Subject: Torek's Computer

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 19:17:05 -0500

From: Bryan Douglas Caplan <[email-masked]>

I don't see how Torek's fiendish computer program is supposed to
be a counter-example.  Because of course the scientist _does_ have
a deterministic law for the computer -- if you input A, it does
B, and if you input B, it does A.  That seems completely deterministic.
But let the scientist say: if I say "raise your right arm, you will
raise your left, and vice versa," I can still falsify that.  The
computer is always going to have to follow some causal rule, however
complex and self-referential.  And I think that my thought experiment
shows that I can always go a step beyond that.

Let me attack this from another angle.  As Searle explains it, 
scientific explanations work from the bottom up.  Macro behavior
gets explained in terms of micro behavior.  Now do you agree that
the behavior of my micro particles could be described by the equations
I imagined?  Why not?  If such micro laws are possible, then they
should be able to predict my macro behavior as well.  If I can
contradict them, then we have a case of macro things not behaving
according to the laws of their constituent particles.  At the very
least, one of the most popular "arguments from science" against free
will crumbles.
   --Bryan