On 12 May 2012, at 19:50, John Clark wrote:
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.
OK. That is the relative indeterminacy that we can use to give meaning
to choice, responsibiliy, free will. Nothing to do with quantum, or
with the comp first person indeterminacy.
The Turing indeterminacy is not an absolute indeterminacy.What the
amchine will do or not is entirely determined by arithmetical truth.
It is just that we, observing the machine, cannot know the result in
advance. But the result is independent of us, and mathematically well
defined.
> 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.
Right. The ability to choose is a good first approximation of free
will. It is not exactly that, because you can choose by throwing a
coin, and this wold be a case of choice without free will. So it is
probably closer to the ability of making a responsible choice.
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.
No problem with that.
> Situation like that abounds in the laws, jurisprudence,
And that's why jurisprudence works so poorly and contains so many
self contradictions.
Yes.
> 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?
To put light on free will, choice, responsibility, etc.
> 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.
?
You just it above: the ability of making non random choice, or of
doing reasonable choice, or responsible choice, in absence of complete
information, I would add.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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