On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 04:24:22PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > On 12 Aug 2012, at 11:45, Russell Standish wrote: > > >On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 11:01:09AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> > >>On 11 Aug 2012, at 09:45, Russell Standish wrote: > >>> > >>>Nevertheless, randomness is a key component of free will. > >> > >> > >>So comp is false? I mean comp can only defend a compatibilist (or > >>mechanist, deterministic) theory of free-will, like with the self- > >>indetermination based on diagonalization. > >>I have never seen how we can use randomness to justify free-will. > >>May be you can elaborate? > >> > >>Bruno > >> > > > >If there are several actions an agent may perform, and one optimal in > >terms of the agent's utility, but the utility is computationally > >unfeasible, then an agent can choose one of the actions by random > >choice. > > How?
Agents perform actions. That is the meaning of agency. If random oracles are available to the agent, why shouldn't the agent use them. > > > > >I don't see why this would entail comp is false though. Perhaps you > >could elaborate? > > Because comp implies that there is no randomness at the ontological > level. Assuming that by "ontological level", you mean what I call the "syntactic level" in my book. There is no free will at the syntactic level, nor is there consciousness, nor human beings, wet water or any other emergent stuff. Free will only makes sense at the semantic level. The level which gives meaning to consious lives. > I guess you are alluding to the self-indeterminacy (à-la > Turing, not to be confused with the first person indeterminacy) > which can make a decision looking random for the one who does it, I would have thought that first person indeterminancy would fit the bill perfectly. Note that as there can be no conscious observer of the 3rd person deterministic subtsrate, it makes no sense to speak of free will for the entities of that substrate. > but which is not the non-compatibilist kind of randomness that some > defender of free-will want to introduce. > I have never met anyone wanting to do this. They sound like some sort of long-discredited Cartesian dualist. Are you sure they're not strawmen you have conjured up? There was a deterministic/free will paradox in the 19th century, when Laplace's "clockwork universe" reigned supreme. But since the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920, the paradox was disolved. And as David Deutcsh is want to point out, for the price of a Multiverse, one can have one's deterministic cake and freely eat it too (sorry for mangling the metaphors :). But this works because the free will exists at a different level from that where determinism rules. > Bruno > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > 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. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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.
