On Saturday, October 20, 2012 12:50:55 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: > > On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com <javascript:>>wrote: > > > If you can do something for your own personal reasons then you have free >> will. If you demand that personal reasons still must always come from >> outside of the person themselves[...] >> > > But I don't demand that at all! You might picked X and not Y entirely for > internal reasons, entirely because of the state of the neurons inside your > very own personal head. >
The reasons of my neurons are not my personal reasons. Neurons deal in GABA and acetylcholine. I deal in paychecks and days off. Different levels of description. My neurons can influence my consciousness from a sub-personal level - say feeling unfulfilled when I get my paycheck, but they cannot decide for me to get a better job. I decide. Me. I might decide to deal steroids on the side instead, or make human jack-o'lanterns out of the neighbors heads and sell them at a garage sale. Of these three options, the steroids and the premeditated murder and decapitation carry a heavy super-signifying charge. My social experience and and innate sensitivity circumscribes these acts as criminal, evil, or both, so my range of seemingly *realistic* options is quite a bit narrower than the full continuum of options available to me in theory. The full scope of what * might* be available to me is relatively limitless. I can meet someone and go into business with them. I can have an idea and make money from it. I can get run over by a furniture truck and collect an insurance settlement. NONE of these possibilities are realizable on the sub-personal or super-signifying levels. They are native to the personal level of description. NOT my neurons or molecules, NOT my behavioral statistics, NOT determinism, NOT randomness. Personal Preference is the appropriate factor. Not the only factor, but a significant factor which you deny like it was the Holocaust. > And my computer did X and not Y entirely because of the state of its > memory banks and microprocessor inside its very own personal aluminum box. > Let's compare. Does your computer worry about it's job? Does it get a feeling one way or another if it receives more or less volts? If you remove RAM does it miss it? You are welcome to believe any fairytale sophistry you like, but you can be sure that the belief in this level of stupidity dwarfs any organized religion. Rather than talking myself into entertaining the fantasy of a computer with feelings, I have a better explanation for why no computer has ever exhibited a personal preference. They have none. There is no 'they' there. Instead of a super-signifying level of acculturation and ecology, they have instruction codes which impress upon them functions which are utterly alien to whatever substance is being borrowed to do the computing. Instead of a personal level, they have only sub-personal logic, involuntary reflex dictated by the rigidity of the materials specially selected for that quality. These are not proto-organisms, they are amputated sculptures playing pre-recorded messages. They are sophisticated messages - useful messages, but ultimately nothing more than a very cleverly organized library. > > >>That would only be true if every event must have a cause, but there is >>> no law of logic that demands that must always be true >> >> >> > Then maybe a new law of logic just appeared out of nowhere. >> > > Maybe, if so it wouldn't be the first time something appeared out of > nowhere. But I don't understand why I should be embarrassed to have an > answer to the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" that > is not entirely satisfactory, its not as if you or anybody else can do > better. > You don't need to be embarrassed at all. I do think that I have solved this problem though. The question assumes a background of nothing, whereas I see that in the absence of our own subjectivity, what is left is everythingness. Our awareness is a subtractive partitioning, or temporary diffraction from a boundaryless whole, not an evacuated absence. If you want to be embarrassed, it would be because you are a staunch critic of all possibilities which deviate even slightly from a reductionist logic of true or false, but don't see any contradiciton in having a deck of infinite wild-cards of 'maybe whatever out of nowhere' in your pocket. > > X and Y are made up. Like Pepsi and Coke. They are notations. >> > > Deep man deep, Plato and Socrates eat your heart out. > Deep shmeep, I am pointing out that X and Y are information modeling symbols, not features of universal truth. > > >> > Was there a part of that grousing and grumbling that resembled an >> answer to my question? I am asking the purpose of preference in a universe >> devoid of ... your favorite word. >> > > As I said before, you can't ask me why I did or wrote something because > according to you I have this thing called "free will" and so I prefer X > over Y for no reason and I prefer X over Y not for no reason. I don't > understand why a person with you philosophy fails to find this a perfectly > reasonable, logical, and satisfying answer. For a person with your > philosophy there is simply nothing more to be said. > That's fine, but you don't subscribe to my philosophy, so I was asking how you rationalize the purpose of preference in your view. > > > you claim that there is no law of logic that prevents being born >> yesterday. Maybe your memories are false. >> > > Could be. Maybe I came into existence 5 minutes ago and all the memories I > have as a child were also created 5 minutes ago. I can't prove it's not > true. > True in theory, absurd in reality. We need to use our personal sense to tell which is more relevant. > > > What fact of the world do you accuse me of being unaware of that would >> be relevant in any way to this or any other discussion on this list? >> > > You don't know any science and you don't know any mathematics and don't > even seem to think they're important, and yet you believe you've discovered > the secrets of the universe. Delusions of grandeur. > The second part would be more credible if you were more restrained in the first. If you had said "You know just enough science and mathematics to make you dangerous" then I might be tempted to take your opinion seriously. What does "you don't know any science" even mean? I was a 'Science' major in high school and got a 4.00 average in those courses, I read scientific articles for pleasure. I have a printout of Einstein's theory of relativity at work which I have been reading carefully and making notes. Do you see why this spit that comes out of your mouth is directed at some figment of your imagination rather than me? Delusions of grandeur? Sure. I don't claim to know one way or another whether that is true. That is ultimately for others to decide. All I know is it makes pretty good sense to me, and a few other people seem to agree. What do I care how significant or insignificant that makes me? I'm interested in taking my crack at solving the problem - doing it my way and seeing where it leads. Why is that so repugnant to you? What does your awesome philosophy have to offer? Self satisfaction? Freedom from intellectual risk? I don't blame anyone for not wanting what I have, but you certainly can't expect me to want what you have. I wouldn't trade, and that's a fact. Maybe I'm crazy, but if what you have is sanity...no thanks. > > > I am suggesting a way of understanding the relation of consciousness and >> physics that seems plausible to me. >> > > Before you connect physics with anything it might be helpful to know a > little physics, and it you're really interested in consciousness study > neurology and computer science; amateur two bit armchair philosophy just > doesn't cut the mustard. > Before you give me advice, you should become a person that I am interested in getting advice from. > > > You have lied to me in writing more than any person I have ever >> encountered. Not that it makes you a liar, but you do lie a lot. >> > > I am lying right now. > Another good example of the limitations of boolean logic. A computer has to have training wheels built into its logic or it will try to compute that shit in circles forever. Craig > > John K Clark > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/vAZdcrLpwOAJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
