Freewill

[madnak]

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Why be so generous with the metaphysicists? I demand evidence that consciousness can be even provisionally modeled as an idealized Will. (That is, a self-contained entity that deliberately chooses among discrete possibilities.)

Honestly I think it's more meaningful to debate whether a video game villain powered by a random number generator has free will.

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The problem is that some people believe in it, and I can't prove them wrong. I can see no reason to believe in it, but I'm hesistant to write it off on that basis.

Don't get me wrong, I think the whole notion of that kind of "will" is ill-defined and foolish. I think it rarely gets beyond the level of Moseley's posts. But I accept the possibility that someone does have special knowledge of the subject.

To use an analogy from the other thread, if I lived in 1200 I would be justified in concluding that there is no Pluto. However, I would not be justified in saying that the question of Pluto's existence is meaningless, or in saying that nobody is justified in concluding that Pluto exists. (Even though, at the time, it's possible nobody was.)