On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 2:43 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Suppose we attempt to build a free-will robot. > It is designed to walk around town until it reaches an intersection with > WALK/DON'T WALK > signs. At that point it crosses in the WALK direction. > It has the "will" component but not the "free" component. > So we build in a random number generator. If it generates an > odd integer it crosses in the DON'T WALK direction; if an even integer it > crosses in the > WALK direction. > Now it has the "free" component but not the "will" component. > So we replace the random number generator with memory & rules. > The robot remembers that crossing in the DON'T WALK direction makes a fine for > "jaywalking" possible & that crossing in the DON'T WALK direction makes harm > more likely than crossing in the WALK direction. > It is also given rules to minimize fines & harm. > So now the robot acts like we act when we're rational. > But humans can act irrationally. So free will is the capacity to act > rationally > & avoid acting irrationally.
But as you said, the robot can be programmed to act rationally, therefore it seems free will under your unusual definition would be the capacity to act irrationally. Of course in the MOQ, rationality is not some correspondence of our actions with a set of laws of reasoning handed to us by reality but rather a compliment paid to good intellectual patterns. In this value-centered metaphysics, we aren't determined by our values. We don't choose our values. Instead we ARE our values, so this whole issue dissolves from an MOQ perspective. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
