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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 05:00:21 GMT
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In article <g12Pwc2w165w@sfrsa.com>, Ed Severinghaus <eds@sfrsa.com> wrote:
>rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>> In <3blk4d$nqo@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> marcus@ee.pdx.edu (Marcus Daniels) writes:
>> 
>> >Neil: yes or no, can a robot, in principle, perform scientific
>> >experiments?  Or is there some mental `cosmology' that the robot inherits
>> >but doesn't have implemented.
> 
>...
>> For a robot of the future, we might have available completely
>> autonomous robots which can act without being controlled.  We would
>> then be concerned as to whether we could trust the judgement of the
>> robot.  My guess is that we would not trust a robot's independent
>> scientific judgement unless we had already come to attribute to the
>> robot the same type of free will that we attribute to humans.
>> 
>
>As to 'trust ... free will', I suggest that this is misplaced.  Perhaps 
>'trust ... integrity' woudl be correct.  But then science is not really 
>about trusting other's results, is it?  Rather it is about being able to 
>methodically repeat experiments and get consistent results.  Lacking free 
>will, a robot's creativity (scientific or otherwise) would be dubious, 
>and thus the value of its contributions not likely to earn it a Nobel 
>Prize.
> 
>Ed
-----------------------------------
It seems as though you must have missed most of this thread, Ed, as the
question has been more like, "Does ANYBODY really have free-will?". There
is no way to prove free-will because what does "free" mean in this case?
Does it mean that you can change your mind at any time without any reason?
That would be ludicrous! You would go in all directions and not any
particular one and likely fall down and collapse into pieces! If your
choices are affected by previous experience, then your actions are
determined, and there cannot be a degree to which you have any "free" will
that is truly "free". The word "free" simply means "free" from the
interference of others or the state, not "free" in the sense that your mind
could do absolutely anything different from what it was always going to do
in response to who you are at that moment! Your choices, no matter how much
you have the thought that they belong to you, are determined and beyoind
your control. Example: "If you can, change your deepest belief system right
now, sincerely and without reservation or deception!" YOU cannot. YOU are
as determined as the rest of us and everything. Whether we know the precise
physics, if a prior situation has only one outcome that we can later sense,
then it is determined, and is not "up for grabs" by some "conscious choice"
or other superstition! Your will is a complex thing, but finally, it can
only do what it was always going to do, or else there can be no future!!
That you claim control is just one of the functions of the aware mind,
whether it can change what it does or not! It actually, more accurately,
claims "responsibility" for actions, and not control. If it appears that
you do next what you wish to do, then your sense of ownership is simply
aware of the other thing that chooses and cannot do other than what it did!
There is no necessary connection between believing one controls and making
choices, except that the awareness is aware the choices were made
internally. Likewise with a robot. They can be made as conscious and aware,
and as swept up in the assumption that we "control" themselves, just as we
are. The argument then is NOT whether a robot can have free will, but
whether free will is not a superstitious fiction, without reality except as
a self delusion that is a necessary part of awareness at one level. At yet
a higher level, the awareness knows that it is NOT really in control and
that it is claiming control after it sees what happens; after the fact, and
that it is not the choice itself, and that the choice made is determined be
previous actors that it may be aware of, but has no power to change! Thus,
robots CAN be as aware as any other human or animals, even, and especially
if no one has so-called "free-will"!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

