PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER

If any genuine “free will” exists, it is at the level of the “I-ness” of a system, the decision making routine, that it comes into play. Before we dive into the technicalities of this issue, let’s first try to brainstorm on what can be understood by “free will”. Although intuitively we “know” what “free will” is, just as we know what consciousness is,it is extremely hard to define it in words. Let’s try to build an ontology “free will” by reciting its features and by drawing the borders of this concept from the notions of what it is not.

I followed a very interesting discussion on the issue of free will and whether it is needed in AI, which I will neither repeat nor summarise here, but a number of striking concepts of which I will use in this essay. I do not claim to have come up with those concepts myself nor do I claim to be an expert on the issue, but I believe that I can add some interesting concepts to the discussion deriving from Ben Jacob’s “Bacterial Wisdom”, “Global Brains” and “Societies-of-Minds”. I will also propose to incorporate an artificial functional mimic of “Free Will” in a Webmind such as the AWWWARENet (Artificial World Wide Web Awareness Resource Engine Net).

A number of concepts stood out above the noise of the aforementioned discussion, which I’ll mention here as features (and non-features) of the “free will ontology”:

“Choice, override, randomness, unpredictability, (non)determination, chaotic, (non)causality and evolution”.

Indeed, for a “Will” or decision-taking routine to be “free”, it must be able to override those possible decisions, which are “causality-determined”. In Goertzel´s Webmind the discriminating faculty is the AttentionBroker routine). In the AWWWARENet, the AttentionBroker presents its conclusions, what course of action is to be taken as being the most rational, as having the highest probability of success, to the I.I.I (Identity,Initiative and Illusion generating routine). In as far as the system has an “override” function, the system appears to be endowed with a faculty of “choice” to an outside observer of the system.

The need for a random-picking faculty arises, when the AttentionBroker present the I.I.I-routine with more than one equally likely options i.e. options with identical priorities.

The issue becomes more poignant, when due to a scarcity of resources or time imposed resource constraints not all options can be carried out simultaneously or worse are mutually exclusive i.e. some must be sacrificed at the expense of others.

The whole of the typical spiritual life may be boiled down to a continuum between faith and wisdom, and another competing continuum – fear and folly. The higher continuum is embellished of the Spirit; the lower, of the flesh. These two spiritual continuums of living are, of course, highly interactive with each other, and they’re also highly dynamic as they ebb and flow through life.

Imagine these two continua as lines spanning both good and evil as they’re experienced or felt by us spiritually. One we desire, the other we flee from.

Before we get into a study of these two continua, we need to understand a spiritual paradox.

A SPIRITUAL PARADOX

The goal of faith is to grow in strength to rely on God – a thing contingent upon weakness – and to realise, also, steady growth in wisdom.

Yet the experience and outcomes of faith and wisdom – as seen by the Faith-Wisdom Continua – seem diametrically opposed. One we draw on to get us through trials. The other we want to sustain – the place of Wisdom is the panacea of all volitional humanity.

The paradox becomes telling as we consider the vast disparity between difficulty at one end and comfort at the other. But both are spiritually disposed.

Likewise, fear is the activator of faith or anxiety; we choose for one or the other. Folly is a different ‘animal’ altogether; it has been tripped up – as a consequence – of poor decisions, usually based in a flawed morality.

Faith and fear are less to do with our will as they attend, at times vicariously, through circumstances; yet, what we do with them is due our will entirely. Wisdom and folly, conversely, are highly contingent in our will – we decide; we’re consequently found wise or foolish by these choices.

THE FAITH-WISDOM CONTINUUM

This Faith-Wisdom Continuum is where we always want to be as believing persons.

We experience peace and joy here, whether via a vindicated faith in our leaning on God in difficulty, or through our enjoyment of blessed consequences for wise living. Wisdom is its own reward.

Faith is required at one end, in weakness. Wisdom is the product at the other end of, usually by virtue of long held faith.