perm filename FREEWI[S84,JMC] blob
sn#749873 filedate 1984-04-10 generic text, type C, neo UTF8
COMMENT ā VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC PAGE DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002 .<<freewi[s84,jmc] Free will and determinism>>
C00004 ENDMK
Cā;
.<<freewi[s84,jmc] Free will and determinism>>
.require "memo.pub[let,jmc]" source;
.cb The Free Will of Determinist Robots
.cb "by John McCarthy, Stanford University"
Some philosophers, e.g. Hobart (1934), have argued that
determinism and free will are not only compatible, but that the concept
of free will requires some degree of determinism to be meaningful.
I agree with Hobart as far as he goes, but he didn't offer any
precise idea of what freedom of will a deterministic system
might have.
The purpose of this paper is to elaborate an idea,
first expressed in (McCarthy and Hayes 1969), making precise
what choices a deterministic computer program can make.