MINSKY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) (05/08/88)
Brian Yamauchi correctly paraphrases 30.6 of Society of Mind: |Everything, including that which happens in our brains, |depends on these and only fixed, deterministic laws or random accidents. | There is no room on either side for any third alternative. He agrees, and goes on to suggest that free will is a decision making process. But that doesn't explain why we feel that we're free. I claim that we feel free when we decide to not try further to understand how we make the decisions: the sense of freedom comes from a particular act - in which one part of the mind STOPs deciding, and accepts what another part has done. I think the "mystery" of free will is clarified only when we realize that it is not a form of decision making at all - but another kind of action or attitude entirely, namely, of how we stop deciding.