Re: Compatibilism
On Nov 19, 3:11 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Rex, Your post reminded me of the quote (of which I cannot recall the source) where someone asked Who pushes who around inside the brain?, meaning is it the matter that causes thought to move around a certain way, or is it the opposite? The looped hierarchies described by Hofstadter, if present, make this a difficult question to answer. If the highest levels of thought and reason are required in your decision making, does it still make sense to say we are slaves of deterministic motions of particles or is that missing a few steps? Well, I find it entirely conceivable that fundamental physical laws acting on fundamental physical entities (particles, fields, strings, whatever) could account for human behavior and ability. So if human behavior and ability is what we are trying to explain, then I see no reason to invoke thought and reason as causal forces. Because you think that leads to some overdetermination and it doesn;t. Shaking Muhammad Ali's hand is shaking Cassius Clay's. It's a different and equally valid of the same stuff And, even if you wanted to, I don't see how they could be made to serve that role. 1Z and I discussed this in the other thread. We don't invoke thought and reason to explain the abilities and behavior of chess playing computers - and while human behavior and ability is much more complex and extensive, I think it can be put in the same general category. It's precisely because the microphysics is so complex that we do use higher level descriptions The conscious experience that accompanies human behavior is another matter entirely, but I don't think it serves any causal role either. I could not perfectly predict your behavior without creating a full simulation of your brain. Doing so would instantiate your consciousness. Therefore I cannot determine what you will do without invoking your consciousness, thought, reason, etc. I wouldn't necessarily agree that a full computer simulation of a human brain would produce conscious experience. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. I have serious doubts. I'm not a physicalist, or a dualist, but rather an accidental idealist. Or maybe an idealistic accidentalist? One or the other. I do not disagree with your assertion that something must be either caused or random, but does _what_ caused you to do something have any bearing? If your mind is the cause, does that count as free will? Even if that were the case, there must be *something* that connects the mind to the choice. Otherwise how can you say that the mind is the cause of the choice? So what is the nature of that connective something? If it is a rule or a law, then the choice was determined by the rule/law. Nope. That reason causes choice causes action does not mean reason was itself caused. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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.
Re: Compatibilism
On Nov 28, 11:36 pm, Stephen Paul King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi Rex and Bruno, I think that you are both missing an important point by taking an from infinity view. The fact that the world is not given to us in terms where these is one and only one option given some condition forces us to deal with alternatives. We can go on and on about causation and determinism but let us get Real, there is only rarely a situation where there can only be one singular effect to a singular cause. In fact there is never a actual singular cause to some event so the argument falls flat because of a false premise. I am not sure if you are saying determinism is false as an ontological fact, or just that alternatives will subjectively appear to be open due to ignorance. We can build and knock over straw men for ever or we can look at Nature honesty and see that our pet theories of Monolithic Static Structure will always be Incomplete. Free Will, illusory or otherwise is an attempt to deal with the reality that there are always alternatives that can occur. We promote a notion of Agency to act as a mechanism that chooses between alternatives without bias or cohesion and imagine that we have such an agency. I don't see why bias should be inimical to FW. Surely this is a falsehood from the point of view of infinity where we can imagine we can see all of the variables, but we are only thinking of ourselves as an observer that is external to the system that we observe and so can see its properties and *that our means of perception of such has no effect upon what those properties are*. This role used to be played by the notion of a Deity. Now we find a secular version of the same thing and wonder why we make no progress beyond this conundrum! We are not Omniscient, we are not Omnipresent and we most certainly are not Omnipotent. Deal with it. I don;'t see your point. Are you saying FW is the same as omnipotence? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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.
Re: Against Mechanism
On 28 Nov 2010, at 20:45, 1Z wrote: On Nov 27, 7:40 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: snip And then we have the cause of our experience. This is true in all cases: scientific realism, scientific materialism, BIV, matrix, other skeptical scenarios. It is not the same in all cases. World+Experience is simpler than World+Vat/Matrix+Experience OK. Note that elementary arithmetic is simpler than both. And it is explains (even without DM) 99,9% of experience, + why it remains necessarily 0.1% of experience for which we cannot have a direct explanation, but still an indirect one, which is arguably appalling with Mechanism. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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.
Re: Against Mechanism
On 28 Nov 2010, at 21:18, Pzomby wrote: On Nov 27, 10:49 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information. Rex Assuming that by using the term ‘abstract’ it means ‘non-physical’, But abstract does not mean non physical. F = ma is physical yet abstract. It is a true (say) abstract relation that we infer from many observation, and which can be instantiated in some concrete relationship between bodies, for example. is it possible for information or anything to be ‘more’ or even ‘less’ abstract. Are not the physical and abstract realms pure unto themselves with no possibility of being more or less abstract or physical? In other words ‘abstract substrates” could be incongruous. This is theory dependent. Natural numbers are usually considered by number theorists as being very concrete (yet immaterial) objects. Relations between numbers are more abstract, and relations between those relations are still more abstract. In math, algebra is considered as more abstract than arithmetic. category theory is known as very abstract. Lambda calculus contains a concrete abstraction operator (indeed lambda) capable of constructing more and more abstract objects. It replace concrete/token immaterial object like numbers (or strings) by variable one. Bruno Any clarification or examples on this issue would be helpful. Thanks -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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 . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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.
Re: Compatibilism
Hi 1Z, -Original Message- From: 1Z Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 8:38 AM To: Everything List Subject: Re: Compatibilism On Nov 28, 11:36 pm, Stephen Paul King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi Rex and Bruno, I think that you are both missing an important point by taking an from infinity view. The fact that the world is not given to us in terms where these is one and only one option given some condition forces us to deal with alternatives. We can go on and on about causation and determinism but let us get Real, there is only rarely a situation where there can only be one singular effect to a singular cause. In fact there is never a actual singular cause to some event so the argument falls flat because of a false premise. [1Z] I am not sure if you are saying determinism is false as an ontological fact, or just that alternatives will subjectively appear to be open due to ignorance. [SPK] What is the notion of determinism? Is it that ...is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is, to some large degree, determined by prior states and involving the belief that the universe is fully governed by causal laws resulting in only one possible state at any point in time? (quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism ) We have direct empirical evidence that this is not the case, for example in the case of the Two Slit Experiment, we have the situation that the relative positions of the impact of photons (or whatever particle is shot from the gun) on the screen is “determined” (if we can even use that word in a consistent manner!) not by a single localized event but by the shape of the wave function of the combined system of gun ⊗ particle ⊗ slits ⊗ Screen. I did not invent this idea, I am just thinking of the implications of the content of this conversation so far and what I have learned from my studies. The notion of free will (real or imaginary) involves the notion of a set of alternative outcomes to any one situation, a condition is that is not consistent with the basic premises of determinism as per the definition that I referenced. What am I missing? We can build and knock over straw men for ever or we can look at Nature honesty and see that our pet theories of Monolithic Static Structure will always be Incomplete. Free Will, illusory or otherwise, is an attempt to deal with the reality that there are always alternatives that can occur. We promote a notion of Agency to act as a mechanism that chooses between alternatives without bias or cohesion and imagine that we have such an agency. [1Z] I don't see why bias should be inimical to FW. [SPK] The term “free” in FW means that it is unconstrained by other factors external to the agent that we are positing might have Free Will. A bias would be a factor that could act as a constraint IFF that bias where imposed from an external source. If I am biased in my choices and I am free to select the conditions of my bias, so be it; I am still free. Surely this is a falsehood from the point of view of infinity where we can imagine we can see all of the variables, but we are only thinking of ourselves as an observer that is external to the system that we observe and so can see its properties and *that our means of perception of such has no effect upon what those properties are*. This role used to be played by the notion of a Deity. Now we find a secular version of the same thing and wonder why we make no progress beyond this conundrum! We are not Omniscient, we are not Omnipresent and we most certainly are not Omnipotent. Deal with it. [1Z] I don;'t see your point. Are you saying FW is the same as omnipotence? [SPK] No, to the contrary; I am pointing out that the basic premise of determinism requires the equivalent of an Omniscient Being to obtain for only such a “Being” could have the frame of reference of seeing all of the variables that enter into a choice and thus be able to make a conclusion that there was really no “free will” what happened in any occasion just is the result of some prior state. My point is that we have evidence that 1) events are not constrained to follow uniquely fro some specific prior state because there does not even exist a prior state that has some sharp properties independent of the specification of the means to measure such properties. This is the Einstein-Bohr debate redux. Do we really need to retrace that road? Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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. wlEmoticon-smile[1].png
Re: Compatibilism
On 28 Nov 2010, at 23:49, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 3:33 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: With your definition of free will, it does not exist. I think we agree. Very good. So what we are really arguing about here is whether your definition or my definition is closer to what is generally meant when people use the term “free will”. I think your definition is not very close to what is generally meant, and so you should come up with a different term for it. I assume that you resist doing this because you are trying to convince the general populace that they don’t *NEED* what is generally meant by “free will” in order to continue with their lives pretty much as before. However, you (and the other compatibilists) don’t just come out and say “free will doesn’t exist, but you don’t need it anyway”. Instead you say: “I have found a way to make free will compatible with determinism!” And then you proceed with explicating your theory as to why they don’t need free will after all - hoping that they won’t notice the subtle switch from “free will is compatible with determinism” to “you don’t need free will”. Ultimately, you have found a way to make free will compatible with determinism: change the definition of free will. And maybe this is the best way to get the general populace on-board with a more reasonable view of things. But it’s still a rhetorical tactic, and not a valid argument. There would be no lengthy discussion on free will if we had a definition on which everyone agrees. See Jason and Russell's answer on this. Nor would you find many people in agreement amongst the general populace. That is not an argument. Yet many compatibilists reason along similar lines, but this is not an argument either. But we’re arguing over whose definition is closer to the general usage of “free will”. The general usage by the general populace. Free will has originally be (re)introduce by christians for justifying the notion of hell. No doubt the people can be a bit confused. I recall you that since 523 after JC (closure of Plato Academy) scientific theology is still a taboo subject. Few people agree that mechanism entails that physics is a branch of theology, and that matter is an emerging pattern. Few people understand that QM = Many worlds. At each epoch few people swallow the new ideas / theories. Science is not working like politics. it is not democratic. Usually the majority is wrong as science history illustrates well. Many people today find hard the idea that they are machine (except perhaps in the DM large sense for people with a bit of education). I’m not necessarily saying that there’s something wrong or inconsistent or impossible with your proposal. All I’m saying is that it’s not free will. The vast majority of the populace certainly does not equate free will with ignorance of causes. Again that is not an argument. It would even be doubtful that humans would be naturally correct on such hard technical question, especially with the mechanist assumption which justified *why* most truth are just unbelievable. “What do you mean by ‘free will’” is not a technically hard question. ? I just said it was a technical hard question. Except with your definition, in which case it follows from elementary logic that it does not exist. Also, “do you believe in ultimate responsibility” is not a technically hard question. It is an hard question, even one which cannot provably (with the definition I gave) be solved algorithmically, and so will be based on discussion between many people and eventually the judge intimate conviction. G* minus G is the precise logic of what is true but unbelievable. It shows that machine have genuine free-will. But humans already dislike the idea that their neighbors have free-will. They *love* the idea that their neighbors have free-will. Bertrand Russell: “Whatever may be thought about it as a matter of ultimate metaphysics, it is quite clear that nobody believes it in practice. Everyone has always believed that it is possible to train character; everyone has always known that alcohol or opium will have a certain effect on behaviour. The apostle of free will maintains that a man can by will power avoid getting drunk, but he does not maintain that when drunk a man can say British Constitution as clearly as if he were sober. And everybody who has ever had to do with children knows that a suitable diet does more to make them virtuous than the most eloquent preaching in the world. The one effect that the free- will doctrine has in practice is to prevent people from following out such common-sense knowledge to its rational conclusion. When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment
Re: Against Mechanism
On 29 Nov 2010, at 05:15, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Information is just a catch-all term for what is being represented. But, as you say, the same information can be represented in *many* different ways, and by many different bit-patterns. And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any information. You just need the right one-time pad to XOR with the bits, and viola! The magic is all in the interpretation. None of it is in the bits. And interpretation requires an interpreter. I agree with this completely. Information alone, such as bits on a hard disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them. Would you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a brain could be conscious? Isn't this mechanism? Or is your view more like the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought? Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought. Ah! The key point where we differ the most. Person is the key concept for those who grasp mechanism and its consequences. At least you don't eliminate consciousness, but you do eliminate persons. Brr... Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what purpose does the actual rock serve? It's superfluous. If the rock can just exist, then the experience of the rock can just exist too - entirely independent of the rock. Once you accept the existence of conscious experiences, what purpose does the brain serve? If you accept the idea of taxes, you have to accept some people send you paper recalling you to pay taxes. The purpose of the brain is to augment the probability that your consciousness can manifest itself relatively to mine and others. It's superfluous. If the brain can just exist, then the experiences supposedly caused by the brain can just exist also. If not, why not? But why? Note I disagree that a brain can just exist. I like to say the brain exists only in the head :) Like any material structure it is a construct of the dreaming numbers (etc. I can explain again if you don't remember the explanation, or reread sane04). SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the thing they represent. Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience, doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience. Just because you manipulate the bits in a way as to represent me seeing a pink elephant doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant. All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and then had the experience of thinking to yourself: hee hee hee, I just caused Rex to see a pink elephant... Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink elephant (Boy does he look surprised!), this interpretation all happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my conscious experience. Isn't this just idealism? To me, the main problem with idealism is it doesn't explain why the thoughts we are about to experience are predictable under a framework of physical laws. But then you have to explain the existence, consistency, and predictability of this framework of physical laws. You still have the exact same questions, but now your asking them of this framework instead of about your conscious experiences. You just pushed the questions back a level by introducing a layer of unexplained entities. Your explanation needs an explanation. Also, you’ve introduced a new question: How does unconscious matter governed by unconscious physical laws give rise to conscious experience? Some theory in physics explains a lot. QM explains the nature and behavior of water, photosynthesis, solid matter, black holes, star, etc. It does not explain consciousness, and unfortunately it explains it away if we take QM as primitive. But DM explains both QM-quanta (up to open problems in math, making DM testable) and consciousness-qualia (up to the belief in numbers, but at least with an explanation why the belief in number is necessarily mysterious from our machine perspectives). If you see a ball go up, you can be rather confident in your future experience of seeing it come back down. It seems there is an underlying system, more fundamental than consciousness, which drives where it can go. In one of your earlier e-mails you explained your belief as accidental idealism, can you elaborate on this accidental part? Basically I’m just combining accidentalism and idealism. snip Meillassoux’s
Re: Against Mechanism
On 11/28/2010 11:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com mailto:rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com mailto:rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Information is just a catch-all term for what is being represented. But, as you say, the same information can be represented in *many* different ways, and by many different bit-patterns. And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any information. You just need the right one-time pad to XOR with the bits, and viola! The magic is all in the interpretation. None of it is in the bits. And interpretation requires an interpreter. I agree with this completely. Information alone, such as bits on a hard disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them. Would you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a brain could be conscious? Isn't this mechanism? Or is your view more like the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought? Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought. Do you believe as you type these responses into your computer you are helping bring new thoughts into existence? If I understood the other threads you cited on accidentalism, it seems as though you do not believe anything is caused. Wouldn't that lead to the conclusion that responding to these threads is pointless? Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what purpose does the actual rock serve? It's superfluous. If the rock can just exist, then the experience of the rock can just exist too - entirely independent of the rock. Believing thought alone exists doesn't give any explanation for why I see a relatively ordered screen with text and icons I understand, compared to something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Tux_secure.jpg There are far more possible thoughts that consist of a visual field that looks random, do you find it surprising you happen to be a thought which is so compressible? Accepting that rocks exist allows the understanding that some of these rocks have the right conditions for live to develop on them, and evolve brains to use to understand the worlds they appear on. The thoughts of those life forms is not likely to look like random snow, since that would not be useful for their survival. If I start with thought as primitive, and try to explain that thought under accidental idealism I can go no further. While it explains the existence of thought (by definition) it seems like an intellectual dead end. I doesn't explain the existence of thought or anything else. It just asserts it and then asserts that no explanation is possible because an explanation would require another explanation. Rex is trying to play the tortoise to your Achilles. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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.
