" that there is, in fact, a >"me" to do the introspecting, but there are a number of philosophies and >religions (mostly of the Eastern variety) which insist that this is _not_ a >fact, And that's exactly the point. Most philosophies, and all religions, make a lot of a priori assumptions about what the world should be like, some of them ridiculously contrary to fact. This approach must be rejected. >Maybe its just me, but I find rather frequently that I'm thinking about >something that I'm _sure_ I'd rather not think about (or humming a trashy >pop song I hate, etc.). It certainly feels at these times that I don't have >complete control over that upon which my consciousness is focussed. Are you saying that, at those times, you are making a deliberate, conscious effort to turn your thoughts to something else, and this effort fails? If so then, yes, it is just you; all the evidence I'm familiar with points to the fact that it's always possible for a human being to control his thoughts by a conscious effort. Eyal Mozes BITNET: eyal%coyote@stanford ARPA: eyal@coyote.stanford.edu
cwp@otter.hple.hp.com (Chris Preist) (05/10/88)
It is depressing to see that people are unable to accept that the problem of determinism is a METAPHYSICAL problem, which cannot be solved purely by philosophical debate, introspection, etc etc. It is NOT self-contradictory to assume that the world is determined, and the freedom we percieve is subjective. Nor is it self-contradictory to assume that we are free through some form of mind-body dualism (As soon as you bring in 'I','free choices',etc, this is what you are opting for). However, it is self-contradictory to assume that what you assume is necessarily correct! Some people in the debate obviously have not understood the determinist/compatiblist argument. For a short and lucid explanation, may I recommend the relevant chapter in Ayer's 'Problems of Philosophy'. By the principle of Occam's Razor (i.e. disguard all unnecessary assumptions), I personally would choose to work assuming the determinist approach. However, the fact that the universe is determined is subjectively irrelevant to our experiences - the freedom we experience (and thus the moral responsibility, etc) is as exciting as ever. Chris
pete@wor-mein.UUCP (Pete Turner) (05/10/88)
In article <8805092354.AA05852@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) writes: >all the evidence I'm >familiar with points to the fact that it's always possible for a human >being to control his thoughts by a conscious effort. > What evidence is this? In my own experience, while I can generally concentrate most of my thinking on a particular subject, occassional apparently irrelevant thoughts drop in unbidden. If a particularly positive or negative experience has occurred recently in my life, no amount of concentration will keep thoughts of it from popping up at any time. Am I unusual? I don't think so. Starting right now, don't think about an elephant.
bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort) (05/11/88)
Eyal Mozes writes: > ... all the evidence I'm familiar with points to the fact >that it's always possible for a human being to control his >thoughts by a conscious effort. Our thoughts are at least partly influenced by information received through our senses. People who have witnessed a disturbing event in their lives may have trouble getting it off their minds. I think most psychologists would agree that at least some portion of the population is susceptible to unwanted thoughts. Perhaps these victims haven't discovered how to engage the conscious mind to override the invasions of the nonconscious mind. (By the way, I'm one of the victims, so I'd be grateful for any guidance Eyal can give me.) --Barry Kort
jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) (05/13/88)
In article <8805091739.AA27922@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) writes:
I didn't see anything in Shani's message that looks like it's based on
Ayn Rand (she certainly wasn't the only philosopher to oppose
self-contradiction),
She overuses the notion.
but I do agree with Jeff that Ayn Rand's writings
can shed light on the free will issue.
Actually, you don't agree with me, because that's not what I think.
I don't really want to get involved in this and can now see that I
should not have brought it up.jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) (05/13/88)
In article <8805092354.AA05852@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) writes: >all the evidence I'm familiar with points to the fact that it's >always possible for a human being to control his thoughts by a >conscious effort. It is not always possible. Think, if no simpler example will do, of obsessives. They have thoughts that persist in turning up despite efforts to eliminate them. Or, consider when you start thinking about something. An idea just occurs and you are thinking it: you might decide to think about something, but you could not have decided to decide, decided to decide to decide, etc. so at some point there was no conscious decision. Or just consider when you are thinking. You cannot consciously shape each thought before it comes. -- Jeff
eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) (05/19/88)
In article <445@aiva.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes: >>So, indirectly, even the obsession itself is under the person's >>volitional control. > >I would be interested in knowing what you think *isn't* under a >person's volitional control. One would normally think that having >a sore throat is not under conscious control even though one can >chose to do something about it or even to try to prevent it. Which is why I used the word "indirectly". You have direct volitional control only over your thoughts and actions; but this means that your physical and psychological health, your intelligence, your success etc., to the extent that your actions can affect them, are indirectly under your volitional control. >As far as you have explained so far, Rand's theory is little more >than simply saying that free will = the ability to focus consciousness, >which we can all observe. Since we can all observe this without the >aid of Rand's theory, all Rand seems to be saying is "that's all there >is to it". This is true in a sense, in that the choice to focus your consciousness or not is the only fundamental free-will choice. However, this choice leads to other, derivative choices, which include the choices of what to think about, what views and values to hold, and what actions to take. Whenever a person faces a decision about what view to hold on some issue, or about what action to take, that person may focus his thoughts on all relevant information and thus try to make an informed, rational decision; or he may make no such effort, deciding on the basis of what he happens to feel like at that moment; or he may deliberately avoid considering some of the relevant information, and make a decision based on evasion. In each case, his decision is based on some reasons, but, by choosing one of these three approaches, he has volitionally chosen what those reasons will be. Eyal Mozes BITNET: eyal%coyote@stanford ARPA: eyal@coyote.stanford.edu
jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) (05/24/88)
In article <8805182232.AA29965@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) writes: >In article <445@aiva.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes: >>I would be interested in knowing what you think *isn't* under a >>person's volitional control. One would normally think that having >>a sore throat is not under conscious control even though one can >>chose to do something about it or even to try to prevent it. >Which is why I used the word "indirectly". You introduced the word "indirectly" in response to an earlier message that suggested that obsessive thoughts might be a counterexample to your claim that people could always control their thoughts, which seemed to be a much stronger claim than what you are saying now. If the sense in which people can control their thoughts is no stronger than that in which they can control whether or not they have a sore throat, than your claim is a rather weak one. >[...] the choice to focus your consciousness >or not is the only fundamental free-will choice. However, this choice >leads to other, derivative choices, which include the choices of what >to think about, what views and values to hold, and what actions to >take. I would like to hear what you would say about some of the other things I said in my previous message, specifically points like the following: Why do you chose to focus on one thing rather than another? Did you decide to focus on that thing, and if so how did you decide to decide to focus on that thing, and so on. Merely deciding to focus (and why that decision rather than another? Did you decide to decide to focus, etc?) does not determine what to think about, and so does not lead to it in a very stong sense. But see my other messages for a better attempt at explaining this. At some point, something other than a conscious decision must be made. And it is hard to see how that can count as free will since the decision is essentially given to us by some non conscious part of our mind. And it isn't actually "at some point": every thought just appears; we don't decide to have it first. What I've just said is wrong in that I've made it sound like we're something separate observing our thoughts as they "appear", that we might wish to control them but can't. It would be better to say that we just are these thoughts. We can't go to some independent level where we control them. Nonetheless, it is possible to have thoughts that are essentially instructions (to ourselves) to think certain things, for example when we try to remember something. And so we do have a certain amount of control in that some of the links are conscious. This ability is limited, however, and one of the limits is due to the problems of infinite regress I've mentioned before. I would recommend (again) Dennett's Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting and also Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bichameral Mind. Even if Jaynes's central thesis is wrong (as it may well be), he makes many useful and interesting observations along the way. >Whenever a person faces a decision about what view to hold on some >issue, or about what action to take, that person may focus his thoughts >on all relevant information and thus try to make an informed, rational >decision; or he may make no such effort, deciding on the basis of what >he happens to feel like at that moment; or he may deliberately avoid >considering some of the relevant information, and make a decision based >on evasion. Often the most rational choice is to deliberately avoid considering all relevant information in order to make a decision within a certain time. It is not necessarily evasion. I also see nothing irrational in, for example, deciding to eat some chocolate ice cream just because that's the flavor I happen to feel like having. -- Jeff
nelson_p@apollo.uucp (06/01/88)
Gilbert Cockton posts: >The test is easy, look at the references. Do the same for AAAI and >IJCAI papers. The subject area seems pretty introspective to me. >If you looked at an Education conference proceedings, attended by people who >deal with human intelligence day in day out (rather than hack LISP), you >would find a wide range of references, not just specialist Education references. >You will find a broad understanding of humanity, whereas in AI one can >often find none, just logical and mathematical references. I still >fail to see how this sort of intellectual background can ever be >regarded as adequate for the study of human reasoning. On what >grounds does AI ignore so many intellectual traditions? Because AI would like to make some progress (for a change!). I originally majored in psychology. With the exception of some areas in physiological pyschology, the field is not a science. Its models and definitions are simply not rigorous enough to be useful. This is understandable since the phenomena it attempts to address are far too complex for the currently available intellectual and technical tools. The result is that psychologists and sociologists waste much time and money over essentially unresolvable philosophical debates, sort of like this newsgroup! When you talk about an 'understanding of humanity' you clearly have a different use of the term 'understanding' in mind than I do. Let's move this topic to talk.philosophy!! --Peter Nelson