: It's not really a paradox. The only real paradox I can
: think of is the statement "Everything I say is a
: lie" or "This statement is false", and
: similar things (like "Every rule has an
: exception, except this one").
I know it's not a paradox, Forrest. My head doesn't hurt, either. :-)
What's paradoxical about the "Every rule" statement? It's not self-contradictory.
: As I said in another post above, from the position of
: anything inside the universe, a perfect prediction of
: any other thing cannot be made. The more complex the
: system you're trying to predict, the harder it is to
: be accurate. When it comes to people, well, one system
: cannot contain an exact replica of another system the
: same size, so a person can't completely know another,
: and even if some super-person could completely know
: you, they couldn't completely know your enviroment,
: the rest of the universe, unless the universe were
: somehow a system smaller than themselves.
: So basically, because of the basics laws of logic and the
: universe, which you have no choice in, everything has
: free will. So you have free will, whether you like it
: or not. :-)
But see, I don't think indeterminacy = free will, from most people's perspectives. Suppose you find out that a certain person's choice in a given matter--whether or not to shoot someone else in a mugging, say--cannot be pre-determined. Which means, in quantum terms, that if you repeatedly have him make the decision under exactly the same conditions each time, he'll choose to shoot her sometimes and choose not to shoot her other times. Do you really want to say that his decision was "free?" Rather than just random? It seems to me that the alternatives are randomness and determinacy, and neither really has anything to with freedom.
And for a materialist like me, it doesn't really matter. Suppose you're enslaved to an insane master who always flips a coin to figure out what he's going to tell you to do. Would you consider yourself "free" just because the random outcome of the coinflip makes it impossible to predict your actions? It's the same, for me, with the brain and the mind. You can't help what you think--it's a function of the brain. So what if your brain evolves randomly over time? You're still forced to think whatever thoughts parallel those randomly-generated states.
And yet, I'm still a happy guy, utilitarian that I am. :-)
--SiliconDream
