Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction by Jack Copeland

Author:Jack Copeland [Copeland, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781119189855
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

How to live with a fixed future

Consider again the final sentence of the passage we’re examining: ‘Your future is fixed, ineviitable – laid out for you, waiting to be discovered.’ We are portrayed as passive travellers who play no role in bringing the future about – an image which is, of course, absurd. A.J. Ayer has put his finger neatly on the flaw: ‘My actions make [a] difference to the future: for they are causes as well as effects.’51

Discarding the second half of the sentence leaves us with ‘Your future is fixed, inevitable’. So long as the word ‘fixed’ is taken to mean nothing more than ‘determined by the past’, it is indeed an implication of determinism that the future of each of us is fixed. This idea has exercised thoughtful people since philosophy began. The Buddha recommended meditation as a technique for reconciling oneself to the knowledge that one’s life is merely a tiny episode in a great fixed chain of cause and effect. The nineteenth century thinker John Stuart Mill wrote of the ‘depressing and paralysing influence’ of his belief in a fixed future, and Ted Honderich has recently written of what he calls his attitude of dismay towards his own belief that each person’s future is fixed.52 Maybe I’m lacking in imagination but I do not find the idea of living in a universe whose future is fixed at all depressing. Let me explain.

1 Firstly, even if the future is fixed it is far from true that my future actions will not be voluntary, will not be up to me, will not be free. I hope my various arguments have already convinced you of this.

2 On the Laplacian view a fixed future is a predictable future: a snooping superhuman intelligence could in principle calculate the intimate details of all our futures. But thanks to chaos theory we now know that a fixed future is not neccessarily a predictable one. Since in a causally connected world unpredictability breeds unpredictability, the existence of even one well of chaos would frustrate the Laplacian calculation.

3 It is sometimes said that if the future is fixed then life can hold no opportunities. I cannot agree. Imagine that you buy a lottery ticket and subsequently read in the conditions printed on the back of it that the winning number was selected by an impartial trustee before the selling of tickets commenced. (The example is Dennett’s.53) ‘The winning number has been placed in a special sealed envelope by the trustee and deposited in a bank vault,’ explains the ticket. Wouldn’t you still feel that you have a perfectly good chance of winning? The news that the outcome of the lottery is already determined surely makes no difference: you still have a chance of carrying away the prize. And if a predrawn lottery can offer you the opportunity of winning the prize of your dreams then so too, of course, can a predetermined future. Indeed, in one important respect a predetermined future is even rosier than a predrawn lottery.

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