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AIList Digest Volume 7 Issue 042
AIList Digest Wednesday, 22 Jun 1988 Volume 7 : Issue 42
Today's Topics:
Free Will:
Free Will & Self Awareness
Disposing of the free will issue
on the concept of will
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Date: 14 Jun 88 14:48:51 GMT
From: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness
In article <2436@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> Carl F. Huber writes:
>In article <5323@xanth.cs.odu.edu> Warren E. Taylor writes:
>>In article <1176@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>, Gordon E. Banks writes:
>>
>>"Spanking" IS, I repeat, IS a form of redesigning the behavior of a child.
>>Many children listen to you only when they are feeling pain or are
>>anticipating the feeling of pain if they do not listen.
>
Whoa! This is not a quote from me! Myself, I would prefer non-violent
forms of punishment, since I think kids learn the legitamacy of violence
from being spanked. But, I should mention, I don't have kids, so I may
not be the one to ask about it.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 88 10:16:38 BST
From: Aaron Sloman <aarons%cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>
Subject: Disposing of the free will issue
(I wasn't going to contribute to this discussion, but a colleague
encouraged me. I haven't read all the discussion, so apologise if
there's some repetition of points already made.)
Philosophy done well can contribute to technical problems (as shown by
the influence of philosophy on logic, mathematics, and computing, e.g.
via Aristotle, Leibniz, Frege, Russell).
Technical developments can also help to solve or dissolve old
philosophical problems. I think we are now in a position to dissolve the
problems of free will as normally conceived, and in doing so we can make
a contribution to AI as well as philosophy.
The basic assumption behind much of the discussion of freewill is
(A) there is a well-defined distinction between systems whose
choices are free and those which are not.
However, if you start examining possible designs for intelligent systems
IN GREAT DETAIL you find that there is no one such distinction. Instead
there are many "lesser" distinctions corresponding to design decisions
that a robot engineer might or might not take -- and in many cases it is
likely that biological evolution tried both (or several) alternatives.
There are interesting, indeed fascinating, technical problems about the
implications of these design distinctions. Exploring them shows that
there is no longer any interest in the question whether we have free
will because among the REAL distinctions between possible designs there
is no one distinction that fits the presuppositions of the philosophical
uses of the term "free will". It does not map directly onto any one of
the many different interesting design distinctions. (A) is false.
"Free will" has plenty of ordinary uses to which most of the
philosophical discussion is irrelevant. E.g.
"Did you go of your own free will or did she make you go?"
That question presupposs a well understood distinction between two
possible explanations for someone's action. But the answer "I went of my
own free will" does not express a belief in any metaphysical truth about
human freedom. It is merely a denial that certain sorts of influences
operated. There is no implication that NO causes, or no mechanisms were
involved.
This is a frequently made common sense distinction between the existence
or non-existence of particular sorts of influences on a particular
individual's action. However there are other deeper distinctions that
relate to to different sorts of designs for behaving systems.
The deep technical question that I think lurks behind much of the
discussion is
"what kinds of designs are possible for agents and what are the
implications of different designs as regards the determinants of
their actions?"
I'll use "agent" as short for "behaving system with something like
motives". What that means is a topic for another day. Instead of one big
division between things (agents) with and things (agents) without free
will we'll then come up with a host of more or less significant
divisions, expressing some aspect of the pre-theoretical free/unfree
distinction. E.g. here are some examples of design distinctions (some
of which would subdivide into smaller sub-distinctions on closer
analysis):
- Compare (a) agents that are able simultaneously to store and compare
different motives with (b) agents that have no mechanisms enabling this:
i.e. they can have only one motive at a time.
- Compare (a) agents all of whose motives are generated by a single top
level goal (e.g. "win this game") with (b) agents with several
independent sources of motivation (motive generators - hardware or
software), e.g. thirst, sex, curiosity, political ambition, aesthetic
preferences, etc.
- Contrast (a) an agent whose development includes modification of its
motive generators and motive comparators in the light of experience, with
(b) an agent whose generators and comparators are fixed for life
(presumably the case for many animals).
- Contrast (a) an agent whose motive generators and comparators change
partly under the influence of genetically determined factors (e.g.
puberty), with (b) an agent for whom they can change only in the light of
interactions with the environment and inferences drawn therefrom.
- Contrast (a) an agent whose motive generators and comparators (and
higher order motivators) are themselves accessible to explicit internal
scrutiny, analysis and change, with (b) an agent for which all the
changes in motive generators and comparators are merely uncontrolled
side effects of other processes (as in addictions, habituation, etc.)
[A similar distinction can be made as regards motives themselves.]
- Contrast (a) an agent pre-programmed to have motive generators and
comparators change under the influence of likes and dislikes, or
approval and disapproval, of other agents, and (b) an agent that is only
influenced by how things affect it.
- Compare (a) agents that are able to extend the formalisms they use for
thinking about the environment and their methods of dealing with it
(like human beings) and (b) agents that are not (most other animals?)
- Compare (a) agents that are able to assess the merits of different
inconsistent motives (desires, wishes, ideals, etc.) and then decide
which (if any) to act on with (b) agents that are always controlled by
the most recently generated motive (like very young children? some
animals?).
- Compare (a) agents with a monolithic hierarchical computational
architecture where sub-processes cannot acquire any motives (goals)
except via their "superiors", with only one top level executive process
generating all the goals driving lower level systems with (b) agents
where individual sub-systems can generate independent goals. In case
(b) we can distinguish many sub-cases e.g.
(b1) the system is hierarchical and sub-systems can pursue their
independent goals if they don't conflict with the goals of their
superiors
(b2) there are procedures whereby sub-systems can (sometimes?) override
their superiors. [e.g. reflexes?]
- Compare (a) a system in which all the decisions among competing goals
and sub-goals are taken on some kind of "democratic" voting basis or a
numerical summation or comparison of some kind (a kind of vector
addition perhaps) with (b) a system in which conflicts are resolved on
the basis of qualitative rules, which are themselves partly there from
birth and partly the product of a complex high level learning system.
- Compare (a) a system designed entirely to take decisions that are
optimal for its own well-being and long term survival with (b) a system
that has built-in mechanisms to ensure that the well-being of others is
also taken into account. (Human beings and many other animals seem to
have some biologically determined mechanisms of the second sort - e.g.
maternal/paternal reactions to offspring, sympathy, etc.).
- There are many distinctions that can be made between systems according
to how much knowledge they have about their own states, and how much
they can or cannot change because they do or do not have appropriate
mechanisms. (As usual there are many different sub-cases. Having
something in a write-protected area is different from not having any
mechanism for changing stored information at all.)
There are some overlaps between these distinctions, and many of them are
relatively imprecise, but all are capable of refinement and can be
mapped onto real design decisions for a robot-designer (or evolution).
They are just some of the many interesting design distinctions whose
implications can be explored both theoretically and experimentally,
though building models illustrating most of the alternatives will
require significant advances in AI e.g. in perception, memory, learning,
reasoning, motor control, etc.
When we explore the fascinating space of possible designs for agents,
the question which of the various sytems has free will loses interest:
the pre-theoretic free/unfree contrast totally fails to produce any one
interesting demarcation among the many possible designs -- it can be
loosely mapped on to several of them.
So the design distinctions define different notions of free:- free(1),
free(2), free(3), .... However, if an object is free(i) but not free(j)
(for i /= j) then the question "But is it really FREE?" has no answer.
It's like asking: What's the difference between things that have life and
things that don't?
The question is (perhaps) OK if you are contrasting trees, mice and
people with stones, rivers and clouds. But when you start looking at a
larger class of cases, including viruses, complex molecules of various
kinds, and other theoretically possible cases, the question loses its
point because it uses a pre-theoretic concept ("life") that doesn't have
a sufficiently rich and precise meaning to distinguish all the cases
that can occur. (Which need not stop biologists introducing a new
precise and technical concept and using the word "life" for it. But that
doesn't answer the unanswerable pre-theoretical question about precisely
where the boundary lies.
Similarly "what's the difference between things with and things without
free will?" This question makes the false assumpton (A).
So, to ask whether we are free is to ask which side of a boundary we are
on when there is no particular boundary in question. (Which is one
reason why so many people are tempted to say "What I mean by free is..."
and they then produce different incompatible definitions.)
I.e. it's a non-issue. So let's examine the more interesting detailed
technical questions in depth.
(For more on motive generators, motive comparators, etc. see my (joint)
article in IJCAI-81 on robots and emotions, or the sequel "Motives,
Mechanisms and Emotions" in the journal of Cognition and Emotion Vol I
no 3, 1987).
Apologies for length.
Now, shall I or shan't I post this.........????
Aaron Sloman,
School of Cognitive Sciences, Univ of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, England
ARPANET : aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cvaxa@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cvaxa%nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk@relay.cs.net
JANET aarons@cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk
BITNET: aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cvaxa@uk.ac
or aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cvaxa%ukacrl.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu
As a last resort (it costs us more...)
UUCP: ...mcvax!ukc!cvaxa!aarons
or aarons@cvaxa.uucp
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 88 12:56 O
From: <YLIKOSKI%FINFUN.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: on the concept of will
Distribution-File:
AILIST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
This is an attempt by me to do some research into the concept of free
will.
First, I would recommend to everyone Carlos Castaneda's books.
They approach the concept of will from Yaqui Indian knowledge point of view.
The Yaqui have their own scientific tradition anthropologically studied
by Castaneda. Their science is very different from Western sci but
non-trivial and honorable.
Secondly - we might have a look at the very life itself and study what
people do actually will in the real life.
Examples:
* marry a lovely spouse and raise smart children
* exceed one's sales quota at IBM
* beat the competition in Silicon Valley
* <in my case> travel to Israel and learn Hebrew
* kill that enemy soldier with one's bayonette
* find out what the life, the universe, and everything are
* explain it to others
* relax with a good book and California wine
Andy Ylikoski
------------------------------
Date: 21 Jun 88 15:28:15 GMT
From: uvaarpa!virginia!uvacs!cfh6r@umd5.umd.edu (Carl F. Huber)
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
In article <306@proxftl.UUCP> T. William Wells writes:
>Let's consider a relatively uncontroversial example. Say I have
>a hot stove and a pan over it. At the entity level, the stove
>heats the pan. At the process level, the molecules in the stove
>transfer energy to the molecules in the pan.
> ...
>Now, I can actually try to answer your question. At the entity
>level, the question "how do I cause it" does not really have an
>answer; like the hot stove, it just does it. However, at the
>process level, one can look at the mechanisms of consciousness;
>these constitute the answer to "how".
I do not yet see your distinction in this example.
What is the difference between saying the stove _heats_ or the
molecules _transfer_energy_? The distinction must be made in the
way we describe what's happening. In each case above, you seem to
be giving the pan and the molecules volition. The stove does not
heat the pan. The stove is hot. The pan later becomes hot. Molecules do
not transfer energy. The molecules in the stove have energy s+e. Then
the molecules in the pan have energy p+e and the molecules in the
stove have energy s.
So it seems that both cases here are entity level, since the answer
to "how do I cause it" is the same. If I have totally missed the
point, could you please try again?
-carl
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End of AIList Digest
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