[extropy-chat] Best To Regard Free Will as Existing.

[Russell Wallace]

On 4/3/07, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:
>
> You can't prove it, not for any deep reason it's just that the term "free
> will" is just a noise some people like to make with their mouth, that's
> it,
> nothing more. Personally I never cared much for the sound of it myself, I
> don't find it particularly musical and so I seldom make that noise with
> my mouth.


There's a division I find rather useful, which is between those things which
are causally influenced by the set of patterns labeled "Russell Wallace" and
those things which are not; the division is useful because it helps me
figure out which neural computations can have positive differential utility
if performed, and which will not, which in turn is useful for optimizing the
expenditure of finite resources. Phrases like "...causally influenced by..."
are a bit unwieldy though, so I want a shorter mouth noise to refer to this
concept; looking around, I find the convention among non-philosophers is to
use this "free will" mouth noise, so that's cool with me. I'm surprised you
don't find the concept useful, though maybe you just have a different short
mouth noise whose sound you find more pleasing.
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