rwallace comments on Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 August 2009 01:10AM

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Comment author: SforSingularity 19 August 2009 06:54:51PM *  0 points [-]

Free will is counted as one of the great problems of philosophy. Wikipedia Lists it as a "central problem of metaphysics". SEP has a whole, long article on it along with others on: "compatibilism", "causal determinism" , "free will and fatalism", "divine foreknowledge", "incompatibilism (nondeterministic) theories of free will" and "arguments for incompatibilism".

If you really have "nuked the dead donkey" here, you would cut out a lot of literature. Furthermore, religious people would no longer be able to use "free will" as a magic incantation with which to defend God.

Comment author: rwallace 19 August 2009 07:40:32PM 2 points [-]

The only reason free will is regarded as a problem of philosophy is that philosophers are in the rather bizarre habit of defining it as "your actions are uncaused" - it should be no surprise that a nonsensical definition leads to problems!

When we use the correct definition - the one that corresponds to how the term is actually used - "your actions are caused by your own decisions, as opposed to by external coercion" - the problem doesn't arise.