On 25 Nov 2010, at 22:38, Rex Allen wrote:
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 21 Nov 2010, at 19:47, Rex Allen wrote:
On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
But your reasoning does not apply to free will in the sense I
gave: the
ability to choose among alternatives that *I* cannot predict in
advance
(so that *from my personal perspective* it is not entirely due to
reason
nor do to randomness).
So that is a good description of the subjective feeling of free
will.
I was not describing the subjective feeling of free will, which is
another
matter, and which may accompany or not the experience of free will.
Free-will is the ability to choose among alternatives that *I* cannot
genuinely predict in advance so that reason fails, and yet it is
not random.
The ability to choose among unpredictable alternatives? What???
The ability to choose among alternatives which are unpredictable by me
right now. The possibility to hesitate, to recognize inner
contradictory pulsions and tendencies, and to act without being able
to justify precisely why we act this way or in some other way yet able
to measure some risk in harming oneself or the others, for examples.
With your definition of free will, it does not exist. I think we agree.
In no way does “ability to choose from unpredictable alternatives”
match my conception of free will.
It might be felt as counter-intuitive, like most "truth" is the
mechanist theory. That should be expected. I guess it is your non-
mechanism assumption which prevents you to pursue such a line of
investigation.
Nor would you find many people in
agreement amongst the general populace.
That is not an argument. Yet many compatibilists reason along similar
lines, but this is not an argument either.
Few people agree that mechanism entails that physics is a branch of
theology, and that matter is an emerging pattern. Few people
understand that QM = Many worlds. At each epoch few people swallow the
new ideas / theories. Science is not working like politics. it is not
democratic. Usually the majority is wrong as science history
illustrates well. Many people today find hard the idea that "they are
machine" (except perhaps in the DM large sense for people with a bit
of education).
You’re just redefining “free will” in a way that allows you to claim
that it exists but which bears little relation to the original
conception.
In a deterministic universe, there are no alternatives.
There are alternatives of many kinds based on many notion of
randomness and indeterminacy which appears from all points of view
except the God's eyes, or view of nowhere, or "truth", or assumed
ultimate reality, etc. You are collapsing all the notion of person
points of view.
Things can
only unfold one way.
Not necessarily from the observer's view. Both in QM and DM, it is
provably not the case that things unfold in one way. We might be
multiplied at the third person level, and feel indeterminacy at the
first person level. This happens in both QM and DM. (but plays no
direct role in the emergence of free will)
Our being unable to predict that unfolding is
neither here nor there.
Again, ignorance is not free will. Ignorance is just ignorance.
Free will is the ability to act with that ignorance. I have never said
that free will is ignorance. That ignorance is what makes free-will
genuine, because that ignorance is unavoidable, and can be known
(metaknown if you prefer).
Free will is closed to the ability to take decision in presence of
partial information, like those studied in some AI technic.
Like consciousness it accelerates (relatively to a universal number)
the decision.
But if you question most people closely, this isn't what they mean
by
“free will”.
You have interpret too much quickly what I was describing. Free-
will as I
define it is not the subjective feeling of having free-will. It is
really
due to the fact that the choice I will make is not based on reason,
nor on
randomness from my (real) perspective (which exists).
I didn’t say that the options were choices based on “reason or
randomness”
I said:
“Either there is *a reason* for what I choose to do, or there isn't.”
By “a reason” I mean “a cause”.
I don’t mean “reason” in the sense of rationality.
I know that. This does not answer my remark.
Subjective does not mean inexisting. Free-will is subjective or
better
subject-related, but it exists and has observable consequences, like
purposeful murdering, existence of jails, etc. It is the root of
moral
consciousness, or conscience.
How does my inability to predict my choices or alternatives in advance
serve as the root for moral conscience?
Because free-will gives you the actual possibility to do bad things
knowing that they are illegal or even really bad, and if the judge can
argue convincingly that such is the case, you will pay the bill or go
to jail. If not you might go to the hospital instead.
They mean the ability to make choices that aren't random, but which
also aren't caused.
And this becomes, with the approach I gave: "the ability to make
choices
that aren't random, but for which they have to ignore the cause".
And I
insist: they might even ignore that they ignore the cause. They
will say
"because I want do that" or things like that.
The vast majority of the populace certainly does not equate free will
with ignorance of causes.
Again that is not an argument. It would even be doubtful that humans
would be naturally correct on such hard technical question, especially
with the mechanist assumption which justified *why* most truth are
just unbelievable. G* minus G is the precise logic of what is true but
unbelievable.
It shows that machine have genuine free-will. But humans already
dislike the idea that their neighbors have free-will. People will not
like that, but in the long run, they will prefer that to the idea that
*they* have no free will themselves. It is still genuine partial free
will. You can manage some of your classes of futures, you have a
partial control.
I disagree that many people would accept your definition, because
it would
entail (even for religious rationalist believers) that free-will
does not
exist, and the debate would be close since a long time.
If you ask “most people”, they will not agree that the human choice is
random, and they will not agree that human choice can be explained by
causal forces.
Such question are known to be hot, and most people disagree with each
other. Many among those who criticizes determinism often relies on
sacred texts, and show an unwillingness to even reason.
Rather, they claim that human choice is something not random *and* not
caused. Though they can’t get any more specific than that.
The debate isn’t settled because they won’t admit that there is no
third option. They feel free, therefore they *believe* that they must
actually be free. Free from randomness and free from causal forces.
“I feel free, therefore I must be free.”
That reasoning is what keeps the free will debate alive.
They have the further belief that since the choices aren't random or
caused, the chooser bears ultimate responsibility for them.
They are right. That is what the materialist eliminativist will
deny, and
eventually that is why they will deny any meaning to notion like
"person",
free-will, responsibility or even "consciousness".
How does ignorance of what choice you will make lead to ultimate
responsibility for that choice?
Because I can have a pretty good pictures of the alternatives. Usually
the conflict will be in instantaneous reward against long term
rewards. I can speed my car and look at TV, or respect the speed
limits and miss the TV. I can stop smoking tobacco and live older, or
I can enjoy tobacco here and now, and die sooner, etc. I do have an
amount of choice and information, but I am ignorant of the details
(notably of my brain functioning, my 'unconscious', etc.), and can
act accordingly as a responsible person.
I deny the possibility of ultimate responsibility and I’m not a
eliminative materialist.
I follow you that "ultimate responsibility" is asking too much. Even a
sadist murderer is usually not responsible for the existence of its
pulsion, but this does not preclude him to be responsible for its
action, in some spectrum. Reasons can be multiple. A sadist could
commit an act in a society where sadism is repressed, and not commit
an act if sadism is sublimated through art and movies, so the society
or system can share responsibility with some act without preventing
such act to be done. Free will is not ultimate: i can choose between
tea and coffee, but I have not chose to be a drinking entity.
But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except
by fiat declaration that it does).
That is a subtle point. Many mechanist are wrong on this. The
expression "mechanism can account for consciousness" is highly
ambiguous. That is why I present mechanism in the operational form of
saying "yes to a doctor who proposes you a digital brain copying your
brain or body or universe at some level of description". No theory can
account for truth, which is independent on any theory or observers,
yet truth is what will eventually select a theory or an observer.
Likewise, if my consciousness is preserved by a mechanist substitution
of my brain, this might be due to a relationship between consciousness
and truth which typically will not been accounted by mechanism per se,
like a theory cannot account for its own consistency already.
That is why mechanism per se is unbelievable by sound machine, and
asks for a type of act of faith. You are free, and necessarily free,
to say "no" to the doctor.
The theory "mechanism" explains why it has to be a religion, in a
sense. It is akin to a belief in reincarnation, if you think about it.
As to “person”, I take a deflationary view of the term. There’s less
to it than meets the eye.
I guess we differ a lot on this.
This further belief doesn't seem to follow from any particular chain
of reasoning. It's just another belief that this kind of person
has.
Because as a person she is conscious and feel a reasonable amount
of sense
of responsibility, which is genuine and legitimate from her first
person
perspective (and from the perspective of machine having a similar
level of
complexity).
This comes back to my earlier point. She “feels” a sense of
responsibility and therefore believes that she is genuinely and
legitimately responsible.
But the fact that she feels responsibility in no way means that she
actually is responsible.
That is true. But she is not just feeling being free, she is,
genuinely so, with the definition I gave of "free-will". So free-will
is a genuinely true feeling about herself. Even if that truth is
partial, and introduces only a partial amount of responsibility. No
one is 100% responsible for its acts. This would be like accusing
someone of just existing. Hitler is not responsible for the fact that
his parents met and gives birth to him. Ultimate responsibility is
like omniscience or omnipotence, even "God" lacks such kind of things
(assuming mechanism).
A further mechanism would have to be provided other than her feelings
for me to believe that she actually was ultimately responsible.
I agree. She is not ultimately responsible. But she might be partially
responsible. Enough to be send in jail, instead of an asylum.
And I’ve never heard of such a mechanism, and I don’t buy your
ignorance-based explanation in the least.
Silly, I know.
It is not silly at all. That is why mechanism is not a
reductionism, and
eventually "saves" the notion of person. That is why consciousness,
even if
matter exists in some fundamental way, is not an epiphenomenon.
Aren’t you making consciousness an epiphenomenon of the digital
machine?
Reread my work. It explains why consciousness is the creator of all
realities consistent with arithmetical truth. Consciousness is the
most effective things ever. It is the mother of all forces, or of all
acceleration. A theory of everything is a theory of consciousness. And
assuming mechanism, as I have explained, consciousness and
differentiating consciousness fluxes are "easly" derivable from the
numbers relations (and the classical theory of knowledge by
Theaetetus). The hard part is the derivation of the physical laws, and
my logical point is that we have to do that derivation, if we assume
mechanism, to solve the mind-body problem. (and then in AUDA I explain
how to do it, and I did a little bit).
Consciousness is not an epiphenomemon. If it was, then indeed free-
will would not exist.
When you say "random or not random", you are applying the third
excluded
middle which, although arguably true ontically, is provably wrong
for
most personal points of view. We have p v ~p, but this does not
entail Bp v B~p, for B used for almost any hypostasis (points of
view).
I'd think that ontically is what matters in this particular case?
I don't see why. A murderer remains a murderer independently of the
ontic
level, be it particles, waves, fields, or number relations.
Murder is just a category you’ve made up for your own convenience. It
has no ontological status separate from you.
I wish I did. But I doubt this. To be murdered is universally
embarrassing for any sufficiently sound machine. "thou shall not kill"
belongs to G* minus G type of mechanist proposition, and that could
explain notably why people *saying* (normatively) "thou shall not
kill" kill the most.
Either there’s a reason for the killing act, or there isn’t. If
there’s a reason, then it was an unavoidable consequence of reality’s
causal structure.
At which level? Usually I mock this kind of statement by mentioning a
lawyer who says "yes, my client did murder those children but I let
you know that my client was just obeying to the Schroedinger wave
equation, so he has no responsibility".
There are two answers to that:
1) the simple one (with the fallibilist jury). All right, the murderer
was just obeying to the Schroedinger equation, and I let you know that
we still have decided to make him guilty and to send him to jail by
our own free will, but be reassured that we are just obeying to
Shroedinger equation ourselves. That answer illustrates that evocation
of determinism evacuates responsibility in a trivial and non
interesting way. (and indeed I have never heard such a defense,
although I have heard some quite close to that).
2) If ever we could use practically the Shroedinger equation to
predict such kind of act we would been lead to paradoxes, showing that
the responsibility is eventually related to that necessary partial
ignorance like I explain above. So although we obey to the SWE, we can
explain our act by saying that we *just* obeys to the SWE. Why do you
want to see in the theater tonight? You will not answer that question
by solving the SWE, still less by dovetailing all the infinite
arithmetic possibilities and ponder them.
If there isn’t, it’s just a random event and nothing further can be
said about it.
We, as conscious first persons, are just not living at the domain in
which "we", as third person bodies, are determined. We would lie to,
ourself saying that. Of course to really grasp this it is easier if
you understand that the identity thesis is wrong, as it is provably
with the mechanist assumption.
Why would I care about whether or why I or anyone else *seem* to
have
free will from their personal points of view?
They do *have* free-will. They genuinely makes decisions which
cannot be
attributed to reason or randomness, from their point of view and
from the
points of view of any machines having a similar complexity.
Faux will. Fake will.
If their decision has no cause, it’s random.
There is always a cause or a reason, except perhaps for the elementary
arithmetical truth.
If their decision is not random, then it has a cause.
Yes.
I see no third option.
Me neither.
And your “inability to predict” theory seems
to me to be completely irrelevant to the issue.
Because you abstract away from the many different person notions,
which exists for arithmetical reasons, (assuming DM), and which lead
to a differentiating fluxes of consciousness that each lobian numbers
can partially control, and this in a genuine way from their relative
points of view.
Even probabilistic laws are a form of causation. In this case the
course of events are genuinely unpredictable (within limits), this
unpredictablity also doesn't amount to free will.
I am glad we totally agree on that. You can use the infinite iteration
of the self-duplication (Washington/Moscow for example) to illustrate
that random oracle does not introduce free-will. It will change the
measure on the domains livable from our first person indeterminacy,
and as such will play a role in stabilizing the physical laws, and
this plays a role in the emergence of "matter" and sharable histories
(it defines the right tensor product), but free-will remains a
determinate matter. The many worlds of the conditional tense does not,
unlike the many worlds of DM and QM, need to "really exist". You could
jump out of the window, does not entail that you will jump out of the
window in some real parallel reality: the imaginary one are enough.
(Independently of the fact that both DM and QM entails that there is a
real world where you jump out of the window, but they are not needed
for the meaning of "could" (and they are rare, Harry Potter like).
If you shuffle a deck of cards using some irreducibly random method,
and then turn the first card face up - I genuinely can't predict which
particular card it will be. But I can predict with certainty that the
card will belong to one of the 4 suits and one of the 13 ranks. No
matter how randomly the deck is shuffled, the card won't come up some
unknown 5th suit. The randomness, though irreducible, is still
constrained. It's only random to the extent it isn't determined.
OK.
If you believe that the fact that the action was determinable in
principles
by some very powerful computer prevent real free-will, then you
might say
that consciousness is also an illusion and you will be led to
eliminativism.
Consciousness stands or falls independently of free will.
Do you agree that consciousness is needed for free-will? Usually
people agree with this.
But I think the converse is true too, although I have to say (it is a
bit embarrassing) that the salvia divinorum experience has put a doubt
in my mind on the argument which follows.
It looks like we can imagine being conscious without having free-will.
When trying to do that, we imagine being conscious, but without any
degree of freedom, like in the ultimate jail (the big nightmare). But
this, I think, is a confusion between free-will, and freedom. If you
feel to be a prisoner in that prison, it means that you have free-
will, because the "wanting of freedom" is somehow a product of free-
will. So you have to imagine that actually, in that state of
consciousness without free-will, you are not aware of being in a
prison. But you are in the ultimate prison, so what is it that you are
aware of, and I thought that to be conscious you have to be aware of
at least some alternate possibilities ("Dt?", "~Bf?"). But OK, the
plant did contradict me on this point. Obviously that was an
hallucination, but mechanism still seem to me to imply that such an
hallucination is just impossible, or (I guess so) that a correction
should be made to the classical theory of knowledge.
My plants are OK with you that consciousness could exist in absence of
free will, but I still find that very weird ! :)
(Note this illustrates that a theory of consciousness can be refuted
by an experience of consciousness).
I see no reason at all to say that consciousness requires free
will. None.
Consciousness is related to some gradient in a landscape of possible
histories/worlds (by UDA). Each state of consciousness defines some
"next" alternate states, or neighborhoods . I thought consciousness
was related to time (subjective time à-la Brouwer). Time is what
gives your closest observable alternative. I will not insist so much
because I could have to change my mind on this, so I am open to the
idea that "we" can be conscious yet without free-will and out of space
and time. But that would be a very special form, rather peculiar, form
of state of consciousness, and I have to experiment more.
The feeling of free will is an aspect of conscious experience.
Feeling of free will => conscious. OK.
But
conscious experience has no dependency on free will.
NOT(Conscious experience => free will or feeling of free will)?
I really doubt that. But my plant agrees with you, apparently, and
this is something I have to think hard about. What remains possible is
that peculiar form of consciousness without free-will is very unstable
and seems to be bounded to large infinities of possibilities.
And Plotinus is a bit unclear on this, should reread it. It is almost
the question if the origin (of consciousness) is conscious, or not, or
if God is a person or a thing. Hard question.
A machine will seem to have consciousness, but will not have genuine
consciousness, with such confusion. There is genuine free-will,
because the
ignorance of the machine is real and genuine, independently of the
fact that
the machine believes in free-will or not, or seems to have free-
will or not.
Such an ignorance cannot be eliminated by adding knowledge to the
machine,
without transforming it into a new and different machine which will
still be
ignorant about herself at another level.
I still don’t see any connection between ignorance and free will.
It is the root of the hesitation between the possible acts. If you
determinate yourself by the determination laws at each instant, you
would not have hesitation. You are poor and hungry, and a rich looking
guy forget 500 $ on the chair. You see the alternatives: being
dishonest and belly satisfied or honest and still hungry: you
hesitate: you have not a clear cut theory of your honesty, you cannot
observe yourself and measure the trade-of of the different style of
rewards like please your conscience (experience of consciousness) or
satisfy your belly (another experience of consciousness). The
ignorance is that you don't really know if you will talk under torture
in all situations. Free-will is somehow the ability of not talking
under torture, like responsibility it needs courage. Like
responsibility, it has its limit. That why someone can be judged
guilty yet with attenuating circumstances, making him staying less
time in prison, or free.
I also don’t see any connection between ignorance and responsibility.
If you are the non hesitating "automata" you allude too, the ignorance
and the knowing of that ignorance cannot play any role. But if you are
the self-determined person then in many situation you will have to
take a decision despite the circumstances does not allow you to see
clearly the consequences. Free-will in perilous situations makes you
more, or less, responsible for your action, depending on the
situations. You drive quickly the ambulance, but you avoid the
pedestrians.
“You don’t know what motivates your actions...therefore you are
ultimately responsible for them.”
Nonsense.
I agree. Did I wrote that?
In situation of free-will I *might* not know the origins *and* all the
consequences of my actions, in term of good or bad, or harming or less
harming, in many situations, so I will learn to act responsibly. And I
can be judged responsible if it can be shown I knew that I could
expect bad consequences. Hard to prove this so the judge might have to
resort to its personal conviction and/or listen to different experts,
jury members, etc.
I believe that you should find a new term for your “ability to choose
among alternatives that *I* cannot genuinely predict in advance.”
Free-will, if you want, is a bit the contrary of the "precaution
principle". It is the right to cross the atlantic ocean in a sieve.
But truly, that is only freedom. Free-will is more in the aspiration
to *more* freedom.
Because that’s not free will, and by claiming that it is you’re just
muddying the water.
“Ignorant Will”. That’s catchy. Use that.
I could say that your definition of free will is too much trivial so
as to be immediately self-contradictory. In some conversation with non-
compatibilists sometimes I argue that "free-will" is a bad choice of
term, and that I believe we should just say "will". I don't believe in
the "naive notion of free-will". The "free" does not add a lot, except
a vague idea of *ultimate* responsibility and of *pure* choice, a bit
like if we could knew what is good and bad for another (we know this
only for oneself and even just partially). Such ultimate universal
notion are just ideal for any terrestrial or relatively embodied
entity, which is truly ignorant of who she is, and who the others are,
or which machine or number she is (here and now) relatively to a
plenty full arithmetical reality.
So I agree: the mechanist notion of free will proposed here is a form
of Ignorant will. OK. I can live with that. Nice expression. To have
free-will and consciousness we have to be ignorant of a part of
ourselves. That part is the "I". As I have said since the beginning,
the question of the number of persons in 'reality' is still open, and
might depend on further vocabulary considerations. The first person
does not know who she is. In "I will", will is easier to define that
"I". "I" cannot. Thus the tension between "I" and I. Or between the
second and third hypostases, when formalized in arithmetic (Bp and Bp
& p). Universal machine have the tendency to make war (and love) with
their images in the mirrors. And all universal machines are mirroring
each others. And none can know who she is "really"(*). You can expect
some mess in Platonia.
Bruno
(*) Except perhaps one, without free-will then, as you and my plant
seem to suggests (sorry for that). I mean that if consciousness is
able to exist without free-will, I can conceive of a thing/machine/
number who could know who she is? Hmm...
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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