On 02 Sep 2013, at 17:24, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
> Free will is related to the issue of determinism -- could a very
powerful computer precisely predict my
future behaviour?
Yes, but only if the computer didn't tell me what it predicted
beforehand, because then the computer's actions would effect my
actions; and the computer can predict my actions but it can't
predict its own.
> And if not,
If not then my actions could not be predicted because they happened
for no reason, they were random.
> is there an "I" that has ultimate control over my decisions?
If something ("I" or anything else) controlled my decisions then my
decisions were deterministic. And if "I" pushed decisions down path
X rather than path Y for a reason then "I" too is deterministic, and
if "I" pushed decisions down path X rather than path Y for NO reason
then "I" is random.
> In that case, what is this "I"?
"I" is a set of memories modulated by a imperfect logical processor
that works better in some directions than others; and perhaps most
important, "I" is a particular set of likes and dislikes that in the
English language is called "will". "Will" is not the problem, it's
"free will" that's gibberish.
OK. In Jammer's book I see Einstein used that definition of free-will,
and that it is gibberish. We agree on this.
But I think that for Einstein it is the very idea of indeterminacy
which is gibberish. A physical event without a cause does not make
sense to Einstein. This makes me tend to believe that Einstein,
eventually would have assessed Everett theory, which reduce the
apparent indeterminacy in the realm of the average first person
reports in self-superposition or self-multiplication.
And then, indeed "free" does not add much to the will, except to
emphasize a local freedom degrees spectrum.
If you are imprisoned, you can keep the will, but have the free-will
quite constrained. Free-will, in that sense, gives the way to
actualize the will or the intention. We might use free-will as just
will + freedom. It presupposes some stable deterministic realities, at
some level.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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