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<div>Chas. et. al.</div>
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<div>Thanks for your reply.</div>
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<div>A few responses below between your text:<br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 12/30/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Chasuk</b> <<a href="mailto:chasuk@gmail.com">chasuk@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">On 12/30/06, Ted Moffett <<a href="mailto:starbliss@gmail.com">starbliss@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br>
> I'm not sure, Chas, if you believe in absolutist or relativistic ethics, but in practice in our society it is clear we do apply majority rule to determining very profound ethical principles. Look at the death penalty, which I also oppose, often defended with polls expressing that the clear majority of the US public support the death penalty.
<br><br>I'm not certain, either. Intellectually, I support relativistic<br>ethics. Emotionally, I am an absolutist. Pragmatically, I'm a<br>combination of both. There are very few human behaviors about which I
<br>am absolutist: female circumcision (the wrongness thereof) being one<br>of them. Generally, I say whatever floats your boat, as long as it is<br>consensual. I extend that rule further than anyone I know, yet my<br>visceral response to some human behaviors makes me a hypocrite.
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<div>Indeed, I feel this hypocrisy every day of the week! It pains me considerably!</div><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">This is especially complicated because I don't believe in the<br>existence of the soul, or that any entity has free will, which makes
<br>us meat machines, and therefore culpable for nothing. </blockquote>
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<div>I have given the issue of determinism and free will some thought.</div>
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<div>Determinism should be understood in the context that we do not know for certain that all events in the universe are determined, their is considerable "looseness" in the chains of causality operating in some systems, and that thinking machines may be constructed to make unpredictable choices based on their own "well being."
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<div>Punishment (an "ethical" act?), if it helps the machine return to normal function, could be a form of "repair," or "moral" reform. The thinking machine is made more aware it "malfunctioned" when restrained by other law enforcement machines. Of course, this is not morality as commonly understood.
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<div>But why should not immensely complicated biological machines feel a need for revenge against other machines that restrain, impair or harm them? And then realize they have no logical/factual basis in the ultimate eternal structure of the universe to complain, given that they will all wear out and expire, and it will all end in Entropy's destiny, perhaps? Machines aware of the ethical absurdity of life?
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<div>We may be very complicated biological "machines," but of an order of complexity that renders comparison with all current human made machines a false comparison. </div>
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<div>I think a definition of "free will" can be constructed within forms of determinism. A person who is aware of how to control aspects of the world and themselves, and is placed in an environment that allows numerous choices, can make unpredictable choices/actions to further their well being based on this knowledge, when living in a society that allows this "freedom"; these choices may be determined, in many ways (brain biochemistry, cultural conditioning, etc.). But an environment of numerous options present for the thinking well educated biological machine in a "free" society, is what can be meant by exercising "free will." No one may be able to predict the outcome of a society of hundreds of millions of well educated thinking biological machines operating with numerous options unrestrained in a complex environment. I know this is not the conventional view of free will, nor of a strict determinism, but it makes more scientific sense than some other views of "free will."
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<div>The two conditions that maximize "free will" for our thinking biological machines are a diverse education and freedom to operate in a complex environment offering numerous options.</div>
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<div>Take away the diverse education and the freedom to operate and according to this view of "free will" there is no or very limited free will. Even given the view of "free will" as a faculty that a person still possesses even in jail, when they have the freedom to think and feel what they want in the freedom of their mind, while their bodies are restrained, a lack of education will limit the options available to their mind, the ability to exercise "free will." This same argument would apply to a artificially intelligent computer with a limited data set about the world.
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<div>Ted Moffett</div>
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<div>That's what I<br>believe intellectually. I still want to retaliate against those who<br>have trespassed against me, or against those whom I love, whether they<br>are morally at fault or not. This dialogue becomes moot if what I
<br>believe intellectually is true in an absolute sense, but it also makes<br>it inescapable.<br><br>Interesting discussion, Ted. The most compelling and simultaneously<br>frustrating questions in life (from my perspective) are the question
<br>of free will, and question 'what is man?' I've studied them<br>continuously for over 30 years, and I'm further from an answer than I<br>was when I started.<br><br>Chas<br> </div></div><br>