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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
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Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 15:55:48 GMT
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In article <3bl2qp$53e@tahoma.cwu.edu>,
R. Scott Schilling <scott@tahoma.cwu.edu> wrote:
>Clay Thurmond (claytex@panix.com) wrote:
>:  Neil Rickert, rickert@cs.niu.edu writes:
>:  
>: >Now suppose the scientist has no free will.  It might happen that
>: >sometimes when there is current flowing the needle deflects, but at
>: >other times when there is current it does not.  That is, the
>: >
>: >The ability to do experimental science presupposes free will.
>
>: This argument seems pretty bizarre if you think about how free
>: will actually function in this scenario. Presumably if she had
>: free will, she would be able to counteract whatever "forces" are
>: constraining her and to do the right thing by using her free
>: will to observe.  But what if these forces were so great that
>
>: It's more plausible to conclude from this that the ability to do 
>: experimental science presupposes *no* free will.
>
>: Anyway, if the failure of one experiment dooms experimental
>: science as a whole, then science, once again, is in quite a
>: predicament.  Physical laws are not derived from single
>
>You know, I don't think that this scenerio is too limted to show 
>something about free will.  It seems to me that it is a recursive 
>argument: if we have free will and judge it by the magnetic experiment,
>then we are correct in running a thinking "geganken" experiment on 
>the exeriment itself, but if we do not have free will, then we cannot even
>judge the magnetic experiment in the first place - we do not have the 
>free will to do so. 
-------------------------------------
I hate to correct your German, but the word is gedanken, meaning thought.
As in thought-experiment.

Anyway, Scott, you misinterpret the entire free-will vs determinism or any
other -ism argument if you imagine that judgement has anything to do with
free-will. It does not. A mousetrap makes the judgement to trip and kill a
mouse. Is it aware? No. A "contraption" which can do that experiment and
follow through it properly might possibly be an automaton, or have
"free-will", but most people I know who have "free-will" would rather go
have coffee instead!;) Amusing, but true. This reverses that argument. I
think that with either free-will or an automaton, that no one would be
either aware or useful, as they either would have limited ability to do new
things or else would choose to do something unuseful out of sheer
willfullness! People, aware beings, are something else. Their decisions are
made, and there is a construct or process in them which takes the credit
for doing it, and it seems that this is all that is needed to create the
grand "illusion" of "will". Really will is no more than the hypothesis that
one can be whatever one does wish to be, and that quite possibly anything
can become aware in this manner. All that is necessary is for the automatic
agent of action be self-acknowledging, and that a part of it identify
itself as the "taker of responsibility" for the actions of what it claims
are the sum of its parts, and that it attempt to justify them. It does NOT
mean that its decisions are any LESS caused and inevitable as any other
action in the universe. It just means that it announces that it claims them
as its own, with this peculiar tie we call "possession", whereby identity
is made.
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

