You’d have to draw the line somewhere so it would have any meaning at all. What’s the point in the concept if anything can be interpreted as such. What do you mean when you say “free choice” or “choice”?
I define freedom in he libertarian sense, freedom in the compatibilist sense, and so on, separately, rather than trying to find a single true definition.
An agent with desires could be said to lack or have compatibilist free will inasmuch as it is able to act on its desires unimpededly. That could include an AI.
An agent with the ability to make undetermined choices could because to have libertarian free will. That could include an AI, too.
So I dont see the probelm with a “complicated contrivance” having free will.
“able to act on its desires unimpededly” has 2 problems.
First, it is clearly describing the “agent’s” (also not a well-defined category, but let’s leave it at that) experience, e.g. desires, not something objective from an outside view. Second, “unimpededly” is also intrinsically vague. Is my desire to fly impeded? Is an addict’s desire to quit? (If the answer is “no” to both, what would even count as impediment?) But, I guess, it is fine if we agree that “compatibilist free will” is just a feature of subjective experience.
“ability to make undetermined choices” relies on the ambiguous concept of “choice”, but also would be surprisingly abundant in a truly probabilistic world. We’d have to attribute “libertarian free will” to a radioactive isotope that’s “choosing” when to decay, or to any otherwise deterministic system that relies on such isotope. I don’t think that agrees with intuition of those who find this concept meaningful.
We can decide issues of compatibilist free will, up to a point, because it’s the same thing as acting under your own volition in the legal sense.
“ability to make undetermined choices” relies on the ambiguous concept of “choice”, but also would be surprisingly abundant in a truly probabilistic world
That would depend on the nature of choice. If the ability to make choices isn’t common , then widespread indeterminism would not lead to widespread undetermined choices.
Why would you want to?
You’d have to draw the line somewhere so it would have any meaning at all. What’s the point in the concept if anything can be interpreted as such. What do you mean when you say “free choice” or “choice”?
I define freedom in he libertarian sense, freedom in the compatibilist sense, and so on, separately, rather than trying to find a single true definition.
An agent with desires could be said to lack or have compatibilist free will inasmuch as it is able to act on its desires unimpededly. That could include an AI.
An agent with the ability to make undetermined choices could because to have libertarian free will. That could include an AI, too.
So I dont see the probelm with a “complicated contrivance” having free will.
Both definitions have their issues.
“able to act on its desires unimpededly” has 2 problems. First, it is clearly describing the “agent’s” (also not a well-defined category, but let’s leave it at that) experience, e.g. desires, not something objective from an outside view. Second, “unimpededly” is also intrinsically vague. Is my desire to fly impeded? Is an addict’s desire to quit? (If the answer is “no” to both, what would even count as impediment?) But, I guess, it is fine if we agree that “compatibilist free will” is just a feature of subjective experience.
“ability to make undetermined choices” relies on the ambiguous concept of “choice”, but also would be surprisingly abundant in a truly probabilistic world. We’d have to attribute “libertarian free will” to a radioactive isotope that’s “choosing” when to decay, or to any otherwise deterministic system that relies on such isotope. I don’t think that agrees with intuition of those who find this concept meaningful.
All definitions have issues.
We can decide issues of compatibilist free will, up to a point, because it’s the same thing as acting under your own volition in the legal sense.
That would depend on the nature of choice. If the ability to make choices isn’t common , then widespread indeterminism would not lead to widespread undetermined choices.