On Feb 6, 6:39 pm, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 7:12 AM, ronaldheld <[email protected]> wrote: > > An agent in possession of free will is able to perform an action that was > > possible to predict by nobody but the agent itself. > > There are a number of things wrong with this: > > 1) In theory there is no reason to think that the agent would be better at > predicting its own actions than a outsider, and indeed its easy to imagine > circumstances where the exact opposite is true.
In terms of the paper, that would be a kind of oracular (as in Oracle Machine) knowledge. But then why wouldn;t agents have knowledge of each others FW functions. > 2) In practice the subjective meaning of the word "free" would seem to be > incompatible with the ability to predict that you would do X tomorrow for > certain and nothing can change that fact, its certain, it's just the way > things are, you're on a path to X and there is no way to get off, you're > stuck. In other words "freedom" and "no choice" don't fit. If you want a > definition try the opposite: That doesn't quite follow. Your action can be free as far as the outside worlds in concerned, but known to you. Suppose you sat in a room deciding the the nexgt days actions on the roll of a die. You would no what you were going to do tomorrow, but not one else would have observed the die rolls. > "Free will is the INABILITY to always predict our own actions even if a > outsider can make such a prediction"; > > That's the only definition of free will that isn't gibberish or circular > but unfortunately nobody except me uses it. I can see why. > 3) If you can always predict your actions then you must be deterministic > and have had a reason for doing so, because otherwise it was random and if > you can predict randomness then its not random. And if you did it for a > reason it's deterministic. I mean, if you weren't deterministic you > couldn't determine what you would do next. Doing things for reasons is compatible with indeterminism. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
