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From: peb@Sun.COM (Paul Baclaski) 
To: mod-ki@unido.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 90 15:10:43 PST
Subject: free will
Keywords: 

mod-ki message 0412
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Originally-From: peb@Sun.COM (Paul Baclaski)
To: alife@a.cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: free will
Cc: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu, pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu
Status: RO
 
 
This following is from comp.ai a while back.  The conclusion of this
article by Aaron Sloman is that free will discussions are a non-issue
 
Actually, I take the position that a taxonomy of types of free will
is necessary, however this could be cumbersome.
 
 
Paul E. Baclaski
Sun Microsystems
peb@sun.com
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Date: Sun, 19 Jun 88 10:16:38 BST
Originally-From: Aaron Sloman <aarons%cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.
AC.UK>
Subject: Disposing of the free will issue
Status: RO
 
(I wasn't going to contribute to this discussion, but a colleague
encouraged me. I haven't read all the discussion, so apologise if
there's some repetition of points already made.)
 
Philosophy done well can contribute to technical problems (as shown 
by the influence of philosophy on logic, mathematics, and computing, 
e.g. via Aristotle, Leibniz, Frege, Russell).
 
Technical developments can also help to solve or dissolve old
philosophical problems. I think we are now in a position to dissolve
the problems of free will as normally conceived, and in doing so we 
can make a contribution to AI as well as philosophy.
 
The basic assumption behind much of the discussion of freewill is
 
    (A) there is a well-defined distinction between systems whose
    choices are free and those which are not.
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However, if you start examining possible designs for intelligent 
systems IN GREAT DETAIL you find that there is no one such 
distinction. Instead there are many "lesser" distinctions 
corresponding to design decisions that a robot engineer might 
or might not take -- and in many cases it islikely that 
biological evolution tried both (or several) alternatives.
 
There are interesting, indeed fascinating, technical problems about 
the implications of these design distinctions. Exploring them shows 
that there is no longer any interest in the question whether we have 
free will because among the REAL distinctions between possible 
designs there is no one distinction that fits the presuppositions of 
the philosophical uses of the term "free will". It does not map 
directly onto any one of the many different interesting design 
distinctions. (A) is false.
 
"Free will" has plenty of ordinary uses to which most of the
philosophical discussion is irrelevant. E.g.
 
    "Did you go of your own free will or did she make you go?"
 
That question presupposs a well understood distinction between two
possible explanations for someone's action. But the answer "I went of 
my own free will" does not express a belief in any metaphysical truth 
about human freedom. It is merely a denial that certain sorts of 
influences operated. There is no implication that NO causes, or no 
mechanisms were involved.
 
This is a frequently made common sense distinction between the 
existence or non-existence of particular sorts of influences on a 
particular individual's action. However there are other deeper 
distinctions that relate to to different sorts of designs for 
behaving systems.
 
The deep technical question that I think lurks behind much of the
discussion is
 
    "what kinds of designs are possible for agents and what are the
    implications of different designs as regards the determinants of
    their actions?"
 
I'll use "agent" as short for "behaving system with something like
motives". What that means is a topic for another day. Instead of one 
big division between things (agents) with and things (agents) without 
free will we'll then come up with a host of more or less significant
divisions, expressing some aspect of the pre-theoretical free/unfree
distinction. E.g. here are some examples of design distinctions (some
of which would subdivide into smaller sub-distinctions on closer
analysis):
 
- Compare (a) agents that are able simultaneously to store and 
compare different motives with (b) agents that have no mechanisms 
enabling this:
i.e. they can have only one motive at a time.
 
- Compare (a) agents all of whose motives are generated by a single 
top level goal (e.g. "win this game") with (b) agents with several
independent sources of motivation (motive generators - hardware or
software), e.g. thirst, sex, curiosity, political ambition, aesthetic
preferences, etc.
 
- Contrast (a) an agent whose development includes modification of 
its motive generators and motive comparators in the light of 
experience, with (b) an agent whose generators and comparators are 
fixed for life (presumably the case for many animals).
 
- Contrast (a) an agent whose motive generators and comparators 
change partly under the influence of genetically determined factors 
(e.g. puberty), with (b) an agent for whom they can change only in 
the light of interactions with the environment and inferences drawn 
therefrom.
 
- Contrast (a) an agent whose motive generators and comparators (and
higher order motivators) are themselves accessible to explicit 
internal scrutiny, analysis and change, with (b) an agent for which 
all the changes in motive generators and comparators are merely 
uncontrolled side effects of other processes (as in addictions, 
habituation, etc.) [A similar distinction can be made as regards 
motives themselves.]
 
- Contrast (a) an agent pre-programmed to have motive generators and
comparators change under the influence of likes and dislikes, or
approval and disapproval, of other agents, and (b) an agent that is 
only influenced by how things affect it.
 
- Compare (a) agents that are able to extend the formalisms they use 
for thinking about the environment and their methods of dealing with 
it (like human beings) and (b) agents that are not (most other 
animals?)
 
- Compare (a) agents that are able to assess the merits of different
inconsistent motives (desires, wishes, ideals, etc.) and then decide
which (if any) to act on with (b) agents that are always controlled 
by the most recently generated motive (like very young children? some
animals?).
 
- Compare (a) agents with a monolithic hierarchical computational
architecture where sub-processes cannot acquire any motives (goals)
except via their "superiors", with only one top level executive 
process generating all the goals driving lower level systems with (b) 
agents where individual sub-systems can generate independent goals. 
In case
(b) we can distinguish many sub-cases e.g.
(b1) the system is hierarchical and sub-systems can pursue their
independent goals if they don't conflict with the goals of their 
superiors
(b2) there are procedures whereby sub-systems can (sometimes?) 
override their superiors. [e.g. reflexes?]
 
- Compare (a) a system in which all the decisions among competing 
goals and sub-goals are taken on some kind of "democratic" voting 
basis or a numerical summation or comparison of some kind (a kind of 
vector addition perhaps) with (b) a system in which conflicts are 
resolved on the basis of qualitative rules, which are themselves 
partly there from birth and partly the product of a complex high 
level learning system.
 
- Compare (a) a system designed entirely to take decisions that are
optimal for its own well-being and long term survival with (b) a 
system that has built-in mechanisms to ensure that the well-being of 
others is also taken into account. (Human beings and many other 
animals seem to have some biologically determined mechanisms of the 
second sort - e.g. maternal/paternal reactions to offspring, 
sympathy, etc.).
 
- There are many distinctions that can be made between systems 
according to how much knowledge they have about their own states, and 
how much they can or cannot change because they do or do not have 
appropriate mechanisms. (As usual there are many different sub-cases. 
Having something in a write-protected area is different from not 
having any mechanism for changing stored information at all.)
 
There are some overlaps between these distinctions, and many of them 
are relatively imprecise, but all are capable of refinement and can 
be mapped onto real design decisions for a robot-designer (or 
evolution).
 
They are just some of the many interesting design distinctions whose
implications can be explored both theoretically and experimentally,
though building models illustrating most of the alternatives will
require significant advances in AI e.g. in perception, memory, 
learning, reasoning, motor control, etc.
 
When we explore the fascinating space of possible designs for agents,
the question which of the various sytems has free will loses 
interest: the pre-theoretic free/unfree contrast totally fails to 
produce any one interesting demarcation among the many possible 
designs -- it can be loosely mapped on to several of them.
 
So the design distinctions define different notions of free:- 
free(1),
free(2), free(3), .... However, if an object is free(i) but not 
free(j)
(for i /= j) then the question "But is it really FREE?" has no 
answer.
 
It's like asking: What's the difference between things that have life 
and things that don't?
 
The question is (perhaps) OK if you are contrasting trees, mice and
people with stones, rivers and clouds. But when you start looking at 
a larger class of cases, including viruses, complex molecules of 
various kinds, and other theoretically possible cases, the question 
loses its point because it uses a pre-theoretic concept ("life") that 
doesn't have a sufficiently rich and precise meaning to distinguish 
all the cases that can occur. (Which need not stop biologists 
introducing a new precise and technical concept and using the word 
"life" for it. But that doesn't answer the unanswerable pre-
theoretical question about precisely where the boundary lies.
 
Similarly "what's the difference between things with and things 
without free will?" This question makes the false assumpton (A).
 
So, to ask whether we are free is to ask which side of a boundary we 
are on when there is no particular boundary in question. (Which is 
one reason why so many people are tempted to say "What I mean by free 
is..." and they then produce different incompatible definitions.)
 
I.e. it's a non-issue. So let's examine the more interesting detailed
technical questions in depth.
 
(For more on motive generators, motive comparators, etc. see my 
(joint) article in IJCAI-81 on robots and emotions, or the sequel 
"Motives, Mechanisms and Emotions" in the journal of Cognition and 
Emotion Vol I no 3, 1987).
 
Apologies for length.
 
Now, shall I or shan't I post this.........????
 
Aaron Sloman,
School of Cognitive Sciences, Univ of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, 
England
    ARPANET : aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cvaxa@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
              aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cvaxa%nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk@relay.cs.net
    JANET     aarons@cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk
    BITNET:   aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cvaxa@uk.ac
        or    aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cvaxa%ukacrl.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu
As a last resort (it costs us more...)
    UUCP:     ...mcvax!ukc!cvaxa!aarons
            or aarons@cvaxa.uucp
 
 
 
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