History, Determinism & Butteflies

[from Gary Cziko (920515.2115):

Greg Williams (920515) says:

My central claim is that the moment-to-moment operation of an individual's
control structure is NOT MIRACULOUS, but rather a function of its past history
(perhaps in a probabilistic way -- I have no desire to get into questions
about "absolute" determinism).

Who could argue with this? How could an individual's control structure be
anything but a "function of its past history?"

But what kind of function is it? You've raised the possibility that it is
a probabilistic function. But what about a chaotic function? I find
chaotic systems particularly intriguing in this respect because they are
completely deterministic, and yet in a sense curiously independent of past
history since after a while the initial starting point has no bearing on
the present state of the system.

A chaotic perspective (with sensitive dependence on initial conditions,
a.k.a, the butterfly effect) on the reorganization of control structures
would suggest that two indentical (as far as anyone could tell) individuals
placed in identical environments could turn out very differently as the
result of reorganization. This is similar to Gould's (_Wonderful Life_)
notion of _contingency_ in biological evolution. Play the evolutionary
videotape back, he says, and let it run again and you will a very different
cast of characters, very likely one in which Homo sapiens has no place.

I don't know what all this means for free will, but at the least it
suggests that it wouldn't take much at all to kick things in a new
direction. History makes sense after the fact. But makes lousy
predictions before.--Gary

P.S. Greg, did I ever send you the Mackay argument for "free will in a
mechanistic universe" (of something like that). If so, what do you think
of it?

ยทยทยท

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