Philosophical issues

The formalism of this paper takes sides in several philosophical controversies.

1. It considers determinism and free will, as experienced and observed by humans, as compatible. This is in accordance with the views of Locke and Hume.

2. It takes a third person point of view, i.e. considers the free will of others and not just the free will of the observer.

3. It breaks the phenomenon of free will into parts and considers the simplest systems first--in contrast to approaches that demand that all complications be understood before anything can be said. In this it resembles the approaches to belief and other intentional states discussed in [Den71], [Den78], and [McC79]. Starting with simple systems is the practice in AI, because only what is understood can be implemented in computer programs.

It seems to me that formulas (1) and (2) expressing the use of the branching time $Result(e,s)$ function in determining what events occur make the philosophical ideas definite. Thus we can see which modifications of the notions are compatible with (1) and (2), and which require different axioms.

The process of deciding what to do often involves considering a pruned set of actions which eliminate those that have obviously bad consequences. The remaining actions are those that one can do. When someone refers to a pruned action, one sometimes gets the reply, ``Oh, I could do that, but I really can't, because ....''