On 09 Jun 2011, at 18:20, Rex Allen wrote:
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
? On the contrary. It was your argument against determinism which I
took as
incompatible with science or scientific attitude. But third person
determinism does not entails first person determinism, nor do
determinism in
general prevents genuine free will. People believing that
determinism per se
makes free will impossible confuse themselves with God.
But now I am no more sure what you are saying. Are you OK with hard
determinism? Are you OK with block-multiverse, or block-mindscape?
I think your position rests on an invalid conflation between the fact
that it posits multiple *actual* futures,
This is derived from the *assumption* that we are Turing emulable. And
that is the main point. Then quantum interferences are hard to
explained without that fact; so QM can be seen as a confirmation of
that proposition (but with comp it is more multi-dreams than multi-
worlds, but as a mathematician I don't worry too much on vocabulary).
all of which *will* occur -
They just exist. It is provable in Robinson Arithmetic that they exist
and verify the condition of being pieces of computations.
and the "folk" intuition that there are multiple *possible* futures,
I am not studying the semantics of natural languages. That is one
intuition among many others.
and that it is *ultimately* our conscious experience of making a
choice which determines which one of those possible futures becomes
actual.
It is our conscious choice which determines the normal realities. If
you jump out of a window, the probability is high that you will have
problems in the normal neighborhoods. At that level the ethic are the
same. It is just false that everything happens with the same relative
measure, and we can act on that relative measure by decision and
action. No reason to be fatalist.
You say the former, but in doing so you allude to the latter.
Which is true of all compatibilist positions...and that's why
compatibilists insist on redefining existing words like "free will"
and "choice" and "responsibility".
Oh? But then define free-will. This is the most debated term of
philosophy. I have given a definition of it, which is of course a
compatibilist one. What is your definition. It is not a primitive
term. What is your theory?
Because if you don't re-use those words - retaining their flavor
without their substance - it becomes impossible for compatibilists to
connect to their traditional meaning in any convincing way.
You say so, but the point is that not only free-will makes sense with
machines, but we have the tool to relate it to consciousness and
intelligence, but also to the big one without name, and the inner God.
We do have an arithmetical understanding of neoplatonism. The theology
of the universal numbers is *very* rich (provably beyond the
mathematics available to the machine).
I am just saying that comp leads to Plato, and not to Aristotle.
Using less misleading terms would make it obvious that compatibilism
has nothing to do with free will at all. Compatibilism is about
building a world view that makes it possible for society to continue
largely as before while accepting determinism.
That is a "process of intention" (we say in french). It means that you
attribute me an intention which I have not. On the contrary, I show
that the universal numbers are universal dissident and that they can
defeat all complete theories we would build on them. You are just
confusing third person views with first person views. You confuse G,
G* and S4Grz, dixit the machine.
You are the one having a reductionist view of machine and numbers, by
exempting them from free-will, and, I guess consciousness. You are the
one saying that they are dumb. I am the one saying that we can already
listen to them, and that they already have an incredibly interesting
discourse.
"Dr. StrangeDennett: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
Determinism".
Repurposing the term "free will" is a propaganda move, to make the
medicine go down easier.
Science redefines the term all the times. The only thing which counts
is to see if we agree with the theories and their consequences.
What is your theory? I am afraid I did already ask you this, and that
you said you have none. If that is the case, I am not sure what you
are talking about. Hmm... I see in your other post that you think free
will does not exist. Well read my answer there.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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