midwifetoad
Posts: 4003
Joined: Mar. 2008
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| Quote | | I don't understand--are you saying there is free will or not? |
I think the question is defective. People have been tossing this around for a couple thousand years without resolution or progress.
One definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over with the expectation that next time the outcome will be different. That pretty much sums up what I think about the free will debate.
I do think, however, that you can make an operational definition of free will. It won't satisfy philosophers and theologians, but it has the advantage of having observable and testable components.
My operational definition of free will is that a free agent is one that modifies itself or its behavior as a result of consequences or experience.
My definition does not require invisible agents or unobservable events.
Species, for example, have free will under my definition, because they are modified by selection. Animals with brains of a minimal complexity have free will because their behavior changes as a result of experience.
A free act is a bet placed on an uncertain outcome, or the result of weighing conflicting outcomes. Looking for a deciding agent is as futile and unproductive as looking for the cause of mutations. It's irrelevant. there doesn't need to be a deciding agent. the only requirement is that the system learns, or changes as a result of outcomes. To be more specific, the deciding state is preserved.
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Any version of ID consistent with all the evidence is indistinguishable from evolution.
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