Re: Free Will Theorem
Le 12-avr.-05, à 05:26, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : And does it really make much difference, whether we are talking truly random or intractably pseudo-random? You may be interested to know that the class of problems soluble by machine with pseudo-random oracle is properly contained in the class of problems soluble by machine with (genuine) random oracle: KURTZ S. A., 1983, On the Random Oracle Hypothesis, Information and Control, 57, pp. 40-47. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Free Will Theorem
Norman Samish wrote: I have somewhat arbitrarily defined free will as voluntary actions that are both self-determined by a Self-Aware Object, and are not predictable. My reasoning is that if something is completely predictable, then there is no option for change, hence no free will. But this illustrates the problem. Randomness is not an option, or will. Randomness is simply randomness. What is doing the opting? To preserve an option for change, you must appeal to a ghost in the machine (dualism); otherwise you have preserved the freedom, but at the cost of loosing the will. We are then merely dice making random actions, with the *illusion* of will. How is this superior to determinism? On this issue, Jonathan Colvin apparently disagrees, since he states that There is no contradiction between determinism / predictability and free will, so long as free will is viewed as self-determinism. But free will would be a meaningless concept in a deterministic universe. If the future were completely predictable then how could there be free will? Everything would be pre-ordained. Everything would indeed be pre-ordained. But why would this make our will not free? What does free mean, in this context? I don't think free in this sense means simply non-deterministic, or random. I consider myself a free man, as opposed to a prisoner. But the definition of a free man is not someone who acts randomly; it is someone free from *external coercion* or imprisonment. Likewise, our will is free if it is free from *external* coercion. It is a fallacy to believe that *internal* (self) determinism is contrary to free will, for it makes no sense that one could coerce one's self. Equating freedom with non-determinism is, IMHO, committing a category error. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Free Will Theorem
[Forwarded to the list on behalf of Quentin Anciaux] From: Quentin Anciaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:53:55 +0200 Le lundi 11 avril 2005 à 22:41 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : We would then still believe that we had free will , even though in reality we are all blindly following a predetermined script. How could we possibly know that this is not what is in fact happening? --Stathis Papaioannou Hi list, Even if the script is predetermined, the input of the script is not. So it could be true that we follow a predetermined path for any input, but we cannot predict what input, so the free seems to be there. Quentin Anciaux _ $60,000 prize pool to be won. Three winners. Apply now! http://www.healthe.com.au/competition.do
Re: Free Will Theorem
Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le lundi 11 avril 2005 à 22:41 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : We would then still believe that we had free will , even though in reality we are all blindly following a predetermined script. How could we possibly know that this is not what is in fact happening? --Stathis Papaioannou Hi list, Even if the script is predetermined, the input of the script is not. So it could be true that we follow a predetermined path for any input, but we cannot predict what input, so the free seems to be there. And in a similar vein from Brent Meeker: Yet many things people do are predictable by those who know them well. I don't know of any evidence that the human brain is chaotic - though it seems a good hypothesis. But besides the brain being unpredictable due to its complexity and possible random events at synapses, there is a third, and I think more important source of effective randomness. Each person has perceptions, which change their brain state almost continuously. Even if the brain were perfectly deterministic, it's coupling with the rest of the world through perception could make it unpredictable. It is ironic that basically dumb environmental processes are being invoked to rescue the mind from mechanical predictability! Thinking about this I am reminded of the observation that humans are quite poor at the apparently simple task of generating random numbers. There is a strong tendency to try to avoid patterns in order to make the numbers more random. A human-generated list will therefore have a relative paucity of consecutive digits, double and triple digits, and so on. This phenomenon is apparantly so consistent that it has found use in fraud investigations, where lists of financial data have been concocted to conceal illegal or negligent activities. This is probably one area where the proverbial chimpanzee bashing away at a keyboard would presumably do a better job than a human (if all the keys were equally easy to reach). Counterintuitively, the smarter you are, the more predictable you are. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Searching for that dream home? Try http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au for all your property needs.
Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem
Stathis, thanks for your reply, but my two points in return are: 1. to the list-appearance remark: I did not miss the 'responses', I missed the list-mail CONTAINIG my post. Whether there is a response is of course up to the (non?)respondents. I don't require such. 2. in the thread: I wonder if your logic is straightforward, if you don't have an understanding about a very complicated system, a fault in it will NOT clear up your underestanding. I agree that in medical 'sciences' there is a widely used practice of studying the sick and drawing conclusions on the healthy, but that does not mean that I should accept it as the right method. You can draw true conclusions from the 'faults' if you know the unfaulted system. Otherwise you just guess. Maybe guess right John M - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 1:42 AM Subject: Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem John Mikes wrote: Stathis: it is always dangerous (wrong!) to mix deviated cases (sick patients) with the general (non sick) human (behavioral etc.) concepts. One thing is even worse: to draw conclusions of such. I disagree with this, in general. In medical science, in particular, one of the most common means of progress in understanding normal physiology has been the study of pathological cases. If you have a very complex system, and a fault develops, if you can trace and understand the fault, then you understand at least one small part of the system. I wrote some comments in this thread lately and did not see them being included in the list-posts. Am I banned from writing to the list? John, of course your comments are welcome on the list. It is easy to think that you are being ignored when nobody replies to your post, but that is not necessarily the case. The posts that get most replies seem to be the ones that say something provocative, controversial, or just plain wrong: everyone loves a good argument! It could simply be that everyone agrees with you if you have no replies. For example, I don't think anyone specifically replied to George Levy's post on this thread, which I thought was very well reasoned and I completely agreed with. --Stathis Papaioannou
Re: Free Will Theorem
The question of free will has generated an enormous amount of philosophical literature. I'd suggest reading at least the first part of this page on Compatibilism, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/. Compatibilism is the doctrine that free will is compatible with determinism. Probably the most well known advocacy of compatibilism is Daniel Dennett'e 1984 book Elbow Room. From the page above: Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism. 1. Terminology and One formulation of the Free Will Problem. 1.1 Free Will It would be misleading to specify a strict definition of free will since in the philosophical work devoted to this notion there is probably no single concept of it. For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue have been hunting for, maybe not exclusively, but centrally, is a feature of agency that is necessary for persons to be morally responsible for their conduct.[1] Different attempts to articulate the conditions for moral responsibility will yield different accounts of the sort of agency required to satisfy those conditions. What is needed, then, as a starting point, is a gentle, malleable notion that focuses upon special features of persons as agents. Hence, as a theory-neutral point of departure, free will can be defined as the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their conduct in a manner necessary for moral responsibility.[2] Clearly, this definition is too lean when taken as an endpoint; the hard philosophical work is about how best to develop this special kind of control. But however this notion of control is developed, its uniqueness consists, at least in part, in being possessed only by persons. 1.2 Moral Responsibility A person who is a morally responsible agent is not merely a person who is able to do moral right or wrong. Beyond this, she is accountable for her morally significant conduct. Hence, she is, when fitting, an apt target of moral praise or blame, as well as reward or punishment. Free will is understood as a necessary condition of moral responsibility since it would seem unreasonable to say of a person that she deserves blame and punishment for her conduct if it turned out that she was not at any point in time in control of it. (Similar things can be said about praise and reward.) It is primarily, though not exclusively, because of the intimate connection between free will and moral responsibility that the free will problem is seen as an important one.[3] 1.3 Determinism A standard characterization of determinism states that every event is causally necessitated by antecedent events.[4] Within this essay, we shall define determinism as the metaphysical thesis that the facts of the past, in conjunction with the laws of nature, entail every truth about the future. According to this characterization, if determinism is true, then, given the actual past, and holding fixed the laws of nature, only one future is possible at any moment in time. Notice that an implication of determinism as it applies to a person's conduct is that, if determinism is true, there are (causal) conditions for that person's actions located in the remote past, prior to her birth, that are sufficient for each of her actions. 1.4 Compatibilism's Competitors The compatibilists' main adversaries are incompatibilists, who deny the compatibility of free will and determinism. Some incompatibilists remain agnostic as to whether persons have free will. But most take a further stand regarding the reality or unreality of free will. Some of these incompatibilists, libertarians, hold that at least some persons have free will and that, therefore, determinism is false. Other incompatibilists, hard determinists, have a less optimistic view, holding that determinism is true and that no persons have free will. A minority opinion is held by hard incompatibilists, who hold that there is no free will regardless of determinism's truth or falsity. I don't think the essay covers it, but as others have pointed out the problem with basing free will (as defined above) on quantum indeterminacy is that it seems as bad as determinism as far as satisfying our instincts about what deserves blame or praise. We don't praise a machine for working as designed, nor do we praise the dice for coming up the way we want in a gambling game. These are not moral agents. This is the paradox, and the essay on compatibilism might also shed light on how a purely random nondeterminism can be compatible with free will as well. Hal Finney
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 09:45:49AM -0700, Hal Finney wrote: The question of free will has generated an enormous amount of philosophical literature. I'd suggest reading at least the first part of this page on Compatibilism, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/. Compatibilism is the doctrine that free will is compatible with determinism. Probably the most well known advocacy of compatibilism is Daniel Dennett'e 1984 book Elbow Room. From the page above: Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism. Moral responsibility is nothing more than a pre-legal version of legal responsibility. It has nothing to do with free-will. Also we live in a nondeterministic world. With compatibilism, we need to ask why. With incompatibalism, we merely need to ask why free-will is necessary for consciousness. The whole debate you quote from Dennett seems quaint and out of date... Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpLwoHUJkOxy.pgp Description: PGP signature
Do branches of the multiverse merge
I would like to ask how decoherered branches of the multiverse can merge - it must be possible as in a consistent histories approach but how is it accounted for in the formalism of QM Puzzled Nick P
