Yeah, the whole free-will/predestination thing gives me the willies, so, whatever Bryan Ekers does, I do the opposite.
I have to agree with Apos. The concept of free will is really hard to pin down. We have some intuitive sense of making a free choice but I can’t think of any way of defining it intellectually. Before we can discuss whether free will exists we need to know what on earth it means. Does anyone know how philosophy textbooks define it?
Nonsense. This statement has precisely nothing to do with what I said. What I said was that if the choice is determined by something not under my control: i.e. not determined by me, then it’s not my choice at all. We are talking about the ACTUAL process of “determining” here. Either that process is ruled by causal chain from the sort of being I am to what I choose in a given situation, or the choice is not ultimately connected to me. That’s the same utterly regardless of whether someone created me so that I would, causally, choose a particular way. Just because someone decided how I would choose does not mean that I am not the one carrying out the act of choosing. I am, and it is most certainly my choice, because I made it.
Why not? There is an entity. It can recognize a number of different options. It can then choose among them, using whatever criteria it has concerning those sorts of choices. How is this different than what we do when we make a choice? I’m not saying that there might not be a difference: but if you think there is, WHAT IS IT?
Actually, as I said, we have pretty good reason to believe that the experience of thoughts DON’T cause actions, as well as pretty strong evidence that brain activty, whether it has any connection to thoughts at all, does cause action.
Apos
My point was the ‘me’ cannot be taken for granted, other wise it’s trivial. Prerequisite to the question of free will is who has it, if anyone.
Bull.
If you know it’s not your choice, it’s not your choice. If you don’t know one way or the other, then it’s possible you’re being deceived.
The difference is the automaton doesn’t “know” it’s making a choice, that IT is something that makes choices. It’s not ‘self’ aware.
Plus you don’t know if you make choices or if things just happen. For all I know the actions that are called ‘me’ are no different then the actions of a volcano.
You have yet to explain what “it” is, so how can we go about determining who has “it” and who doesn’t?
Do you have a crunkle fisted snorklax in your pocket?
Is there an argument here, or is this bold assertion week? If it is a choice that I came to, using whatever deciding compents that “I” have, then what does it matter that those components are set up in one particular way or another? No matter what, they have to be set up in SOME way, and the fact that someone thoughtfully set them vs. them just being that way by chance has no bearing on whether or not it’s “my” choice.
If you want to argue the point further, you MUST be willing to defend some theory of what making a choice actually involves, in a programatic way.
How would you know this? And what does it matter? Let’s say that I’ve made an automaton of sufficient complexity that it is aware of itself? So what? What does that change?
And yet, either way, they are certianly “your” choices, unless you are willing to deny that there is any such thing as “you” at all.
Apos
“it” is yet to be defnied, but more fundamental is defnining, “ I” or “ self” or whatever owns or relates to this “ it “
Yes, it gets down to. What is a choice?
We don’t know whether it’s self aware anymore then we know other human are self aware, but we can make a reasonable guess. A toaster isn’t self aware in the ususal sense of the word.
Sans self awareness, the automaton doesn’t know it’s an automaton, in fact it does ‘know’ anything. It is only an aware observer that can determine whether or not it did anything. Left alone in a room it cannot be said to make any choices or done anything for there is no one there for its actions have meaning to. Like humans it’s dependent on being observed for its existence, but cannot provide that observation its ‘self’, for there is no ‘self’. The difference is you wouldn’t know any differnce, it’s like being nothing.
For the autonmaton there is no “my” choice.
Well that’s the question isn’t it? For the automaiiiton there is no “you”, me, them, they, us, I or whatever.
According to the automaton there is no ‘me’, there is no “according to the automaton. There is no “ it “ to have, own, possess etc. a choice.
The differnece awareness makes is that something exists. No awareness no difference.
Okay, for all you “there is no free will” people out there, I have an experiment for you.
Tomorrow, I want you to buy a quick-pick lottery ticket, where the machine picks the numbers for you. After you purchase it, I want you to tear it up and throw it away in the store. If there is no obvious garbage can, ask the clerk to throw it out for you. You must do this without looking at the numbers you are given, so that you will not be able to then repurchase the same ticket.
This is an act that is highly abnormal, and not a learned pattern response behavior. It will require you to make an active choice, because the desire to hang on to a lottery ticket and see if it wins is fairly strong.
If you cannot do it, then you do not have free will.
What would that prove, Ellis? Those who followed your instructions would be following your instructions. Those who didn’t wouldn’t. Some people are more prone to suggestion than others. QED.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ellis Dee *
obvious garbage can, ask the clerk to throw it out for you. You must do this without looking at the numbers you are given, so that you will not be able to then repurchase the same ticket.
If you cannot do it, then you do not have free will.
[QUOTE]
If anybody does what you tell them to, they have no free will. Instead, they are still automata, merely following the instructions of others.
Oddly enough, that’s essentially what I did about two years ago, on the same situation. Helped that we were hanging outside the 7-11. I’m willing to believe that, insofar as our actions and reflexes, we are highly culturally conditioned, excepting that some of us have more switching options than others. You train your mind, you think more and more widely. Go fig. Where’s the surprise?
It doesn’t matter if we live within a deterministic universe or not, at least from any possible perspective within the universe. Either way, our models of the universe will be necessarily incomplete, and as a result, our predictions will have an irreducible uncertainty to them. There’s no way we can ever know whether a given event was deterministic or nondeterministic.
This means that God can’t know the future perfectly either. Unless He’s not part of the universe, in which case He doesn’t exist, in which case it doesn’t matter.
Have a nice day.
Actually, no. Assuming one thinks about it and makes the choice in full knowledge o the consequences, one could only be making a choice. No matter what you do, you are either electing to follow Ellis’s idea or electing to read the ticket; or simply giving it to someone else.
Let me guess,…because of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem?
Is there no cause on the altar of which you won’t shamelessly sacrifice this dessicated morsel of esoterica? <would insert smiley if I did that sort of thing>
I can know whatever it is designed to know. It can know as much about itself and it’s values and the implications of its actions as we do.
I don’t understand what you are saying? Are you sure you do? I can’t see what awareness has to do with anything.
What about us “free will is an unintelligible concept” people?
I don’t understand the point of your experiment. What does it demonstrate, and how?
Apos
That’s not the point. You were arguing that the automaton would be making a choice, not that you can know what its actions are.
If the automaton is not self aware it doesn’t know it’s choosing, it doesn’t know anything. Hence, “making a choice” doesn’t exist for the automaton.
I am saying without awareness nothing is known to exist. The automaton has NO experiences.
As Thomas Nagel as said, “consciousness is what it’s like to be something”
Here’s an interesting essay of Nagel’s,
banditActually, no. Assuming one thinks about it and makes the choice in full knowledge o the consequences, one could only be making a choice.
[/quote]
Actually, yes. You are backwards reasoning. You actually do something or don’t, and then reason that you made a “choice”. This later element is unnecessary in explaining the phenomenon.
My opinion is similar to Apos i think. Unless i am misunderstanding him anyway!
Free will is a meaningless concept. Not only because the concept is nebulous and difficult to define. But also because there is no possible way to tell if something has free will. If it is not possible to detect something then it has no effect on our reality. If it has no effect on our reality then for all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist.
what do you mean by self-aware? what is this self you are aware of? and why are you aware of it when you’re so sure the automaton can’t be?
does the thermostat not choose to turn off the heat when it realizes the temperature in the room is too warm? if not, why not?
your definition of “choice” (though i’m not entirely sure what it is–perhaps you could clarify) seems fairly arbitrary.
** No, actually, it’s the other way around: Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem because no map can describe the territory.
