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Article 6685 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: schuette@wl.com (Wade Schuette)
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Message-ID: <1992Aug23.045218.4408@wl.com>
Organization: Warner Lambert / Parke-Davis
References: <25048@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1992Aug20.192242.2728@mp.cs.niu.edu> <706@trwacs.fp.trw.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 04:52:18 GMT
Lines: 75

In article <706@trwacs.fp.trw.com> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
>Let's see.
>1. There's determined and predictable behavior.
>2. There's determined but unpredictable behavior. (chaos in a general
>sense).
>3. There's random, ergodic behavior. (time average = average over state
>space.)
>4. There's random, non-ergodic behavior. (random behavior, but statistics
v>change with time.)
>5. Then there's free-will. 
>
>How as an observer do I distinguish 5 from 1-4?

It seems to me that the question of free-will has a lot to do with 
whether "I" determine my behavior, or whether "it/they" determine it
for me.  If so, the scope of "I" is an issue, in both space and time.

At the summer conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science
in 1986 (or so) we spent a week thrashing around determinism and free will,
without much resolution.

There is a subtle sort of recursion to the problem.  My behavior may be
"determined" by my companions of the past year, but, then again, "I" had
some say in selection of those companions, but then again... 

Also, there is a time factor related to constancy in some sense. 
Suppose I have a car on the salt flats and the steering wheel is 
"almost locked", so I have only 2 degrees (as in 360 degrees in a circle)
of steering play.  Can I "steer" the car?  Well, yes and no. In the
short run, no.  In the long run, if I'm clever, (and mabye conscious and
a fast learner :-) ), sure, I can put that baby wherever I want it.

There's an intrinsic assumption in "determinism" that one can sort out
interactions in a cybernetic loop here.  What determines what?
Do wages drive prices or vice versa? It's not clear to me that
a nested set of overlapping and interacting contexts can be flattened
out meaningfully and a "direction" of determinism determined. 

The sense I get from chaos is that a whole lot MORE of the
world is a whole lot LESS determined externally than we thought.
Another question might be then, what exactly does it mean to say
"It's up to you..."  Kinda means it's determined by a complex function
of recall of the past, perception of the present, and mental model of
the future by the decision-making agent, along with what they had for
breakfast and whether they made that red light or not on the way to work.

To add to that, a good deal of the perception or model may have to do
with what they THINK that other decision-makers are going to think or
do or say or react to the contemplated actions.  So now I'm determined
by whether he's determined by what SHE is going to do... 
 
All cereal makers target kids, cause Mom or Dad will most likely buy
whatever junior rushes to get and says he's REALLY honestly going to
eat.

Which raises one more question:  can a COLLECTIVE of agents have 
free-will, even if no single one alone has, even remotely, free-will?
This is more relevant to the 10*10 neurons you call a brain, or the
ant-hill or bee colony or State of Massachusetts.

Or, a massively parallel whatever.













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