Re: OT: Memes Vs. Free Will

From: Clifford Heath (no_at_spam.please.net)
Date: 09/26/04 

Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 18:52:41 +1000

Kevin Aylward wrote:
>>The question is whether the machine is merely a filter on the
>>environmental stimulus, or generates behaviour independently, or
>>both.

> However, independently generated behaviour is not sufficient to conclude
> that there is a true free will. Random generated behaviour, is by
> definition, unpredictable. If it is unpredictable, we have no control
> over it, thereby no free will to control it.

You're falling again into the trap of assuming that there could be
a separate "we" that could have control over it. It's turtles all
the way down there(*). How does this independent "we" get control,
from where does *that* control spring? You see, it comes down to how
you define "true", "free" will.

The independently generated behaviour (to which you below said "yes"),
*is* the free will. Just because it's random doesn't mean we can't
*ascribe* meaning and value to it. Because all meanings are ascribed
anyway. We shape the novelty according to the structure of our
processes (that is, the processes that *are* ourselves), and we and
others ascribe values to the outcomes, praising or criticising the
shaping process (the individual) as a result.

However I think we're singing from the same songbook, even if yours
sometimes seems to be written in ancient Hittite :-).

I want to see Rich Grise's response, because if each individual is
a process, then surely his "Spirit" is the universe's process.

>>Quantum mechanics appears to allow indeterminism,
>>and that allows new things (as opposed to mechanistic coincidences)
>>to happen.
> Yes.

So there *is* a deus ex machina. It's probably random, but gosh it's
pretty :-). It's the world as we know it, we're bound to admire it.

Clifford.

(*) Bertrand Russell story, I'm assuming you've heard it.

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