Kent Stevens

Currently there seems to be an artificial distinction between systems based on whether they possess free will or not. Humans and animals are supposed to be able to choose what they do. All other systems are supposed to not be able to choose what they do. These other systems would include dynamic systems such as the sun and the earth. These other systems would also include human technology such as computers, robots, and mechanical systems.

However, I think the distinction between free will systems and non-free will systems is illusionary. Everything is a physical system and it seems strange to say that a person is inherently different from the weather in terms of unpredictability. For, I can neither predict what the weather will do tomorrow, nor can I predict what you will do tomorrow. An animal can plan things while say the weather can not, but both types of systems are physical in that they both obey the same physical laws.

It would seem absurd to say that a dynamic system such as the weather has choice. The Earth does not decide to rain tomorrow instead of stay fine. Hurricanes do not choose to avoid where I live. This is even though these systems being dynamic in nature are unpredictable.

Your computer can also be unpredictable but it also sounds absurd to say that it chooses to do various things. A computer does not choose to produce your bank statement every month for example. A computer can have a degree of randomness built into it. So a computer can generate a random number that for our purposes is unpredictable. But the computer does not choose that number, but instead it produces or generates it. Suppose you are playing a computer in some game where there appears some point where the computer can produce more than one outcome. Say if you playing a game of chess with the computer and it produces a move. I suggest that it is wrong to say that the computer chose that move. It is more correct to say that the computer completed that move, or that it produced that move.

I will try to counter the obvious objection that I chose to write this and you are choosing to either agree or disagree with me. I say that you can get the unnecessary word of choosing out of the sentence and it still makes sense. That is I can say that I have written this and you either agree or disagree with me. I could have done something else but a dice could have also produced a different result than what it did. You could have thought differently about this article but the weather could have been different yesterday from what it was. Neither the dice nor the weather has choice and I suggest we are similar in this particular aspect.

This is a fairly radical idea and I am still open to debate on this issue. However, I do not want to say that the Earth chose to be fine tomorrow. I do not want to say that the Lottery machine chose that numbers that it produced. It seems bizarre to say that my computer is choosing its actions when I play computer games with it. Yet if I say that I can choose then that this suggests that the systems given above can also choose.

Probably notions of free will are buried into our language and as a practical measure I do not suggest removing all ideas of choice in everyday speech. Instead I am suggesting there is no difference between systems, in that all systems do not chose.

rebelnerd

Not at all. You and I are sentient, the above mentioned systems are not. If humans ever develop true AI, then I would allow for an AI system choosing.

Filo

dostf

Kent Stevens:

-Human beings are not entirely "physical systems". The "mental" and "emotional" systems certainly influence us in terms of "free will". This is different than eco systems, or animals that operate primarily on instinct.
- I would contend we are "free to choose" depending on the degree our "limiting self" or "attributes"
- our personal "past" also is a determining factor in the "free will" issue. If an individual is "free" from their own "past", every moment is "new" -with freedom of choice

thanks

Be seeing you...

sweep

good stuff- don't stop now

popeontheropes

i don't want to expand this by adding quotations ad infinitum. so , suffice it to say that ,i disagree with your entire argument.
I will say that i do not 'choose' to disagree. It simply is that i cannot agree , at all, with any of it.( in terms of the general bent of the statement that we are no different from the weather.)
yes it is true that , from your perspective, i am as unpredictable as the weather. But , to say that i do not choose to be and do as i please is rather 'absurd'. even animals posess some ability to make choices. i.e. this way or that , eat this or eat that. primarily , animal systems are so dependant on instinct that, there is little need and even less room for 'personal choice'. they are primarily concerned with survival and ,as a result,are highly 'reactionary ' in terms of how they deal with thier surroundings.

...if you were to throw a ball..it would land somewhere and you could retrieve it.
.....if you were to throw a squirrel ..it would land somewhere and run like hell. it would not choose to stay because that would be contrary to it's need or drive to survive.
if you were to throw a human..it would land somewhere and get up and beat you to a pulp...or run away..or have another shot and saddle up for another tossing..depending on the choices it was willing to make.
we choose all day , every day of our lives.
to repeat a former post ...we are sentient..this means we have self awareness and thereby , control over our actions and the abillity to predict the possible outcome and subsequent consequences of the choices we make. we allso posess the ability to reason and base our choices on our wants , needs , and desires.
we do not automatically do anything unless something triggers our fight or flight response wich eminates from deep within our simian brain. the same place where the impulse to breath comes from. the rest of our brain is devoted to observation and qualification as well as to sentamentality and a whole slew of other self based qualities that comprise the totality of the human being. we are a dynamic natural system but not a mechanical -dynamic natural system like the weather. wee choose all of the hows whats wheres and whys.

thanks for reading

excreationist

Kent Stevens:
Suppose you are playing a computer in some game where there appears some point where the computer can produce more than one outcome. Say if you playing a game of chess with the computer and it produces a move. I suggest that it is wrong to say that the computer chose that move. It is more correct to say that the computer completed that move, or that it produced that move.
I disagree... I have studied some AI at university, I'd say that the computer *selects* the optimal move - by doing things like looking a few moves into the future and working out how you would be likely to respond (to prune the "graph" of possibilities to save time) and work out what it needs to do now to achieve the best future outcome. In AI they also talk about decisions being made - this is the same thing as selections.
BTW, besides the examples of the weather and random number generators on computers that you gave, cubes (dice) and thin cylinders (coins) tumbling in flat surfaces are also very unpredictable.

Instead I am suggesting there is no difference between systems, in that all systems do not chose.
I think that some systems make selections - their selection (or "choice") may be inevitable, but it is still something that was done.
In the case of people (and probably most or all other mammals), we make lots of decisions. It involves weighing up our desires and goals and constraints and arriving at decisions. And often this initiates or stops muscle movement... so decision-making is about the intelligent control of things. We are different from things like the weather and coins... we accumulate symbolic information which represents the external environment and do (fuzzy) logic operations with it...

Bill

"Free Will" does not exist!

Where in the continuum of life do you draw the line between organisms demonstrating "free will" and those that do not? Does my houseplant have "free will?" It would seem to be absurd to assert that it does.

So, does a bacteria have "free will?" Why, or why not? I mean, a bacteria self-motivates around in its environment, reproduces, seeks food, etc.; just what do you need in order to demonstrate that some particular organism has (or does not have) "free will?" And a bacteria is a far simpler organism than is my house plant!

A virus isn't even "alive" (by the usual biological definition, because a virus has no metabolism). But what characteristic of activity distinguishes the virus from the bacteria so far as "free will" goes? The virus must infect another organism in order to feed and reproduce itself, but it still manages to get around within its adapted environment and survive for way too long. (And anybody who attempts to logically and rationally assert that a virus had "free will" will be shot on sight! )

==========

As <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=625" target="_blank">Terrence W. Deacon shows in his book The Symbolic Species</a>, the real distinction between humans and other animals lies in our ability to think symbolically. It is an enhanced mode of thinking that makes humans unique from other primates (or, other mammals). Is "free will" somehow buried in among that extra thinking ability of humans? I've never heard "free will" defined in such a way as to make that even a remote possibility!

Free will is an attempt to defend a species of creation ex nihilo for human thoughts. For me to possess "free will," I must be able to create a thought out of no cause whatsoever. But the way we know that our human brains work, it is a flat impossibility for a human thought to be created "out of nothing." Since all human thought is the product of the operation of our brain's cells, firing and/or not-firing as required to produce one thought or another, there are clearly causes (however deep they might lie) for every thought which occurs within our brains. The fact that we usually have no clue as to what those causes amount to does not eliminate the existence of those causes. There are causes either within ourselves or outside of ourselves for every thought or action that we take (or fail to take). Since those causes always exist, "free will" is clearly just an illusion.

"Free Will" is an illusion; but it is an illusion that humans, by and large, all treasure. We hate to think of ourselves as we are: mere robots, carrying out our programs in accordance with the information and stimuli that make up the totality of our cranial information system. It is such a disturbing thought that we are merely robots that most of us will reject that idea out of hand, regardless of just how correct the idea might be.

God, too, is just such a convenient illusion of a belief. Sic transit gloria mundi!

== Bill

xeren

I love when the moderator comes in and lays the smack-down on everyone!

Bill is right, if our decisions come from our brains (which, i hope everyone realizes, they do) then our decisions are simply the choices that are brains make based on it's past experiences and current conditions at the time of the decision. That's not free will, that's just a complicated biological system. The only reasons we think these choices are free, is because we have the self-consciousness to observe them as we are making the decisions.

For those of you who think that our decisions come from somewhere else, like our souls or something ridiculous like that, then let me ask you this: How do the souls make their decisions?

The only two answers are "based on it's past experiences and current conditions around" (and we know where that leads) or "arbitrarily". Neither answer equals free will.

Thank you

Here's an essay about free will and determinism that everyone should read, it changed my way of thinking about free will:

<a href="http://world.std.com/~twc/strawson.htm" target="_blank">http://world.std.com/~twc/strawson.htm</a>

dostf

Bill:

"Free Will" is an illusion; but it is an illusion that humans, by and large, all treasure. We hate to think of ourselves as we are: mere robots, carrying out our programs in accordance with the information and stimuli that make up the totality of our cranial information system. It is such a disturbing thought that we are merely robots that most of us will reject that idea out of hand, regardless of just how correct the idea might be.
(Bill)

- No we are not merely robots carrying out programs in accordance with information and stimuli that make up our cranial information system
- even in the past many have recognized and sought methods to "defeat" our "programming"- prayer, fasting, narcotics, ritual, "sacred" dance, etc...
- these however were not successful and are incomplete
- it is however my assertion that while certainly we are influenced by our "programming", it is not "always and forever" so.
- if we are destined to always act according to our "programming" in accordance to "information and stimuli" that make up the totality of our cranial information system, we are always "fated" to act or react in a particular manner
- not only is this an entirely pessimistic world view, it is incorrect
- although this is not an entirely correct way to state it, our "past" need not be our "future". Every moment is "new" depending on our "relationship" to our "past".
Basically, the human being is NOT the "total sum of its programming" and nothing more...

Be seeing you...

Ted Hoffman

Kent Stevens,
You are wrong. It seems you have a very incorrect idea of what "will" means. Only sentient beings can have a will. A plant for example, has NO will, it can react phototrophically to light but thats because of its light sensing mechanism ie it cannot choose to grow into the dark and leave light the other way. A stone cant choose to stay in the air when you release it. Humans however can decide to commit suicide, go for hunger strikes, stay celibate, rape etc. The degree to which an individual (animal) is able to excercise free will is dependent upon its level of intelligence.
A kid for example doesnt excercise free will when they need to poo or urinate. They will cry when the cry comes and they will sleep when the sleep comes.

You need to revise your argument completely.