On Sep 14, 10:06 pm, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:07 AM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: > >> If it isn't deterministic, it's random. > > > Says who? Is your opinion on this determined for you or is it random? > > What is determining it if not you? Have you no control of it > > whatsoever? > > >>There aren't any other > >> possibilities. > > > Oh, well if you put it scientifically like that... As long as we're at > > it, can we state that arguments from authority are the basis of > > scientific curiosity? How about 'Ignorance is strength.'? > > A non-determined event is synonymous with a random event.
Not if it is a self-determined event. Then it is not random and not externally determined. > If an > entity's behaviour is not determined then it is random, and if it not > random it is determined. It's a false dichotomy. Something making choices based on private criteria is going to look random from the outside. By determining our own behavior, we prove unquestionably that (some) of our behavior is neither pre-determined nor random. It can be voluntarily purposeful or arbitrary in addition to being involuntarily determined or random. I know you're probably never going to accept that (even though to 99+% of people who have ever lived would agree that it is a simple and obvious experiential truth), because you are only able to consider the universe from a particular perspective, which is in relation to my perspective, inside out. In order to understand that there is a third option beyond randomness and determinism, you would have to take your own existence seriously as a phenomenology equivalent in realism to any phenomena which is observed or measured through it. This hallucination does not seem to be curable, so I can only say, have fun being a puppet of determinism and randomness. >This applies to consciously willed or > unconscious behaviour. How does this apply to consciously willed behavior? >Random could mean truly random, quantum level > events like radioactive decay, or pseudorandom, events that are > deterministic but very difficult to predict due to not knowing all the > variables, like a coin toss. You are assuming that the primitive bias is determinism. I don't. I see the foundations of order divided equally between determinism (entropy across space), chance, and purpose (significance through time). > > >>Some incompatibilist believers in free will are happy > >> with randomness as the source of their freedom. Compatibilists say the > >> opposite: if your decisions are determined then you are free in that > >> you do what you want to do, and what you want to do depends on what > >> sort of person you are and what your experiences have been; whereas if > >> you decisions are random they are not based on anything. > > > What if your decisions are based upon your own choices which arise out > > of experience, randomness, and actual, legitimate, personal volition. > > You know, exactly how it has always seems when we're not actively > > struggling to disprove it with tortured reasoning and sophistry. > > "Actual, legitimate personal volition", like everything else, must > have either a deterministic or random effect on behaviour. It instantiates a motive purposeful (cause) which the receiving agent(s) respond to in varying degrees of purpose (of it's won), compliance, and chance. Sometimes you want to hit a hole in one, but your swing can't always comply with your wishes. You may instantiate the same motive cause to your body every time you are on the golf course, but a number of psychological, physiological, social, and environmental factors influence the effect of that cause. To the outside observer, you are a good golfer if your body complies obediently to your will and your will is precisely synched with the 3- p intersubjective sense of the golf course topology. > > >> > We understand the what and the how of electromagnetism, but to predict > >> > what a brain would do you need to understand the who and the why of > >> > sensorimotive perception. With only half the picture, you only get > >> > half of the predictive power. > > >> So again, as I have said many times and you deny, you are invoking > >> magic. Electromagnetism is a physical phenomenon that can be measured > >> and modelled. > > > Electromagnetism is the physical end of a phenomenon that we have > > partially modeled. > > >>If it drives the brain then the behaviour of the brain > >> can be measured and modelled. > > > We have only measured and modeled the most primitive, literal examples > > of electromagnetism. We have not yet scratched the surface of how it > > scales up to human perception. > > Electromagnetism is one of the most well-understood physical > phenomena. If electromagnetic effects drive neuronal behaviour, these > effects can be modelled and predicted. Electromagnetic effects are a way of describing the behavior of all matter. If it's made of atoms, then it's electromagnetic. But no, it has nothing to do with the unpredictability of higher order systems being reducible to lower order phenomena. The synergies at each level - molecular, biological, physiological, zoological, neurological, and of course anthropological and psychological prohibit a simplistic low level description from being sufficient. You can't explain LOLcats in machine language or a TV show in scan lines. > > >>But if there is something else, not > >> being electromagnetism or any other measurable physical force, driving > >> the brain the brain will behave in ways contrary to science, and this > >> should be observable and widely known. > > > That would be true if I were an idiot and had not considered that > > already many times. I get what you're saying. You don't understand > > what I'm saying. Unfortunately that means it's up to you to understand > > me if you care to. > > Perhaps you can repeat your point in even simpler terms. As I see it: > 1. Every part of the brain moves due to physical forces. Forces aren't physical to begin with, they are iust how we model the invariance of the behavior of physical phenomena. Parts of the brain move. That's all we know. They move and change and produce coherent patterns of changes which we can detect (meaning that they are in some way imitated by the behavior of) electrically charged metal probing devices so we consider them electromagnetic changes. > 2. Physical forces are described by physical laws. Physical laws refer to the invariant behaviors of physical phenomena. The idea of a 'force' is a metaphysical abstraction. Forces do not exist independently of physical phenomena they act upon, therefore any actions that make sense to us among separate entities are attributed to a 'force'. It's perfectly fine to consider them 'forces' or 'fields' for purposes of calculation, but I think that is not what they really are. They are sensorimotive relations. Physical phenomena making sense of each other and changing that sense to the extent that they can. If a monkey learns how to make a hydrogen bomb and blows an island to kingdom come, we cannot attribute thermonuclear reactions on atolls or by hominids to be comprehensible in terms of 'physical laws'. > 3. Therefore, the movements of the parts of the brain are described by > physical laws. It's already tautological. You are saying all bologna comes from the bologna factory, therefore all parts of the bologna are described by factory procedures. I'm saying it's completely different. You're only looking at half of the universe with one eye closed. > 4. If either 1, 2 or 3 were not true then experiments would show it > and it would be amazing news. That's just confirming the antecedent. Physical experiments can never anticipate the capability of a monkey to produce a hydrogen bomb. If you looked at it from space, you could see a bomb blow up an island, but maybe could not see that humans were involved. Our past experiments cannot disprove a theory which has not been investigated yet if the theory specifically points out the flawed assumption of those past experiments. My hypothesis is that the private ontology of the cosmos which we experience natively is part of a universe of private ontologies associated with public physical phenomenon. Those private phenomenologies cannot be accessed by third person experiments on physical objects (that would make them not private). Experiments dealing with the private side of physical phenomena would have to be done through interfacing the brain with those physical phenomena directly. > 5. If 1, 2 and 3 are true then the brain's movement is deterministic > to the extent that physical laws governing the brain are > deterministic, and random to the extent that they are random. Except that 1, 2, and 3 are not true. Forces come from within and are synchronized through coherent compliance of shared sensorimotive conditions. There are no disembodied 'forces' flying around empty space. Space is just the distance between the exteriors physical phenomena, nothing more. Time is the separation between the interiors of energy events. When energy looks at matter (it's own exterior) it sees deterministic structure. When energy looks at matter being influenced by energy (it's own interior inferred from the sense it makes of matter), it sees randomness. When it looks at it's own energy it sees something like will and feeling, but the quality of that I/O changes according to what the thing is. > > >> It's no better to say the electron contains a bit of consciousness > >> that it is to say consciousness results from the electron's > >> interactions, the functionalist position. > > > Then that means it's no worse either? It makes a difference because > > the functionalist position is a wild goose chase for the Philosopher's > > Stone of a formula for exporting our consciousness into inanimate > > objects. My way explains why light and life and awareness seem elusive > > to us and unlike other material processes. > > You saying "consciousness is an irreducible part of matter, so there" > is all other considerations aside no better than me saying > "consciousness is an irreducible part of function, so there". It > doesn't explain more, it isn't simpler or more plausible. And as I > have discussed, there are other reasons to prefer the functionalist > position. I'm saying "If consciousness (really awareness) is an irreducible expression of sense, and matter is the opposite irreducible expression of the same sense, then X, Y, Z follows: X: You get a universe where living organisms have significant thoughts, feelings, and temporal experiences which are both private and sharable in a public context. Y: You get a public universe where thoughts, feelings, and experiences are indirectly inferred through and held in contradistinction to computable physical structures in spatial relation with each other (thus creating an interior topology of energy events through time and an exterior topology of substantial objects in space) Z: You get a continuum which relates X and Y as an involuted whole such that every phenomena is both a single subject which qualitatively perceives the universe as many objects and a single object or set of objects as perceived quantitatively by other qualified perceivers. This opens the way for inertial networks and hierarchies of perception. I'm saying "If consciousness is an irreducible part of 'function' then: 1. You get a universe where certain functions produce consciousness, such that anything can thing and feel that they are a human being even if they are a group of mild bottles, a ventriloquist's dummy, a projection on a movie screen, or a program inside of a computer game. 2. You get a universe of intangible entities which we can only know through arithmetic calculation, while the universe we know is only explainable as a solipsistic simulation, forever disconnected from the rest of the cosmos as an unexplained fantasy in an otherwise mechanistic universe. 3. You get a nihilistic, absurd philosophy where a video game experience of killing a person-shaped graphic avatar of sufficient sophistication should logically be prosecuted as first degree murder. 4. The egregious violations of common sense which lead to variations of 3 must be explained away with assurances that 'our lives don't have to be any less wonderful just because part of us knows it's a random, predetermined calculation that manipulates our hallucinations like puppets for no conceivable reason' and 'just because we haven't yet found a calculation that solves to [the experience of seeing red} doesn't mean we won't someday'. 5. You get a metaphysical pseudo-teleology through magical-teleonomy, with zombies, 'illusions', 'interpretations', 'information', 'signals', and 'emergent properties' which will make ping pong balls turn into conscious Mickey Mouses eventually if you give them enough time. 6. You might need to create a separate universe for every typo that everyone ever makes, every action that is ever taken or not taken by any object that has ever existed or could ever exist as a consequence of any variation in any universe. To explain one universe you would need an infinity of universes which would, I imagine each need an infinity of sub universes to explain them? 7. You get light that is intangible, massless, travels faster than anything, cannot interact with anything except through atoms, and has nothing whatsoever with what we think we see when we look at a source of light. 8. You get a description of a universe as told by a hypothetical omniscient voyeur, an unexplained provider of transparent, perspectiveless deduction, which is somehow immune to the solipsistic illusions of 2. So, we can have light that is a form of darkness, in one of infinite worlds of accidental nonsense pretending to make sense for no reason, where life and death are simply chemical reactions and murder is no more or less significant than flipping a light switch. This worldview provides that arcane computer assisted computation is the only true valid epistemology and that any suggestion of anthropocentric epistemology is to be met with kneejerk accusations of magic and witchcraft behind veils of presumed authority, with insinuations of incompetence and promissory materialism for all. > > >> QED and other physical theories are either wrong or magic is occurring > >> if neurons fire in a way that cannot be predicted. > > > I don't know why you keep wanting to hear the same objection over and > > over, but what you're saying is completely bogus. It's no different > > from saying that if understanding how a TV set works doesn't predict > > the winner of the Super Bowl ten years in advance, then there must be > > magic occurring. > > You completely misunderstand why that analogy is bogus. If you model > the brain then you model how the brain will respond to environmental > input: You can't model environmental input of a brain unless you can predict the future. Ideas are among the environmental inputs that change the brain. Images, experiences. > you expose your model to the input and see what happens. The > model doesn't know what you're going to do tomorrow until it happens > and you don't know what you're going to do tomorrow until it happens > either. Indeed, your feeling of free will is exactly because of this > fact. What is the point of the model? > > > Are you saying there is no evidence that we can manipulate our own > > brain chemistry consciously? Since emotions are essentially (but not > > existentially) the same thing as physical events in the brain, if you > > assume that the physical events are primary, then your study will > > reflect that. When a person decides to think about something that is > > associated with a certain emotion, neurotransmitter events takes place > > in the brain (in different regions, some simulataneously, some in > > chain reactions). There is no evidence to suggest that the > > neurotransmitters in the patients brain could cause the doctors brain > > to suggest to the patient that they think of something which would > > precipitate that brain event or emotion. We are not just biochemical > > puppets. Our biochemistry responds to our feelings and thoughts as > > well as causing us to respond to it's collective experiences and > > conditions. I don't see how you can deny that with any sincerity. > > If I have a thought A which causes emotions B associated with release > of neurotransmitters then you would say (I guess) that the thought A > caused the neurotransmitter release. No, I say that the thought A is interior perspective of the neurotransmitter release. It depends on what the thought is as to whether or not the sensorimotive sense it makes or the electromagnetic sense it makes is more relevant. If the thought is food-sex-money then it's worthwhile to pursue an electromagnetic view of the process in the body. If the thought is a poem, then there is no point in trying to understand it's content as a neurotransmission. It has a neurotransmitter correlate, of course, but it's not what we care about. You can't read it aloud in a coffee shop (well actually you could, if you wanted to be *that* geeky and artsy, but it's not really a poem). > In a manner of speaking that is > true. However, the underlying process is that brain events A caused > neurotransmitter release B, That's an unsupported assumption. Brain event A and thought A are the same thing. One does not cause the other. Brain event A causes both brain event B and thought B, and sometimes it is the voluntary thought supplying the purpose and sometimes it's the consequence of brain events which are supplying involuntary thought. Your view fails to admit the possibility that every brain event has a sensorimotive correlate. I don't make that mistake. > and brain events A are associated with > thought A while neurotransmitter release B is associated with emotion > B. It is very important to understand this basic principle taken for > granted in neuroscience and I'm not sure that you do. I think actually you don't understand. Neurotransmitters like serotonin, epinephrine, dopamine, etc. are not associated with 'emotions'. They are neurological agents which are associated with many cognitive, emotive, and behavioral traits, as are all 'brain events'. There is no one to one correspondence between a human experience like the word 'rose' and a single instance of chemical or electrical stimulation. A human brain is as complex as something like China. There is a lot going on, none of which can be boiled down to a 'basic principle' of neuroscience. > If it did not > happen this way then, as I have said many times, we would expect > experiments to show that neurotransmitter B is released without any > antecedent cause, which would be miraculous and amazing and widely > known. I think it happens all the time. We don't know why or how gambling causes activity in the amygdala, we just observe that there is a correlation. Zero cause. No mechanism. > > >> Then you are saying that the atoms do *not* always follow physical > >> laws. If they did, we would be able to predict their behaviour. > > > No. That's what you're saying. I'm saying that physical laws are > > observations about simple, literal, objective phenomena. Not > > everything can be addressed meaningfully by the laws of physics. It's > > not a universal tool of understanding, it has a specific, limited > > efficacy. If we understand what physicality actually is, and what > > makes it possible to even consider the idea of anything other than > > physicality, then we could realize that predictibility is one of the > > qualities which diminishes the more you look at the other end of the > > continuum of sense. Matter acts predictably on the outside, less so on > > the inside. > > Physics can't tell what the subjective experience of a thing is, but > it can describe the objective behaviour (the qualifiers subjective and > objective here are redundant but I need to spell it out). It is the > *objective* behaviour of matter that I am talking about. What could be important about the objective behavior of a brain? >If subjective > factors directly affect the objective behaviour then that would be > observed in experiments as an event contrary to the laws of physics. If you can't observe subjective factors, how do you know when they are directly affecting the objective behavior? > If, on the other hand, the subjective has a supervenient relationship > to the objective behaviour the objective behaviour of the brain can be > entirely explained in physical terms. Anything the brain does is by definition physical. It means nothing to say that subjectivity supervenes upon the brain if we subjectively feel otherwise. > > > The brain is too close to our own frame of reference. We know too much > > about what's going on from the inside view to be able to predict to > > any meaningful degree of precision. We can predict generally how a > > healthy brain should function, but not the idiosyncratic patterns of > > how any particular person's brain will function over time. If you > > could predict how the person's life will go minute by minute, then > > sure, you could get a pretty good idea, but then you have to predict > > the entire universe. > > The same is true of even the simplest object. You don't know what > forces it will be subjected to tomorrow, but you do know what it's > going to do *given* a certain force. That is called "having a model of > the object's behaviour". The model does not include everything that's > going to happen to the object, since that would be called "having a > model of the entire universe". Models do different things for different purposes. > > > Sure, if it's just on the general level of 'matter'. If you want to > > predict the trajectory of a serotonin molecule in a brain, you might > > need to know what a person is thinking about. Serotonin in a brain > > acts differently than serotonin by itself in a vacuum. There is > > nothing in the molecular structure of serotonin which indicates that > > it should have a role in something like a human brain. What is > > meaningful about serotonin cannot be described in purely in terms of > > it being a bonded group of atoms. It's a physical agent but it's also > > a chemical, biological, and neurological agent. > > Of course serotonin behaves differently in different environments; how > chemicals behave in different environments constitutes the subject of > chemistry. and of course there is nothing in the structure of > serotonin indicating it should have a role in the brain, but there is > nothing in the structure of methane indicating that it should have a > role cooking your dinner. Then we agree. Why would there have to be something in the structure of the brain that indicates it is watching Braking Bad? > > >> You can't have it both ways. Either the brain follows physical laws > >> and its behaviour is predictable or it does not follow physical laws > >> and it's behaviour is magical. > > > You can have it a third way. The brain has behaviors which can be > > described adequately with physical observation, and it has behaviors > > which can only be described meaningfully in other ways. > > The consciousness of the brain cannot be described in physical terms, > but the objective, observable behaviour can. I agree only to the extent that you are observing objective behavior that doesn't relate to the content of consciousness. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
