"Max" <max1974isome@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:baa549eb.0308041026.397553ec@posting.google.com...
> You really see into the issue, you see what's missing from Dennett's
> thesis, and yet you leave your mind happily open to his ideas, which
> is kind of you.  But I don't think Dennett will ever satisfy you where
> you want a better explanation. (a few more remarks below)
>
> reanimater_2000@yahoo.com (The Immortalist) wrote in message
> > Dennett shows that adding a dash of indeterminism, maybe in the form
> > of some random quantum chance, whether external or internal to the
> > brain, doesn't solve the problem. But this really is a "no-brainer":
> > if I'm at a fork in the path, then tossing a coin, or consulting a
> > quantum event, to "choose" the branch to take can't possibly be what
> > anyone means by free will. Not only must it be that if the "tape was
> > run again", a different outcome was possible; but I have to choose
> > that outcome. Now, personally I have no idea how this can possibly be
> > the case, how I, following either deterministic or random rules, can
> > make that choice. I can't even formulate a coherent question. But
> > that's what philosophers are for, and so I would have liked more
> > discussion of this point. There is some discussion of what something
> > being "up to me" might mean, but it is all mixed in with a quantum
> > indeterminism red herring.
>
> Right.  Randomness would scuttle determinism, but that doesn't imply
> that free will moves in.
>
> > I do have a problem with the Game of Life automaton as a pump primer
> > for intuition about determinism and so on. The real world is not a
> > cellular automaton (although some physicists might disagree), but
> > rather is open in some not very well understood sense.
>
> Some people find fluid dynamics models more intuitive than automata.
> (Not that a metaphoric model is needed)
>
> > Dennett talks about Game of Life patterns that appear at higher
> > levels: things like gliders and glider guns, not individual cells: he
> > is taking a stance above the level of the underlying cellular rules.
> > It feels like he is about to claim that free will is an emergent
> > property, a property that only holds at higher levels, and is not even
> > a meaningful concept at lower ones. As I read it, I felt a faint
> > inkling this might work, this might make sense, so I turned to the
> > next chapter, eager to see how it would pan out. But I was caught in a
> > sort of mental whiplash, because he immediately goes on to talk at
> > this higher level, about kinds of free will worth wanting, as if the
> > problem is settled, without that bridging chapter I so dearly needed.
>
> It was not discussed because he has never bridged that gap.  Who has?
> (How do higher levels of complexity bring about free will?)
>
> I have to admit I'm starting to get arrogant when it comes to this
> topic, and I'm also starting to think that it's very important.  Most
> people, even very educated ones, really don't understand the issue and
> are quite naive. (ahem, excuse me..)  But it's important because these
> people lightly make naive judgements that cost others their lives.
>
> Does anyone follow me here?
>
> -Max
>
> (to reply by email, remove the year from the address)

"How do higher levels of complexity bring about free will?"

Once you get to a level of complexity where you have an animal making
decisions based on past experience you have free will.  Doesn't seem like a
difficult problem to me.