Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem
Hi Stathis: My argument is that Turing's result points towards the MWI and makes it a deterministic outcome but I so far see no reason why all worlds should run concurrently. So the judge's decision you experience now is an indeterminate [random] selection from all possible outcomes and gives the illusion that the judge has Free Will because our minds are too coarse grained to store the quantum level events. Hal Ruhl
Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem
Hi Stathis: I left out that Turing's result seem to point towards a conclusion that the set of universe descriptions does not form a continuum but rather a countable set and thus these descriptions can generally differ by too large an amount to store all prior quantum level states - too coarse grained. Thus the illusion of indeterminacy and thus free will. Hal Ruhl
Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem
Since this topic of legal responsibility regularly comes up in discussions of free, it needs to be squashed from a great height. The notion of legal responsibility has nothing whatsoever to do with free will. Legal responsibility is used for different purposes, depending on whether the case is civil or criminal. In civil cases, legal responsibility who pays cost and damages. In criminal cases, it used to decide whether an agent should be punished. An agent here may be a person, or a company, or any other legal entitity that that legal tradition recognises. The purpose of punishment is to prevent that occurrence from happening again. Human society depends on punishment to ensure altruism (reference to recent work by that Swiss guy here...). If the agent is a learning system, then applying punishment to the agent can cause the agent to learn - the stick of carrot a stick. Alternatively, the punishment is used to deter others from committing the same crime. The notion of diminished responsibility is an interesting case. Here, an agent may be found to be under the influence of another agent, so one can attribute some of the responsibility to another agent. However, as the Nuernberg trials showed, this is a very shaky defence. It cannot be applied to the sources of randomness within your brain - those sources of randomness are still part of the legal entity that is you. Pleading the defence of insanity can really only alter the punishment. Punishing an insane person to make them learn will probably not work - different sort of treatment, such as medical intervention might be appropriate. Religions have a notion of responsibility rather similar to the legal one, however theological doctrine seems to have more to say about free will. However, being essentially atheist, and unlikely to ever meet a god face to face, this line of argumentation doesn't impress me much. So I leave it at that - responsibility has nothing whatsoever to do with free will. Cheers On Sun, Apr 10, 2005 at 03:19:19PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Norman Samish writes: The answer to Stat[h]is' question seems straightforward. Given quantum indeterminacy, thought processes cannot be predictable. Therefore, genuine free will exists. ...Can someone please explain how I can tell when I am exercising *genuine* free will, as opposed to this pseudo-free variety, which clearly I have no control over? Norman Samish So if, on a whim, I commit murder, I can present the following argument to the judge: Your Honour, quantum indeterminacy made me do it. If you could have looked inside my brain just prior to the moment when I decided to become a murderer you would have seen a sodium ion teetering at the edge of a protein ion channel embedded in the membrane of a particular neuron. If the sodium ion passes through the channel it will raise the voltage across the membrane to just past the threshold required to trigger an action potential. The neurone will then fire, setting off a cascade of neuronal events which I experience as the decision to kill an innocent stranger - which I then proceeded to do. If, on the other hand, that crucial sodium ion had not passed through the membrane channel, a different cascade of neuronal events would have ensued, causing me to allow the stranger to live. I cannot deny that it felt like I was exercising my free will when I decided to kill, but clearly this must have been a delusion. Firstly, the cause of my decision was a random event (to the extent where non-classical behaviour applies to the sort of biochemical reactions which occur in the brain). Secondly, my decision had already been determined at the point where the behaviour of that initial sodium ion was determined; when I experienced myself deciding to kill, in a sense my brain had already been programmed to do so. Therefore, I don't think it is fair that I should be punished! --Stathis Papaioannou _ Update your mobile with a hot polyphonic ringtone: http://fun.mobiledownloads.com.au/191191/index.wl?page=191191polyphonicringtone -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem
Russel, Stathis I agree that free will and legal responsibility are different. Free will is a subjective concept. It is a feeling that one has about being "master" of one's decisions. In the terminology used in this list, free will is also a "first person" issue. Legal responsibility is an objective concept about restricting or punishing members of a society, used to insure that the society is functioning porperly. Legal responsibility is also a third person issue. Confusion arise because we are mixing first person and third person concepts, that is we assume that other members of our species (third persons) have free will like ourselves (first person). Hence, we deduce that others have free will and therefore they should be masters of their own decisions to do "good and evil" - in relation to society or to conscious deity - and therefore can be guided by a system of rewards and punishments. This key assumption may be justified on practical ground for the stability of our society and requires the existence of conscious others. Treating free will as a first person concept, implies that it is also relative to the observer. For example a super being observing our brain as we make decisions, will come to the conclusion that we have no free will. Our choices, as Stathis said, is only the result of causally driven sodium atoms pushing through nerve membranes. Similarly, a programmer who understand his code thoroughly, can believe that his program has no free will. We can also have a super being watching a programmer watching his programthere is no absolute free will. >From an absolute viewpoint, that is looking at the whole plenitude, there is no quantum free will since any decision involving quantum branching is no decision at all. >From the relative point of view of a classical superbeing observing a human making a decision generated by a quantum event, the superbeing must deduce that the decision is produced by free will since, being classical, he cannot understand the causality behind the decision. My point is that free will cannot be absolute. It is really a relative, subjective and first person concept that depends on the state of mind of the observer and the complexity of the observed entity in relation to the observer. George Russell Standish wrote: Since this topic of legal responsibility regularly comes up in discussions of free, it needs to be squashed from a great height. The notion of legal responsibility has nothing whatsoever to do with free will. Legal responsibility is used for different purposes, depending on whether the case is civil or criminal. In civil cases, legal responsibility who pays cost and damages. In criminal cases, it used to decide whether an agent should be punished. An agent here may be a person, or a company, or any other legal entitity that that legal tradition recognises. The purpose of punishment is to prevent that occurrence from happening again. Human society depends on punishment to ensure altruism (reference to recent work by that Swiss guy here...). If the agent is a learning system, then applying punishment to the agent can cause the agent to learn - the stick of carrot a stick. Alternatively, the punishment is used to deter others from committing the same crime. The notion of diminished responsibility is an interesting case. Here, an agent may be found to be under the influence of another agent, so one can attribute some of the responsibility to another agent. However, as the Nuernberg trials showed, this is a very shaky defence. It cannot be applied to the sources of randomness within your brain - those sources of randomness are still part of the legal entity that is you. Pleading the defence of insanity can really only alter the punishment. Punishing an insane person to make them learn will probably not work - different sort of treatment, such as medical intervention might be appropriate. Religions have a notion of responsibility rather similar to the legal one, however theological doctrine seems to have more to say about free will. However, being essentially atheist, and unlikely to ever meet a god face to face, this line of argumentation doesn't impress me much. So I leave it at that - responsibility has nothing whatsoever to do with free will. Cheers On Sun, Apr 10, 2005 at 03:19:19PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Norman Samish writes: The answer to Stat[h]is' question seems straightforward. Given quantum indeterminacy, thought processes cannot be predictable. Therefore, genuine free will exists. "...Can someone please explain how I can tell when I am exercising *genuine* free will, as opposed to this pseudo-free variety, which clearly I have no control over?" Norman Samish So if, on a whim, I commit murder, I can present the following argument to the judge: Your Honour, quantum indeterminacy made me do it. If you could have looked inside my brain just prior to the moment
Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem
Russell Standish writes: Since this topic of legal responsibility regularly comes up in discussions of free, it needs to be squashed from a great height. The notion of legal responsibility has nothing whatsoever to do with free will. Legal responsibility is used for different purposes, depending on whether the case is civil or criminal. In civil cases, legal responsibility who pays cost and damages. In criminal cases, it used to decide whether an agent should be punished. An agent here may be a person, or a company, or any other legal entitity that that legal tradition recognises. The purpose of punishment is to prevent that occurrence from happening again. Human society depends on punishment to ensure altruism (reference to recent work by that Swiss guy here...). If the agent is a learning system, then applying punishment to the agent can cause the agent to learn - the stick of carrot a stick. Alternatively, the punishment is used to deter others from committing the same crime. The notion of diminished responsibility is an interesting case. Here, an agent may be found to be under the influence of another agent, so one can attribute some of the responsibility to another agent. However, as the Nuernberg trials showed, this is a very shaky defence. It cannot be applied to the sources of randomness within your brain - those sources of randomness are still part of the legal entity that is you. Pleading the defence of insanity can really only alter the punishment. Punishing an insane person to make them learn will probably not work - different sort of treatment, such as medical intervention might be appropriate. Religions have a notion of responsibility rather similar to the legal one, however theological doctrine seems to have more to say about free will. However, being essentially atheist, and unlikely to ever meet a god face to face, this line of argumentation doesn't impress me much. So I leave it at that - responsibility has nothing whatsoever to do with free will. Cheers I agree that the purpose of punishment is to prevent that occurrence from happening again; at least, this is what the purpose of punishment ought to be. But note that this *does* imply an assumption about the reasons people decide to act in a particular way, which is that it is not completely random or indeterminate. If it were, then punishment or the fear of punishment would not have any effect on future behaviour, would it? Putting aside the pragmatics of the legal system, one's philosophical beliefs about free will can influence attitudes towards criminals. A criminal behaves as he does due to (a) his biology, (b) his past life experiences, (c) random physical processes in the brain, or some combination of the three. It is tempting to add (d) free choice, but how can this possibly be anything different to (a), (b) and (c)? It certainly feels like one can overcome (a), (b) and (c) by force of will, but the existence of this subjective experience has no more bearing on reality than, for example, the strong feeling that the Earth is flat, and that there is an absolute up/down in the universe. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Buy want you really want - sell what you don't on eBay: http://adfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/705-10129-5668-323?ID=2
Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem
On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 10:30:25AM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I agree that the purpose of punishment is to prevent that occurrence from happening again; at least, this is what the purpose of punishment ought to be. But note that this *does* imply an assumption about the reasons people decide to act in a particular way, which is that it is not completely random or indeterminate. If it were, then punishment or the fear of punishment would not have any effect on future behaviour, would it? Sure - a totally indeterminate human being would not be very functional. Nor would a totally determinate one. Punishment would probably be inappropriate in either case. Putting aside the pragmatics of the legal system, one's philosophical beliefs about free will can influence attitudes towards criminals. A criminal behaves as he does due to (a) his biology, (b) his past life experiences, (c) random physical processes in the brain, or some combination of the three. It is tempting to add (d) free choice, but how can this possibly be anything different to (a), (b) and (c)? It certainly feels like one can overcome (a), (b) and (c) by force of will, but the existence of this subjective experience has no more bearing on reality than, for example, the strong feeling that the Earth is flat, and that there is an absolute up/down in the universe. --Stathis Papaioannou Nothing I disagree with here. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpcHUjVUyITt.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Free Will Theorem
This discussion is exhibiting the usual confusion about what free will means. The concept itself is incoherent as generally used (taken as meaning my actions are not determined). But then in this case they must be merely random (which is hardly an improvement), or we require recourse to a Descartian immaterial dualism, which merely pushes the problem back one level. The only sensible meaning of free will is *self-determination*. Once looked at in this manner, quantum indeterminacy is irrelevant. Our actions are determined by the state of our minds. Whether these states are random, chaotically deterministic, or predictably deterministic is irrelevant; the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. In most circumstances, the answer is surely yes, and so we have self-determination and hence free will. Sleepwalking, reflexes, etc. are examples of actions that are not consciously self-determined, and so are not examples of free will. Jonathan Colvin ** Norman Samish writes: The answer to Stat[h]is' question seems straightforward. Given quantum indeterminacy, thought processes cannot be predictable. Therefore, genuine free will exists. ...Can someone please explain how I can tell when I am exercising *genuine* free will, as opposed to this pseudo-free variety, which clearly I have no control over? Norman Samish
Re: John Conway, Free Will Theorem
Here are some interesting symptoms from sufferers of schizophrenia, which may be seen as disorders of free will: 1. Command auditory hallucinations. The patient hears voices commanding him to do sometimes horrific things, which he feels he *must* obey, and often does obey, even though he does not want to. It is not that there is a fear of consequences if he disobeys, like Nazi subordinates following orders. Rather, the perceived command seems to directly impinge on the decision-making centres of the brain, bypassing the frantic efforts of the judgement centres to counteract it: I heard a voice telling me to strangle my mother... I was terrified, I didn't want to do this, but I couldn't resist, I *had* to do it. 2. Passivity phenomena. This is generally even harder to resist, and hence more dangerous, than command auditory hallucinations. The patient experiences his body being controlled like a puppet by an external force: I was walking down the street when all of a sudden, I felt the satellites beaming a force field at me, which took control of my body and made me throw myself in front of the oncoming traffic. I tried to resist, but it was impossible. 3. Catatonia. The patient appears as if paralysed and unresponsive. Asked about the experience afterwards, he sometimes explains that he was actually aware of his surroundings, that he felt able to move and speak if he wanted to at any point, but that he did not want to do so, for reasons he cannot explain - just a whim. The fact is, catatonic patients are *not* able to move, even though they think they are, and could die if not given urgent medical care (IV hydration, ECT). --Stathis Papaioannou _ SEEK: Now with over 80,000 dream jobs! Click here: http://ninemsn.seek.com.au?hotmail
Re: Free Will Theorem
If free will simply means self-determination then Jonathan is right, and to the extent we are self-determined we have free will. He says, the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. But what about the sufferers of schizophrenia who Stathis Papaioannou referred to? They exercise self-determination, and their mental state is such that their actions, at least in some cases, are completely predictable. Do they have free will? Another example might be a self-aware computer of the future that would be programmed to have predictable actions as well as self-determination. Would it have free will? In both cases, the actions of the Self-Aware Organism are predictable, hence their will is not free. They are bound by their destiny. To have free will, the actions of a SAO cannot be completely predictable. To be free of complete predictability, at least some of the SAO's actions must ultimately depend on some kind of random event. At the most fundamental level, this must be quantum indeterminacy. Norman Samish ~~~ From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] This discussion is exhibiting the usual confusion about what free will means. The concept itself is incoherent as generally used (taken as meaning my actions are not determined). But then in this case they must be merely random (which is hardly an improvement), or we require recourse to a Descartian immaterial dualism, which merely pushes the problem back one level. The only sensible meaning of free will is *self-determination*. Once looked at in this manner, quantum indeterminacy is irrelevant. Our actions are determined by the state of our minds. Whether these states are random, chaotically deterministic, or predictably deterministic is irrelevant; the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. In most circumstances, the answer is surely yes, and so we have self-determination and hence free will. Sleepwalking, reflexes, etc. are examples of actions that are not consciously self-determined, and so are not examples of free will. Jonathan Colvin
