Abstract

A common feature of free will is that a person has choices among alternative actions and chooses the action with the apparently most preferred consequences. In a determinist theory, the mechanism that makes the choice among the alternatives is determinist. The sensation of free will comes from the fact that the mechanism that generates the choices uses a non-determinist theory as a computational device and that the stage in which the choices have been identified is introspectable. The present formalism is based on work in artificial intelligence (AI). We present a theory of simple deterministic free will (SDFW) in a deterministic world. The theory splits the mechanism that determines action into two parts. The first part computes possible actions and their consequences. Then the second part decides which action is most preferable and does it.

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