On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 01:21:43PM -0500, Jason Resch wrote: > One of the concerns people have with free will or the lack thereof is that > if physics is deterministic, one's future actions can predicted beforehand, > without them even having to exist. However, an interesting consequence of > computationalism is this: One's future actions cannot be predicted without a > simulation that goes into enough detail to instantiate that person's > consciousness. As conscious creatures, our wills cannot be calculated > without our consciousness being invoked by the calculations, just as the > physics of this universe is doing now.
Sorry I haven't been following the thread, but I assume people have also brought up issues like measurement error, sensitive dependence on initial conditions and quantum uncertainty. The next question I would have is: assuming such a program could be fully realized and accurately initialized, would it have to have a partitioned structure which would simulate the environment as well as the internal mind of the individual, and would such a program be capable of deducing logical shortcuts to the internal's next state which are not already incorporated into the internal (and our biological neural nets) at the corresponding point in "time". Are we in some logical way an optimal expression of ourselves? If so, it would seem we have free will at least in the sense of not being predictable. Rich --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---