"Generate the phenomenon" means that some machine, by its operation, behaves
according to some recognizable pattern. The *phenomenon* of "free will" does
exist. We know it exists because people talk about it so much. It's ingrained
in our legal system. Etc. Maybe you'll remember the quote "I can't define it.
But I know it when I see it"? Now, as I've typed ad nauseum at this point,
whether that phrase ("free will") refers to what people *think* it refers to is
another matter. This mechanism is an attempt to refine what people might think
the phrase refers to.
Validation/falsification in modeling and simulation is a relatively mature
discipline. There are many ways to falsify some mechanism by the phenomena it
generates (face, data, trace, etc.). Of course, you're right that it isn't
simple. Just like "intelligence", some people are impressed with the
achievements of AI and some aren't. Regardless, the act of designing AI
machines that *try* to generate intelligence has lead to a fantastic refinement
of what "intelligence" means. I think the same can be done with "free will" if
people would focus on building machines that fail at the task.
It's relatively easy to establish that a *particular* mechanism fails to
generate some pattern. Brute force parameter sweeps is feasible with the
computational power we have now. But there are many ways to search and sample a
behavior/phenomena space that aren't as difficult. What's difficult is trying
to falsify some hypothesis that's NOT based on a particular, concrete mechanism.
If anything, I'm tossing a rope down the hole. Anyone who talks about "free
will" *without* proposing a mechanism for it is digging the hole deeper.
On 6/18/20 6:53 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> What do you mean by "generate the phenomenon"? If the phenomenon is
> non-existent, it can't be generated. Even if that weren't a problem, who is
> to judge whether "the phenomenon" had been generated? And how is that
> judgment made?
>
> On the other hand, how do you establish that "it *cannot* generate the
> phenomenon"? That sounds like a pretty hard thing to establish on the basis
> of empirical evidence.
>
> This all seems to be digging a deeper hole.
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