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From: glass@mrbig.rockwell.com (Jim Glass)
Subject: Re: Freedom = Determinism = Random (The heck it does)
Message-ID: <1996Feb22.151415.19016@nb.rockwell.com>
Sender: glass@mrbig (Jim Glass)
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Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 15:14:15 GMT
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In article <wilkins-1902961456000001@mac213.wehi.edu.au>, wilkins@wehi.edu.au (John Wilkins) writes:
|> In article <1996Feb14.161059.1764@nb.rockwell.com>,
|> glass@mrbig.rockwell.com (Jim Glass) wrote:
|> 
|> | 
|> | I reluctantly concur.  As I said before, (stimulating much discussion),
|> | a random robot is still a robot.
|> | 
|> | And when someone asserts that they posess free will, I translate that into:
|> | 
|> | "My outputs are not functions of my inputs."
|> | 
|> | "Very well, then; what ARE your outputs functions of?"
|> 
|> Well, I translate it into "my _social_ outputs are not functions of my
|> _social inputs_". However, they may very well be functions of my
|> _biological_ inputs. If social degrees of movement are not determined by
|> the physical substrate of society, ie, the properties of society are
|> emergent and perhaps even chaotic, then biological determinism is quite
|> compatible with free will in the social sense.
|> 
|> Moreover, biological properties are often divided into facultative and
|> obligate: the former being the "faculty" to act in certain ways (eg, speak
|> a language), the latter the strict determination that the organism will
|> behave in certain ways (eg, breathe, etc).
|> 
|> You may be deterministically caused to have the social faculty to act
|> freely, within certain limits.
|> | 
|> | This is my simple-minded way of saying, "You must be proposing some
|> teleological
|> | force which moves your body to rationality".  Eh, cobber?
|> 
|> Or not...
|> 
|> -- 
|> John ["Chris"] Wilkins, Head of Communication Services, Walter and Eliza
|> Hall Institute and Assoc. Prof. of Autochtonic Aetiology, Uni of Ediacara
|> <http://www.wehi.edu.au/~wilkins/www.html> | <mailto:wilkins@wehi.edu.au>
|> Errors and Omissions Exempted. "Chris" is TM Uni of Ediacara c/- talk.origins.
|> I do not speak for WEHI, Darwin or my wife.


Hmm.  I think it not very useful to divide up behaviors this way, i.e., into
biologically-determined and socially-free.  All I need do is point out that
your "socially free" behavior must be biologically determined; hence you 
are not free in any meaningful sense.  Or are you determined to BELIEVE
your actions are free?  Either way you are not free by MY lights...

The distinction between facultative and obligate seems to offer
no illumination:  we are obligated to respire; we lack the faculty of 
unassisted flight.  Both are physically determined by our construction.
Birds can fly (most of them) but sometimes "elect" not to.  Yet the power
of flight AND the mechanisms that sometimes result in walking are both
built-in and are "determined" in some fundamental sense...

Jim Glass

