Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Tom Caylor writes (in response to Marvin Minsky):
Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea
of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is
no truth that we can discover. But on the other hand, if there is no
discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the
existence of freedom of will, is false?
That's easy: it's logically impossible. When I make a decision, although
I take all the evidence into account, and I know I am more likely to
decide one way rather than another due to my past experiences and due to
the way my brain works, ultimately I feel that I have the freedom to
overcome these factors and decide "freely". But neither do I feel that
this free decision will be something random: I'm not mentally tossing a
coin, but choosing according to my beliefs and values. Do you see the
contradiction here?
Yes, but it's a contrived contradiction. You have taken "free" to mean independent of
you where "you" refers to your past experience, the way your brain works, etc. As
Dennett says, that's not a free will worth having.
Brent Meeker
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