Towards Implementing Free-Will
CPM Report No.: 00-57
By: Bruce Edmonds
Date: 13th March 2000
Presented as: Edmonds, B. (2000) Towards Implementing Free Will,
AISB'2000 symposium on "How to Design a Functioning Mind", Birmingham, April
2000.
An substantially revised version of this is available as
CPM Report 03-124
Abstract
Some practical criteria for free-will are suggested where free-will is
a matter of degree. It is argued that these are more appropriate than
some extremely idealised conceptions. Thus although the paper takes
lessons from philosophy it avoids idealistic approaches as irrelevant.
A mechanism for allowing an agent to meet these criteria is
suggested: that of facilitating the gradual emergence of free-will in
the brain via an internal evolutionary process. This meets the
requirement that not only must the choice of action be free but also
choice in the method of choice, and choice in the method of choice of
the method of choice etc. This is directly analogous to the emergence
of life from non-life. Such an emergence of indeterminism with respect
to the conditions of the agent fits well with the `Machiavellian
Intelligence Hypothesis' which posits that our intelligence evolved (at
least partially) to enable us to deal with social complexity and
modelling `arms races'. There is a clear evolutionary advantage in
being internally coherent in seeking to fulfil ones goals and
unpredictable by ones peers. To fully achieve this vision several
other aspects of cognition are necessary: open-ended strategy
development; the meta-evolution of the evolutionary process; the
facility to anticipate the results of strategies; and the situating of
this process in a society of competitive peers. Finally the requirement
that reports of the deliberations that lead to actions need to be
socially acceptable leads to the suggestion that the language that the
strategies are developed within be subject to a normative process in
parallel with the development of free-will. An appendix outlines a
philosophical position in support of my position.
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