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Article 3512 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Functionalist Theory of Qualia
Keywords: qualia, functionalism
Message-ID: <1992Feb5.223905.19203@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 5 Feb 92 22:39:05 GMT
References: <1992Feb4.160229.20899@cs.yale.edu> <1992Feb4.193653.25027@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb5.220638.9673@cs.yale.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 32

In article <1992Feb5.220638.9673@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:
>
>   Free will doesn't really exist (you just can't help exempting your
>choices from causal laws)
>   Free will turns out to be the possession of a self-model in which
>one is exempted from causal laws.
>
>If you absolutely insist on the freedom you thought you had, you lose.
>If you want to know what in this universe comes closest to being "free
>will" (the, so to speak, proximal referent in the actual world), then
>it is the self-modeling structure described.
>
>Cf. solid objects: Solid objects turn out to be made of very strange
>little wave functions.  Take your choice:
>
>    Solid objects don't really exist
>    Solid objects turn out to be wave functions (that interact with
>other wave functions, e.g., us, in ways best described using words
>like "collision")

 I must quibble a little with the analogy.

 Somebody might say "Free will does not exist" and mean only that "free will"
is not actually free.  But nobody would say "solid objects don't exist" when
all they meant was that the solid object was not really solid, perhaps
because neutrinos can pass through them.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


