Tag: free will
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Can a Robot Have Free Will?
Keith Douglas Farnsworth. Can a Robot Have Free Will? Entropy 19, no. 5 (2017): 237. “Using insights from cybernetics and an information-based understanding of biological systems, a precise, scientifically inspired, definition of free-will is offered and the essential requirements for an agent to possess it in principle are set out.” “The only systems known to…
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David Bohm on Free Will
Quotes from David Bohm, Thought as a System p. 72 “We have to be able to think on this clearly; even though, as I said, that by itself won’t really change the reflexes. But if we don’t think of it clearly then all our attempts to get into this will go wrong. Clear thinking implies…
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Ancient and medieval philosophy
I have recently listened to lectures by Maarten Hoenen Antike und mittelalterliche Philosophie He has considered in his lectures Plato Aristotle Plotinus Augustine of Hippo Avicenna Anselm of Canterbury Albertus Magnus Thomas Aquinas Meister Eckhart Duns Scotus William of Ockham Nicolaus Cusanus Descartes I have found lectures pretty interesting. They show how Christian philosophers in…
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Every Event has a Cause as Metaphysics
In his book An Essay on Metaphysics in Part IIIc Causation, Collingwood has considered what could mean that every event must have a cause. This could be interesting for a discussion on free will, as Collingwood shows that causation presupposes free will. In other words, if free will is to be abandoned, then causation must…
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Free Will and Mathematics
Alekandr Lokshin has a book Free Will and Mathematics (in Russian) and he has started a discussion on the everything list with an abstract of the book in English Alekandr Lokshin, 27.05.2012 20:51: Alexander A. Lokshin FREE WILL AND MATHEMATICS Moscow, MAKS-Press, 2012 , 40 pages (abstract) The general idea of the booklet is as…
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Reason, Free Will, and the Big Bang
I have recently listened to Kontroversen in der Philosophie by Prof Hoenen. One of the controversies there was the question whether the Universe if eternal or not. Recently I have employed the logic from the lectures on the everything list http://groups.google.com/group/t/thread/ba5f90b7e68bccf when there was a comment about determinism. I hope that the dialog below shows that…
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Stephen Wolfram’s Computational Irreducibility
Stephen Wolfram Some Modern Perspectives on the Quest for Ultimate Knowledge https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/some-modern-perspectives-quest-ultimate-knowledge/ A good overview about computational irreducibility and how it could affect our quest for ultimate knowledge. Just one example from the paper. Let us imagine that the Universe is governed by just a few simple rules and they are completely determenistic. Yet, as they represent…