Why would that feel like free will? Wouldn't it just feel like using adaptive heuristic problem solving to explore an imperfectly mapped problem/solution space while attempting to maximize value fulfillment payoff?
It's of course logically possible that doing that could make someone feel like they had free will, but it seems a rather odd idea.
Because the choice resulting from problem solving is adaptive and heuristic, I can't run it advance of the evidential state I'm in when I choose. I can't know the evidential state in advance, because the problem/solution space is imperfectly mapped. So it feels like my choices are not determined in advance. (However they're entirely determined at the instant I make them.)
I'm confused by the "because" in the first sentence and the "so" in the penultimate. I see no reason why the one thing should cause the other. As I say, it's logically possibly that there could be such a causal relation, but in general there's no reason to think that doing X should feel like doing Y -- you'd expect it to feel like doing X! If I don't know what my choice will be, I'd expect that to feel like not knowing what my choice will be. Which is a distinct state from feeling that I have freedom of choice.
In fact if you use your imagination, you can come up with scenarios in which you don't know what your future choice will be, but it clearly doesn't feel like a free choice. E.g. if you say "I will choose to get a coffee if I roll the die and the number is 3 or above, or a tea otherwise."
My mistake regarding because. Yes, I was talking about the causal relationship in the penultimate sentence only.
>The part explaining the causal relationship is the penultimate sentence
It doesn't explain it, it just asserts it. There is no reason why a lack of foreknowledge about your future decisions should make you feel as if you have free choice. It could just as well make you feel like you're bobbing around at random in the causal flux.
Splitting the phrase/concept "free choice" into "free" and "choice", I have been mostly talking about the "free", because it describes the feeling that a choice "might be anything and I won't know until I've made it". Above, you are more concerned with whether it's a "choice" (versus "bobbing around at random") - but you know implicitly the mechanism is adaptive and heuristic and that it attempts to maximize value fulfillment payoff. So it will make a "choice" (defined in this context as a purposeful decision). Therefore, free choice.
I don't think your analysis of "free choice" captures the relevant meaning. You can't answer these sorts of questions by playing with words. You need to think about the phenomenon that is being referred to, not the phrase I used to describe it.
>but you know implicitly the mechanism is adaptive and heuristic and that it attempts to maximize value fulfillment payoff
Actually, I'm not sure that I know any of those things (it might help if one of those terms actually meant something).
"I don't think your analysis of "free choice" captures the relevant meaning."
Can you tell me why you think it doesn't? You think I was playing word games. I think I was cleanly picking a concept apart into fundamentals and relating my definition to each piece.
I assert that free choice means
1. you make purposeful choices
2. your choices don't feel like they are definite until you choose them
and that I have sufficiently shown why each of these relates to the definition I gave.
"it might help if one of those terms actually meant something"
They are all very clear AI terminology except value fulfilment, which should be self evident.
>I think I was cleanly picking a concept apart into fundamentals and relating my definition to each piece.
You were picking a particular stipulated definition apart, but the definition in question doesn't correspond to the concept of "free will" or "free choice" that people actually have. Playing around with definitions like this doesn't address any important issue.
Tthere is no sense in which (1) and (2) explain our sense of freedom of choice. You can perfectly well imagine that even if both (1) and (2) were true, you might nonetheless have no sense of free will. Even if you don't know what you future decisions will be, you can still feel like a "cog in the machine" with no power to act of your own volition. In fact, I sometimes really do feel like this. For example, if you've ever been extremely angry, you've probably had the feeling of not knowing exactly what you're going to do next, but nonetheless feeling that you have very little control over your actions.
>They are all very clear AI terminology except value fulfilment, which should be self evident.
Really? If I google for "value fulfillment payoff", the only result is a link to these posts. I'm know what the individual words mean, but I find the phrase a little baffling.
Comments
Why would that feel like free will? Wouldn't it just feel like using adaptive heuristic problem solving to explore an imperfectly mapped problem/solution space while attempting to maximize value fulfillment payoff?
It's of course logically possible that doing that could make someone feel like they had free will, but it seems a rather odd idea.
Because the choice resulting from problem solving is adaptive and heuristic, I can't run it advance of the evidential state I'm in when I choose. I can't know the evidential state in advance, because the problem/solution space is imperfectly mapped. So it feels like my choices are not determined in advance. (However they're entirely determined at the instant I make them.)
I'm confused by the "because" in the first sentence and the "so" in the penultimate. I see no reason why the one thing should cause the other. As I say, it's logically possibly that there could be such a causal relation, but in general there's no reason to think that doing X should feel like doing Y -- you'd expect it to feel like doing X! If I don't know what my choice will be, I'd expect that to feel like not knowing what my choice will be. Which is a distinct state from feeling that I have freedom of choice.
In fact if you use your imagination, you can come up with scenarios in which you don't know what your future choice will be, but it clearly doesn't feel like a free choice. E.g. if you say "I will choose to get a coffee if I roll the die and the number is 3 or above, or a tea otherwise."
Did you misread? That "because" is an internal connective inside the first sentence only. (I'd rephrase, but I'm not sure what would be clearer.)
The part explaining the causal relationship is the penultimate sentence, "it feels like my choices are not determined in advance".
"If I don't know what my choice will be, I'd expect that to feel like not knowing what my choice will be."
You expect to know what your choice will be only when you choose it. That equals the feeling of "freedom of choice".
My mistake regarding because. Yes, I was talking about the causal relationship in the penultimate sentence only.
>The part explaining the causal relationship is the penultimate sentence
It doesn't explain it, it just asserts it. There is no reason why a lack of foreknowledge about your future decisions should make you feel as if you have free choice. It could just as well make you feel like you're bobbing around at random in the causal flux.
Splitting the phrase/concept "free choice" into "free" and "choice", I have been mostly talking about the "free", because it describes the feeling that a choice "might be anything and I won't know until I've made it". Above, you are more concerned with whether it's a "choice" (versus "bobbing around at random") - but you know implicitly the mechanism is adaptive and heuristic and that it attempts to maximize value fulfillment payoff. So it will make a "choice" (defined in this context as a purposeful decision). Therefore, free choice.
I don't think your analysis of "free choice" captures the relevant meaning. You can't answer these sorts of questions by playing with words. You need to think about the phenomenon that is being referred to, not the phrase I used to describe it.
>but you know implicitly the mechanism is adaptive and heuristic and that it attempts to maximize value fulfillment payoff
Actually, I'm not sure that I know any of those things (it might help if one of those terms actually meant something).
"I don't think your analysis of "free choice" captures the relevant meaning."
Can you tell me why you think it doesn't? You think I was playing word games. I think I was cleanly picking a concept apart into fundamentals and relating my definition to each piece.
I assert that free choice means
1. you make purposeful choices
2. your choices don't feel like they are definite until you choose them
and that I have sufficiently shown why each of these relates to the definition I gave.
"it might help if one of those terms actually meant something"
They are all very clear AI terminology except value fulfilment, which should be self evident.
>I think I was cleanly picking a concept apart into fundamentals and relating my definition to each piece.
You were picking a particular stipulated definition apart, but the definition in question doesn't correspond to the concept of "free will" or "free choice" that people actually have. Playing around with definitions like this doesn't address any important issue.
Tthere is no sense in which (1) and (2) explain our sense of freedom of choice. You can perfectly well imagine that even if both (1) and (2) were true, you might nonetheless have no sense of free will. Even if you don't know what you future decisions will be, you can still feel like a "cog in the machine" with no power to act of your own volition. In fact, I sometimes really do feel like this. For example, if you've ever been extremely angry, you've probably had the feeling of not knowing exactly what you're going to do next, but nonetheless feeling that you have very little control over your actions.
>They are all very clear AI terminology except value fulfilment, which should be self evident.
Really? If I google for "value fulfillment payoff", the only result is a link to these posts. I'm know what the individual words mean, but I find the phrase a little baffling.