DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 2024-02-20 4:54 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> broger...@gmail.com <brogers31751@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 2:48:16 PM UTC-5, DB Cates wrote:
>>>> On 2024-02-20 12:26 PM, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 1:03:16 PM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:49:51 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
>>>>>> <broger...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 12:03:16?PM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 04:45:50 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
>>>>>>>> <broger...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> [snip for focus]
>>>>>>>>> I'd say that (1) free will isn't magical, it just means that we
>>>>>>>>> make choices, even if, given exactly who we are and the
>>>>>>>>> circumstances we were in, no other choice could have happened and
>>>>>>>>> (2) the problems with the most extreme version of free will - I did
>>>>>>>>> X, but even being exactly who I am and being in the exact same
>>>>>>>>> situation I might just as well have done Y - do not depend on
>>>>>>>>> materialism or physical determinism; they just depend on there
>>>>>>>>> being causes for effects; whether those causes reside in
>>>>>>>>> arrangements of matter or in immaterial "soul stuff" makes no difference.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I wrote a longish post on this in this thread a few days back, but
>>>>>>>>> it may have been TL;DR for Martin
>>>>>>>> I have never treated as TL;DR a post from you or anyone else in any
>>>>>>>> discussion in which I am involved with the notable exception of Peter
>>>>>>>> Nyikos and I have given my reasons for that several times in the past.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The tone of your comment suggests that along with LD, you are having
>>>>>>>> to resort to petulant ad hominem.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My comment was meant to skewer my own verbosity, not to complain about you.
>>>>>> So why did you say TL;DR *for Martin*?
>>>>>
>>>>> Because I was talking to Daggett about his response to you.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that one problem with not stating a definition is that it leads
>>>>> to confusion as there seems to be between you and Daggett. In my view,
>>>>> you do not seem to be asserting the sort of libertarian, maximalist
>>>>> type of free will, ie the idea that an exactly identical person in
>>>>> exactly identical circumstances might do different things. I think that
>>>>> that sort of free will is incoherent, independent of whether you are a
>>>>> physicalist or a dualist, and I think Daggett is right to argue against
>>>>> it. But I don't think that your position requires it. You seem to want
>>>>> to say that people make meaningful choices, and I agree that they
>>>>> certainly do. One is defined by one's choices and so it is not a
>>>>> limitation on one's freedom to say that one's choice's are determined
>>>>> by (and reveal) exactly what one is. I am free, but I am not free to be
>>>>> someone other than who I am. Who I am may change over time, in response
>>>>> to the effects of my choices and my environment, but at any instant,
>>>>> who I am is a given.
>>> ....
>>>> I'm trying to determine the utility of a description of 'free will' that
>>>> is indistinguishable from determinism. ie I agree with everything you
>>>> say above except the label.
>>>
>>> That's generally the problem people have with compatibilism - they don't
>>> think the free will of compatibilism counts as free enough. I'd just say
>>> that I certainly feel free, I make choices that reflect competing
>>> internal and external causes, and when the causes are more internal than
>>> external I feel less constrained and more free. That I cannot choose to
>>> be something that I am not (at a given point in time) just seems to me to
>>> be a given, not something that impinges on *my* freedom, since *my*
>>> freedom is the freedom of the thing I am (at this given point in time) to
>>> act for my own internal reasons rather than being forced by something else.
>>>
>> Dennett argues for a free will worth wanting, a crane type over a skyhook.
>> He gets into our complexity of cognition giving us degrees of freedom. A
>> bivalve only open and closes a certain way. Our forearm with various
>> articulations (wrist, elbow, etc) has more freedom of motion.
>>
>>
> I am a man of limited intellect, but that makes no sense to me.
>
Dennett from his debate with Sam Harris:
“You want to claim that free will — the core of free will — is its denial
of determinism, and I made a career saying that’s not the core. In fact,
let me try a new line on you, because I’ve been thinking, why doesn’t he
see this the way I see it, and I think that the big source — the likely,
big source — of confusion about this is that when people think about
freedom, in the context of free will, they’re ignoring a very good and
legitimate notion of freedom, which is basically the engineering notion of
freedom when you talk about degrees of freedom. My wrists, my shoulder, my
elbow, those joints, there’s three degrees of freedom right there, and in
control theory it’s all about how you control the degrees of freedom. And
if we look around the world, some things have basically no degrees of
freedom, like that rock over there, and some things, like you and me, have
uncountably many degrees of freedom because of the versatility of our
minds; the capacity that we can be moved by reasons on any topic at all —
this gives us a complexity from the point of view of control theory, which
is completely absent in any other creature. And that kind of freedom is
actually, I claim, at the heart of our understanding of free will because
it’s that complexity, which is not just complexity, but it’s the competence
to control that complexity — that’s what free will is. What you want, if
you’ve got free will, is the capacity — and it’ll never be perfect — to
respond to the circumstances with all the degrees of freedom you need to do
what you think would be really the right thing to do. You may not always do
the right thing, but — let’s take a dead simple case: imagine writing a
chess program, which, stupidly, was written wrong so that the king could
only move forward or back or left or right, like a rook, and it could not
move diagonally; and this was somehow hidden in it so that it just never
even considered moves, diagonal moves, by the king. Completely disabled
chess program, it’s missing a very important degree of freedom, which it
should have and be able to control and recognize when to use and so forth.
What you want — I mean, let me ask you a question about what would be ideal
from the point of view of responsibility: what does an ideal responsible
agent have? Is it not mainly true beliefs, a well-ordered set of desires,
the cognitive adroitness to change one’s attention, to change one’s mind,
to be moved by reasons — the capacity to listen to reasons, the capacity
for some self-control? These things all come in degrees, but our model of a
responsible adult, someone you would trust, someone you would make a
promise to — or that you’d accept a promise from — is someone with all
those degrees of freedom and control of them. Now, what removes freedom
from somebody is if either the degrees of freedom don’t exist — they’re
blocked mechanically — or some other agent has usurped them and has taken
over control: a marionette and a puppeteer.”

https://medium.com/@mgmobrien/does-free-will-exist-sam-harris-and-dan-dennett-discuss-a3d54259a417

From his early book _Elbow Room_:
“Suppose you buy a model airplane, a working model with a motor. You start
it up and off it flies, crashing into a tree. “Needs to be controlled,” you
mutter, and fasten long wires to one wingtip. Now you can control it,
making it go up and down—whichever you want, whenever you want—as it goes
round and round in a circle. “Not enough degrees of freedom” you mutter, so
you replace the wires with a wireless radio “remote control” system. Now
you can control the direction, height, speed, turning, diving, and banking
of the plane. There are many more degrees of freedom, and they are all
under your control, but not until you have discovered the parameters of the
plane’s degrees of freedom and the causal relationships between those
parameters and your joystick-moving acts—an epistemic problem that is often
not trivial and must always be solved before control can be effected.”…“One
can control only those states or activities of a thing that fall within the
range of its degrees of freedom, or in other words, within the range of
what it can do. (We speak of what a model airplane can do, and of its
degrees of freedom, but in doing this we are not attributing to it the sort
of agency or freedom we attribute to a moral agent, of course. Still, the
advanced sorts of agency and freedom certainly have the simple sorts as
prerequisites.”

erik simpson <eastside.erik@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/20/24 3:01 PM, DB Cates wrote:
>> On 2024-02-20 4:54 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>> broger...@gmail.com <brogers31751@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 2:48:16 PM UTC-5, DB Cates wrote:
>>>>> On 2024-02-20 12:26 PM, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 1:03:16 PM UTC-5, Martin Harran
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:49:51 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
>>>>>>> <broger...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 12:03:16?PM UTC-5, Martin Harran
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 04:45:50 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
>>>>>>>>> <broger...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [snip for focus]
>>>>>>>>>> I'd say that (1) free will isn't magical, it just means that we
>>>>>>>>>> make choices, even if, given exactly who we are and the
>>>>>>>>>> circumstances we were in, no other choice could have happened and
>>>>>>>>>> (2) the problems with the most extreme version of free will - I
>>>>>>>>>> did
>>>>>>>>>> X, but even being exactly who I am and being in the exact same
>>>>>>>>>> situation I might just as well have done Y - do not depend on
>>>>>>>>>> materialism or physical determinism; they just depend on there
>>>>>>>>>> being causes for effects; whether those causes reside in
>>>>>>>>>> arrangements of matter or in immaterial "soul stuff" makes no
>>>>>>>>>> difference.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I wrote a longish post on this in this thread a few days back, but
>>>>>>>>>> it may have been TL;DR for Martin
>>>>>>>>> I have never treated as TL;DR a post from you or anyone else in any
>>>>>>>>> discussion in which I am involved with the notable exception of
>>>>>>>>> Peter
>>>>>>>>> Nyikos and I have given my reasons for that several times in the
>>>>>>>>> past.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The tone of your comment suggests that along with LD, you are
>>>>>>>>> having
>>>>>>>>> to resort to petulant ad hominem.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> My comment was meant to skewer my own verbosity, not to complain
>>>>>>>> about you.
>>>>>>> So why did you say TL;DR *for Martin*?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Because I was talking to Daggett about his response to you.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think that one problem with not stating a definition is that it
>>>>>> leads
>>>>>> to confusion as there seems to be between you and Daggett. In my view,
>>>>>> you do not seem to be asserting the sort of libertarian, maximalist
>>>>>> type of free will, ie the idea that an exactly identical person in
>>>>>> exactly identical circumstances might do different things. I think
>>>>>> that
>>>>>> that sort of free will is incoherent, independent of whether you are a
>>>>>> physicalist or a dualist, and I think Daggett is right to argue
>>>>>> against
>>>>>> it. But I don't think that your position requires it. You seem to want
>>>>>> to say that people make meaningful choices, and I agree that they
>>>>>> certainly do. One is defined by one's choices and so it is not a
>>>>>> limitation on one's freedom to say that one's choice's are determined
>>>>>> by (and reveal) exactly what one is. I am free, but I am not free
>>>>>> to be
>>>>>> someone other than who I am. Who I am may change over time, in
>>>>>> response
>>>>>> to the effects of my choices and my environment, but at any instant,
>>>>>> who I am is a given.
>>>> ....
>>>>> I'm trying to determine the utility of a description of 'free will'
>>>>> that
>>>>> is indistinguishable from determinism. ie I agree with everything you
>>>>> say above except the label.
>>>>
>>>> That's generally the problem people have with compatibilism - they don't
>>>> think the free will of compatibilism counts as free enough. I'd just say
>>>> that I certainly feel free, I make choices that reflect competing
>>>> internal and external causes, and when the causes are more internal than
>>>> external I feel less constrained and more free. That I cannot choose to
>>>> be something that I am not (at a given point in time) just seems to
>>>> me to
>>>> be a given, not something that impinges on *my* freedom, since *my*
>>>> freedom is the freedom of the thing I am (at this given point in
>>>> time) to
>>>> act for my own internal reasons rather than being forced by something
>>>> else.
>>>>
>>> Dennett argues for a free will worth wanting, a crane type over a
>>> skyhook.
>>> He gets into our complexity of cognition giving us degrees of freedom. A
>>> bivalve only open and closes a certain way. Our forearm with various
>>> articulations (wrist, elbow, etc) has more freedom of motion.
>>>
>>>
>> I am a man of limited intellect, but that makes no sense to me.
>>
> On the other hand, i have four fingers and a thumb, but my left rear
> upper molar has no free will whatsoever.
>
What use is the molar without the jaw joint?

On 2024-02-20 6:19 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2024-02-20 4:54 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>> broger...@gmail.com <brogers31751@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 2:48:16 PM UTC-5, DB Cates wrote:
>>>>> On 2024-02-20 12:26 PM, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 1:03:16 PM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>> On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:49:51 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
>>>>>>> <broger...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 12:03:16?PM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 04:45:50 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
>>>>>>>>> <broger...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [snip for focus]
>>>>>>>>>> I'd say that (1) free will isn't magical, it just means that we
>>>>>>>>>> make choices, even if, given exactly who we are and the
>>>>>>>>>> circumstances we were in, no other choice could have happened and
>>>>>>>>>> (2) the problems with the most extreme version of free will - I did
>>>>>>>>>> X, but even being exactly who I am and being in the exact same
>>>>>>>>>> situation I might just as well have done Y - do not depend on
>>>>>>>>>> materialism or physical determinism; they just depend on there
>>>>>>>>>> being causes for effects; whether those causes reside in
>>>>>>>>>> arrangements of matter or in immaterial "soul stuff" makes no difference.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I wrote a longish post on this in this thread a few days back, but
>>>>>>>>>> it may have been TL;DR for Martin
>>>>>>>>> I have never treated as TL;DR a post from you or anyone else in any
>>>>>>>>> discussion in which I am involved with the notable exception of Peter
>>>>>>>>> Nyikos and I have given my reasons for that several times in the past.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The tone of your comment suggests that along with LD, you are having
>>>>>>>>> to resort to petulant ad hominem.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> My comment was meant to skewer my own verbosity, not to complain about you.
>>>>>>> So why did you say TL;DR *for Martin*?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Because I was talking to Daggett about his response to you.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think that one problem with not stating a definition is that it leads
>>>>>> to confusion as there seems to be between you and Daggett. In my view,
>>>>>> you do not seem to be asserting the sort of libertarian, maximalist
>>>>>> type of free will, ie the idea that an exactly identical person in
>>>>>> exactly identical circumstances might do different things. I think that
>>>>>> that sort of free will is incoherent, independent of whether you are a
>>>>>> physicalist or a dualist, and I think Daggett is right to argue against
>>>>>> it. But I don't think that your position requires it. You seem to want
>>>>>> to say that people make meaningful choices, and I agree that they
>>>>>> certainly do. One is defined by one's choices and so it is not a
>>>>>> limitation on one's freedom to say that one's choice's are determined
>>>>>> by (and reveal) exactly what one is. I am free, but I am not free to be
>>>>>> someone other than who I am. Who I am may change over time, in response
>>>>>> to the effects of my choices and my environment, but at any instant,
>>>>>> who I am is a given.
>>>> ....
>>>>> I'm trying to determine the utility of a description of 'free will' that
>>>>> is indistinguishable from determinism. ie I agree with everything you
>>>>> say above except the label.
>>>>
>>>> That's generally the problem people have with compatibilism - they don't
>>>> think the free will of compatibilism counts as free enough. I'd just say
>>>> that I certainly feel free, I make choices that reflect competing
>>>> internal and external causes, and when the causes are more internal than
>>>> external I feel less constrained and more free. That I cannot choose to
>>>> be something that I am not (at a given point in time) just seems to me to
>>>> be a given, not something that impinges on *my* freedom, since *my*
>>>> freedom is the freedom of the thing I am (at this given point in time) to
>>>> act for my own internal reasons rather than being forced by something else.
>>>>
>>> Dennett argues for a free will worth wanting, a crane type over a skyhook.
>>> He gets into our complexity of cognition giving us degrees of freedom. A
>>> bivalve only open and closes a certain way. Our forearm with various
>>> articulations (wrist, elbow, etc) has more freedom of motion.
>>>
>>>
>> I am a man of limited intellect, but that makes no sense to me.
>>
> Dennett from his debate with Sam Harris:
> “You want to claim that free will — the core of free will — is its denial
> of determinism, and I made a career saying that’s not the core. In fact,
> let me try a new line on you, because I’ve been thinking, why doesn’t he
> see this the way I see it, and I think that the big source — the likely,
> big source — of confusion about this is that when people think about
> freedom, in the context of free will, they’re ignoring a very good and
> legitimate notion of freedom, which is basically the engineering notion of
> freedom when you talk about degrees of freedom. My wrists, my shoulder, my
> elbow, those joints, there’s three degrees of freedom right there, and in
> control theory it’s all about how you control the degrees of freedom. And
> if we look around the world, some things have basically no degrees of
> freedom, like that rock over there, and some things, like you and me, have
> uncountably many degrees of freedom because of the versatility of our
> minds; the capacity that we can be moved by reasons on any topic at all —
> this gives us a complexity from the point of view of control theory, which
> is completely absent in any other creature. And that kind of freedom is
> actually, I claim, at the heart of our understanding of free will because
> it’s that complexity, which is not just complexity, but it’s the competence
> to control that complexity — that’s what free will is. What you want, if
> you’ve got free will, is the capacity — and it’ll never be perfect — to
> respond to the circumstances with all the degrees of freedom you need to do
> what you think would be really the right thing to do. You may not always do
> the right thing, but — let’s take a dead simple case: imagine writing a
> chess program, which, stupidly, was written wrong so that the king could
> only move forward or back or left or right, like a rook, and it could not
> move diagonally; and this was somehow hidden in it so that it just never
> even considered moves, diagonal moves, by the king. Completely disabled
> chess program, it’s missing a very important degree of freedom, which it
> should have and be able to control and recognize when to use and so forth.
> What you want — I mean, let me ask you a question about what would be ideal
> from the point of view of responsibility: what does an ideal responsible
> agent have? Is it not mainly true beliefs, a well-ordered set of desires,
> the cognitive adroitness to change one’s attention, to change one’s mind,
> to be moved by reasons — the capacity to listen to reasons, the capacity
> for some self-control? These things all come in degrees, but our model of a
> responsible adult, someone you would trust, someone you would make a
> promise to — or that you’d accept a promise from — is someone with all
> those degrees of freedom and control of them. Now, what removes freedom
> from somebody is if either the degrees of freedom don’t exist — they’re
> blocked mechanically — or some other agent has usurped them and has taken
> over control: a marionette and a puppeteer.”
>
> https://medium.com/@mgmobrien/does-free-will-exist-sam-harris-and-dan-dennett-discuss-a3d54259a417
>
> From his early book _Elbow Room_:
> “Suppose you buy a model airplane, a working model with a motor. You start
> it up and off it flies, crashing into a tree. “Needs to be controlled,” you
> mutter, and fasten long wires to one wingtip. Now you can control it,
> making it go up and down—whichever you want, whenever you want—as it goes
> round and round in a circle. “Not enough degrees of freedom” you mutter, so
> you replace the wires with a wireless radio “remote control” system. Now
> you can control the direction, height, speed, turning, diving, and banking
> of the plane. There are many more degrees of freedom, and they are all
> under your control, but not until you have discovered the parameters of the
> plane’s degrees of freedom and the causal relationships between those
> parameters and your joystick-moving acts—an epistemic problem that is often
> not trivial and must always be solved before control can be effected.”…“One
> can control only those states or activities of a thing that fall within the
> range of its degrees of freedom, or in other words, within the range of
> what it can do. (We speak of what a model airplane can do, and of its
> degrees of freedom, but in doing this we are not attributing to it the sort
> of agency or freedom we attribute to a moral agent, of course. Still, the
> advanced sorts of agency and freedom certainly have the simple sorts as
> prerequisites.”
>
> More recent _Freedom Evolves_: “Yes, trees can "decide" that spring has
> come and it is time to push out the blossoms, and clams can "decide" to
> clam up tight when they feel an alarming bump on their shells, but these
> options are so rudimentary, so close to being simple switches, that they
> are decisions by courtesy only. But even a simple switch, turned on and off
> by some environmental change, marks a degree of freedom, as the engineers
> say, and hence is something that needs to be controlled, one way or
> another. A system has a degree of freedom when there is an ensemble of
> possibilities of one kind or another, and which of these possibilities is
> actual at any time depends on whatever function or switch controls this
> degree of freedom.”
>
>
>
More words doesn't mean more sense.
--
--
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)

DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 2024-02-20 6:19 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 2024-02-20 4:54 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>>
[snip]
>>>>
>>>> Dennett argues for a free will worth wanting, a crane type over a skyhook.
>>>> He gets into our complexity of cognition giving us degrees of freedom. A
>>>> bivalve only open and closes a certain way. Our forearm with various
>>>> articulations (wrist, elbow, etc) has more freedom of motion.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I am a man of limited intellect, but that makes no sense to me.
>>>
>> Dennett from his debate with Sam Harris:
>> “You want to claim that free will — the core of free will — is its denial
>> of determinism, and I made a career saying that’s not the core. In fact,
>> let me try a new line on you, because I’ve been thinking, why doesn’t he
>> see this the way I see it, and I think that the big source — the likely,
>> big source — of confusion about this is that when people think about
>> freedom, in the context of free will, they’re ignoring a very good and
>> legitimate notion of freedom, which is basically the engineering notion of
>> freedom when you talk about degrees of freedom. My wrists, my shoulder, my
>> elbow, those joints, there’s three degrees of freedom right there, and in
>> control theory it’s all about how you control the degrees of freedom. And
>> if we look around the world, some things have basically no degrees of
>> freedom, like that rock over there, and some things, like you and me, have
>> uncountably many degrees of freedom because of the versatility of our
>> minds; the capacity that we can be moved by reasons on any topic at all —
>> this gives us a complexity from the point of view of control theory, which
>> is completely absent in any other creature. And that kind of freedom is
>> actually, I claim, at the heart of our understanding of free will because
>> it’s that complexity, which is not just complexity, but it’s the competence
>> to control that complexity — that’s what free will is. What you want, if
>> you’ve got free will, is the capacity — and it’ll never be perfect — to
>> respond to the circumstances with all the degrees of freedom you need to do
>> what you think would be really the right thing to do. You may not always do
>> the right thing, but — let’s take a dead simple case: imagine writing a
>> chess program, which, stupidly, was written wrong so that the king could
>> only move forward or back or left or right, like a rook, and it could not
>> move diagonally; and this was somehow hidden in it so that it just never
>> even considered moves, diagonal moves, by the king. Completely disabled
>> chess program, it’s missing a very important degree of freedom, which it
>> should have and be able to control and recognize when to use and so forth.
>> What you want — I mean, let me ask you a question about what would be ideal
>> from the point of view of responsibility: what does an ideal responsible
>> agent have? Is it not mainly true beliefs, a well-ordered set of desires,
>> the cognitive adroitness to change one’s attention, to change one’s mind,
>> to be moved by reasons — the capacity to listen to reasons, the capacity
>> for some self-control? These things all come in degrees, but our model of a
>> responsible adult, someone you would trust, someone you would make a
>> promise to — or that you’d accept a promise from — is someone with all
>> those degrees of freedom and control of them. Now, what removes freedom
>> from somebody is if either the degrees of freedom don’t exist — they’re
>> blocked mechanically — or some other agent has usurped them and has taken
>> over control: a marionette and a puppeteer.”
>>
>> https://medium.com/@mgmobrien/does-free-will-exist-sam-harris-and-dan-dennett-discuss-a3d54259a417
>>
>> From his early book _Elbow Room_:
>> “Suppose you buy a model airplane, a working model with a motor. You start
>> it up and off it flies, crashing into a tree. “Needs to be controlled,” you
>> mutter, and fasten long wires to one wingtip. Now you can control it,
>> making it go up and down—whichever you want, whenever you want—as it goes
>> round and round in a circle. “Not enough degrees of freedom” you mutter, so
>> you replace the wires with a wireless radio “remote control” system. Now
>> you can control the direction, height, speed, turning, diving, and banking
>> of the plane. There are many more degrees of freedom, and they are all
>> under your control, but not until you have discovered the parameters of the
>> plane’s degrees of freedom and the causal relationships between those
>> parameters and your joystick-moving acts—an epistemic problem that is often
>> not trivial and must always be solved before control can be effected.”…“One
>> can control only those states or activities of a thing that fall within the
>> range of its degrees of freedom, or in other words, within the range of
>> what it can do. (We speak of what a model airplane can do, and of its
>> degrees of freedom, but in doing this we are not attributing to it the sort
>> of agency or freedom we attribute to a moral agent, of course. Still, the
>> advanced sorts of agency and freedom certainly have the simple sorts as
>> prerequisites.”
>>
>> More recent _Freedom Evolves_: “Yes, trees can "decide" that spring has
>> come and it is time to push out the blossoms, and clams can "decide" to
>> clam up tight when they feel an alarming bump on their shells, but these
>> options are so rudimentary, so close to being simple switches, that they
>> are decisions by courtesy only. But even a simple switch, turned on and off
>> by some environmental change, marks a degree of freedom, as the engineers
>> say, and hence is something that needs to be controlled, one way or
>> another. A system has a degree of freedom when there is an ensemble of
>> possibilities of one kind or another, and which of these possibilities is
>> actual at any time depends on whatever function or switch controls this
>> degree of freedom.”
>>
>>
>>
> More words doesn't mean more sense.

You seem to want to assert your autonomy from being remote controlled by
Dennett’s words, but you should instead be reasons responsive. His points
about self-control and articulated degrees of freedom (as in the clam vs
forearm) are subtle but powerful.

I have more words. Here is a concise Dennett: “Consciousness is for
control. In engineering control theory, we talk about degrees of
freedom—how many degrees of freedom does that robot have in its arm? One or
five—each one has to be controlled.”

“A degree of freedom is an opportunity for control. You have millions of
degrees of freedom, because it’s not just “where do I put my arms now, or
my feet?” There’s “what do I think about now?” And you can think about
anything. You’re the ultimate chameleon when it comes to having degrees of
freedom, because you can think about things here, or far away in the past
and the future. You can plot schemes, write novels.”
From : https://now.tufts.edu/2020/09/02/our-brains-our-selves

And far wordier Dennett on this very thing of degrees of freedom, where
humans excel, and our deliberative self control, where maturity or
arbitrary age of majority (the Sorites problem) comes into the spotlight:

https://www.amherstlecture.org/dennett2019/dennett2019_ALP.pdf

“How many degrees of freedom in a robotic arm (in an automobile assembly
line, for instance? It depends on how many joints the arm has and how each
joint can vary. Roughly speaking, the degrees of freedom of a thing line up
pretty well with how many moving parts it has, how many different ways can
it be.”

Clam shell vs forearm. See?

“Each degree of freedom is an opportunity to control. How many degrees of
freedom in your arm for you to control? Lots.”

If I understand him correctly clamping off degrees of freedom is akin to
procedural memory allowing you to drive while more consciously mulling over
pressing matters.

Here’s a real kicker: “Autonomy is self-control as contrasted with remote
control
and with being out of control.” So free will worth wanting is the coy
evasion of manipulation by others and not going berserker by succumbing to
base impulses.

And given I do much of my information procession and knowledge gathering
with a smartphone or tablet, which aren’t the bane of existence, this
caveat is apt: “Suppose you are doing something really important and you
need to look up something on your smart phone. If you get distracted by a
YouTube link or advertisement on the screen, your string has just been
pulled. “Oh, that looks interesting,” you remark to yourself, and off you
go, abandoning, if only temporarily, your important project. Even if you
don’t bite, the people who would control you are gathering all the feedback
they can, trying to learn all about you, so that they can design a better
distractor to dangle in front of you tomorrow. (I tell my grandchildren
about anglerfish that lie in wait, dangling a little wiggly worm-lure in
front of their mouths, until snap! – their prey gets too close and becomes
lunch. There are thousands of different species of anglerfish out there, I
tell my grandchildren, and they must learn to be self-conscious about
approaching anything that looks tempting.)”

On Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at 12:28:17 AM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> DB Cates <cate...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2024-02-20 6:19 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >> DB Cates <cate...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On 2024-02-20 4:54 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >>>>
> [snip]
> >>>>
> >>>> Dennett argues for a free will worth wanting, a crane type over a skyhook.
> >>>> He gets into our complexity of cognition giving us degrees of freedom. A
> >>>> bivalve only open and closes a certain way. Our forearm with various
> >>>> articulations (wrist, elbow, etc) has more freedom of motion.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> I am a man of limited intellect, but that makes no sense to me.
> >>>
> >> Dennett from his debate with Sam Harris:
> >> “You want to claim that free will — the core of free will — is its denial
> >> of determinism, and I made a career saying that’s not the core.. In fact,
> >> let me try a new line on you, because I’ve been thinking, why doesn’t he
> >> see this the way I see it, and I think that the big source — the likely,
> >> big source — of confusion about this is that when people think about
> >> freedom, in the context of free will, they’re ignoring a very good and
> >> legitimate notion of freedom, which is basically the engineering notion of
> >> freedom when you talk about degrees of freedom. My wrists, my shoulder, my
> >> elbow, those joints, there’s three degrees of freedom right there, and in
> >> control theory it’s all about how you control the degrees of freedom. And
> >> if we look around the world, some things have basically no degrees of
> >> freedom, like that rock over there, and some things, like you and me, have
> >> uncountably many degrees of freedom because of the versatility of our
> >> minds; the capacity that we can be moved by reasons on any topic at all —
> >> this gives us a complexity from the point of view of control theory, which
> >> is completely absent in any other creature. And that kind of freedom is
> >> actually, I claim, at the heart of our understanding of free will because
> >> it’s that complexity, which is not just complexity, but it’s the competence
> >> to control that complexity — that’s what free will is. What you want, if
> >> you’ve got free will, is the capacity — and it’ll never be perfect — to
> >> respond to the circumstances with all the degrees of freedom you need to do
> >> what you think would be really the right thing to do. You may not always do
> >> the right thing, but — let’s take a dead simple case: imagine writing a
> >> chess program, which, stupidly, was written wrong so that the king could
> >> only move forward or back or left or right, like a rook, and it could not
> >> move diagonally; and this was somehow hidden in it so that it just never
> >> even considered moves, diagonal moves, by the king. Completely disabled
> >> chess program, it’s missing a very important degree of freedom, which it
> >> should have and be able to control and recognize when to use and so forth.
> >> What you want — I mean, let me ask you a question about what would be ideal
> >> from the point of view of responsibility: what does an ideal responsible
> >> agent have? Is it not mainly true beliefs, a well-ordered set of desires,
> >> the cognitive adroitness to change one’s attention, to change one’s mind,
> >> to be moved by reasons — the capacity to listen to reasons, the capacity
> >> for some self-control? These things all come in degrees, but our model of a
> >> responsible adult, someone you would trust, someone you would make a
> >> promise to — or that you’d accept a promise from — is someone with all
> >> those degrees of freedom and control of them. Now, what removes freedom
> >> from somebody is if either the degrees of freedom don’t exist — they’re
> >> blocked mechanically — or some other agent has usurped them and has taken
> >> over control: a marionette and a puppeteer.”
> >>
> >> https://medium.com/@mgmobrien/does-free-will-exist-sam-harris-and-dan-dennett-discuss-a3d54259a417
> >>
> >> From his early book _Elbow Room_:
> >> “Suppose you buy a model airplane, a working model with a motor. You start
> >> it up and off it flies, crashing into a tree. “Needs to be controlled,” you
> >> mutter, and fasten long wires to one wingtip. Now you can control it,
> >> making it go up and down—whichever you want, whenever you want—as it goes
> >> round and round in a circle. “Not enough degrees of freedom” you mutter, so
> >> you replace the wires with a wireless radio “remote control” system. Now
> >> you can control the direction, height, speed, turning, diving, and banking
> >> of the plane. There are many more degrees of freedom, and they are all
> >> under your control, but not until you have discovered the parameters of the
> >> plane’s degrees of freedom and the causal relationships between those
> >> parameters and your joystick-moving acts—an epistemic problem that is often
> >> not trivial and must always be solved before control can be effected.”…“One
> >> can control only those states or activities of a thing that fall within the
> >> range of its degrees of freedom, or in other words, within the range of
> >> what it can do. (We speak of what a model airplane can do, and of its
> >> degrees of freedom, but in doing this we are not attributing to it the sort
> >> of agency or freedom we attribute to a moral agent, of course. Still, the
> >> advanced sorts of agency and freedom certainly have the simple sorts as
> >> prerequisites.”
> >>
> >> More recent _Freedom Evolves_: “Yes, trees can "decide" that spring has
> >> come and it is time to push out the blossoms, and clams can "decide" to
> >> clam up tight when they feel an alarming bump on their shells, but these
> >> options are so rudimentary, so close to being simple switches, that they
> >> are decisions by courtesy only. But even a simple switch, turned on and off
> >> by some environmental change, marks a degree of freedom, as the engineers
> >> say, and hence is something that needs to be controlled, one way or
> >> another. A system has a degree of freedom when there is an ensemble of
> >> possibilities of one kind or another, and which of these possibilities is
> >> actual at any time depends on whatever function or switch controls this
> >> degree of freedom.”
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > More words doesn't mean more sense.
..
> You seem to want to assert your autonomy from being remote controlled by
> Dennett’s words, but you should instead be reasons responsive. His points
> about self-control and articulated degrees of freedom (as in the clam vs
> forearm) are subtle but powerful.
They seem neither subtle nor powerful to me. It's like the transition from a very
simple robot to a robot that can dance and juggle. There's an increase in feedback
circuits and sophistication but none that is usefully profound with respect to the
metaphysical sense of free will. One could build in various mechanisms to add
elements of seeming randomness to responses but they wouldn't create the sort
of free will that advocates of free will sensu opponents of determinism seem to
want. And I doubt they mind robots not having free will.

But distinguishing humans from robots is not a matter of the degree of complexity
or feedback or apparent randomness.

Sorry I probably won't have time to process your added thoughts before I'm lost
to talk.origins, like tears in the rain.

It seems to me that the free will vs determinism thing is
dualistic. That's the point of it. It's not about whether a clock is
free to tick or not to tick (because it stopped), but whether it is free
to act against its own nature. If I consider myself as a non physical
spirit within a physical body, then it's a valid question, do I have
complete freedom, or am I at the mercy of my body? But if I consider I
am a conscious entity which is an emergent property of my brain and
body, then the question doesn't really arise at all. Perhaps the only
way it can arise is if there is quantum uncertainty.

So, what I call free will is a product of the function of my brain. It's
a way of looking at it. If it is not free will can there be any such
thing as free will?

Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
> It seems to me that the free will vs determinism thing is
> dualistic. That's the point of it. It's not about whether a clock is
> free to tick or not to tick (because it stopped), but whether it is free
> to act against its own nature. If I consider myself as a non physical
> spirit within a physical body, then it's a valid question, do I have
> complete freedom, or am I at the mercy of my body? But if I consider I
> am a conscious entity which is an emergent property of my brain and
> body, then the question doesn't really arise at all. Perhaps the only
> way it can arise is if there is quantum uncertainty.
>
I don’t think at the macro level where people evaluate options and make
choices (or so they perceive) quantum anything is relevant for anything
more than a fancy buzzword. Uncertainty is at play as we have very limited
knowledge of our circumstances and ourselves. Dennett pushes for a role of
deterministic chaos as a means for being unpredictable and thus not readily
dupable by would be manipulators or puppeteers. It seems terminology is a
word chowder when people talk of uncertainty, chaos, and randomness and
adding the quantum modifier doesn’t help.
>
> So, what I call free will is a product of the function of my brain. It's
> a way of looking at it. If it is not free will can there be any such
> thing as free will?
>
The term has way too much baggage on its own given the tendency toward
kneejerk libertarianism. That’s probably why Dennett’s attempts are doomed
(ex- his debates with Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky where he gets strawed
a lot). The things he puts forward in its stead may be more apt a focus:
degrees of freedom in complex systems, self-control, Machiavellian
concealment vs conveyance, well-ordered desire hierarchy (sensu Frankfurt)…
Those are not the things people are wishing for when they invoke the term
so Dennett’s struggles fall flat. Frankly I think it reveals a lack of
grounding in the compatibilist literature and a tendency to construct
libertarian strawmen to argue against.

On 2024-02-20 11:27 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>
> DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2024-02-20 6:19 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>> DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 2024-02-20 4:54 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>>>
> [snip]
>>>>>
>>>>> Dennett argues for a free will worth wanting, a crane type over a skyhook.
>>>>> He gets into our complexity of cognition giving us degrees of freedom. A
>>>>> bivalve only open and closes a certain way. Our forearm with various
>>>>> articulations (wrist, elbow, etc) has more freedom of motion.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> I am a man of limited intellect, but that makes no sense to me.
>>>>
>>> Dennett from his debate with Sam Harris:
>>> “You want to claim that free will — the core of free will — is its denial
>>> of determinism, and I made a career saying that’s not the core. In fact,
>>> let me try a new line on you, because I’ve been thinking, why doesn’t he
>>> see this the way I see it, and I think that the big source — the likely,
>>> big source — of confusion about this is that when people think about
>>> freedom, in the context of free will, they’re ignoring a very good and
>>> legitimate notion of freedom, which is basically the engineering notion of
>>> freedom when you talk about degrees of freedom. My wrists, my shoulder, my
>>> elbow, those joints, there’s three degrees of freedom right there, and in
>>> control theory it’s all about how you control the degrees of freedom. And
>>> if we look around the world, some things have basically no degrees of
>>> freedom, like that rock over there, and some things, like you and me, have
>>> uncountably many degrees of freedom because of the versatility of our
>>> minds; the capacity that we can be moved by reasons on any topic at all —
>>> this gives us a complexity from the point of view of control theory, which
>>> is completely absent in any other creature. And that kind of freedom is
>>> actually, I claim, at the heart of our understanding of free will because
>>> it’s that complexity, which is not just complexity, but it’s the competence
>>> to control that complexity — that’s what free will is. What you want, if
>>> you’ve got free will, is the capacity — and it’ll never be perfect — to
>>> respond to the circumstances with all the degrees of freedom you need to do
>>> what you think would be really the right thing to do. You may not always do
>>> the right thing, but — let’s take a dead simple case: imagine writing a
>>> chess program, which, stupidly, was written wrong so that the king could
>>> only move forward or back or left or right, like a rook, and it could not
>>> move diagonally; and this was somehow hidden in it so that it just never
>>> even considered moves, diagonal moves, by the king. Completely disabled
>>> chess program, it’s missing a very important degree of freedom, which it
>>> should have and be able to control and recognize when to use and so forth.
>>> What you want — I mean, let me ask you a question about what would be ideal
>>> from the point of view of responsibility: what does an ideal responsible
>>> agent have? Is it not mainly true beliefs, a well-ordered set of desires,
>>> the cognitive adroitness to change one’s attention, to change one’s mind,
>>> to be moved by reasons — the capacity to listen to reasons, the capacity
>>> for some self-control? These things all come in degrees, but our model of a
>>> responsible adult, someone you would trust, someone you would make a
>>> promise to — or that you’d accept a promise from — is someone with all
>>> those degrees of freedom and control of them. Now, what removes freedom
>>> from somebody is if either the degrees of freedom don’t exist — they’re
>>> blocked mechanically — or some other agent has usurped them and has taken
>>> over control: a marionette and a puppeteer.”
>>>
>>> https://medium.com/@mgmobrien/does-free-will-exist-sam-harris-and-dan-dennett-discuss-a3d54259a417
>>>
>>> From his early book _Elbow Room_:
>>> “Suppose you buy a model airplane, a working model with a motor. You start
>>> it up and off it flies, crashing into a tree. “Needs to be controlled,” you
>>> mutter, and fasten long wires to one wingtip. Now you can control it,
>>> making it go up and down—whichever you want, whenever you want—as it goes
>>> round and round in a circle. “Not enough degrees of freedom” you mutter, so
>>> you replace the wires with a wireless radio “remote control” system. Now
>>> you can control the direction, height, speed, turning, diving, and banking
>>> of the plane. There are many more degrees of freedom, and they are all
>>> under your control, but not until you have discovered the parameters of the
>>> plane’s degrees of freedom and the causal relationships between those
>>> parameters and your joystick-moving acts—an epistemic problem that is often
>>> not trivial and must always be solved before control can be effected.”…“One
>>> can control only those states or activities of a thing that fall within the
>>> range of its degrees of freedom, or in other words, within the range of
>>> what it can do. (We speak of what a model airplane can do, and of its
>>> degrees of freedom, but in doing this we are not attributing to it the sort
>>> of agency or freedom we attribute to a moral agent, of course. Still, the
>>> advanced sorts of agency and freedom certainly have the simple sorts as
>>> prerequisites.”
>>>
>>> More recent _Freedom Evolves_: “Yes, trees can "decide" that spring has
>>> come and it is time to push out the blossoms, and clams can "decide" to
>>> clam up tight when they feel an alarming bump on their shells, but these
>>> options are so rudimentary, so close to being simple switches, that they
>>> are decisions by courtesy only. But even a simple switch, turned on and off
>>> by some environmental change, marks a degree of freedom, as the engineers
>>> say, and hence is something that needs to be controlled, one way or
>>> another. A system has a degree of freedom when there is an ensemble of
>>> possibilities of one kind or another, and which of these possibilities is
>>> actual at any time depends on whatever function or switch controls this
>>> degree of freedom.”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> More words doesn't mean more sense.
>
okay, overly glib.

> You seem to want to assert your autonomy from being remote controlled by
> Dennett’s words, but you should instead be reasons responsive.

Excuse me? I thought I have made it very clear that the exposure,
through you, to his words is part of the circumstances determining my
responses. (The glib sentence)

His points
> about self-control and articulated degrees of freedom (as in the clam vs
> forearm) are subtle but powerful.

I disagree. He doesn't seem to know what 'degrees of freedom' from an
engineering perspective are. The shoulder; forward/back, up/down,
rotate; three degrees of freedom. the elbow (forearm; elbow to wrist);
up/down, rotate; two degrees of freedom (clamshell; open/close; one
degree of freedom). Wrist; left/right (a variation of forward/back),
up/down; two degrees of freedom.
He also doesn't mention an important control consideration, the *range*
within those degrees of freedom.
>
> I have more words. Here is a concise Dennett: “Consciousness is for
> control. In engineering control theory, we talk about degrees of
> freedom—how many degrees of freedom does that robot have in its arm? One or
> five—each one has to be controlled.”

It's not explicit, but I get the impression that he has become enamoured
by the word "free" in 'degrees of freedom' and that it is somehow
connected to "free" in 'free will'.

The rest seems to be a repeated assumption that 'control' is an aspect
of free will. The more complex the control, the more likely free will is
involved. And I see nothing to support that assumption.

>
> “A degree of freedom is an opportunity for control. You have millions of
> degrees of freedom, because it’s not just “where do I put my arms now, or
> my feet?” There’s “what do I think about now?” And you can think about
> anything. You’re the ultimate chameleon when it comes to having degrees of
> freedom, because you can think about things here, or far away in the past
> and the future. You can plot schemes, write novels.”
> From : https://now.tufts.edu/2020/09/02/our-brains-our-selves
>
> And far wordier Dennett on this very thing of degrees of freedom, where
> humans excel, and our deliberative self control, where maturity or
> arbitrary age of majority (the Sorites problem) comes into the spotlight:
>
> https://www.amherstlecture.org/dennett2019/dennett2019_ALP.pdf
>
> “How many degrees of freedom in a robotic arm (in an automobile assembly
> line, for instance? It depends on how many joints the arm has and how each
> joint can vary. Roughly speaking, the degrees of freedom of a thing line up
> pretty well with how many moving parts it has, how many different ways can
> it be.”
>
> Clam shell vs forearm. See?
>
> “Each degree of freedom is an opportunity to control. How many degrees of
> freedom in your arm for you to control? Lots.”
>
> If I understand him correctly clamping off degrees of freedom is akin to
> procedural memory allowing you to drive while more consciously mulling over
> pressing matters.
>
> Here’s a real kicker: “Autonomy is self-control as contrasted with remote
> control
> and with being out of control.” So free will worth wanting is the coy
> evasion of manipulation by others and not going berserker by succumbing to
> base impulses.

On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 16:51:05 +0000, Martin Harran
<martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:49:29 -0800 (PST), Lawyer Daggett
><j.nobel.daggett@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 5:18:15?AM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:
>> . . .
>>> I think we all find it very difficult because, as I observed earlier,
>>> free will is one of those areas of life (including life itself) which
>>> are impossible to define precisely and we have to settle for
>>> describing various characteristics in different ways. In debating
>>> this, we are essentially debating philosophically rather than
>>> scientifically so it is little wonder that we so often end up going
>>> round in circles :)
>>
>>Frankly, you're ask convincing as Ron Dean arguing for a designer.
>
>Ron Dean regularly dismisses scientific evidence. Please give an
>example of where I have dismissed scientific evidence either here or
>in any discussion.
>
>[snip for focus]

So, you have nothing to offer. It saddens me that a poster for whom I
have had very high regard should sully his final days here with a
petulant ad hominem :(

On 2/16/24 8:04 PM, DB Cates wrote:
>
> I've also considered one argument, not so much for free will but against
> no free will, that should some entity commit act X then if there is no
> free will involved then that entity should not attract any praise or
> condemnation or anything in between from anyone else since they were not
> 'responsible' for X. But the huge long mesh of incidents leading to X
> happening also led to the existence of that entity. So even though I
> free will to be an illusion, I have no moral qualms about judging that
> entity based on X. (Of course, I would have done so anyway without this
> examination... hmmmm, or would I?)

The tack I take on this subject is to unlink blame from responsibility.
People can be responsible for actions that they are not to blame for,
indeed, that they didn't even do. For example, a father and young son
are playing catch in their back yard. Son throws wildly and breaks a
neighbor's window. Father is responsible for replacing the window, even
though no (or at most very little) blame incurs upon him.

If I don't have free will when I rob the liquor store, I am still
responsible for the consequences. Moral guilt need not enter the picture
at all.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

On 2/17/24 1:53 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2024 09:53:50 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2024-02-16 4:03 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 13:48:14 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
>>> <brogers31751@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thursday, February 15, 2024 at 4:43:12?PM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 12:19:13 -0800, Mark Isaak
>>>>> <specime...@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Lacking any creationism subjects to argue about, I bring up something
>>>>>> arguably off topic, but on a topic which comes up here plenty of times
>>>>>> anyway.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What is the difference between having free will and not having free will?
>>>>> I posted this earlier today in a response to Burkhard in the
>>>>> 'Masterclass' thread but I think it's worth repeating here. Benjamin
>>>>> Libet (he of the famous experiments):
>>>>>
>>>>> "The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to initiate a
>>>>> voluntary act, but rather to control occurrences of the act. We may
>>>>> view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as "bubbling
>>>>> up" in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these
>>>>> initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto and
>>>>> abort, with no act appearing.
>>>>>
>>>>> This kind of role for free will is actually in accord with religious
>>>>> and ethical strictures, which commonly advocate that you "control
>>>>> yourself" Most of the Ten Commandments are "do not" orders."
>>>>>
>>>>> That hits the spot for me - free will is the ability to decide not to
>>>>> do something that our instincts want us to do or decide to do
>>>>> something that our instincts don't want us to do.
>>>>>
>>>>> The absence of free will would be us just following our instincts.
>>>> So you are free to the extent that you go against your natural inclinations. Is that what you mean?
>>>
>>> I don't like your "to the extent that" qualifier. I think that free
>>> will is one of those things that is difficult if not impossible to
>>> *define* in simple terms but whose characteristics can be *described*.
>>> What I have given above is a description, not a definition; it is one
>>> of many possible descriptions but I think it does capture a key
>>> characteristic.
>>>
>> Can you come up with a definition of 'instinctive reaction' that can't
>> be applied to whatever action you actually do?
>
> Definitions are tricky but examples are easy e.g. I'm under some
> financial strain. Walking down the street, I see a $50 bill falling
> unnoticed from the pocket of a rich-looking guy walking in front of
> me. There is nobody around to see what is happening. Lifting the bill
> and putting it into my own pocket would be an instinctive reaction.
> Calling out "Hi mister, you've just dropped $50" would not be
> instinctive.

I was once in such a position. I saw someone 10 meters or so ahead of me
reach into his back pocket (putting something else in it, I think), and
when his hand came out, his wallet fell to the ground, and he kept
walking. I picked up the wall and ran after him to give it back. It
occurred to me later that I did so without consciously making a decision
to do so.

I was not under financial strain at the time, but neither was I anywhere
close to wealthy.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

On 2/20/24 8:54 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:39:53 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
> <brogers31751@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 5:18:15?AM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> On Sun, 18 Feb 2024 18:37:24 -0600, DB Cates <cate...@hotmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>>>
>>>> Sigh, I find it very difficult to fully express my thought on this
>>>> subject.
>>> I think we all find it very difficult because, as I observed earlier,
>>> free will is one of those areas of life (including life itself) which
>>> are impossible to define precisely and we have to settle for
>>> describing various characteristics in different ways. In debating
>>> this, we are essentially debating philosophically rather than
>>> scientifically so it is little wonder that we so often end up going
>>> round in circles :)
>>
>> For all the difficulty in defining free will, I still think it useful to make the attempt. Otherwise you greatly increase the likelihood of going round in circles or talking to yourself.
>
> A definition comes from consensus. Several people have tried to define
> free will here but I don't see any real consensus on anything that
> would amount to a definition. I don't think that the absence of an
> agreed definition prohibits discussion that is at least interesting if
> not informative.

An important point I once heard a lecturer make is that there are
different kinds of definitions for different purposes. The most common
is categorization for universal communication (e.g., _Danaus plexippus_
refers to any butterfly in the species which matches this type
specimen), but there are other kinds of definitions as well. One of
those is clarification for how *you* intend the term in a narrower
context (e.g., "client" in this contract refers to ACME Amalgamated Inc.).

"Free will", it seems to me, can be defined such that its existence is
trivially true: Free will is the ability to make choices. The definition
you use (as I understand) adds "non-instinctive" in there -- less
trivial, but still close to obvious. Another definition I just pulled
from a dictionary, "the power of acting without the constraint of
necessity or fate", is what I had in mind when I began this thread, and
the existence of free will by that definition is nowhere near as clear-cut.

So my question becomes, How does acting without constraint of necessity
differ from acting with constraint of necessity? An easy answer is that
acting without constraint is easy sailing, whereas acting with
constraint means you have to open doors before you pass through them,
and perhaps even unlock them. But that is a simplistic answer. How do
you know that going through the open door was a free choice in the first
place, and not determined by a combination of instinct, learning, and
environmental factors that made the choice inevitable?

Here I see potential for a definitional problem again. If the factors
determining my decision include my learning, then I am, at least partly,
making the choice. But it may be that my learning has been wholly
deterministic, too. In which case, I would say, my making choices does
not mean I have free will.

Incidentally, I must apologize for beginning this thread shortly before
other life events (constraint of necessity) prevented me from having
time to participate in it. It appears, though, that y'all have had fun
without me.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

On 2/16/24 2:29 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 18:19:51 -0800, Mark Isaak
> <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>> But what about someone who learns a habit and then has to
>> struggle mightily to break that habit?
>
> I can't see your issue with that. A habit is our body in control of
> what we do; deciding to break the habit is an exercise of free will.
> For example, I started smoking when I was 16 - that was a free will
> decision, nobody or nothing forced me. Nicotine then took charge and
> my body demanded a regular supply for the next forty years. After
> those 40 years, I made a decision to quit. My body didn't like that
> decision at all and there was an ensuing battle for quite some time
> between my mind and my body. Seventeen years later, that battle has
> still not entirely abated, I still get the occasional yearning for a
> cigarette or cigar.

Smoking is a good example. There are millions of people who sincerely
want to give up smoking and can't. Where is their free will?

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

On 2/17/24 3:14 PM, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Feb 2024 10:43:44 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2024-02-17 3:45 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> On Fri, 16 Feb 2024 09:59:40 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2024-02-16 4:31 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 20:54:05 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 2024-02-15 3:41 PM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 12:19:13 -0800, Mark Isaak
>>>>>>> <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Lacking any creationism subjects to argue about, I bring up something
>>>>>>>> arguably off topic, but on a topic which comes up here plenty of times
>>>>>>>> anyway.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> What is the difference between having free will and not having free will?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I posted this earlier today in a response to Burkhard in the
>>>>>>> 'Masterclass' thread but I think it's worth repeating here. Benjamin
>>>>>>> Libet (he of the famous experiments):
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to initiate a
>>>>>>> voluntary act, but rather to control occurrences of the act. We may
>>>>>>> view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as "bubbling
>>>>>>> up" in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these
>>>>>>> initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto and
>>>>>>> abort, with no act appearing.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This kind of role for free will is actually in accord with religious
>>>>>>> and ethical strictures, which commonly advocate that you "control
>>>>>>> yourself" Most of the Ten Commandments are "do not" orders."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> That hits the spot for me - free will is the ability to decide not to
>>>>>>> do something that our instincts want us to do or decide to do
>>>>>>> something that our instincts don't want us to do.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The absence of free will would be us just following our instincts.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> And how would one determine otherwise? I'm really having difficulty
>>>>>> coming up with any way of distinguishing the free will/no free will
>>>>>> positions. At least the 'no free will' position doesn't screw up physics.
>>>>>> --
>>>>> There is a whiff of scientism about that final remark!
>>>>>
>>>> Being a hidebound materialist I plead guilty. Let me rephrase that last
>>>> sentence.
>>>> At least the 'no free will' position doesn't have the potential to screw
>>>> up physics.
>>>
>>> Do you think it doesn't matter if it screws up things beyond physics
>>> e.g. with the legal/penal system by punishing people for something
>>> over which they had no control?
>>>
>> Interesting. I actually addressed some of this in a different post last
>> night. Now, the legal/penal system is not supposed to be 'punishment'
>> (I'll get to what it mostly appears to me to be later) but protection of
>> society and rehabilitation. Where this idea has been properly funded and
>> implemented, it appears to work fairly well; and is not properly
>> construed as 'punishment'. I think this position is compatible with both
>> 'free will' and 'determinism'.
>> What it appears to be in most places is that protection of society thing
>> (actually protection of the status quo) as cheaply as possible and
>> avoiding all that expensive rehabilitation thing. If someone makes a
>> shitton of money as well... well that's a bonus.
>
> A man murders his wife in a fit of temper after discovering she has
> had an affair. He is extremely remorseful so there is no real need for
> any rehabilitation. This is the only time in his life that he is known
> to have been violent, the police believe that this was a once-off
> event between two specific individuals and the husband is no threat to
> the general public. Do you think he should not be sent to jail?

The best predictor of a behavior is having engaged in that behavior in
the past. If his temper were such that it could lead to murder once, and
he has not since then learned ways to control it, it is still a problem.
That said, any sentence the man receives should consist mainly of anger
control instruction.

The main deterrent to most crimes is societal norms. Enforcing jail
terms on criminals, I think, helps strengthen those norms. Making such
jail terms long or harsh, I think, does not.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

On 2/18/24 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Feb 2024 21:23:51 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2024-02-17 5:14 PM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> A man murders his wife in a fit of temper after discovering she has
>>> had an affair. He is extremely remorseful so there is no real need for
>>> any rehabilitation. This is the only time in his life that he is known
>>> to have been violent, the police believe that this was a once-off
>>> event between two specific individuals and the husband is no threat to
>>> the general public. Do you think he should not be sent to jail?
>>>
>> [new followup]
>>
>> OH. oh. can I make up a hypothetical? Here goes.
>> After a big breakthrough in quantum computing a group gets an obscenely
>> large grant that simulates a pair of real people who are kept in a
>> highly controlled environment. Single environmental changes are
>> introduced and their responses are closely monitored. The simulation
>> predicts their responses with a very high degree of accuracy.
>> Is your faith in free will shaken?
>
> I'm not a big fan of drawing conclusions from thought experiments that
> have no possibility of being carried out in real life. The nearest
> thing to real life that I can think of is the Stanley Milgram
> experiments but I don't think that those really have much impact on
> the free-will debate. They just show that many people are too easily
> manipulated into abandoning their own judgement and placing their
> trust in authority figures.

Not just Milgram's experiments. Another set of classic experiments (by
Arp, IIRC) found that people almost always decided that an obviously
shorter line was longest if everyone else in the room said it was.
Another set found that people are much more likely to intervene in a
theft if they are simply asked politely beforehand to "keep and eye on
my things." Other experiments found that people are unlikely to
intervene is another bystander does not. Etc., etc., etc. People can be
manipulated in all sorts of ways. That's why there is an advertising
industry, among other things.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

On 18/02/2024 17:25, DB Cates wrote:
> On 2024-02-18 6:48 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>> On 18/02/2024 03:23, DB Cates wrote:
>>> On 2024-02-17 5:14 PM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 17 Feb 2024 10:43:44 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2024-02-17 3:45 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>> On Fri, 16 Feb 2024 09:59:40 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 2024-02-16 4:31 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 20:54:05 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On 2024-02-15 3:41 PM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 12:19:13 -0800, Mark Isaak
>>>>>>>>>> <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Lacking any creationism subjects to argue about, I bring up
>>>>>>>>>>> something
>>>>>>>>>>> arguably off topic, but on a topic which comes up here plenty
>>>>>>>>>>> of times
>>>>>>>>>>> anyway.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> What is the difference between having free will and not
>>>>>>>>>>> having free will?
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I posted this earlier today in a response to Burkhard in the
>>>>>>>>>> 'Masterclass' thread but I think it's worth repeating here.
>>>>>>>>>> Benjamin
>>>>>>>>>> Libet (he of the famous experiments):
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> "The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to
>>>>>>>>>> initiate a
>>>>>>>>>> voluntary act, but rather to control occurrences of the act.
>>>>>>>>>> We may
>>>>>>>>>> view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as
>>>>>>>>>> "bubbling
>>>>>>>>>> up" in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these
>>>>>>>>>> initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto and
>>>>>>>>>> abort, with no act appearing.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> This kind of role for free will is actually in accord with
>>>>>>>>>> religious
>>>>>>>>>> and ethical strictures, which commonly advocate that you "control
>>>>>>>>>> yourself" Most of the Ten Commandments are "do not" orders."
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> That hits the spot for me - free will is the ability to decide
>>>>>>>>>> not to
>>>>>>>>>> do something that our instincts want us to do or decide to do
>>>>>>>>>> something that our instincts don't want us to do.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> The absence of free will would be us just following our
>>>>>>>>>> instincts.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> And how would one determine otherwise? I'm really having
>>>>>>>>> difficulty
>>>>>>>>> coming up with any way of distinguishing the free will/no free
>>>>>>>>> will
>>>>>>>>> positions. At least the 'no free will' position doesn't screw
>>>>>>>>> up physics.
>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> There is a whiff of scientism about that final remark!
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Being a hidebound materialist I plead guilty. Let me rephrase
>>>>>>> that last
>>>>>>> sentence.
>>>>>>> At least the 'no free will' position doesn't have the potential
>>>>>>> to screw
>>>>>>> up physics.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do you think it doesn't matter if it screws up things beyond physics
>>>>>> e.g. with the legal/penal system by punishing people for something
>>>>>> over which they had no control?
>>>>>>
>>>>> Interesting. I actually addressed some of this in a different post
>>>>> last
>>>>> night. Now, the legal/penal system is not supposed to be 'punishment'
>>>>> (I'll get to what it mostly appears to me to be later) but
>>>>> protection of
>>>>> society and rehabilitation. Where this idea has been properly
>>>>> funded and
>>>>> implemented, it appears to work fairly well; and is not properly
>>>>> construed as 'punishment'. I think this position is compatible with
>>>>> both
>>>>> 'free will' and 'determinism'.
>>>>> What it appears to be in most places is that protection of society
>>>>> thing
>>>>> (actually protection of the status quo) as cheaply as possible and
>>>>> avoiding all that expensive rehabilitation thing. If someone makes a
>>>>> shitton of money as well... well that's a bonus.
>>>>
>>>> A man murders his wife in a fit of temper after discovering she has
>>>> had an affair. He is extremely remorseful so there is no real need for
>>>> any rehabilitation. This is the only time in his life that he is known
>>>> to have been violent, the police believe that this was a once-off
>>>> event between two specific individuals and the husband is no threat to
>>>> the general public. Do you think he should not be sent to jail?
>>>>
>>> [new followup]
>>>
>>> OH. oh. can I make up a hypothetical? Here goes.
>>> After a big breakthrough in quantum computing a group gets an
>>> obscenely large grant that simulates a pair of real people who are
>>> kept in a highly controlled environment. Single environmental changes
>>> are introduced and their responses are closely monitored. The
>>> simulation predicts their responses with a very high degree of accuracy.
>>> Is your faith in free will shaken?
>>
>> I assume you mean that in the experiment
>> there are two real people, and also there
>> is a separate simulation of the people
>> in that situation.
>>
>> It's a problem for the argument that you
>> mention "quantum computing", because it's
>> possible to use that to claim that you
>> have merely recreated free will in a
>> quantum computer.
>>
> In that case, surely it would give different results, not the same.

But what if the real people behave deterministically
but the computer simulated people don't?

On 2024-02-26 4:16 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> On 18/02/2024 17:25, DB Cates wrote:
>> On 2024-02-18 6:48 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>> On 18/02/2024 03:23, DB Cates wrote:
>>>> On 2024-02-17 5:14 PM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>> On Sat, 17 Feb 2024 10:43:44 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 2024-02-17 3:45 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>> On Fri, 16 Feb 2024 09:59:40 -0600, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 2024-02-16 4:31 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 20:54:05 -0600, DB Cates
>>>>>>>>> <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On 2024-02-15 3:41 PM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 12:19:13 -0800, Mark Isaak
>>>>>>>>>>> <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Lacking any creationism subjects to argue about, I bring up
>>>>>>>>>>>> something
>>>>>>>>>>>> arguably off topic, but on a topic which comes up here
>>>>>>>>>>>> plenty of times
>>>>>>>>>>>> anyway.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> What is the difference between having free will and not
>>>>>>>>>>>> having free will?
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I posted this earlier today in a response to Burkhard in the
>>>>>>>>>>> 'Masterclass' thread but I think it's worth repeating here.
>>>>>>>>>>> Benjamin
>>>>>>>>>>> Libet (he of the famous experiments):
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> "The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to
>>>>>>>>>>> initiate a
>>>>>>>>>>> voluntary act, but rather to control occurrences of the act.
>>>>>>>>>>> We may
>>>>>>>>>>> view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as
>>>>>>>>>>> "bubbling
>>>>>>>>>>> up" in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these
>>>>>>>>>>> initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto
>>>>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>>>>> abort, with no act appearing.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> This kind of role for free will is actually in accord with
>>>>>>>>>>> religious
>>>>>>>>>>> and ethical strictures, which commonly advocate that you
>>>>>>>>>>> "control
>>>>>>>>>>> yourself" Most of the Ten Commandments are "do not" orders."
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> That hits the spot for me - free will is the ability to
>>>>>>>>>>> decide not to
>>>>>>>>>>> do something that our instincts want us to do or decide to do
>>>>>>>>>>> something that our instincts don't want us to do.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> The absence of free will would be us just following our
>>>>>>>>>>> instincts.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> And how would one determine otherwise? I'm really having
>>>>>>>>>> difficulty
>>>>>>>>>> coming up with any way of distinguishing the free will/no free
>>>>>>>>>> will
>>>>>>>>>> positions. At least the 'no free will' position doesn't screw
>>>>>>>>>> up physics.
>>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>> There is a whiff of scientism about that final remark!
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Being a hidebound materialist I plead guilty. Let me rephrase
>>>>>>>> that last
>>>>>>>> sentence.
>>>>>>>> At least the 'no free will' position doesn't have the potential
>>>>>>>> to screw
>>>>>>>> up physics.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Do you think it doesn't matter if it screws up things beyond physics
>>>>>>> e.g. with the legal/penal system by punishing people for something
>>>>>>> over which they had no control?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Interesting. I actually addressed some of this in a different post
>>>>>> last
>>>>>> night. Now, the legal/penal system is not supposed to be 'punishment'
>>>>>> (I'll get to what it mostly appears to me to be later) but
>>>>>> protection of
>>>>>> society and rehabilitation. Where this idea has been properly
>>>>>> funded and
>>>>>> implemented, it appears to work fairly well; and is not properly
>>>>>> construed as 'punishment'. I think this position is compatible
>>>>>> with both
>>>>>> 'free will' and 'determinism'.
>>>>>> What it appears to be in most places is that protection of society
>>>>>> thing
>>>>>> (actually protection of the status quo) as cheaply as possible and
>>>>>> avoiding all that expensive rehabilitation thing. If someone makes a
>>>>>> shitton of money as well... well that's a bonus.
>>>>>
>>>>> A man murders his wife in a fit of temper after discovering she has
>>>>> had an affair. He is extremely remorseful so there is no real need for
>>>>> any rehabilitation. This is the only time in his life that he is known
>>>>> to have been violent, the police believe that this was a once-off
>>>>> event between two specific individuals and the husband is no threat to
>>>>> the general public. Do you think he should not be sent to jail?
>>>>>
>>>> [new followup]
>>>>
>>>> OH. oh. can I make up a hypothetical? Here goes.
>>>> After a big breakthrough in quantum computing a group gets an
>>>> obscenely large grant that simulates a pair of real people who are
>>>> kept in a highly controlled environment. Single environmental
>>>> changes are introduced and their responses are closely monitored.
>>>> The simulation predicts their responses with a very high degree of
>>>> accuracy.
>>>> Is your faith in free will shaken?
>>>
>>> I assume you mean that in the experiment
>>> there are two real people, and also there
>>> is a separate simulation of the people
>>> in that situation.
>>>
>>> It's a problem for the argument that you
>>> mention "quantum computing", because it's
>>> possible to use that to claim that you
>>> have merely recreated free will in a
>>> quantum computer.
>>>
>> In that case, surely it would give different results, not the same.
>
> But what if the real people behave deterministically
> but the computer simulated people don't?
>
Remember, in my hypothetical the real and simulated people respond to
the same change in their environment the same way almost all the time.
The map is not the territory and it would be impossible to make the
simulation 100% exact so i would expect the simulation to drift away
from accuracy without some occasional resetting of the parameters.
If you conclude that the real people behave deterministically (with some
random drift; not free will) then my job here is done!
If the simulation is not deterministic in the same way (it has free
will?; lots of random variation?) then it is a puzzle that its behaviour
so closely tracks the deterministic behaviour (my scenario, remember)
Possible I suppose but frankly, ridiculous.
--
--
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)