Couldn't you "predict" by working through the system before the systems works itself in reality?
(Not practical because reality runs faster than any computer, but you know what I'm saying.)
Or are you actually saying the output is has an element of randomness and is not determined by the input?

Talking of "prediction" seems to be causing me problems.
I'll try putting it another way.
You put an input (starting conditions) into these systems and they give an output (the proceeding chain of events)
Now, if I put in the same input a several times I have two possibilities:
1) I always get the same output. Always. No possibility of a differing one.
If so, I'd say that this system is determinate - given the system and input the output is determined.
2) If there is a possibility of different outputs from the same input, I'll call this system indeterminate.

I suspect that you are speaking of systems are "indeterminate" - type 2; but I just wanted to be sure that I'd understood you right.
I had heard that Quantumn Physics involves systems of that time, but I hadn't heard of any others.
(we agree that Chaotic systems don't count as type 2, right?
because they are ultimately determined by type 1 systems/equations and that "apparent randomness" is due to complexity rather than a genuine type 2 randomness?)

I didn't explain what I meant by "reducible".
Words like "Organism" and "Life Process" are defined in terms of biological concepts.
Their definition is made up of biological things and their behaviour.
In turn, these things and behaviour are defined by simpler concepts...
Breaking it down, you eventually get a construction made up of physical concepts.
That's what it means by "reducible".

It doesn't mean that a biologists problem is a physicists problem or anything silly like that.
The only significance is for topics like this one.
If the laws of physics are deterministic then any concepts that reduce into physical ones are deterministic.

While your rant seemed to be based on a misunderstanding of what philosophers mean by "Reducible" I can see where you're coming from and kind of agree with you.
I think that the most valuable thing I've learnt from my time studying philosophy is how to dismantle bad arguments.
Too many philosophical arguments use weird concepts, and the consequences of these arguments usually follow from such weird concepts being used in the first place.

While there's plenty of good work being done in philosophy as well, there doesn't seem to be an agreed standard to sort the worth from the waste.
I think too much emphasis on learning the issues themselves and not enough training spent on how to understand, tackle and debunk bad arguments.

The existence of free will is relevant to morality both directly and indirectly.

Directly, because a moral code is a set of principles intended to guide choices. If there is no free will, there is no choice, and no moral code is necessary.

Indirectly, because a moral code is a set of principles intended to guide choices. If we are not able to choose our principles, blind forces determine which moral code we practice. In that world, I cannot say that my moral code is right and yours wrong. I can only say that I find myself believing and practicing this, and you find yourself believing and practicing that.

To primitive mankind, "blind forces" caused him to want to breath, eat, sleep, have sex, socialize, etc... Science now pretty well understands and explains these formerly "blind forces". That's why the concept of morality needs to be dumped as a superstitious invention of a pre-scientific era. Science can now explain what forces guides one's decisions. There are no "blind forces" anymore.

Also believing in something because you don't like the consequences of it not being true is very irrational. Should a person believe they are not going to die because the thought of one's own death makes them feel uncomfortable? You feel better in a world with absolute morality where you have free will. So this is what you have trained yourself to believe. This only demonstrates that we don't have free will and everyone is just out to feel good and avoid feeling bad.

　

　

 

That is an argument towards why free will is a necessary component of ethics and morality.

A lack of free will is a lack of choice. Ethics is the study of the morality of choices. Morality is the normative value of choices.

No choices means no normative value, hence no morality, hence no ethics.

 

 

 

Why should I care what you believe or what your moral code is unless your actions harm me in some way? If I make a social contract with you and you violate the terms of this contract, I can say you must be punished for this. Morality needs to be dumped and social contracts developed that maximize everyone's opportunity to pursue their own happiness and pleasure. This is how things should work in a post-religious world.

Society needs to dump the concept of morality and spell out the terms of our social obligations and rights along with the rewards and punishments for behaviors. Morality is BS because everyone just makes up their own anyways and then lies about being holier than everyone else. Results are what matters.

A Theist or absolute morality is inferior because it's about pleasing Mr. Invisible or some mythical code of valor. It's not about producing results that work.

If you have no free will, then there is only one option for you to choose. I am not arguing for or against free will, but that it is necessary to make choices. My definition of free will, of course, is extremely loose. I think all animals and even some computer programs have free will.

There are other methods of making a choice which have nothing to do with those prejudices that you listed,  or even chance, unless  reason is included in your "etc."

Punishment for offenses against those standards can only be justified based on  "emotional state, relevant memories, desires, urges, beliefs, etc?" I say that the standards themselves must be justified by something other than "social consensus" or they are completely arbitrary and shouldn't be followed. Laws should be based on reason. They should be based on a reasoned ethical system. They should not be based on social custom or other arbitrary nonsense like emotional states and beliefs.

True perhaps in the context of theology--but not in the context of philosophy. Free will is necessary for any action to be evaluated on a normative basis. You must concede that a being has some control of its own actions and is responsible for making choice A over choice B before you can begin to make claims about that being having acted rightly in making choice A or choice B. If you cannot make claims of this nature, then you cannot have a moral system that is not unjust, arbitrary, and meaningless.

 

If we have no free will as you say, then we would be forced by reason to evaluate all actions as morally neutral. Again, I am not arguing for free will, but arguing that without free will there is no need for any moral system or normative evaluation, since all actions are evaluated in the same way.

When you say that there should be a scientific study of how to pursue pleasure and pain, you are making a normative statement. You are saying that it matters that we pursue pleasure, and that science should convene ways for us to pursue it. If we have no free will, and no quality of ethical judgement, then it wouldn't matter if we had pleasure or pain. It would make no difference, since no person, no scientist, and no follower of that study could do anything but what they were going to do anyway as automatons. So what difference does it make if an automaton of no will decides to give another pleasure and another pain? Does it make any difference if a hurricane on a desolate, lifeless world tosses about stones from their resting places? If we have no free will, we are no better than those stones, and our pain and pleasure no more important than that hurricane.

No, it doesn't.  But in any case it doesn't matter if the will is an emergent property of the brain or came about through more superstitious "magical" means. If the will is free, the logic of ethics apply to it, just as the logic of ontonology applies to all things which exist or can exist, or the logic of discrete mathematics applies to all things enumerable.

In any case, its a good idea because it allows us to reason about normative issues. It allows us to argue and debate about things which cannot be measured or experimented upon -- and come to an agreement based upon our reasoning.

If we cannot reason about normative issues -- ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, etc. then we cannot convince anyone of anything of that nature without coercion (threats, fear, lies, etc.) or violence. We cannot stop someone from doing something we don't like by talking to them. We can't agree on compromises. We can't argue for the things we believe in and have value for.

Suppose a scientific discovery is made. One scientist says that discovery can lead to a technology which provides pleasure for group A at the expense of group B. Certainly group A would like the technology, but group B would not. How do we decide whether to develop the technology or not? We can't make that judgement without first deciding that the pleasure of group A is more, less, or equally important to the pain of group B.

If a computer program can take one action at the expense of another, with the conceivable ability to take that other action rather than not (i.e. its ability to take such an action is not arbitrarily or fundamentally limited,) then it has a will. If it takes actions towards an internal goal with a model of its future environment in mind, and if its goal is not arbitrarily set, but can change then under my definition, its will is free. Many programs fit this definition.

To evaluate whether or not it has acted rightly, we must examine the nature of its will. We must examine whether it is capable of reasoning about the consequences of its actions upon other wills. We must examine whether it is capable of understanding what choices it can make and how to make them. If it meets these criteria, then we can apply any other rigorous ethical system to determine whether it has acted rightly or wrongly.

I may be wrong about computer programs having free will, but if they did have free will, evaluating their actions ethically would be no different from evaluating the actions of a human being or other rational creature.

So, in algorithmic form:

Entity X has performed action X'.

if (X has a will)

{

    if( the will of X is free)

    {   if(X is a rational being)

         {

             Apply ethical system to Y.

         }

         else Y is morally neutral.

     }

   else Y is morally neutral.

}

else Y is morally neutral.

 I'm surprised the first half of this discussion included no clarification of which version of free will was being referred to!

 

If it's the free will of theism, then I don't think it plays any role in morality, but if it's the free will of compatibilism (where free will means a non coerced choice) then I think it does, to some degree.

 

Theistic free will has no meaning whatsoever, because as Hume pointed out it leads to uncaused choices, which are not based on who we are, our characters, beliefs, desires, etc.

The first test is the individual ability to act, which a computer function, regardless of it's level of advancement, doesn't have in the terms with which we are familiar. THe fact is. another individual initiates the functions of a computer program in 'real time' not the computer itself. For a computer to be closer to the mark on this criteria requires that it, by some function, first, autonomously selects the program it will run, second, locates and taps an energy source for the purpose, again of it's own volition and then if a computer can do all this in order to initiate a program you could say it is potentially interesting in regards to its individual capacity to act. Since computers don't do this at present, they fail the original criteria.

 

 

 

This is a really good question, EXC. This is very close to one of the main reasons why I originally simplified the assumptions by which we were going to judge the capacity to act. It's possible, and even likely, the universe is a very dynamic and interdependent entity, that individual capacity to act with intent can be equally well defined just beyond this arbitrary limitations and coherently justify the consideration of a bundle of nerve cells as an individual, in no less a sense than humans are.

In most discourse, the parsing of concepts is unconsciously done by fitting to a framework that reflects the psychological scope of the listener. That is, it can be said we translate everything anthropocentrically. This works really well when what we are translating is the experience of another arthropod, but in the case that we are trying to determine if rocks have free will or not the limits of our psychological parameters are exposed and we need to acknowledge them because they are the threshold. They are the point at which an entities existence goes from a state which we can readily understand and judge to one that is fundamentally alien to our senses.

Advanced computer software goes way beyond simple responses to human input. Even without considering genetic algorithms, they are programmed with a basic set of tools of analysis, and guidelines on how to apply them to a task, including criteria for assessing the effectiveness of each tool to the data being analysed, or the design task specified, and invoke different algorithms if they seem to work better.

It is much more analogous to asking a human expert to address some technical problem which they have appropriate training and/or experience in.

Then if you use genetic programming, you are likely to get genuinely original results.

There are even promising results from programs designed to come up with original theorems in math.

It is becoming progressively harder to distinguish clearly between the decision-making of such software and that of the human mind.

'Morality' just introduces another category of criteria to evaluate the options for action. 'Free will' is only meaningful in this context as implying freedom from coercion by others.

So if my chess playing program randomly and/or on a regular schedule pops up and asks me if I want to play, then it has free will? So just write a simple little progam to popup and ask the question.

So when a lawn mowing robot 'decides' that it is scheduled to cut the grass and 'chooses' to do so, if it checks it's batteries first and recharges if necessary. Then it has free will, if it does not check it's batteries it does not have free will?

It just seems like an arbitrary requirement that a robot should need to check it's batteries and recharge if necessary before performing a task to be free will vs. non free will.