Free will

[Bruce_Abbott]

[From Bruce Abbott (970130.1455 EST)]

Scott Sterling (30 Jan 1997 12:49:26) --

Without logical consistency, deterministic discourse becomes babble.

Without logical consistency, nondeterministic discourse becomes babble, too.

But
the determinist cannot be blamed for that, though, because either his
genes or the environment (a false dichotomy if there ever was one) made
him do it

Yes it is a false dichotomy, but it is not inherent in the determinist
position, and I doubt that Rupert meant it as an either/or proposition even
if he did state it that way. The determinist argument would hold that one's
behavior results from a complex interplay of genes (themselves the product
of a complex history of physical interactions) and environment, producing a
continuously evolving physical structure (the body) whose current character
reflects its developmental history (including the structural changes we call
learning), and whose behavior results from the interplay of its current
organization (e.g. hierarchically-organized multi-level control system,
certain intrinsic reference levels, stored knowledge-base, tuned parameters,
etc.) and current environment (constraints, EFFs, disturbances).

(whoever "him" is--perhaps "it" would be a better term in the
determinist paradigm).

I fail to see how a determinist view converts "him" to an "it." "He" is the
same system, with the same perceptions, emotions, cognitions, the same human
pains and pleasures, the same ability to make his decisions "freely" (i.e.,
according to his own wishes, internal standards), however you view the
origins of his perceptions, emotions, cognitions, decisions, hopes, and
fears, and is as much responsible for his actions. He has the same worth,
the same human dignity, the same soul, in either case. He is still a human
being.

At least the determinist position offers an explanation for those
capacities; they are not assumed to arise spontaneously from some etherial
void or other dimension as the nondeterminist position would have it.

Regards,

Bruce

[Scott_Stirling]

>But
>the determinist cannot be blamed for that, though, because either his
>genes or the environment (a false dichotomy if there ever was one) made
>him do it

Yes it is a false dichotomy, but it is not inherent in the determinist
position, and I doubt that Rupert meant it as an either/or proposition even
if he did state it that way. The determinist argument would hold that one's
behavior results from a complex interplay of genes (themselves the product
of a complex history of physical interactions) and environment, producing a
continuously evolving physical structure (the body) whose current character
reflects its developmental history (including the structural changes we call
learning), and whose behavior results from the interplay of its current
organization (e.g. hierarchically-organized multi-level control system,
certain intrinsic reference levels, stored knowledge-base, tuned parameters,
etc.) and current environment (constraints, EFFs, disturbances).

I fail to see how a determinist view converts "him" to an "it." "He" is the
same system, with the same perceptions, emotions, cognitions, the same human
pains and pleasures, the same ability to make his decisions "freely" (i.e.,
according to his own wishes, internal standards), however you view the
origins of his perceptions, emotions, cognitions, decisions, hopes, and
fears, and is as much responsible for his actions. He has the same worth,
the same human dignity, the same soul, in either case. He is still a human
being.

        For the determinist, an individual becomes a relationship of
physical phenomena. If anyone is going to thoroughly adopt this view,
then why not be consistent and live according to the conclusions that are
adumbrated by the merest consideration of it? Ethics, law, family,
education, justice, and on and on will need major overhauling if
determinism is true. If you view everything the same way after you've
adopted a deterministic Weltannschaung, you are hardly accepting the
responsibility that comes with that knowledge, are you?

        Recently in Concord, NH, where I stay at home when not in school,
a young kid died in the back of a Friendly's restaurant. He was wanted
by the police, who reported to the scene on a tip that the kid was
there. This young man went into the bathroom and would not come
out. The police believed he was armed, and might be wearing a bullet
proof vest. Finally the kid comes out, but when he does, he appears to
reach into the waist of his pants for a gun. A cop shoots him 9 times.
After an autopsy, it is determined that the kid actually shot himself in
the head as he was being riddled with bullets. He had turned away from
the police with his gun when he drew it out, and shot himself. The
bullet in his head, from his own gun, was determined to be the actual
bullet that killed the kid. It was reported that he had told
acquaintances that he would never be taken back to prison alive. Concord
is a small city of about 30,000 people. This kid was 21 or 22. Things
like this don't happen often in Concord.

        In a discussion with my mother on this rather shocking event, my
mother expressed the typical behavioralist view that the poor kid must
have had a tough upbringing, and must have never had "the good"
reinforced in his life. I tried to explain to my mom that it was more
likely that, given this kid was originally just as healthy as the next
guy, he had adopted the widely held, popular belief system of
behaviorism and the determinism that fairly goes hand in hand with it,
at a very early age. And so even if he had seen any opportunity for a way
out of his sorry life, he would have likely doubted the efficacy of any
effort on his part to take advantage of it, what with the world being a
system of chance, authoritative control, and personal powerlessness in
the face of genes and environment.

        I tried to argue that if this kid, and every kid, was helped
toward the understanding that control is within the individual to a large
and significant degree, and not merely an epiphenomena of physical
relationships, then he would have had a better chance at home and in the
world, where brute force and manipulative powers lurk at every turn. I
say adopt a level of perception where the goal is a sincere sense of
self-empowerment and personal responsibility for conscious behavior.

At least the determinist position offers an explanation for those
capacities; they are not assumed to arise spontaneously from some etherial
void or other dimension as the nondeterminist position would have it.

        I think the determinist position is a knee-jerk reaction to a
fairly rudimentary understanding of the world. I am not arguing that
free will is a fact, or that it is even a term which refers to any
reality in any dimension of the universe. I am arguing that 1) an appeal
to complexity of relationships of physical events is not an
argument against free will or for determinism--it's a tactic that can
be used to draw a premature conclusion about whatever you want. If there
are 10 to the trillionth possible connections in the brain (including
varying synaptic strengths, or "weights"), but only 10 to the
eighty-seventh square meters in the universe, what does that prove? They
are just appeals to complexity, which could be used to push any
conclusion about consciousness, duality, freedom, or what have you. And
2) given the state of ignorance of the brain and the evidence of our own
subjective states (which tell us that we are conscious, free, and having
mental states that are just opaque to any present, third person
investigation--try this at home, I tried it last night, close your eyes
and picture something, anything, and be amazed that you can picture whole
landscapes, imaginary shapes, fantasies of all kinds, and then try to be
content with a closed minded view of how the brain works), it would be
most wise to turn toward the view of personal freedom and responsibility
and spread it everywhere you can, especially to young people, parents,
and teachers.

Regards,

Bruce

Scott

···

On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Bruce Abbott wrote:
______________________________________________________________________________
Scott M. Stirling Email: scstirli@anselm.edu
Saint Anselm College Phone: (603) 668-1101 school
Box 2111 (603) 225-3799 home
100 Saint Anselm Dr.
Manchester, NH 03102-1310

http://www.anselm.edu/student/scstirli/welcome.html

[T_B_Harms]

*From Tracy Harms (1997;01,30.19:15 PST)

Scott M. Stirling,

       For the determinist, an individual becomes a relationship of
physical phenomena. If anyone is going to thoroughly adopt this view,
then why not be consistent and live according to the conclusions that are
adumbrated by the merest consideration of it?

Because, as you understand, by determinist theory there is no option,
alternative, or opportunity to do so conditionally. The logical
implications of the theory cannot be tied to such things as principals,
goals, or behaviors in more than an incidental fashion.

Ethics, law, family,
education, justice, and on and on will need major overhauling if
determinism is true.

Agreed. However, if it were true and a revision were to happen which
brought these things into consistency with it, there would be no
accomplishment to that occurrence. Intention, from a determinist point of
view, is delusional. In contrast PCT emphasizes how intention is
effectual. While PCT is not logically incompatible with determinism, it
offers no advance for such theory. The benefits of PCT are compelling only
within indeterminist frameworks.

Tracy Bruce Harms
Lake County, California

[Bruce_Abbott]

[From Bruce Abbott (960130.0850 EST)]

Bill Powers (970131.030 MST)

I think what bothers non-determinists is not only the "external causation"
idea but the inevitability of all events. If the state of every particle in
the universe is determined by the influences of all other particles, then
the "sense of free will" is a mockery, because it, too, is simply the
consequence of all physical interactions prior to now. Even arguments in
favor of determinism are pointless, because however you argue, you could
have said nothing else -- your argument was predetermined by the Big Bang
and all the events subsequent to it, just as your being killed by a comet,
or not, was predetermined millions of years ago in the Oort cloud, which in
turn was implicit in all prior events. This makes life into a movie which,
no matter how many times you show it, must always come out the same.

Bill, you are conflating determinism with "predeterminism," or predestiny.
The kind of determinism I have in mind allows quantum _in_determinism, and
quantum indeterminism precludes a clockwork Laplacian universe in which
every event from beginning to infinity was set into motion at the start.
Also, as I have noted previously, I set this out as a scientific assumption,
on the grounds that as scientists (who are, after all, in the business of
explaining how things work), we must assume that there are discoverable
physical reasons why people think and act as they do. To begin by assuming
that it's all due to "free will" is to give up the game before it's even
been played. It is the explanation that stops all further enquiry.

Those who find this a disquieting view can take comfort in the fact that
free will continues to be a viable philosophic position so long as there
remain thoughts, impulses, behaviors whose origins cannot be traced within
the structures and mechanisms of the brain. Given the enormous complexity
of this system and the inherent difficulties it presents for precise
observation, that is unlikely to happen any time soon, if ever. You and I
can believe (on a personal level) whatever view we are most comfortable
with. As soon as we begin to act as scientists, however, we must put aside
those personal views and, for the moment, pretend that the assumption of
determinism is true, that we can with sufficient effort ultimately trace the
origins of mind and will. If that assumption is false then those efforts
will ultimately fail, but until then it justifies our trying.

I couldn't help saying that: my internal references made me do it. (;->

Regards,

Bruce

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (970131.0805 MST)]

Bruce Abbott (960130.0850 EST)--

Bill, you are conflating determinism with "predeterminism," or predestiny.
The kind of determinism I have in mind allows quantum _in_determinism, and
quantum indeterminism precludes a clockwork Laplacian universe in which
every event from beginning to infinity was set into motion at the start.

I didn't think our positions were very far apart on this, but it's good to
be explicit about what we mean. As you know, I am a very strong proponent of
deterministic models, at levels of organization where we know how to build
them. PCT is basically deterministic, in that it shows how purposive
behavior emerges naturally from the interactions of physical components of
the brain.

As I said way back in B:CP, the only way to find out anything about
indeterministic aspects of human existence is to account for everything we
can account for with a deterministic physical model. This is why I have
carried the HPCT model, beyond reason, all the way to the system concept
level. We must exempt no function of the human mind from the possibility of
being explained by a mechanistic model, even if we have to expand the idea
of mechanism far beyond anything we could design or build today. It is as
important to know what consciousness and awareness are NOT about as it is to
understand them. Whatever we can represent in a mechanistic deterministic
model is an OBJECT of consciousness, or a VEHICLE of consciousness. The more
clearly we can separate consciousness from the acquired attributes of the
brain, the less danger there will be of conflating brain operations with the
properties of consciousness (or I should say, in the light of my own
previous remarks, awareness, or volition/awareness).

The fact seems to be that we, as aware and volitional entities, can
interfere with the normal operation of the hierarchy of control systems,
causing things to happen in ways unrelated to previous events or surrounding
circumstances. This is one reason I have tentatively associated awareness
with the reorganizing process. The ability to interrupt the habitual
routine, to break the pattern, to defy conditioning, is an essential part of
creativity and learning. Religion and mysticism are about the only areas of
knowledge in which people have tried to make some sense of this irrational
and arbitrary aspect of human nature. I don't consider the associated
theories very advanced, but I respect the observations. There are realms of
human experience that science has studiously avoided, and in my opinion this
has led to a lot of pomposity and misplaced confidence in the omniscience of
science. It has led people to jump to a lot of unwarranted conclusions. It
has quite unnecessarily restricted our sense of the possibilities that exist
in nature, of which we know nothing but can surmise everything.

In case anyone is wondering, I don't buy the God Hypothesis -- it seems much
too conventional and picayune. God, as depicted by those who promote this
hypothesis, seems to have broken all his own commandments including the one
against adultery (according to Christians, anyway). I think the universe is
much more interesting and much less frightening than believers in God make
it out to be. If there is life after death, I sure hope it's not going to
take place in any Heaven I have ever heard about.

Best,

Bill P.

[T_B_Harms]

*From Tracy Harms (1997;01,31.17:30 PST)

Bruce Abbott (960130.0850 EST)

Bill, you are conflating determinism with "predeterminism," or predestiny.

I agree that Bill (and Scott Stirling and I, among others) have been doing
what you say, but I don't see it as an error. Rather, I see the error as
being in your using the word "determinism" to denote a world-view wherein
all causation is natural and amenable to explanatory inquiry. Fostering
such a world-view seems to be your goal, and I find that laudible. Indeed,
I share that view, I just don't think it should be tied to determinism.

The kind of determinism I have in mind allows quantum _in_determinism, and
quantum indeterminism precludes a clockwork Laplacian universe in which
every event from beginning to infinity was set into motion at the start.

In that case you are simply not arguing that the changes in reality are
deterministic. I can adjust my vocabulary to accept your use of the word,
of course; and at some point, to some degree, I do. But I think it
important to warn against what you are doing, for I think it misleading in
a manner which promotes avoidable errors.

Also, as I have noted previously, I set this out as a scientific assumption,
on the grounds that as scientists (who are, after all, in the business of
explaining how things work), we must assume that there are discoverable
physical reasons why people think and act as they do. To begin by assuming
that it's all due to "free will" is to give up the game before it's even
been played. It is the explanation that stops all further enquiry.

I agree that "free will" has too often been reified in a manner which
substitutes assertion for explanation, and this courts irrationality by
insisting on acceptance of such assertion against investigation.
Indeterminist libertarianism has a task in cleaning up this historical mess
it made, but I am confident that these errors are not inherent to the basic
theoretical position.

Those who find this a disquieting view can take comfort in the fact that
free will continues to be a viable philosophic position so long as there
remain thoughts, impulses, behaviors whose origins cannot be traced within
the structures and mechanisms of the brain. Given the enormous complexity
of this system and the inherent difficulties it presents for precise
observation, that is unlikely to happen any time soon, if ever. You and I
can believe (on a personal level) whatever view we are most comfortable
with. As soon as we begin to act as scientists, however, we must put aside
those personal views and, for the moment, pretend that the assumption of
determinism is true, that we can with sufficient effort ultimately trace the
origins of mind and will. If that assumption is false then those efforts
will ultimately fail, but until then it justifies our trying.

This paragraph is interesting because of its attempt to directly tie
determinism and philosophy of science. Thanks for spelling out this view.
Without preparing a rebuttal at length I will but comment that I presently
favor a view wherein the genuine fact of personal freedom (being but one of
the indeterminacies of the world as a whole) is not dependent upon
impossibility of tracing or explaining thoughts, impulses, or behaviors in
regard to their origins. If this view is correct, theories of
indeterminate freedom are *not* in a defensive posture against scientific
advances, nor does indeterminism need be suspended in order to approach
psychological problems in a scientific manner.

Tracy Bruce Harms
Lake County, California

[Scott_Stirling]

Well, the weekend is here, and _Star Wars_ is coming out on the big
screen again. Hopefully I can catch a matinee tomorrow with my
girlfriend, Cassy. I am satisfied with the exchange on free will we have
had/been having. I will continue to ponder these mysteries, but right
now, I have nothing further to add. Bruce Abbot, Tracy Harms, and Bill
have all made fine points. We all know where we stand, I think!

I looked up the word for "world view" or "personal philosophy" in my
German dictionary last night. I thought my spelling from memory was
close, but supect. I was right: Weltanschauung is the correct spelling.

Thanks for the intellectual stimulation. I'm full. May the force be with
you.

Scott

···

______________________________________________________________________________
Scott M. Stirling Email: scstirli@anselm.edu
Saint Anselm College Phone: (603) 668-1101 school
Box 2111 (603) 225-3799 home
100 Saint Anselm Dr.
Manchester, NH 03102-1310

http://www.anselm.edu/student/scstirli/welcome.html

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (970201.0400 MST)]

Tracy Harms (1997;01,31.17:30 PST) --

Your new location looks like nice country on a map. I was reminded of a
science-fiction story "An Adventure in the Yolla Bolly Middle Eel
Wilderness" (Aandahl, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Aug. 1969), a title that
has stuck in my mind because it's such nonsense until you find the place on
a map. Watch out for Bigfoot. She'll be coming down from the North.

I agree that "free will" has too often been reified in a manner which
substitutes assertion for explanation, and this courts irrationality by
insisting on acceptance of such assertion against investigation.
Indeterminist libertarianism has a task in cleaning up this historical
mess it made, but I am confident that these errors are not inherent to the
basic theoretical position.

From what I've seen of libertarianism, it doesn't seem to deserve serious

consideration. All I've seen are collections of "get off my back" pet
peeves, plus Ayn Rand's Superman comics (not that she didn't make a pretty
good try at constructing a PCT kind of scheme).

You said to Bruce:

Without preparing a rebuttal at length I will but comment that I presently
favor a view wherein the genuine fact of personal freedom (being but one
of the indeterminacies of the world as a whole) is not dependent upon
impossibility of tracing or explaining thoughts, impulses, or behaviors in
regard to their origins. If this view is correct, theories of
indeterminate freedom are *not* in a defensive posture against scientific
advances, nor does indeterminism need be suspended in order to approach
psychological problems in a scientific manner.

I'd like to see your exposition on this. In my view, even the possibility of
inner direction weakens any deterministic description of behavior. The
determinists see this problem: they argue, roughly, "If you have an adequate
explanation of behavior in terms of observable environmental variables,
there is no need for a second explanation in terms of independent internal
variables like thoughts, desires, or intentions" -- an Occam's Razor or
epiphenomenon argument. Unfortunately, what is called an "adequate"
explanation involves a large component of assumptions of the very
determinism they think they are proving; for example, a tendency to excuse
failures of prediction by saying that there would have been no failure if
the entire history of reinforcement had been known. That, of course, would
be true if total determinism is a fact, but not if it isn't. Skinner
supported his contention that all behavior is caused by environmental
variables by saying that this assumption is the essence of science itself,
so if you didn't agree with him you weren't a scientist.
This is one of the risks of setting yourself up as the judge of whether your
own idea is adequate. Unless you can seriously consider that it may be
inadequate, this judgment is best left to others.

I think there's a potential argument for indeterminism in the Butterfly
Effect. When you trace causes backward, there is a point where an
infinitesimal alteration of the previous world can have major present-time
effects. This means that there's a bottleneck in the confluence of prior
influences where any number of different situations could have preceded the
Butterfly Point, and hence the present world.

In fact, because of the Butterfly Effect, the Laplacian concept of
determinism seems to work only in the backward direction. That is, once you
have a world, you can explain it in terms of the immediately preceding
situation, and go back as far as you like one small step at a time. But
given the present world, there is no way to extrapolate forward for more
than a very limited time. Alternate universes converge when you trace
backward through the tree of possibilities, but diverge when you try to go
forward. I haven't really thought this through, however -- maybe there's
also a Reverse Butterfly Effect, so that a given present situation could
have arisen from a wide variety of previous situations. Now that I think of
it, that looks fairly likely. Infinitestimal indeterminacies add up pretty
fast in steps of 10^-33 seconds, going either forward or backward.

Living systems have the property of being able to hold the local world on a
preselected course despite tendencies of that world to diverge onto
different courses. Intentions, therefore, oppose the Butterfly Effect. If
it's true that there is a Reverse Butterfly Effect, then the organization
that has intentions could have arisen in any number of different ways, and
once it has arisen, it is divorced from its actual origins. It amounts to
Free Will to any degree of approximation you like.

I wonder how these thoughts will look after I go back to bed and wake up at
a more reasonable hour. Am I dreaming about this Butterfly Effect, or is it
dreaming about me?

Best,

Bill P.

[T_B_Harms]

Bill Powers (970201.0400 MST),

My use of the word "libertarian" was in its older, philosophical meaning.
It denotes the proposition of free will, as opposed to necessitarian.

As for the political meaning of the word, I'll just note that a prominent
PCTer (who shall remain unnamed) has offered that my libertarian studies
have given me "an unfair advantage" when it comes to learning PCT.

In the duration until I get around to writing about indeterminism I
recommend the paper by Karl Popper entitled "Of Clouds and Clocks". It
occurs as one of the chapters in _Objective Knowledge_. By the time I
encountered it I had already found complexity theory to persuasively
indicate indeterminism (as it does for you), but I find Popper's
presentation especially conducive to thorough understanding and integration
of science within an indeterminite universe.

Tracy Bruce Harms
Lake County, California

···

*from: Tracy Harms (1997;02,01.14:30 PST)

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (970203.1145 MST)]

Martin Taylor 970203 11:30 --

maybe there's
also a Reverse Butterfly Effect, so that a given present situation could
have arisen from a wide variety of previous situations.

Yes, it's correct, so far as I know. Imagine the extreme of this, the ball
in the bowl having come to rest so far as any feasible measurement can >tell.
The ball could have come from _anywhere_ in the bowl originally--a much
less deterministic past than the simple bifurcation of the future at the
rim where two bowls meet.

Yes, this is what I meant some time ago when I said "history doesn't
matter." For any given state of the world, especially locally, there are any
number of past states that could have led to the same state that holds now.
Extrapolating from your remarks, we could say that the marble at the bottom
of the bowl could have come from anywhere; then that the marble with a
certain velocity could have arrived there from any history of accelerations;
then that the marble with a constant second derivative of position could
have had any history of third derivatives ...

Of course the more other variables you bring into the equation, the more
constraints there are, but the same could be said of all the other
variables, too. In the end, I think that Laplace's proposition holds only if
you know the states of ALL the variables in the universe. If you leave out
even one of them, the whole equation becomes indeterminate, doesn't it? It's
like saying y = f(x1 + x2 + ... xn) + z. If you don't know z, knowing
millions of x's doesn't help you to determine the value of y.

Best,

Bill P.

[Martin_Taylor3]

[Martin Taylor 970203 11:30]

Bill Powers (970201.0400 MST)]

I think there's a potential argument for indeterminism in the Butterfly
Effect. When you trace causes backward, there is a point where an
infinitesimal alteration of the previous world can have major present-time
effects. This means that there's a bottleneck in the confluence of prior
influences where any number of different situations could have preceded the
Butterfly Point, and hence the present world.

Yes, exactly. The Butterfly effect doesn't mean that wherever there is
a Butterfly flapping its wings, it makes the difference between a tornado
and a calm day in Kansas next June 20. But on some occasion, it might.

We are talking about basins of attraction, here. If there were no external
disturbances to the system under consideration (say, the sun-earth-outer
space energy flows), then one could, in principle, (following Laplace in
a slightly more modern way) say that from any one state, the system
would move toward some specifiable attractor. But there are boundaries
between attractor basins. There are places where an infinitesimal move
takes the system from one basin of attranction to another.

maybe there's
also a Reverse Butterfly Effect, so that a given present situation could
have arisen from a wide variety of previous situations. Now that I think of
it, that looks fairly likely.

Yes, it's correct, so far as I know. Imagine the extreme of this, the ball
in the bowl having come to rest so far as any feasible measurement can tell.
The ball could have come from _anywhere_ in the bowl originally--a much
less deterministic past than the simple bifurcation of the future at the
rim where two bowls meet.

Living systems have the property of being able to hold the local world on a
preselected course despite tendencies of that world to diverge onto
different courses. Intentions, therefore, oppose the Butterfly Effect. If
it's true that there is a Reverse Butterfly Effect, then the organization
that has intentions could have arisen in any number of different ways, and
once it has arisen, it is divorced from its actual origins. It amounts to
Free Will to any degree of approximation you like.

I wonder how these thoughts will look after I go back to bed and wake up at
a more reasonable hour. Am I dreaming about this Butterfly Effect, or is it
dreaming about me?

Either way, it's a more realistic dream than most.

Martin

[HANS_BLOM2]

[Hans Blom, 970204c]

(Bill Powers (970201.0400 MST))

I think there's a potential argument for indeterminism in the
Butterfly Effect. When you trace causes backward, there is a point
where an infinitesimal alteration of the previous world can have
major present-time effects. This means that there's a bottleneck in
the confluence of prior influences where any number of different
situations could have preceded the Butterfly Point, and hence the
present world.

In fact, because of the Butterfly Effect, the Laplacian concept of
determinism seems to work only in the backward direction.

I wouldn't want to give up Laplace's dream -- which is ultimately the
concept of causality -- so easily. The problem of the Butterfly
Effect is the problem of weather prediction. You're perfectly able to
give an extremely good prediction of how the weather is going to be
in ten minutes, but not how it's going to be in ten days. Why? Well,
the physics is extremely complex and difficult to model. Practical
problems are (1) the limited number of observations, that do not
allow a good description of what the (global) weather is right now
[there is no good state vector], (2) the great many relationships
between the different variables that play a role (gas atoms or
molecules, solar photons) that would need to be modelled [the state
vector and transition matrix are too huge to handle even if we had
accurate laws], and (3) computational errors due to finite word
length in the computations [leading to rapidly growing uncertainty].
Perfect, comprehensive observations and thus a perfect model are
forever out of reach, but maybe "merely" because of our limited human
capabilities. An all-knowing God with a perfect Laplacian model would
maybe be able to predict everything perfectly. Given a perfect model
and its perfect predictions, He wouldn't even need to _observe_ so He
would even escape limitations such as Heisenberg's uncertainty
relation; He would _know_.

In other words: physics is not about the world; it is about what we
know about the word. And what we know are mere models: rough (and
sometimes not so rough) approximations at best, and rough are also
our ways of manipulating those models -- in generating predictions.
The same goes for "predicting" the past.

Anyway, science (maybe in contrast to philosophy takes Laplace's
dream seriously and attempts to discover ever better models. That is,
to take the position that what we thus far had to consider "noise" or
"disturbance" in our models is in fact explainable as well -- if we
only knew more.

But then the next question is how much control would improve if we
knew more. It appears that one of the goals we control for _is_
uncertainty in various forms. Adventure. Luck. Discovery. Free will.
Whatever one calls it.

Greetings,

Hans

[Martin_Taylor3]

[Martin Taylor 970204 12:00]

Bill Powers (970203.1145 MST)]

Of course the more other variables you bring into the equation, the more
constraints there are, but the same could be said of all the other
variables, too. In the end, I think that Laplace's proposition holds only if
you know the states of ALL the variables in the universe. If you leave out
even one of them, the whole equation becomes indeterminate, doesn't it? It's
like saying y = f(x1 + x2 + ... xn) + z. If you don't know z, knowing
millions of x's doesn't help you to determine the value of y.

Yes, and I think it should be noted that to include "ALL the variables"
means to include the state of the knower as well.

Contemplate. (Not Bill P, who has already done so).

Martin

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (9760204.0625 MST)]

Hans Blom, 970204c --

I wouldn't want to give up Laplace's dream -- which is ultimately the
concept of causality -- so easily. The problem of the Butterfly
Effect is the problem of weather prediction. You're perfectly able to
give an extremely good prediction of how the weather is going to be
in ten minutes, but not how it's going to be in ten days. Why? Well,
the physics is extremely complex and difficult to model.

That's not the problem at all, as I understand it. Even if we had good data
and perfect equations, the Butterfly Effect would still exist. The problem
is that there are multiple time integrations involved. Martin Taylor pointed
this out, too: there are multiple bifurcations of causality, and when you
are close enough to one of these bifurcations, extremely small random
fluctuations can move the system to one side or the other of a bifurcation,
leading to entirely different results. The results of encountering each
bifurcation are cumulative, because each successive process begins where the
previous one left off. That's what I mean by "integrations." It doesn't
take many processes in a row to randomize the results.

At the museum of science and industry that I used to visit as a child, there
was a frame standing on edge, with rows of regularly-spaced nails driven
into its back as in a pinball or pachinko machine. Into the top several
hundred steel balls were dropped, one at a time, through a narrow opening.
They would bounce off the nails until they reached bins in the bottom. The
result was that the bins filled up according to a Gaussian curve that was
painted on the back of the frame. There were about ten levels of nails, so
that the average ball would bounce about 10 times or fewer during its fall.
This introduced at most 10 bifurcations of causality into an otherwise
perfectly mechanical process, and the result was a completely randomized
distribution of the balls. This is the butterfly effect in the small. The
balls fell through an opening that was only a fraction of a millimeter
larger than the 1-cm balls. Yet this slight uncertainty at the top was
enough to make the final position of any given ball uncertain over a range
of perhaps half a meter at the bottom. The initial uncertainty was magnified
by at least 100 times -- and in only 10 steps taking perhaps 2 seconds at
the most.

This effect is what makes prediction for any long time futile, in a complex
system containing many interactions. Weather prediction involves this kind
of problem: we're up against a natural limit. I heard a weather man on TV
reporting that the centers that do weather prediction estimate the ultimate
limit on weather prediction as being about 15 days, at some modest
probability level.

Best,

Bill P.

[HANS_BLOM2]

[Hans Blom, 970205]

(Bill Powers (9760204.0625 MST))

I wouldn't want to give up Laplace's dream -- which is ultimately
the concept of causality -- so easily. The problem of the Butterfly
Effect is the problem of weather prediction. You're perfectly able
to give an extremely good prediction of how the weather is going to
be in ten minutes, but not how it's going to be in ten days. Why?
Well, the physics is extremely complex and difficult to model.

That's not the problem at all, as I understand it. Even if we had
good data and perfect equations, the Butterfly Effect would still
exist. The problem is that there are multiple time integrations
involved.

It _is_ the problem, in practice at least. Consider an example of the
Butterfly Effect which isn't so unlikely: a planetoid is discovered,
still far away, somewhere near Jupiter. It is heading our way. There
are a number of possible outcomes (there is "bifurcation"): it will
hit the earth, be annihilated, and cause terrific damage; it will
braze the earth's atmosphere only, with unimaginable effects; it will
fly past the earth, but so closely that the earth orbit changes
significantly; or it will fly by and hardly be noticed. What will it
do? The outcome is quite sensitive to initial conditions: a tiny
difference in approach angle, mass or velocity makes the difference
between a catastrophe on earth and something hardly noticeable. Yet
the problem is deterministic: if we would know all the variables and
could do our calculations without error, we could already know the
(gross features of the) outcome even though the rock is still in the
vicinity of Jupiter. That is state of the art, and we're improving.

Martin Taylor pointed this out, too: there are multiple bifurcations
of causality, and when you are close enough to one of these
bifurcations, extremely small random fluctuations can move the
system to one side or the other of a bifurcation, leading to
entirely different results.

All right, we can make my example problem indeterministic by positing
that the planetoid, while on its way, will be randomly hit by other
bodies and varying amounts of radiation from all kinds of
unimaginable sources, such as unpredictable supernova explosions.
That would leave us with probabilistic answers only.

My question is more basic, however. What do we mean by "random"?
Things that we _cannot_ know, even in principle? Or things that we
currently do not know, due to our lack of knowledge/ understanding/
computing power, but that we might be able to have a better grasp of
in the future? I infer from the history of science that scientists
(must) believe that the first meaning of "random" is unacceptable.

Greetings,

Hans

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (970205.0730 MST)]

Hans Blom, 970205 --

Consider an example of the
Butterfly Effect which isn't so unlikely: a planetoid is discovered,
still far away, somewhere near Jupiter. It is heading our way. There
are a number of possible outcomes (there is "bifurcation"): it will
hit the earth, be annihilated, and cause terrific damage; it will
braze the earth's atmosphere only, with unimaginable effects; it will
fly past the earth, but so closely that the earth orbit changes
significantly; or it will fly by and hardly be noticed.

This is not a causal bifurcation; it's only an uncertainty. A bifurcation
occurs, for example, when a system is at an unstable equilibrium point, so
whichever way it goes, it tends to go all the way (or much farther) in that
direction. Small uncertainties get magnified disproportionately. It's only
through this kind of magnification that the butterly in the antipodes can
influence the hurricane off Florida.

Here's a relevant example. Suppose you're holding your arm straight out in
front of you. The torque applied at your shoulder joint is just equal to the
moment applied by gravity to the arm, times the cosine of the angle of the
arm relative to the horizontal. If the torque were generated open loop, with
no negative feedback from arm position, the slightest perturbation of the
arm in the upward direction would cause it to rise as high as possible. The
reason is that the force required to maintain the arm in a given position
decreases as the arm either rises or falls: the equilibrium is unstable. If
the arm is perturbed upward, it will accelerate in that direction.

Notice that in order move the arm to a new position either above or below
the horizontal, the muscle forces must _decrease_. In an MCT system, this
would not be a straightforward problem. The PCT system, of course, handles
it easily.

All right, we can make my example problem indeterministic by positing
that the planetoid, while on its way, will be randomly hit by other
bodies and varying amounts of radiation from all kinds of
unimaginable sources, such as unpredictable supernova explosions.
That would leave us with probabilistic answers only.

As you can see now, perhaps, randomness is not the problem: amplification of
perturbations, whether random or systematic, is. Time integrations tend to
amplify small perturbations. Consider the following example.

Suppose you're driving a 1000 Kg car down a straight level road for 20 km on
a windless day at the modest speed of 40 km/hr. To a first approximation, we
can treat the car as a free mass (since its wheels are rolling) acted upon
by steering forces and wind forces. If the wind exerts a force of 0.01 N
(about 1 gram) at right angles to the path of the car, how far sideways will
the car drift by the end of the trip (1800 seconds later?)

Newton says a = f/m, so the sideward acceleration is 0.01/1000 = 10^-5
m/sec^2. Since, integrating twice, distance = 1/2*a*t^2, the car will move
sideways by 16.2 meters (50 feet). A one-gram unbalance between the wind
force and the steering force will therefore move the car completely off a
two-lane road by the end of the trip. Of course the deformation of the tires
does impose a little resistance, so this may be an overestimate -- but not
by much.

Note what this implies for the MCT model: the computation of the forward
simulation and its inverse must obviously contain no systematic errors
equivalent to as much as 1 gram of steering force (at the front tires) if
the car is still to be on the road after a 20-km trip.

I leave it as an exercise for the student to compute how accurately the
_angle_ of the front wheels must be maintained, open-loop, to have the car
be on the road at the end of the trip, assuming that there is NO slippage of
the tires.

In fact, if you work the problem the other way around, it is easy to see the
impracticality of the MCT model. How accurately can we reasonably assume the
forward and inverse simulations to be calculated by a nervous system? How
accurately can we assume the neural signals involved to represent the
numerical solution of the equations? How accurately can we expect the
muscles to translate the neural signals into actual steering efforts applied
to the steering wheel? And finally, how accurately can we expect the
steering force at the front wheels to reflect the steering efforts? Given
any generous estimates, we can then calculate the expected systematic error
in steering force at the front wheels (or front wheel angle of attack). And
from this we can calculate how far the car will travel before it is out of,
say, a 3-meter traffic lane. Remember that in the MCT model there is never a
direct comparison of the controlled result against the reference signal. If
the reference position is measured from the center of the lane, its nominal
value is 0.0000... . This value has to be tranformed into a steering force
at the front wheels that will keep the car in its lane for half an hour.

I am guessing that the car will move perhaps 100 meters before it is
completely out of its lane. Maybe someone would like to try working this
problem out to see how far wrong I am. I expect that I am being much too
optimistic.

In a purely mathematical analysis, accuracy of computation is never
considered. Problems like these, which arise in implementing any
mathematical scheme in wetware, tend to remain hidden. If the forward
equation says x = 3*u, then the inverse is u = x/3, not x/2.99. But if the
computation of the inverse is off by 1 part in 300, the output u will be off
by that amount, and nothing in the MCT system will detect that fact. There's
no serious problem if the plant reponds proportionally to u. But if the
plant has one integration in it, then x will begin departing from the
nominal value by whatever amount is implied by an error of 0.3% in u, and
the internal simulation will do the same, still accurately representing the
plant. If there are two integrations, the rate at which x departs from r
will be increasing with time, and so on. And the MCT system will never know it.

In all examples of the MCT system we have seen, the "plant" has a reponse
that is proportional to u. The equation

x(t+1) = Ax(t) + Bu(t)

is, for A < 1 as assumed, equivalent to a leaky integrator: that is, for
constant u, x(t) will come to a constant value in an asymptotic way. So if
u(t) has been miscalculated by 0.3 percent, the final value of x(t) will be
off by the same fraction, one third of a percent (for A a small number).
That is trivial. But if we had assumed a plant with a true integration in it
(A = 1), any systematic error in u(t) would be cumulative without limit. A
double integration, as we find in a free-moving mass affected by a force,
would result in an accelerating cumulation of error.

Incidentally, the PCT model will work for the above plant equation if A is
somewhat greater than 1. The MCT model will seem to work, until you realize
that both the simulated and real environments are running away.

Best,

Bill P.

[HANS_BLOM2]

[Hans Blom, 970206]

(Bill Powers (970205.0730 MST))

Consider an example of the Butterfly Effect which isn't so
unlikely: a planetoid is discovered, still far away, somewhere
near Jupiter. It is heading our way. There are a number of possible
outcomes (there is "bifurcation"): it will hit the earth, be
annihilated, and cause terrific damage; it will braze the earth's
atmosphere only, with unimaginable effects; it will fly past the
earth, but so closely that the earth orbit changes significantly;
or it will fly by and hardly be noticed.

This is not a causal bifurcation; it's only an uncertainty.

Sure, but a fundamental one. That is, the "possible worlds" after the
fly-by/impact will look very differently, not only quantitatively but
also qualitatively. In one "possible world" the planetoid disappears
as a separate entity and is merged with the earth; in another, it
continues on its way through the universe.

By the way, what is a "causal" bifurcation?

As you can see now, perhaps, randomness is not the problem:
amplification of perturbations, whether random or systematic, is.
Time integrations tend to amplify small perturbations.

What you call "time integration" I call "long term prediction" --
it's exactly the same thing. "Randomness" is certainly not the
"cause", because I do not accept its existence in that sense
(reified, as something objectively existing). The problem is our
limited predictive powers.

Yet, for me "randomness" _is_ the problem; but then I equate it with
the imprecision that is inherent in our predictions. I use the term
to describe what is left over when we have explained all that we
could explain.

By the way, who or what does the "amplification"? Shouldn't we
reserve that term for _active_ systems such as exist within control
systems? It is not amplification, but increase in uncertainty that
you mean, I guess. If I _want_ to head straight ahead but _do_ have a
(deterministic or fixed, or indeterministic or random) heading angle
inaccuracy of 0.001 degree, I probably won't notice any inaccuracy
right now -- but I will after 100 miles. But only if I keep my eyes
closed during that 100 mile trip. As soon as I perform an
observation, the uncertainty collapses. So if I observe frequently
enough, I keep the uncertainty small.

Not very different from what PCT says, in practice...

In fact, if you work the problem the other way around, it is easy to
see the impracticality of the MCT model.

Bill, I'm sorry to say that you tend to forget that MCT has found a
great many _practical_, real life applications where the approach has
proven to be successful and where MCT-based systems have, in fact,
supplanted earlier systems that were designed using a very PCT-like
approach. The MCT model is far from impractical. I don't accept that
argument, although I _do_ want to consider your arguments that model-
building is not what a living entity does -- although thus far I find
your arguments unconvincing. More about that later.

Greetings,

Hans

[Gene_Boggess]

Ref: Greg Williams (920518)

Greg:

You said:

I agree that it seems to me that I do have (traditional) free will. I
disagree that I necessarily have free will because it seems that I do.

     "Free will" refers to an abstract concept, not to an observable object;
thus, it cannot be pointed to but must be defined. To me, the definition of
free will must involve some concept of responsibility, of accepting credit, or
blame, for the consequences of one's own choices. In the reality in which we
live, credit and blame (both internally and externally assigned) are quite
real; these concepts are socially sustained and validated. The next time you
have to make an important decision, try to not exercise free will - just stand
there and let the inexorable flow of the forces of the universe make the
choice for you. Resist all impulses to act of your own free will. Now
monitor yourself and see if you perceive any error. My guess is that you will
have a huge error signal, and that the psychological impulse to take some
action will be overwhelming. So deliberately make a choice, and act on it;
then check to see whether you feel responsible for the action you have taken,
and whether others also feel that you are responsible. My guess is that, in
the cognitive and social reality in which you live, the feeling of
responsibility will be quite real, on both sides.
     Humans are limited. We exist in a limited place, for a limited time,
and have limited cognitive capacity; yet we have to deal with an unlimited
universe. So the human organism, to survive, must abstract, chunk, and filter
the enormous amouts of potentially significant raw data available in our
environment. Perceptually, we can't hear sounds below 20Hz or above 20KHz; we
can't see in the infrared or the ultraviolet; we can't feel alpha, beta or
gamma radiation hitting our skin. Cognitively, we can't remember the exact
pronunciation of each phoneme in the sentence someone has just said to us; we
remember the words and the general tone of voice instead. Just think of the
length of time it would take our neural processing system to bring all of the
sensations up to the level of the cerebral cortex, not to mention the
tremendously increased number of neural pathways required, nor the fact that
the cortex would become oversaturated with signals in just a fraction of a
second. So we live in a world of metaphors and abstractions; we have to, in
order to survive.
     The implication of all this is that we, quite literally, create the
world we live in. There is no "democracy" Out There, just a series of
discrete space-time events - events to which we have no direct, unmediated
access. There is no "red", just a near-infinite number of discrete visual
sensations in hundreds of millions of people - sensations that no others can
share. There is no "PCT", just words on paper, electrons in computers, and
neural patterns in the minds of several hundred people. But in our world,
these terms have meaning and power. There very well may be no "free will" Out
There, just a series of discrete space-time events, all pre-determined by the
initial state of the universe at the moment of the Big Bang. But in our
world - the only world we can know - free will (or rather the feeling of
individual responsibility for choosing our actions, which we label "free
will") is just as real and meaningful and consequential as any other component
of reality, all of which are, necessarily, abstractions from Reality

At the root of our disagreement is your claim that "in the only reality we
can know," our actions are free. I think we can know more than one model of
(portions of) Reality, each model corresponding to a different reality.

     The Existentialists are particularly eloquent about the moment of
difficult personal choice being the point at which we know we exist (or even,
through our choice, define ourselves into existence) because of the personal
angst involved in making the choice. At that moment, all of your models of
reality collapse into the one reality in which that choice is the natural -
the only - choice that the real you can make. We can abstractly consider
other possible realities, but at each moment we can live in only one.
     As an aside, I would also be willing to argue that not only can we not
know big-R Reality, we can't know little-r reality completely, either. We
create it as we act, and thus re-constitute reality every time we make a
choice. (I often don't know what I think about a subject until I see what I
say about it, and work out my thoughts by expressing a number of ideas and
trying them on for size to see how they fit.)

Modeling is the Royal Road toward knowing Reality; if what one finds along
that Road conflicts with one's (or, especially, others') reality, well,
that's what heretics are (sometimes) punished for!

     There is no "Royal Road" to KNOWING Reality. Modeling is just one more
tool to use in trying to develop useful metaphors to guide our thoughts and
actions. It abstracts and regularizes; what you get is not even what you see,
much less what is Really Out There (whatever that is).

I said:

I think there ARE some absolute standards implied by PCT:

You responded:

I claim, to the contrary, that any ethical absolutes ("ought" claims)
"implied" by PCT MUST be implied by PCT CONJOINED WITH at least one ethical
dictum.

I stated:

Given that: (1) control systems in good control exist in equilibrium with
their environment, and (2) the environment almost always includes other
control systems (other people), THEREFORE, to enable people to live
with one another with the least conflict, we should try to provide others
with the maximum opportunity to develop their own effective control systems.

You said:

Here there IS an (unnumbered) normative postulate (that it is good to enable
people to live with each other with the least conflict), and the conclusion
DOES follow. Again, note that the conclusion is NOT absolute for someone who
thinks it is good to promote conflict.

     OK; let me elaborate. We are control systems. We evolved (or were
created) in such a way that we try to reduce the error signal between an
interior reference signal and a sensation, presumably caused by an external
event. If the event produces a disturbance, we change our actions in such a
way that the error signal is once again reduced to a more desirable level. It
is against the nature of our organism to tolerate large error signals; it
would be a disturbance, and the organism would act in such a way as to reduce
or eliminate the disturbance. Too many disturbances in an environment will
swamp the control system and throw the organism into chaos, as the feedback
from one action is lost or overwhelmed by the plethora of other signals
coming in at the same time; in extreme cases, this can cause the death of the
organism. Reduction of conflict is thus necessary for the continued existance
of the organism. If people are effective control systems, then they are more
likely to live in some sort of equilibrium with their environments, including
other people (us, for example). This will reduce conflict and make it more
likely that everyone can continue to exist. (I assume continued existence is
a self-evident value, as without it there can be no other values, at least in
the reality we are speaking of.) I therefore claim that allowing other people
the opportunity to develop as effective control systems is an ethical norm
implied by the nature of PCT and by the nature of people as control systems,
and is not based on any external ethical consideration.

- Gene

···

From: Gene Boggess (920520)

[William_T_Powers2]

[From Bill Powers (920524.0900)]

Greg Williams (920523) --

It [how the universe got to the way it is] matters to the folks who
have pitched the idea of what I've been referring to as "traditional"
free will (which is where this thread started). They claim that an
individual has a "transcendental self" (their term) which can make
"free deliberate choices," where "free" means completely independent of
anything besides the "self" and "deliberate" means "not-random."

When "these folks" (?) claim that free deliberate choices are completely
independent of anything besides the self, do they include independence from
the choices that are available to be made? That is, if you're presented
with the choice of eating a dish of Jello and eating a dish of spaghetti,
are you free to choose to eat a cheese sandwich, even if there isn't one?
The very concept of "a choice" (however it's made) seems to imply some
extant alternatives among which to choose -- in other words, a world apart
from the chooser over which the chooser does not have total control, which
the chooser did not choose to exist. If you have total control over the
universe, no choices need be made.

Second difficulty: how would anyone show that a "deliberate" act was "non-
random?" As you present the idea, this would be impossible to demonstrate.
If an act is "non-random," then it seems that it must be related in some
systematic way to surrounding conditions. In other words, the proof of non-
randomness is to describe the algorithm or rule or influence that generated
the choice. If "deliberate" means "non-random," it means acting for a
reason: to achieve a goal, or in obedience to a describable rule. But then
the goal or the rule determined the choice, and it was not free. The same
procedure that shows that a choice was non-random shows that it was not
free (I will show later that there's a flaw in this argument).

If you're fairly describing the best thought of those who support the
concept of free will, it's hard to understand how "they" could have ignored
such elementary difficulties. If, on the other hand, you're picking the
lowest common denominator to represent that point of view, it isn't hard at
all, nor are you presenting the view fairly. Why should we bother with
analyzing the least competent way of presenting a viewpoint? The only
interesting challenge would be the one presented by the most thorough and
competent thinkers who speak of free will.

We have to avoid falling into the same tactics that were used in denying
purposiveness. One of the arguments against purposiveness was that the
future can't affect the present. This was a very insulting argument,
because it assumed that those who accepted purposiveness were so stupid
that they had overlooked this elementary problem. Instead of using that
counterargument, the opponents of purposiveness should have thought "I'm
talking with a person who is as intelligent as I am, so whatever that
person means by purposiveness, he or she wouldn't mean to say that the
future affects the present. What, then, might be a meaning that wouldn't
entail this silly assertion?"

Even if a particular proponent doesn't see problems with the idea of
purpose, the challenge is still to discover how that idea MIGHT be defended
by someone who IS competent. Until you can say that even when you give it
your best effort you can't find a defense, you have no basis for rejecting
the idea. You're just defending your own idea, the same as the other
person.

So, what could "these folks" be referring to in speaking of free will that
might have some validity to it? I don't mean the stupidest of them; I mean
the smartest of them, those over whom we do not have any intellectual edge.

There is one way to reconcile a "deliberate" act with a "non-random" act,
and still leave the act free. Behind the concept of randomness is the
assumption that there is no orderliness in a random event. But given a
change in a variable that does not seem related to anything else, it is
still possible that we simply don't recognize the order that is there. A
"deliberate" choice for a change in that variable, a choice that is still
not systematically related to any prior conditions, would have, as far as
anyone can tell, the character of a random choice. Even if there is order
behind the choice, if that orderliness is not of the kind that is a
recognizeable relationship to prior events it would be indistinguishable
from a random choice.

At this point one has to be cautious lest we make the same logical error
made by the opponents of purposiveness. Those opponents used their premise
to support the conclusion. The premise was that ALL OUTCOMES ARE CAUSED BY
EXTERNAL EVENTS. The reasoning went something like this.

A series of actions leads through time to a future outcome. The only way
those actions could come about would be as a result of some external event.
To say that an action is caused by a purpose is to say that its intended
outcome caused the action. Therefore the intended outcome is to the action
as a cause is to its effect. But in this case, the cause occurs after the
effect, which is impossible.

The error is to assume that purpose works as cause and effect work. The
correct solution is to see that a purpose is not a prior cause, but a
blueprint defining, in present time, a state of affairs that is to be
brought about. The action is based not on the end-point, but on the present
difference between the blueprint and the actual state of affairs. Action
continues until the difference disappears.

If the opponents of purposiveness had thought this way, they would have
invented control theory, thus showing the proponents that they were right
even if the proponents at hand had no idea of how to defend their own
belief. But of course if they had thought that way, the "opponents" of
purposiveness wouldn't have been opponents in the first place; they would
simply have taken the concept under advisement, given it their best effort,
and discovered that it was in fact defensible. No adversary procedure would
have been necessary.

On other other hand, if the opponents had given it their best effort and
failed, they would then have had some basis for claiming that the concept
of purpose was flawed -- or at least not tenable for the present. They
would then have had every justification for opposing the proponents.

Now we have a similar situation. I have proposed that there can be a basis
for choice that is not dependent on prior events, a basis that can't be
expressed as a cause-effect chain or an algoritm or a rule. A choice made
on that basis would be indistinguishable from a random choice. One
possible, but erroneous, counterargument would be to say that if a choice
has any basis, that basis must have been some external influence. That is
the very question we are investigating: are there choices that are made
without any external influence? So the counterargument uses the desired
(negative) answer to prove itself.

There is another error to avoid, also made by the opponents of
purposiveness. Another kind of counterargument was to describe instances in
which the acts intended to create a certain outcome failed to do so,
because of unpredictable large disturbances occurring after the act but
before the outcome. In the same vein, opponents of purpose cited such
things as the eyeblink reflex to prove that blinking the eye occurred
whether one felt an intention to blink or not. These instances were taken
as counterexamples that disproved the existence of purpose.

But purpose does not have to apply to every single act in order to exist.
If a cosmic ray hits a motor nerve, the muscles may cause a limb to twitch
and knock a glass of water to the floor. This is certainly not a purposive
outcome. But under other circumstances it might have been. The existence of
purpose is not disproven by demonstrating instances of nonpurposive
outcomes.

In the same way, the existence of free will is not disproven by
demonstrating instances of rule-based or automatic behavior presumably
generated by automatic machinery. To say that free will exists and has
effects is not to say that nothing else exists and has effects in the same
organism.

I have proposed the possible locus of free will to be the process of
reorganization. I would rule out reason, thought, emotion, principles, and
system concepts as evidence of free will, because we can understand such
things as being the product of learned computations in a physical brain
obedient to physical properties of matter. I would also rule out as free
will any truly random processes in the reorganizing system, because there
can be automatically disorderly (or at least chaotic) processes at work as
well, as in E. coli. But I can't rule out the possibility that there is an
uncaused but orderly influence at work during the process of reorganization
that can say, for no reason whatsoever, "Let's try it this way." Nor can I
rule out the possibility that this kind of orderly influence accounts for
ALL of the apparently random process of reorganization. It is impossible to
distinguish an uncaused but orderly process from a truly random one, as
long as we know of no ordering scheme that will account for the apparent
randomness.

Quite likely, my conclusion about free will would not satisfy many of those
who already believe in it. I don't particularly care about that. True
Believers don't listen to reasoned arguments anyway, nor are they
interested in risking any real investigation of belief that might turn out
"wrong." If one already knows the answer, why go looking for it again?

A lot of arguments like these result from the way people use words without
really examining what they mean. Consider the word "deliberate" in
"deliberate choice." The derivation of this word implies deliberation --
that is, rational consideration of alternatives and the arrival at a
logical conclusion. That would certainly NOT be a characteristic of free
will, because then circumstances and logic predetermine the outcome. But
what most people mean by "deliberate" is "on purpose," which entails
nothing more than that sense of willed urging that something shall come to
pass. As few people have understood purpose, it's not surprising that they
are rather inarticulate when it comes to talking about purpose. But this
doesn't mean that they're just tossing empty words around. They're trying
to describe an experience without the vocabulary or system concept needed
to give order to the description.

We'll get furthest by trying to understand and articulate those
indescribable experiences rather than by rejecting the way people try to
talk about them.

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Best,

Bill P.