Ben -
I know you, via the web, as one who has both a strong mathematical (objective) background and also one who tends very strongly to value the experiential (subjective) stance.
How is it that your mathematical side can allow you to downplay a solution to a difficult problem, saying the explanation makes it unproblematic, but fault it for being non-intuitive to most people? Doesn't that describe virtually all significant scientific advance?
I came to a similar understanding of the problem of free will, which is in the same family of problems as Personal Identity, The Hard Problem of Consciousness, and Qualia, years ago and found it to be one of the most liberating, and therefore subjectively positive, realizations I've ever had.
Our evolved sense of self fights this realization tooth and nail, but it places many key philosophical problems into an understandable structure that becomes entirely unproblematic. There's great practical value for progress in studies of values, ethics, and politics as we approach the boundaries of conventional understanding of these "common-sense" topics.
BTW, I don't see any essential difference between ESR and Dennett on this thinking.
- Jef
Ben Goertzel wrote:
Hmmm.. well, it looks to me like he just redefines free will in a way that makes it unproblematic, but doesn't really match with most peoples' intuitive feeling about free will....
Saying "A has free will to B if B can't predict what A does" is all very well, but the intuitive notion of most people is that their free will is independent of who's observing them.... So the kind of free will his argument provides, is not the kind that most people intuitively feel like they have...
-- Ben
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David Hart Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 3:40 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] ESR on philosophy of mind, free will, computability and complexity theory
Hi,
Eric Raymond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond) has a interesting short essay in his blog entitled "Predictability, Computability, and Free Will".
http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?m=200410#161
ESR has independently re-invented similar lines of thought to Wolfram, Dennett, and others, but with his own angle. An interesting and concise read.
-dave
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