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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 13:02:53 GMT
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In article <3aj3dv$8qt@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>In <3aj1ls$i3m@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> marcus@ee.pdx.edu (Marcus Daniels) writes:
>>rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>>In <3ain01$6ki@news.panix.com> Clay Thurmond <claytex@panix.com> writes:
>
>>>> Neil Rickert, rickert@cs.niu.edu writes:
>>>You are quite right.  If one scientist lacks free will, that is not
>>>important because there are other scientists.  But those who deny
>>>free will would deny free will to all scientists.  Thus all
>>>scientists might come up with the same bogus law.
>
>>You really buy into this Law thing don't you?!  I'm perfectly keen
>>on admitting that that all we can get out mathematics and science 
>>is utility.
>
>Utility is good enough for me.
>
>>             If you need more, well okay, use it as a rationalisation
>>for free will, then that is that, but there is no point in repeating 
>>`subjective free will' louder and louder like it provides any insight.
>
>I was not attempting to rationalize free will.  I have no need of
>such a rationalization.  Rather, I was attempting to point you to the
>evidence that your denial of free will is contrary to the evidence.
>
>Most likely, however, we simply do not agree on the meaning of "free
>will."  You have apparently adopted a meaning which makes the concept
>inconsistent, and have therefore concluded that it doesn't exist.  I
>am quite happy with what I take to be the common usage of "free
>will".  This includes the ability to make choices, such as a
>scientist makes in carrying out a scientific experiment.  By virtue
>of the meaning I use, the denial of free will necessarily denies the
>possibility of science.  Since you argue otherwise, I will take that
>as strong evidence that we do not agree on the meaning.
---------------------------------------------------------
The fact that in common parlance, "humans make choices", is useful jargon for
some purposes, does NOT indicate that those choices are not themselves, in
turn, caused, and therefore deterministic, no matter whether there is also
another mechanism in the human brain which will "believe" that it made the
choice out of thin air!!! I don't object so much to the word "will", as to
the idiotic assertion that this is "free" will, whatever the fuck THAT
might mean!!! Does it mean it costs nothing to assert? I suspect so!!!;->

And as for quantum mechanics, or the idiotic assertion that science
couldn't be done without free will, consider a being that is determined by
circumstances to investigate and to do it in a methodical manner or in a
partially itrrational manner, or in a completely irrational manner. I have
seen all three done, and I am NOT impressed with this supposed "free" will
except in that it is sort of funny watching it do the obviously determined
cultural irrational act, such as condemning poor Galileo, and again not
impressed that it is free, because if it was, then NO science would get
done, because people would intentionally be doing stupid actions in their
science all the time just to prove to each other that ole' determinism had
no hold on them, no sirreee!!;-)

Whatever happens tomorrow, it was always going to happen tomorrow, and if
it doesn't, then it obviously WASN'T what was always going to happen
tomorrow! That is true, whether the world is a mechanistic Newtonian
device, a broken toy doing something weird, or whether "Gawd" plays dice
with the universe, per uncle Albert E. (=mc^2), or any other thing you wish
to call whatever "causes" what finally happens!!! It still wasn't your
idea, and the thing looking out of your eyes, being suprised each moment,
hasn't the vaguest idea why you do what you do either!!! You are just a
set of phenomena, one of which tries to take credit for whatever your body
did, (or tries to deny it), and another which thinks that IT's the thing
that thinks, when actually it's just another thought on par with all
others! And what you see in the "mind's eye" or the view out the peepers is
all just a panorama of sense and idea, (called the sixth sense by asians),
and you're just along for the ride. The thing looking out of your eyes and
feeling your senses and looking at what you think, and the concept that
thinks it thinks it, has no memories of its own, only yours, and no name of
its own, only yours, and no identity at all of its own. It looks out of all
our eyes, and says nothing, but it is the sense of being, and it exists in
everything that HAS being to sense, from a breaking rock to a tree to the
sun and galaxies! It is the only Witness. Some call it God, some call it
the Void. It "adventures" in the world through us. "We" are just a concept
among many, and the world is just a dream, and there is no way to prove it
is not! A dream "circled round by a sleep". Nighty night.
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

