Mike> The conscious mind thinks literally, freely. Section 14.5 of What is Thought? discusses these kind of ideas about free will. Proponents of "free will" want something mystical to happen at the point of decision making. They generally accept that physics is deterministic so the brain must be deterministic (it could in principle invoke quantum probabilities, but philosophic proponents of free will such as Searle generally explicitly reject quantum randomness as being what they want-- "random is not free"-- and anyway, Schrodingers equation is deterministic (it outputs probabilities, but the system itself is in a higher sense determined)) but they say there must be something else, something inscrutable must happen at the point of decision where I decide whether to order soup or salad. However, Turing proved that you can't predict what a Turing machine is going to do by any method much better than simulating it.
So, Mike, if you believe the mind thinks "freely", please explain what test would distinguish "freely" from the output of a Turing machine with available random bits. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
