John Mikes wrote:
>The question of (in)determinacy within our judgement is model-related. A
>distinction:
>"..."free will" to refer to conscious entities making indeterminate
>choices..." is as well the judgement of reasonability in our limited views.
>There may be (hidden? undiscovered?) 'reasons' that make us choose a
>(seemingly) "unreasonable" decision.
>
>To Statis' question I don't pretend to have "The Answer", :
>"...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?"
> but a consideration may go like this:
>our mind is interrelated to the rest of the totality (wholeness) and stores
>individually different mindsets as a result of memory and ideation
>(genetically + personal history-wise modified).
>The 'mind' (what is it? self, memories, etc., I say: the mental ASPECT of
>our complexity)
>is not a sole function of the brain-tissues which are only the tools
>working WITH it. There is no 'mystery' in this statement: only our
>ignorance preventing to discover things beyond our present models by our
>physical and physiological observational (and explanatory) skills.
>At the level of complexness in our mind-state we have choices. Not freely,
>but definitely 'ways' to compare and choose. "We are free" means we can
>choose the route that fits most the combined image of our mental state at
>the moment. We are "free" to choose otherwise, again, deterministically by
>the background(s) we consciously know or don't. No matter if
>it looks 'reasonable' for others, ot not. Statis is right to feel not
>responsible for such choices - only religions impart such guilt-feeling to
>keep the flock under control.
>
>Since the actions are deemed (in)deterministic in both 'conscious(?)' and
>'inanimate(?)' units, it points to our ignorance about the functional
>originations for them. The unlimited interconnections with their
>differential efficiency on the different targets that makes the wholistic
>interconnection of the totality incalculable (not prone to Turing-Chuch
>application) gives us the feeling of a free will, of indeterminacy,
>earlier: of a miracle and awe.
>
>I don't want to even guess how much we did not yet discover.
Just to clarify, my request for a method to distinguish "genuine" free will
from the "pseudo-free" variety (deterministic or random) was
tongue-in-cheek. A person's decisions and actions must either follow
deterministically from a set of rules (which at bottom must reduce to the
laws of physics, whatever these ultimately turn out to be), or else they
must be random; what other possibility is there? Certainly, when I make a
decision it doesn't *feel* as if I am bound by any absolute deterministic
rules, nor does it feel as if I am being driven by a random number
generator. But if I think about it seriously, it is clear that this is what
must actually be happening.
--Stathis Papaioannou
_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Received on Mon Apr 11 2005 - 21:31:20 PDT