On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 8:34 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> although machines can be said determined, they are not entirely > determined from what they can know about themselves at the time they decide > to act. > As I've said many many times, Turing proved in 1936 that in general there is no shortcut and the only way to know what a machine will do is to watch it and see, even the machine does not know what it will do until it does it. > It [free will] means the ability to chose among a set of future > possibilities > So free will means the ability to choose and the ability to choose means you have free will, and round and round we go. No amount of mental contortions can avoid the fact that you made the choice for a reason or you did not make the choice for a reason. You're a coo coo clock or a roulette wheel, there is no third alternative. > > > Situation like that abounds in the laws, jurisprudence, > And that's why jurisprudence works so poorly and contains so many self contradictions. > although he is determined, he can't be aware of the determination. > That's what Turing proved and I've been saying for months. So what are we arguing about? > Free-will is a higher order relational notion, and it is totally > unrelated to the determinacy question > Oh I'd forgotten, that's what we're arguing about. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
