I am a compatibilist. Free will necessitates determinism. It makes
people choosing to do what their want, notably when choosing between
alternatives. But they cannot choose what they want. This depends on
many factors.
Free will is a high level phenomenon. Adding indeterminacy is
irrelevant, concerning free-will. Adding indeterminacy in a choice can
only lessen the freeness of the will.
Cashmore demolishes a naive notion of free-will which makes no sense
at the start. We can do freely actions, even when our friends who know
us can predict the action. Free will is the ability to choose, among
alternatives, in gneral with incomplete information, the actions which
maximize some self-satisfiability constraints. It is self-determination.
Bruno
On 11 Mar 2010, at 22:26, m.a. wrote:
Bruno and John,
The confusion is my fault. I copied the
URL from a Kurzweil page heading when I should have gone to the
article itself, so the wrong feature appeared. This is the one I
requested comments about:
http://www.physorg.com/news186830615.html
(Excerpts)
PhysOrg.com) -- When biologist Anthony Cashmore claims that the
concept of free will is an illusion, he's not breaking any new
ground. At least as far back as the ancient Greeks, people have
wondered how humans seem to have the ability to make their own
personal decisions in a manner lacking any causal component other
than their desire to "will" something. But Cashmore, Professor of
Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, says that many biologists
today still cling to the idea of free will, and reject the idea that
we are simply conscious machines, completely controlled by a
combination of our chemistry and external environmental forces.
To put it simply, free will just doesn’t fit with how the physical
world works. Cashmore compares a belief in free will to an earlier
belief in vitalism - the belief that there are forces governing the
biological world that are distinct from those governing the physical
world. Vitalism was discarded more than 100 years ago, being
replaced with evidence that biological systems obey the laws of
chemistry and physics, not special biological laws for living
things.“I would like to convince biologists that a belief in free
will is nothing other than a continuing belief in vitalism (or, as I
say, a belief in magic),” Cashmore told PhysOrg.com.
There seems to be an evolutionary rightness and inevitability to the
idea that free will is taking its place as just another illusion
like vitalism, religion, aether, absolute time and space, geocentric
universe, single-galaxy universe and so on. But I think people will
have an even tougher time dealing with the implications of strict
determinism. It's an idea that could tear through the entire fabric
of society even though acceptance needn't change one's behavior in
the slightest respect. marty a.
----- Original Message -----
From: m.a.
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: Free will
Bruno,
ummm...I don't follow this answer. Does your reply affirm free will,
deny it or take some other tact? m.a.
----- Original Message -----
From: Bruno Marchal
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: Free will
Marty,
With the MWI, superluminal computers are particular case of quantum
computer, as far as I guess correctly on what they are talking
about. There is no transmission of information at speed higher than
light speed, but in a single universe view, quantum weirdness
exploitation (like quantum teleportation) may make it appears to be
so. Looks a bit like Marketing. If someone know better. (here I
assume QM, not comp, although comp should imply QM).
Bruno
On 11 Mar 2010, at 15:03, m.a. wrote:
Bruno,
In the light of the article presented below, I'm trying
to remember whether you have committed yourself on this issue one
way or another. marty a.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=/news/
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