Aaron Sloman School of Computer Science
The University of Birmingham
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs
NOTE 1:
This was originally written while I was at the University of Sussex.
A slightly shorter version of the following text was broadcast via net news
("usenet") to the comp.ai and sci.philosophy.tech news groups some time in 1988.
It began with this remark, which explains the closing question:
"I wasn't going to contribute to this discussion, but a colleague encouraged me."
A slightly modified version of this appeared in
AISB Quarterly, Winter 1992/3, Issue 82, pp.31-2
NOTE 2 (8 Apr 2014):
The formatting of this version has been changed, e.g. with the list of transitions
now numbered, below, where reference is made to Stan Franklin's
book chapter which made use of these distinctions (with permission).
He also made a number of additional distinctions in the same spirit, summarised
below.
NOTE 3 (9 Apr 2014):
A section from my 1978 Book discussing free will is appended
below.
Abstract:
Much philosophical discussion concerning freedom of the will is based on an assumption that there is a well-defined distinction between systems whose choices are free and those whose choices are not. This assumption is refuted by showing that when requirements for behaving systems are considered there are very many design options which correspond to a wide variety of distinctions more or less closely associated with our naive ideas of individual freedom. Thus, instead of one major distinction there are many different distinctions; different combinations of design choices will produce different sorts of agents, and the naive distinction is not capable of classifying them. In this framework, the pre-theoretical concept of freedom of the will needs to be abandoned and replaced with a host of different technical concepts corresponding to the capabilities enabled by different designs.
Conversely, technical developments can also help to solve or dissolve old philosophical problems. I think we are now in a position to dissolve the problems of free will as normally conceived, and in doing so we can make a contribution to AI as well as philosophy.
The basic assumption behind much discussion of freedom of the will is:
(A): there is a well-defined distinction between systems whose choices are free and those whose choices are not free.
However, if you start examining possible designs for intelligent systems in great detail you find that there is no one such distinction. Instead there are many 'lesser' distinctions corresponding to design decisions that a robot engineer might or might not take - and in many cases it is likely that biological evolution tried both (or several) alternatives.
There are interesting, indeed fascinating, technical problems about the implications of these design distinctions. For example, we can ask how individuals with the different designs would fare in a variety of social settings, what they would be like to interact with, which sorts of tasks they would be able to achieve and which not. Exploring design details shows, I believe, that there is no longer any interest in the question whether we have free will because among the real distinctions between possible designs there is no one distinction that fits the presuppositions of the philosophical uses of the term "free will". It does not map directly onto any one of the many different interesting design distinctions. So (A) is false.
"Free will" has plenty of ordinary uses to which most of the philosophical discussion is irrelevant. E.g.
"Did you go of your own free will or did she make you go?"
That question presupposes a well-understood distinction between two possible
explanations for someone's action. But the answer "I went of my own free will" does
not express a belief in any metaphysical truth about human freedom. It is merely a
denial that certain sorts of influences operated, such as threats or coercion by
another person. There is no implication that no causes, or no mechanisms were
involved. How could any lay person know that there are no causes, since we know very
little about how our brains work?
The claim to have done something of your own free will simply illustrates a common-sense distinction between the existence or non-existence of particular sorts of 'external' influences on a particular individual's action. We could all list types of influences that might make us inclined to say that someone did not act of his own free will, some of which would, for example, lead to exoneration in the courts. But saying "I did not do it of my own free will because processes in my brain caused me to do it" would not be accepted as an excuse, or a basis for requesting forgivenness.
However there are other deeper distinctions that relate to different sorts of designs for behaving systems, but our ordinary language does not include terms for distinguish behaviour flowing from such different designs. Before we can introduce new theory-based distinctions, we need to answer the following technical question that lurks behind much of the discussion of free will.
"What kinds of designs are possible for intelligent agents and what are the implications of different designs as regards the determinants of their actions?"I'll use "agent" as short for "behaving system with something like motives". What that means is a topic for another day. Instead of *one* big division between things (agents) with and things (agents) without free will we'll then come up with a host of more or less significant divisions, expressing some aspect of the pre-theoretical free/unfree distinction. E.g. here are some examples of design distinctions (some of which would subdivide into smaller sub-distinctions on closer analysis):
Design distinctions
(Most of these were used in the discussion of Free Will in Franklin (1995), Chapter 2.
The relevant text is available, starting on page 31 on
page 31, and adds additional
distinctions summarised below.)
(b1) the system is hierarchical and sub-systems can pursue their independent goals if they don't conflict with the goals of their superiors(b2) there are procedures whereby sub-systems can (sometimes?) override their superiors (e.g. trained reflexes?)
Franklin's chapter adds several more distinctions in the same spirit, available here. The additional distinctions are concerned with differences in sense modalities (which he labels S1, S2), memory mechanisms (M1, M2, M3, M4), and differences in planning, visualising and creating mental models (T1, T2, T3).
There are some overlaps between these distinctions, and many of them are relatively imprecise, but all are capable of refinement and can be mapped onto real design decisions for a robot-designer (or evolution).
They are just some of the many interesting design distinctions whose implications can be explored both theoretically and experimentally, though building models illustrating most of the alternatives will require significant advances in AI e.g. in perception, memory, learning, reasoning, motor control, etc.
When we explore the fascinating space of possible designs for agents, the question which of the various systems has free will loses interest: the pre-theoretic free/unfree contrast totally fails to produce any one interesting demarcation among the many possible designs -- though it can be loosely mapped on to several of them. However, different mappings will imply different implications for classifying an agent as free, or as unfree.
After detailed analysis of design options we may be able to define many different notions of freedom, with corresponding predicates:- free(1), free(2), free(3), .... However, if an object is free(i) but not free(j) (for i /= j) then the question "But is it really FREE?" has no answer.
It's like asking: What's the difference between things that have life and things that don't?
The question whether something is living or not is (perhaps) acceptable if you are contrasting trees, mice and people with stones, rivers and clouds. But when you start looking at a larger class of cases, including viruses, complex molecules of various kinds, and other theoretically possible cases, the question loses its point because it uses a pre-theoretic concept ("life") that doesn't have a sufficiently rich and precise meaning to distinguish all the cases that can occur. (This need not stop biologists introducing a new precise and technical concept and using the word "life" for it. But that doesn't answer the unanswerable pre-theoretical question about precisely where the boundary lies.)
Similarly "What's the difference between things with and things without free will?" may have an answer if you are contrasting on the one hand, thermostats, trees and the solar system with, on the other hand, people, chimpanzees and intelligent robots. But if the question is asked on the presumption that all behaving systems can be divided, then it makes the false assumption (A).
So, to ask whether we are free is to ask which side of a boundary we are on when there is no particular boundary in question, only an ill-defined collection of very different boundaries. This is one reason why it is that so many people are tempted to say "What I mean by 'free' is..." and they then produce different incompatible definitions.
In other words, the problem of free will is a non-issue. So let's examine the more interesting detailed technical questions in depth.
It is sometimes thought that the success of computational models of the human mind would carry the implication that we lack freedom because computers have no freedom. However, as I argued in section 10.13 of Sloman (1978) (below), on the contrary, such models may, at last, enable us to see how it is possible for agents to have an architecture in which their own desires, beliefs, preferences, tastes and the like determine what they do rather than external forces or blind physical and chemical processes. This line of thinking is elaborated in the books and papers cited in the bibliography. Dennett (1984), in particular, analyses in considerable depth the confusions that lead people to worry about whether we are free or not.
Now, shall I or shan't I submit this.........????
[The question with which the original usenet posting ended is explained
above.]
10.13. Problems about free will and determinism
A common reaction to the suggestion that human beings are like computers running complex programs is to object that that would mean that we are not free, that all our acts and decisions are based not on deliberation and choice but on blind deterministic processes. There is a very tangled set of issues here, but I think that the study of computational models of decision-making processes may actually give us better insights into what it is to be free and responsible. This is because people are increasingly designing programs which, instead of blindly doing what they are told, build up representations of alternative possibilities and study them in some detail before choosing. This is just the first step towards real deliberation and freedom of choice.
NOTE (Added 9 Apr 2014)
For a discussion of subdivisions between proto-deliberative systems and
various other increasingly sophisticated kinds of deliberative systems,
see Sloman(2006).
In due course, it should be possible to design systems which, instead of always
taking decisions on the basis of criteria explicitly programmed in to them (or
specified in the task), try to construct their own goals, criteria and principles,
for instance by exploring alternatives and finding which are most satisfactory to
live with. Thus, having decided between alternative decision-making strategies, the
program may use them in taking other decisions.
For all this to work the program must of course have some desires, goals, strategies
built into it initially. But that presumably is true of people also. A creature with
no wants, aims, preferences, dislikes, decision-making strategies, etc., would have
no basis for doing any deliberating or acting. But the initial collection of programs
need not survive for long, as the individual interacts with the physical world and
other agents over a long period of time, and through a lengthy and unique history
extends, modifies, and rejects the initial program. Thus a robot, like a person,
could have built into it mechanisms which succeed in altering themselves beyond
recognition, partly under the influence of experiences of many sorts.
Self-modification could apply not only to goals but also to the mechanisms or rules
for generating and for comparing goals, and even, recursively, to the mechanisms for
change.
This is a long way from the popular mythology of computers as simple-minded
mechanisms which always do exactly what they are programmed to do. A self-modifying
program, of the sort described in
chapter 6, interacting with
many people in many situations, could develop so as to be quite unrecognisable by its
initial designer(s). It could acquire not only new facts and new skills, but also new
motivations; that is desires, dislikes, principles, and so on. Its actions would be
determined by its own motives, not those of its designers.
If this is not having freedom and being responsible for one's own development
and actions, then it is not at all clear what else could be desired under the name of
freedom.
As people become increasingly aware of the enormous differences between these new
sorts of mechanisms, and the sorts of things which have been called mechanisms in the
past (clocks, typewriters, telephone exchanges, and even simple computers with simple
programs), they will also become less worried about the mechanistic overtones of
computer models of mind. (See also my 1974 paper on determinism. Sloman (1974))
(Also a Sussex Cognitive Science Research Paper 62, and reprinted in
M.A. Boden (ed) The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
"Oxford Readings in Philosophy" Series Oxford University Press,
pp 231-247 1990.)
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/81-95.html#6