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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: A New Theory of Free Will -- continuation of an Open Letter to Professor Penrose
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References: <jqbDLr3LD.CG4@netcom.com> <jqbDLsss6.6qE@netcom.com> <4ede9q$vd@news.cc.ucf.edu> <NNYXSI.96Feb1182620@swap31-220>
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 23:53:55 GMT
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In article <NNYXSI.96Feb1182620@swap31-220>,
Kunal Singh <nnyxsi@swap31-220> quotes:
>In article <4ede9q$vd@news.cc.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:
>
>   I will try one more time.  If you don't get it now I can only
>   suggest a course in logic or finite mathematics.

This article hasn't reached here; I don't know if that is a propagation
problem, or because Mr. Clarke wisely cancelled it.  In any case, let me point
out that ad hominems do not make for rebuttals, and frustrations with those
who "just don't get it" are frequent in these newsgroups but are rarely an
indication of the correctness of the position held by the frustrated person.
I have studied both logic and and finite mathematics enough to understand
which direction an arrow of implication points.  If non-predictability implies
free will, then randomness (according to Clarke's equivalences) is sufficient
for free will.  But randomness cannot be necessary to free will, since a truly
free will is free to act predictably.  To spell it out: a world which does and
always has shown complete order and determinism based upon rigid laws could
*still* contain agents of free will that can subvert those laws, but find it
best or desireable not to; this is a quite Humean view.  If the view Clarke is
expressing is simply that free will requires that it be conceivable that the
laws of nature might not be completely known to us (randomness), this says
nothing at all.  When he says that randomness is necessary to free will, I
took him to mean some randomness in *observation*, not merely in principle.  I
find the notion of the universe having or not having randomness in principle
to be rather empty.

Note also that the discussion above is entirely within Clarke's apparent lack
of admission of compatibilist notions of free will into the equation, from his
formulation below.

>   Suppose that a persons behavior is deterministic, not random.
>   We can argue about the definition of deterministic, but let us
>   take it to mean that if you have sufficient information that
>   you can predict the person's behavior.
>   In this case, I think most would agree that the person does
>   not have free will since given the sufficient information, 
>   the person's behavior is predicted, is determined, is not free.


-- 
<J Q B>

