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From: pshe@netcom.com (Pat Shelton)
Subject: Re: The only acceptable def. of Free Will
Message-ID: <psheDMLtv1.3K3@netcom.com>
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References: <4er5uf$9lm@news-rocq.inria.fr> <jqbDM4Av4.2yC@netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 09:18:37 GMT
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In article <jqbDM4Av4.2yC@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>In article <4er5uf$9lm@news-rocq.inria.fr>,
>Mikal Ziane (Univ. Paris 5 and INRIA)  <ziane@noemie.inria.fr> wrote:
>>(weak) Free Will is the ability to take decisions in agreement with your
>>"core personality".
>>
>[...]
>>"Fine, but what is this defintion useful to ?"
>>Well, it helps define moral responsibility, which is what is often expected from
>>a def. of free will. When someone lacks free will then this person is not morally responsible.
>>"Why not?"
>>Simply because it is useless to punish this person.
>>"Why useless ?"
>>Because the threat of punishement (i.e. threat of  something expected to go against
>>the core desires of the person) cannot be taken into account by the person
>>in her/his decision process. Of course this does not mean that the person should
>>let be free not to behave again, but simply that inflicting pain will be useless.
>
>This seems terribly circular.  If punishment induces changes in behavior, it
>is useful, even if those changes aren't freely made.  You can hardly argue
>from the usefulness of punishment to the presence of free will.
>
>Consider a program designed to complete a task in a minimal amount of time.
>It doesn't have fixed rules concerning its operating environment; it tracks
>the resources granted to it by the operating system, and tries to adjust in
>order to maximize the amount of resources it receives.  For instance,
>allocating excessive virtual memory may result in the thrashing (swapping to
>disk), slowing the process.  Now consider an operating system designed to
>punish resource hogs by dropping a process's priority when it attempts to
>allocate more than a certain number of resources.  The program will respond to
>the punishment and to avoid such large allocations as a result.  But I think
>few would grant the program a "core personality", "pain qualia", or "free
>will".  (My view is that granting these things is more a matter of convention
>than an issue of fact.)
>-- 
><J Q B>
>

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Subject: Re: The only acceptable def. of Free Will
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In article <4er5uf$9lm@news-rocq.inria.fr> ziane@noemie.inria.fr (Mikal Ziane (Univ. Paris 5 and INRIA) ) writes:
>It does not look like the threads on Free Will and determinism are progressing
>very rapidly while I really see no difficulty at all.
>
>The first thing is to define Free Will.
>I have already posted my proposed definition but it must be incredibly banal
>since nobody commented it. Banale maybe but it does solve the problem pretty easily.
>So let me try once more.
>
>(weak) Free Will is the ability to take decisions in agreement with your
>"core personality".
>
    Nope, if you make decisions according to anything, they are
    being determined by that thing....as the existentialists correctly
    pointed out, free will means making decisions out of character or
    even completely irrational decisions.  You might join the 20th
    century and comment on A. I. Melden's book "Free Action," where
    I think that Melden points out that "free will" is not meaningful.

>Note that I do NOT say that your decisions are determined by yourself because
>this is at least confusing.
>What I say is that free will means that your decisions are COMPATIBLE with 
>your main objectives, principles or desires.
>One counter-example that I already gave is someone who wants to be healthy
>but at the same time drinks a gallon of whiskey each day 'cause he/she can't
>help it.

    What is this a counter example of????  You seem to be saying
    that if one drinks whiskey when he want to be health, he is
    not doing it freely because it is imcompatible with his prime
    objective of being health...whether he drinks whiskey or not
    shows nothing...sorry.

>
>"Fine, but what is this defintion useful to ?"
>Well, it helps define moral responsibility, which is what is often expected from
>a def. of free will. When someone lacks free will then this person is not morally responsible.
>"Why not?"
>Simply because it is useless to punish this person.
>"Why useless ?"
>Because the threat of punishement (i.e. threat of  something expected to go against
>the core desires of the person) cannot be taken into account by the person
>in her/his decision process. Of course this does not mean that the person should
>let be free not to behave again, but simply that inflicting pain will be useless.

     Wrong again.  Negative reinforcement works, even with reflex
>
>
>
>"So is Free Will compatible with determinism ?"
>Of course, although the status of determinism itself is to be clarified.
>Determinism is more of a meta-statement than of something that can be put in
>a theory of the world. One MUST believe in some sort of determinsm which states
>that the world will behave tommorrow as one has observed it behaved in the past,
>in some way. Otherwise no survival is possible.

     First, whether survival is possible or not has nothing to 
     do with free will.  You might consider Nietsche's thesis
     (ethernal recurrance) which says that given infinite time
     (Nietzsche believed this) every possible universe will be
     generate >sometime< and we just happen to be living in one
     that was randomly generated that >appears< to have lawlike
     behavior.  (There are infinitely many such universes also.)
     But none of this has anything to do with free will (or
     determinism either, for that matter.)

