Re: Manifesto Rex
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 1:09 AM, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: On 22 Jan 2015, at 3:58 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Which was also my problem with physicalism - in that why would a random (i.e., not specially chosen) set of physical laws and initial conditions lead to the development of beings who are then able to correctly (or even approximately) discover those physical laws and initial conditions. But the laws surely are not random. Laws cannot be random. Look, the universe is a setup job. Either we are simulated and the limitation to our minds is intentional or we are enjoying a ride of some sort where we are real and the ride is the simulation. I go for that interpretation - that's comp. Who set up this setup job? And why? So you gave two simulation scenarios: (1) The universe is a simulation, and we are a part of that simulation. (2) The universe is a simulation, but we are not part of that simulation. *In the first case* - if you are being simulated, then all of your thoughts and beliefs are part of the simulation. You can not think or believe anything except what is entailed by the rules of the simulation. If a simulated entity correctly deduces that they are inside a simulation - then their deductive process must necessarily be explainable purely in terms of the rules of simulation - because these rules determine the state changes that underlie the entity’s thought processes. So in this case - it really is a setup job. Frame by frame, the movie plays out. The main character in the movie says, “I’m a character in a movie.” Just as the script requires. But the simulation could make you think or believe anything - anything at all. Do you think there is any limit to the possible craziness of simulated thoughts and beliefs? Of all the possible simulated thoughts and beliefs, how likely is it that a simulation would cause you to have the true belief that you are in fact in a simulation? *In the second case *- it seems like there would be a detectable “seam” in reality. Our behavior and abilities would not be explainable in terms of the observed universe - because we are not part of the simulation. Our behaviors and abilities would be “supernatural” - coming from outside the simulation’s “nature”. Here, the simulated part of reality can’t force thoughts and beliefs on you. Your ability to reason comes from outside the simulation. So in this scenario, my questions would be: which of our behavior and abilities do you think can’t be explained in terms of GR+QFT+IC? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Manifesto Rex
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 22 Jan 2015, at 05:58, Rex Allen wrote: I think my main problem with platonism is that I don't see why a mathematical universe would generate beings who then develop true beliefs about the mathematical nature of the universe. But Gödel + Church + Kleene + Post + Turing + Matiyazevich... discovery *is* the discovery that just the arithmetical reality if full of entities, machines, and non-machines, which struggle to understand what happens, and develop true and false beliefs around the subject. But does arithmetical reality exist outside of the human mind? I would tend to say - no. The human mind entertains concepts. This is one of them. This is proved. What is not proved is that they are conscious, but they need to be if you assume that there is no magic (actual infinities, non-local 3p influences, 3p indeterminacies) playing in the brain. So there is no way that that GR+QFT+IC can (in principle) mechanistically explain observed human behavior and mathematical ability? I am not referring to the first person subjective experience. Just the third person observed behavior. Which was also my problem with physicalism - in that why would a random (i.e., not specially chosen) set of physical laws and initial conditions lead to the development of beings who are then able to correctly (or even approximately) discover those physical laws and initial conditions. If we say that GR+QFT+IC+Evo is true - this is a problem, since evolution seems to only care about survival and reproduction - not truth. So how do evolved beings like us arrive at a true theory like that? But a scientist will never say that anything is true. He will just say what he believes in, knowing he might be wrong. We can only hope getting close to the truth, but even in arithmetic, lies can be consistent, and truth can depart from wishes, etc. However - if we only say that GR+QFT+IC+Evo is *useful* (and not true) - this is more consistent - since it also predicts that evolved beings will develop useful (i.e., survival-enabling) theories. usefulness would reduce science to instrumentalism, and then the question which will be forbid will be instrument for what? Torture? Correct. I like instrumentalism. Instrument for what? For whatever we want. As a tool for accomplishing our goals. Whatever they may be. But you are right, truth is not always useful, but lies makes things harder, and should be avoided in most situations, I think. I think I understand why you think consciousness precedes logic and arithmetic. I think that this is coherent with the first person view of the universal person, as consciousness is atemporal at that level, and is the origin of all possible consciousness content. But that is still an inside view. That general consciousness is the atemporal consciousness of the löbian machine, and perhaps even just the universal one. It is something approximated by t? t It is an unconscious Am I consistent? in consistent situation. It is also a semantical fixed point. It provides the meaning of meaning somehow, and let the senses filtered it into consistent scenarios. I tend to think that, like information, meaning is a difference that makes a difference. Which is to say, meaning is a felt difference that makes a felt difference. Which is to say, meaning is a difference in conscious experience that feels like it makes a difference to conscious experience. Which is to say, that our consciousness is just a web of felt differences that feel like they have some significance. As to what accounts to all of these differences - a useful way of looking at it is is that they are a product of evolution's focus on survival and reproduction. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Manifesto Rex
On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 10:53 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 1/20/2015 5:54 PM, Rex Allen wrote: Hi Telmo, Is there a better starting point than consciousness? My main thought was to suggest that the theory of evolution, taken to it's logical conclusion, supports a Kantian division of reality into phenomenal and noumenal realms. We are entities whose consciousnesses are shaped only with an eye towards what promotes survival and reproduction. Consciousness isn't the least concerned with truth - only with usefulness. Maybe this explains many of the conundrums that are pondered in this group. If you completely discard the concept of truth and replace it entirely with evolutionary usefulness - does that change anything? That's essentially the thesis of William S. Cooper's book The Origin of Reason - that our language, logic and mathematics were driven by evolution. And he suggests how it may go further. Whether you agree with him or not, it's a thought provoking book (and not a long one). I remember you mentioning this book a few years ago. I read the first chapter then, and it was in the back of mind when I wrote the manifesto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Manifesto Rex
I think my main problem with platonism is that I don't see why a mathematical universe would generate beings who then develop true beliefs about the mathematical nature of the universe. Which was also my problem with physicalism - in that why would a random (i.e., not specially chosen) set of physical laws and initial conditions lead to the development of beings who are then able to correctly (or even approximately) discover those physical laws and initial conditions. If we say that GR+QFT+IC+Evo is true - this is a problem, since evolution seems to only care about survival and reproduction - not truth. So how do evolved beings like us arrive at a true theory like that? However - if we only say that GR+QFT+IC+Evo is *useful* (and not true) - this is more consistent - since it also predicts that evolved beings will develop useful (i.e., survival-enabling) theories. Rex On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 7:52 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I used to think that way. If you examine previous posts, you will see my posts reasoning along these natural-selection lines (evolution is a very very bad name for natural selection). But now I think that this is incomplete. More or less your point of view is similar to the Konrad Lorentz when he said that natural selection is what introduces the Kantian a prioris in the mind since evolution makes the mind. Kant is famous for positing synthetic a priory truths that are self evident and toward which we can not create any simpler explanation. You are following the Kantian lines, that are part of the folk metaphysics of today: There are an external reality that is inaccessible to us, and that external reality is the True Reality. Kant called phenomena what we observe and the external inaccessible reality is what Kant call noumena. Only by means of experimentation on phenomena we can known something about the true external reality . The results are scientific models and theories. Internally there are only subjective things : feelings, values etc. Only what is objectivated by science are facts. the subjective gain objective status by means of science or direct shared observation. Since internal states are not observable, this positivistic metaphisics despise all of this, including metaphysincs. So it is self reinforcing and self contradictory at the same time. But I think that this is not that way. the noumenal external reality does not exist. the reality is in the mind. The external reality is purely mathematical an evolution creates the conscious experiences, the values, feelings and perceptions (including tacticle and visual) necessary to maintain the body in this mathematical four dimensional reality along the time dimension. Then there are no two realities but a single meaningful one, that is mental. and the models are the true external reality or an approximation to it, that is mathematical. we share almost identical internal realities because we share the same mind functional architecture. But there is more. QM and GR are not the only mathematical structures out there. Both need other mathematical structures to work and the space time generate other structures along the time dimension,seen locally as evolution: it generates structures that are in the physiology of living and non living beings but also in the mind of inteligent beings. It could be said that a perfect mind is also a mathematical structure toward which our mind is evolving. natural selection does not produce arbitrary forms, but optimize designs close to an optimum of efficiency and simplicity for a task, many times in ways that apparently look weird but other times are very clear. there are mathematical relations in living beings. In terms of behaviours, there are also mathematical relations in game theory that may be used in the future to relate love, goodness, evil and so on to mathematical entities, and degrees of good and evil in terms of variations of entropy. Being will be also something objectivable mathematically in the future. I think that a notion of mind or soul, can be also a ideal mathematical structure towards which our evolved minds try to imitate in his evolved imperfection, in the same way that by convergent evolution the fin of a dolphin and a shark tend to the same ideal dorsal fin. And this Mind really encloses not phisically, but mathematically, the universe and we are part of it and this Mind is the ultimate reality. It is not an evolved mind but a mathematical one in the platonic sense but also in the same way that we are not maths, but math is our model, He is not only that. 2015-01-20 3:33 GMT+01:00 Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com: Consciousness precedes axioms. Consciousness precedes logic. Axioms and logic exist within conscious experience - not vice versa. Consciousness comes before everything else. It is self-evident that there are conscious experiences. However, what consciousness
Re: Manifesto Rex
That is not what I was thinking, but it makes a certain amount of sense. Rex On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:43 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Consciousness precedes axioms. Consciousness precedes logic. That would be consistent with my idea that consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard and is the reason Evolution developed animals that were conscious of environmental stimuli and could use induction as far back as the Cambrian Explosion, but took another 500 million years for Evolution to develop animals that could deduce answers to problems by using logic. John K Clrk -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Manifesto Rex
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 6:48 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 2:54 AM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Telmo, Is there a better starting point than consciousness? No. My main thought was to suggest that the theory of evolution, taken to it's logical conclusion, supports a Kantian division of reality into phenomenal and noumenal realms. Yes, I think I got your point. You could say that the Plato's cave becomes a metaphor for being stuck inside survival machinery, and not necessarily truth-seeking machinery, no? Basically correct, yes. Though it might be better to say that we *are* survival machinery, instead of just being stuck inside of survival machinery. In that we can't act against our evolved nature. We are entities whose consciousnesses are shaped only with an eye towards what promotes survival and reproduction. Consciousness isn't the least concerned with truth - only with usefulness. But here I feel you contradict your initial point of starting from consciousness, because you seem to implicitly assume that consciousness emerges from matter. I would have no problem if you replaced consciousness with brain in the above sentences. I am kind of thinking that our conceptions of both matter *and* consciousness are artifacts of our evolutionary history. Neither is true. Or, if either conception does happen correspond to the way things are, then it is just due to luck circumstances - in that blind evolution forced us to that view. Rex Maybe this explains many of the conundrums that are pondered in this group. If you completely discard the concept of truth and replace it entirely with evolutionary usefulness - does that change anything? I think it might. For example, suppose we all share the same consciousness. It is evolutionary useful to maintain the illusion that this is not the case (thus my previous rant). Telmo. Rex On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 7:43 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Hi Rex, Interesting read. I will just start with something I've been thinking about, along these lines (I believe). It is interesting that there are a number of models of reality that are prima facie as plausible as any other but are more consistently rejected as lunacy, woo, new-age-mambo-jambo, etc. These models tend to have something in common: they suggest that we are not what we appear to be, that we are not mortal or immortal because time itself is a dream. That there is only one consciousness and we are all fundamentally the same entity, from the amoeba on. Quantum immortality. This sort of thing. They start with consciousness as the brute fact, as you posit. I have no intellectual reason to reject such ideas, but I definitely feel a resistance to them. So it also occurred to me that believing in such things appears maladaptive. Intuitively, such beliefs may lead you to be less preoccupied with survival and reproduction. So it's not so surprising that we evolved to reject such ideas but this leads to a terrible doubt: can we trust ourselves to do science? Another distasteful speculation: maybe there's *survival instinct* behind nerds and geeks being bullied. A more optimistic take: maybe real science is a possibility for the future, if we transcend Darwinism. Cheers Telmo. On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 3:33 AM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Consciousness precedes axioms. Consciousness precedes logic. Axioms and logic exist within conscious experience - not vice versa. Consciousness comes before everything else. It is self-evident that there are conscious experiences. However, what consciousness *is* - it’s ultimate nature - is not self-evident. Further, what any particular conscious experience “means” is also not self-evident. For example: The experience of color is directly known and incontrovertible. But what the experience of color *means* is not directly known - any proposed explanation is inferential and controvertible. We do not have direct access to meaning. We only have direct access to bare uninterpreted conscious experience. So - any attempted explanation of consciousness from the outside (i.e., objectively) must be constructed from inside consciousness, by conscious processes, on a foundation of conscious experience. Not a promising situation - because any explanation must be based entirely on conscious experiences which have no intrinsic meaning, and arrived at via conscious processes which are equally lacking in intrinsic meaning. It “seems” like we could just stop here and accept that things are what they are. And what else do we have other than the way things “seem”? I experience what I experience - nothing further can be known. HOWEVER - while we could just stop there - most of us don’t. For most of us, it seems that non-accepting, questioning, doubting, believing, disbelieving
Re: Manifesto Rex
Hi Telmo, Is there a better starting point than consciousness? My main thought was to suggest that the theory of evolution, taken to it's logical conclusion, supports a Kantian division of reality into phenomenal and noumenal realms. We are entities whose consciousnesses are shaped only with an eye towards what promotes survival and reproduction. Consciousness isn't the least concerned with truth - only with usefulness. Maybe this explains many of the conundrums that are pondered in this group. If you completely discard the concept of truth and replace it entirely with evolutionary usefulness - does that change anything? Rex On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 7:43 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Hi Rex, Interesting read. I will just start with something I've been thinking about, along these lines (I believe). It is interesting that there are a number of models of reality that are prima facie as plausible as any other but are more consistently rejected as lunacy, woo, new-age-mambo-jambo, etc. These models tend to have something in common: they suggest that we are not what we appear to be, that we are not mortal or immortal because time itself is a dream. That there is only one consciousness and we are all fundamentally the same entity, from the amoeba on. Quantum immortality. This sort of thing. They start with consciousness as the brute fact, as you posit. I have no intellectual reason to reject such ideas, but I definitely feel a resistance to them. So it also occurred to me that believing in such things appears maladaptive. Intuitively, such beliefs may lead you to be less preoccupied with survival and reproduction. So it's not so surprising that we evolved to reject such ideas but this leads to a terrible doubt: can we trust ourselves to do science? Another distasteful speculation: maybe there's *survival instinct* behind nerds and geeks being bullied. A more optimistic take: maybe real science is a possibility for the future, if we transcend Darwinism. Cheers Telmo. On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 3:33 AM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Consciousness precedes axioms. Consciousness precedes logic. Axioms and logic exist within conscious experience - not vice versa. Consciousness comes before everything else. It is self-evident that there are conscious experiences. However, what consciousness *is* - it’s ultimate nature - is not self-evident. Further, what any particular conscious experience “means” is also not self-evident. For example: The experience of color is directly known and incontrovertible. But what the experience of color *means* is not directly known - any proposed explanation is inferential and controvertible. We do not have direct access to meaning. We only have direct access to bare uninterpreted conscious experience. So - any attempted explanation of consciousness from the outside (i.e., objectively) must be constructed from inside consciousness, by conscious processes, on a foundation of conscious experience. Not a promising situation - because any explanation must be based entirely on conscious experiences which have no intrinsic meaning, and arrived at via conscious processes which are equally lacking in intrinsic meaning. It “seems” like we could just stop here and accept that things are what they are. And what else do we have other than the way things “seem”? I experience what I experience - nothing further can be known. HOWEVER - while we could just stop there - most of us don’t. For most of us, it seems that non-accepting, questioning, doubting, believing, disbelieving, desiring, grasping, wanting, unsatisfied conscious experiences just keep piling up. Why is this? Well - it seems like there is either an explanation for this - or it just a brute fact that has no explanation. If there is no explanation, then we should just accept our non-acceptance, our non-stoppingness, and let it go. Or not. Doesn’t matter. Alternatively, if there is an explanation - then there are two options: 1. The explanation is not accessible to us because our conscious experiences do not “point” towards the truth of the way things are. 2. The explanation is accessible to us, because our conscious experiences *do* point towards the truth of the way things are. Again, if we believe that option 1 is correct, we can just stop. Or not. It doesn’t matter. So - let’s *provisionally* assume that option 2 is correct. I say “provisionally” instead of “axiomatically” because we will revisit this assumption. Once we’ve gone as far as we can in working out the implications of it being true - we will return to this assumption and see if it still makes sense in light of where we ended up. At this point I am willing to grant that modern science provides the best methodology for translating (extrapolating?) from our truth-pointing conscious experiences to models
Manifesto Rex
Consciousness precedes axioms. Consciousness precedes logic. Axioms and logic exist within conscious experience - not vice versa. Consciousness comes before everything else. It is self-evident that there are conscious experiences. However, what consciousness *is* - it’s ultimate nature - is not self-evident. Further, what any particular conscious experience “means” is also not self-evident. For example: The experience of color is directly known and incontrovertible. But what the experience of color *means* is not directly known - any proposed explanation is inferential and controvertible. We do not have direct access to meaning. We only have direct access to bare uninterpreted conscious experience. So - any attempted explanation of consciousness from the outside (i.e., objectively) must be constructed from inside consciousness, by conscious processes, on a foundation of conscious experience. Not a promising situation - because any explanation must be based entirely on conscious experiences which have no intrinsic meaning, and arrived at via conscious processes which are equally lacking in intrinsic meaning. It “seems” like we could just stop here and accept that things are what they are. And what else do we have other than the way things “seem”? I experience what I experience - nothing further can be known. HOWEVER - while we could just stop there - most of us don’t. For most of us, it seems that non-accepting, questioning, doubting, believing, disbelieving, desiring, grasping, wanting, unsatisfied conscious experiences just keep piling up. Why is this? Well - it seems like there is either an explanation for this - or it just a brute fact that has no explanation. If there is no explanation, then we should just accept our non-acceptance, our non-stoppingness, and let it go. Or not. Doesn’t matter. Alternatively, if there is an explanation - then there are two options: 1. The explanation is not accessible to us because our conscious experiences do not “point” towards the truth of the way things are. 2. The explanation is accessible to us, because our conscious experiences *do* point towards the truth of the way things are. Again, if we believe that option 1 is correct, we can just stop. Or not. It doesn’t matter. So - let’s *provisionally* assume that option 2 is correct. I say “provisionally” instead of “axiomatically” because we will revisit this assumption. Once we’ve gone as far as we can in working out the implications of it being true - we will return to this assumption and see if it still makes sense in light of where we ended up. At this point I am willing to grant that modern science provides the best methodology for translating (extrapolating?) from our truth-pointing conscious experiences to models that represent the accessible parts of how things “really” are. To the extent that anything can be said about how things really are “outside of” conscious experience - science says it. But we never have direct access to the truth - all we have are our models of the truth, which (hopefully) improve over time as we distill out the valid parts of our truth-pointing conscious experiences. Okay - now, having said all of that - what models has modern science developed? Apparently there are two fundamental theories: General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory. From Wikipedia: GR is a theoretical framework that only focuses on the force of gravity for understanding the universe in regions of both large-scale and high-mass: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc. On the other hand, QFT is a theoretical framework that only focuses on three non-gravitational forces for understanding the universe in regions of both small scale and low mass: sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, etc. QFT successfully implemented the Standard Model and unified the interactions between the three non-gravitational forces: weak, strong, and electromagnetic force. Through years of research, physicists have experimentally confirmed with tremendous accuracy virtually every prediction made by these two theories when in their appropriate domains of applicability. In accordance with their findings, scientists also learned that GR and QFT, as they are currently formulated, are mutually incompatible - they cannot both be right. Since the usual domains of applicability of GR and QFT are so different, most situations require that only one of the two theories be used. As it turns out, this incompatibility between GR and QFT is only an apparent issue in regions of extremely small-scale and high-mass, such as those that exist within a black hole or during the beginning stages of the universe (i.e., the moment immediately following the Big Bang). Now - in addition to those two fundamental theories, we have other higher level theories, which are in principle reducible to GR+QFT. Chief among these is the Theory of Evolution. Wikipedia again: Evolution – change in heritable traits
And yet...
This world of dew is only a world of dew - and yet, and yet... -- Kobayashi Issa, after the death of his daughter. This world of quantum states is only a world of quantum states - and yet, and yet... -- Rex Allen, after a very cold shower. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Prime Numbers
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 11:50 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 10:19 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Rex, Do you have a non-platonist explanation for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set and the infinite complexity therein? I find fictionalism to be the most plausible view of mathematics, with all that implies for the Mandelbrot set. I'm curious about what a plausible fictionalist account of the Mandelbrot set could be. Is fictionalism the same as constructivism, or the idea that knowledge doesn't exist outside of a mind? I lean towards a strong form of fictionalism - which says that there are few important differences between mathematics and literary fiction. So - I could give a detailed answer - but I think I'd rather give a sketchy answer at this point. I would say that mathematics is just very tightly plotted fiction where so many details of the story are known up front that the plot can only progress in very specific ways if it is to remain consistent and believable to the reader. Mathematics is a kind of world building. In the imaginative sense. But ;et me turn the question around on you, if I can: Do you have an explanation for how we discover mathematical objects and otherwise interact with the Platonic realm? How is it that we are able to reliably know things about Platonia? I think just doing logic and math - starting from axioms and proving things from them - is interacting with the Platonic realm. But how is it that we humans do that? This is my main question. What exactly are we doing when we start from axioms and prove things from them? Where does this ability come from? What does it consist of? I would have thought that quarks and electrons from which we appear to be constituted would be indifferent to truth. Which would fit with the fact that I seem to make a lot of mistakes. But you think otherwise? I didn't understand the above... what do quarks and electrons have to do with arithmetical platonism? Are we not composed from quarks and electrons? If so - then how do mere collections of quarks and electrons connect with platonic truths? By chance? Are we just fortunate that the initial conditions and causal laws of the universe are such that our quarks and electrons take forms that mirror Platonic Truths? How can you make sense of that in terms of the constructivist point of view that you are (I think) compelled to take if you argue against arithmetical platonism? It seems obvious that all possible intelligences would discover the same forms of the Mandelbrot so long as they iterated on z' = z^2 + c, but maybe I am missing the point of your argument. I will agree with you that all intelligences that start from the same premises as you, and follow the same rules as inference as you, will also draw the same conclusions about the Mandelbrot set as you do. However - I do not agree with you that this amenable group exhausts the set of all *possible* intelligences. I only meant that all possible intelligences that start from a mathematics that includes addition, multiplication, and complex numbers will find that if they iterate the function z' = z^2 + c, they will find that some orbits become periodic or settle on a point, and some escape to infinity. If they draw a graph of which orbits don't escape, they will draw the Mandelbrot Set. All possible intelligences that undertake that procedure will draw the same shape... and this seems like discovery, not creation. It seems like a tautology to me. If you do what I do and believe what I believe then you will be a lot like me...? Is there anything to mathematics other than belief? What are beliefs? Why do we have the beliefs that we have? How do we form beliefs - what lies behind belief? Can *our* mathematical abilities be reduced to something that is indifferent to mathematical truth? Could there be intelligences who start from vastly difference premises, and use vastly different rules of inference, and draw vastly different conclusions? Of course, but then what they are doing doesn't relate to the Mandelbrot Set. However - they might *believe* their creations to be just as significant and universal as you consider the Mandelbrot Set to be - mightened they? What would make them wrong in their belief but you right in yours? What are the limits of belief, do you think? Is there any belief that is so preposterous that even the maddest of the mad could not believe such a thing? I don't think so... based on my understanding of how mad maddest of the mad can get. And if there is no such belief - then is it conceivable that quarks and electrons could configure themselves in such a way as to *cause* a being who holds such beliefs to come into existence
Re: Prime Numbers
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 12:27 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 18, 2012, at 9:19 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Rex, Do you have a non-platonist explanation for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set and the infinite complexity therein? I find fictionalism to be the most plausible view of mathematics, with all that implies for the Mandelbrot set. But ;et me turn the question around on you, if I can: Do you have an explanation for how we discover mathematical objects and otherwise interact with the Platonic realm? We study and create theories about objects in the mathematical realm just as we study and create theories about objects in the physical realm. So in the physical realm, we start from our senses - what we see, hear, feel, etc. From this, we infer the existence of electrons and wavefunctions and strings and whatnot. Or some of us do. Others take a more instrumental view of scientific theories. So you're saying that thought is another kind of sense? And that what occurs to us in thought can also be used as a basis to infer the existence of objects which help explain those thoughts? But we believe that electrons interact causally with us because we are made from similar stuff - and by doing so make themselves known to us...right? How do Platonic objects interact causally with us? Via a Platonic Field? PFT - Platonic Field Theory? It's not much different from how we develop theories about other things we cannot interact with: the early universe, the cores of stars, the insides of black holes, etc. We test these theories by following their implications and seeing if they lead to contridictions with other, more established, facts. Just as with physical theories, we ocasionally find that we need to throw out the old set of theories (or axioms) for a new set which has greater explanatory power. So you think our current mathematical theories are not true in any metaphysical sense - but rather are approximations of what exists in Platonia? Is there an equivalent of the idea of domains of validity that holds in some circles in physics? I'm not sure any of this counts as being evidence in favor of Platonism... How is it that we are able to reliably know things about Platonia? The very idea of knowing implies a differentiation between true and false. Nearly any intelligent civilization that notices a partition between true and false will eventyally get here. True in what sense? A coherentist conception of truth? A correspondence conception of truth? How do we know truth? Do we have an innate truth sense? Does the ability to know truth require free will? For instance: If we say a statement is true because it is true, that is different than saying it is true because our neurons fired in a way that determined our response. If all our decisions were predetermined from the moment of the big bang then rational discussion is meaningless. Whether or not anyone agrees with you has nothing to do with the truth of your claim. Their beliefs were hardwired from the beginning of time. It follows then that your own beliefs are not based on their truth value. You believe what you believe because your neurons have determined that you will believe in this rather than that. SO - what is this truth stuff, really? I would have thought that quarks and electrons from which we appear to be constituted would be indifferent to truth. The unreasonable effectiveness of math in the physical sciences is yet further support if Platonism. If this, and seemingly infinite physical universes exist, and they are mathematical structures, why can't others exist? Which would fit with the fact that I seem to make a lot of mistakes. But you think otherwise? We are imperfect beings. What is the source of imperfection? Where does it come from? What explains it? Objectively, intrinsically, absolutely imperfect? Have you heard the term Works as coded, with respect to software development? So I can write a program that has a bug in it - and the computer will run it perfectly. The computer will do exactly what I told it to do. The program works as coded. When running my program, the computer is perfectly imperfect. I am the source of its imperfection. However, in a functionalist theory of mind - I am actually just executing my own program right? Given the initial conditions of the universe and the causal laws that govern it - I could not do other than I did when I wrote that buggy code. I also work as coded. I also am perfectly imperfect. And since in this view I am not the source of my own imperfection - the universe's initial conditions and causal laws must be that source. But what explains that imperfection? But - maybe there really is no such thing as imperfection? It's all just made up...like mathematical
Re: Prime Numbers
Just to avoid confusion, this sentence: *I would say that mathematics is just very tightly plotted fiction where so many details of the story are known up front that the plot can only progress in very specific ways if it is to remain consistent and believable to the reader.* Should probably be: *I would say that mathematics is just very tightly plotted fiction where so many details of the back-story are known up front that the plot can only progress in very specific ways if it is to remain consistent and believable to the reader. * On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 8:40 AM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 11:50 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 10:19 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Rex, Do you have a non-platonist explanation for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set and the infinite complexity therein? I find fictionalism to be the most plausible view of mathematics, with all that implies for the Mandelbrot set. I'm curious about what a plausible fictionalist account of the Mandelbrot set could be. Is fictionalism the same as constructivism, or the idea that knowledge doesn't exist outside of a mind? I lean towards a strong form of fictionalism - which says that there are few important differences between mathematics and literary fiction. So - I could give a detailed answer - but I think I'd rather give a sketchy answer at this point. I would say that mathematics is just very tightly plotted fiction where so many details of the story are known up front that the plot can only progress in very specific ways if it is to remain consistent and believable to the reader. Mathematics is a kind of world building. In the imaginative sense. But ;et me turn the question around on you, if I can: Do you have an explanation for how we discover mathematical objects and otherwise interact with the Platonic realm? How is it that we are able to reliably know things about Platonia? I think just doing logic and math - starting from axioms and proving things from them - is interacting with the Platonic realm. But how is it that we humans do that? This is my main question. What exactly are we doing when we start from axioms and prove things from them? Where does this ability come from? What does it consist of? I would have thought that quarks and electrons from which we appear to be constituted would be indifferent to truth. Which would fit with the fact that I seem to make a lot of mistakes. But you think otherwise? I didn't understand the above... what do quarks and electrons have to do with arithmetical platonism? Are we not composed from quarks and electrons? If so - then how do mere collections of quarks and electrons connect with platonic truths? By chance? Are we just fortunate that the initial conditions and causal laws of the universe are such that our quarks and electrons take forms that mirror Platonic Truths? How can you make sense of that in terms of the constructivist point of view that you are (I think) compelled to take if you argue against arithmetical platonism? It seems obvious that all possible intelligences would discover the same forms of the Mandelbrot so long as they iterated on z' = z^2 + c, but maybe I am missing the point of your argument. I will agree with you that all intelligences that start from the same premises as you, and follow the same rules as inference as you, will also draw the same conclusions about the Mandelbrot set as you do. However - I do not agree with you that this amenable group exhausts the set of all *possible* intelligences. I only meant that all possible intelligences that start from a mathematics that includes addition, multiplication, and complex numbers will find that if they iterate the function z' = z^2 + c, they will find that some orbits become periodic or settle on a point, and some escape to infinity. If they draw a graph of which orbits don't escape, they will draw the Mandelbrot Set. All possible intelligences that undertake that procedure will draw the same shape... and this seems like discovery, not creation. It seems like a tautology to me. If you do what I do and believe what I believe then you will be a lot like me...? Is there anything to mathematics other than belief? What are beliefs? Why do we have the beliefs that we have? How do we form beliefs - what lies behind belief? Can *our* mathematical abilities be reduced to something that is indifferent to mathematical truth? Could there be intelligences who start from vastly difference premises, and use vastly different rules of inference, and draw vastly different conclusions? Of course, but then what they are doing doesn't relate to the Mandelbrot Set. However
Re: Prime Numbers
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.comwrote: Rex, Do you have a non-platonist explanation for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set and the infinite complexity therein? I find fictionalism to be the most plausible view of mathematics, with all that implies for the Mandelbrot set. But ;et me turn the question around on you, if I can: Do you have an explanation for how we discover mathematical objects and otherwise interact with the Platonic realm? How is it that we are able to reliably know things about Platonia? I would have thought that quarks and electrons from which we appear to be constituted would be indifferent to truth. Which would fit with the fact that I seem to make a lot of mistakes. But you think otherwise? How can you make sense of that in terms of the constructivist point of view that you are (I think) compelled to take if you argue against arithmetical platonism? It seems obvious that all possible intelligences would discover the same forms of the Mandelbrot so long as they iterated on z' = z^2 + c, but maybe I am missing the point of your argument. I will agree with you that all intelligences that start from the same premises as you, and follow the same rules as inference as you, will also draw the same conclusions about the Mandelbrot set as you do. However - I do not agree with you that this amenable group exhausts the set of all *possible* intelligences. Could there be intelligences who start from vastly difference premises, and use vastly different rules of inference, and draw vastly different conclusions? If not - what makes them impossible intelligences? =*= What are the limits of belief, do you think? Is there any belief that is so preposterous that even the maddest of the mad could not believe such a thing? And if there is no such belief - then is it conceivable that quarks and electrons could configure themselves in such a way as to *cause* a being who holds such beliefs to come into existence? And if this is beyond the capacity of quarks and electrons, does it seem possible that there might be some other form of matter with more exotic properties that might be up to the task? And if not - why not? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Prime Numbers
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 2:05 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: I think an easier way to intuit prime numbers that can't be represented as rectangles, only a 1-wide lines. While the concept of primes is straight forward, there is an unending set of not-so-obvious facts that we continue to discover about the Primes. Right. My proposal is that this entire infinite edifice is built on top of our innate sense of more, less, and equal. Which I am tentatively advancing as the basis of an argument against Platonism. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Prime Numbers
It seems to me that numbers are based on our ability to judge relative magnitudes: Which is bigger, which is closer, which is heavier, etc. Many animals have this ability - called numeracy. Humans differ only in the degree to which it is developed, and in our ability to build higher level abstractions on top of this fundamental skill. SO - prime numbers, I think, emerge from a peculiar characteristic of our ability to judge relative magnitudes, and the way this feeds into the abstractions we build on top of that ability. =*= Let’s say you take a board and divide it into 3 sections of equal length (say, by drawing a line on it at the section boundaries). Having done so – is there a way that you could have divided the board into fewer sections of equal length so that every endpoint of a long section can be matched to the end of a shorter section? In other words – take two boards of equal length. Divide one into 3 sections. Divide the other into two sections. The dividing point of the two-section-board will fall right into the middle of the middle section of the three-section-board. There is no way to divide the second board into fewer sections so that all of its dividing points are matched against a dividing point on the longer board. Because of this – three is a prime. (Notice that I do not say: “this is because 3 is prime” – instead I reverse the causal arrow). =*= Let’s take two boards and divide the first one into 10 equally sized sections. Now – there are two ways that we can divide the second board into a smaller number of equally sized sections so that the end-points of every section on this second board are matched to a sectional dividing point on the first board (though the opposite will not be true): We can divide the second board into either 2 sections (in which case the dividing point will align with the end of the 5th section on the first board), OR We can divide the second board into 5 sections – each of which is the same size as two sections on the first board. Because of this, the number 10 is not prime. =*= The entire field of Number Theory grows out of this peculiar characteristic of how we judge relative magnitudes. Do you think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Prime Numbers
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: HI Rex, Nice post! Could you riff a bit on what the number PHI tells us about this characteristic. How is it that it seems that our perceptions of the world find anything that is close to a PHI valued relationship to be beautiful? Thanks Stephen! Actually my initial example of numeracy isn't quite right, but it's not important to the rest of the argument. My main point is that you can get to the concept of prime numbers just using relative magnitudes that we have an innate sense of. As for the significance of PHI - well - I guess there's probably some plausible sounding evolutionary story that could be told about that. Though how satisfying or useful an explanation like that is just depends on what you're after and what your interests are. An explanation that might be useful in one context might be useless in some other context. Explanations are observer dependent. Probably. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 12:02 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 7/8/2011 8:08 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:01 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 7/8/2011 7:35 PM, Constantine Pseudonymous wrote: it makes so much sense. the doctrine of physicalism is in the least on the same plane as any idealistic metaphysics, especially some form of objective idealism. But in my eye… the fairer judgment is that some form of idealistic metaphysics is in fact situated a step above physicalism in probability and satisfactory of coherence. And has idealistic metaphysics ever made a successful prediction or informed a useful product? Metaphysics has nothing to do with prediction. Metaphysics is about interpretation and meaning. But the metaphysics of materialism has been the philosophical guide of science since the renaissance. Idealism has been the metaphysics of mystics and charlatans. Association fallacy, I think. In other words: What do we make of the fact that these predictions were successful (or not)? What does this mean with respect to our beliefs about what kinds of things exist? The things we take to exist are the elements of our successful models. We who? Not me. Argumentum ad populum? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 2:47 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 7/8/2011 11:35 PM, Rex Allen wrote: In other words: What do we make of the fact that these predictions were successful (or not)? What does this mean with respect to our beliefs about what kinds of things exist? The things we take to exist are the elements of our successful models. We who? Not me. Really? Do you not have a model of your home and don't you take the contents of that home as things that exist? Do you not suppose the beer in your refrigerator exists - even when the door is closed? If not you must have trouble getting through the day. Tu quoque fallacy. Sad. But seriously, it's not that hard. I do fine. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:01 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 7/8/2011 7:35 PM, Constantine Pseudonymous wrote: it makes so much sense. the doctrine of physicalism is in the least on the same plane as any idealistic metaphysics, especially some form of objective idealism. But in my eye… the fairer judgment is that some form of idealistic metaphysics is in fact situated a step above physicalism in probability and satisfactory of coherence. And has idealistic metaphysics ever made a successful prediction or informed a useful product? Metaphysics has nothing to do with prediction. Metaphysics is about interpretation and meaning. In other words: What do we make of the fact that these predictions were successful (or not)? What does this mean with respect to our beliefs about what kinds of things exist? PHYSICS is about prediction. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 4:03 AM, Constantine Pseudonymous bsor...@gmail.com wrote: Rex, your killing me, I was following you well as the most logical seeming person here, but then you started plummeting into thoughtless absurdities Ha! Well, we all have our off days... We can say that we have information about what we are aware of...but that is not the same as saying that awareness *is* information. Information is a difference that makes a difference. But it has to make a difference *to* someone. Awareness may very well be information, unless you want to make up a piece of information which masquerades as the entity behind information. You say information has to make a difference to someone... very well, but that doesn't get you out of the problem of the enigma-identity of this supposed someone that you think must be at the root of information. Well, I can see how my use of the term “someone” might lead to confusion. However, I didn’t intend to imply the existence of some “supra-experiential” entity. My intended point was that information isn’t something that exists separately from, or more fundamentally than conscious experience. Information is just that which consciousness finds meaningful. Information is observer-relative. Observers aren’t information- relative. Don't you see your observer is information! Well...no. I don’t see that. Though perhaps we’re using different definitions of “information”. Moving beyond the notion of a observer... I would even claim that observation isn't occurring, neither as a act or process or object or event there is merely the observed. There is merely experience. Representation depends on me. I don’t depend on representation. Wrong. You do depend on representation... but pseudo-representation, you depend on a pseudo-representation or a non-representational invented pseudo-representation. Psuedo-representation? Representation is something you do, not something that you are. Well then what are you! Consciousness. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 2:15 PM, Constantine Pseudonymous bsor...@gmail.com wrote: Rex, I think your onto something here let me add a little critique: 1. Explanation is subordinate to description. 2. Description is subordinate to observation. 3. Observation is subordinate to experience. 4. And now we want to close the circle by explaining experience. you distinguish between observation and experience? nonsense. I’m using “observation” as the term for particular instances or aspects of experience. So, no, I don’t actually distinguish between observation and experience in any significant way. However, our explanation of experience can only be justified by appeal to experience - plus reason. Before jumping to explanation of experience you might want to hang out at the problem of description of experience which is an element of experience itself, or in so far as it is possible, a tautology. Does any such description of experience exist? I can describe my experience to you in terms of fundamental concepts which I possess - but unless you have access to those same concepts, then my description won’t make any sense to you. FURTHERMORE you assume there is in existence any such explanation of experience or existence. show me one explanation of experience. even if it existed it would be a mere feature of experience. I don’t assume that there is any sort of ultimate explanation for experience. In fact, I assume that there is not. Do you believe in a objective world or totality? Do you believe in an objective experience of experience-description? Do you believe in a objective reality, universal and totalizing, that can represent itself as such? I believe that conscious experience exists, fundamentally and uncaused. And there’s just the general question of what “reason” means in a deterministic world, or a probabilistic world, or a purely contingent world. Or how about a world which is a vague approximation of all three and more. And more? What is this “more” to which you refer? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Constantine Pseudonymous bsor...@gmail.com wrote: Rex definitely makes the most sense in this group... w00t w00t! Take that, you other people in this group!!! Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: The Brain on Trial
On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 12:08 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/26/2011 7:23 PM, Rex Allen wrote: So what does compatibilism have to say about this? Nothing useful, it seems to me... http://www.theatlantic.com/**magazine/archive/2011/07/the-** brain-on-trial/8520/http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-brain-on-trial/8520/ Advances in brain science are calling into question the volition behind many criminal acts. A leading neuroscientist describes how the foundations of our criminal-justice system are beginning to crumble, and proposes a new way forward for law and order. ON THE STEAMY first day of August 1966, Charles Whitman took an elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower in Austin. The 25-year-old climbed the stairs to the observation deck, lugging with him a footlocker full of guns and ammunition. At the top, he killed a receptionist with the butt of his rifle. Two families of tourists came up the stairwell; he shot at them at point-blank range. Then he began to fire indiscriminately from the deck at people below. The first woman he shot was pregnant. As her boyfriend knelt to help her, Whitman shot him as well. He shot pedestrians in the street and an ambulance driver who came to rescue them... [...] WHILE OUR CURRENT style of punishment rests on a bedrock of personal volition and blame, our modern understanding of the brain suggests a different approach. Blameworthiness should be removed from the legal argot. It is a backward-looking concept that demands the impossible task of untangling the hopelessly complex web of genetics and environment that constructs the trajectory of a human life. Instead of debating culpability, we should focus on what to do, moving forward, with an accused lawbreaker. I suggest that the legal system has to become forward-looking, primarily because it can no longer hope to do otherwise. As science complicates the question of culpability, our legal and social policy will need to shift toward a different set of questions: How is a person likely to behave in the future? Are criminal actions likely to be repeated? Can this person be helped toward pro-social behavior? How can incentives be realistically structured to deter crime? Rather than being forward-looking, the above recommendation is myopic and reactionary. Reactionary? How so? If he were proposing that we -return- to public executions and floggings, *that* would be reactionary. His proposal is, if anything, radical. As for myopic...I'm not sure how that pejorative applies either. It's like you're just picking insults at random... His comment on deterrence: We have hope that this approach represents the correct model: it is grounded simultaneously in biology and in libertarian ethics, allowing a person to help himself by improving his long-term decision-making. Like any scientific attempt, it could fail for any number of unforeseen reasons. But at least we have reached a point where we can develop new ideas rather than assuming that repeated incarceration is the single practical solution for deterring crime. The point of punishing the criminal is not revenge or even retribution. It is based on two forward looking objectives: 1) Deter others by the exemplar punishment. 2) Prevent feuds by replacing private retribution with public. Why do you think executions and corporal punishment used to be public? Because they couldn't think of anything better. Given what they knew at the time, that was all they could come up with. Do you hold the reactionary position of wishing to return to these practices? The important change will be in the way we respond to the vast range of criminal acts. Biological explanation will not exculpate criminals; we will still remove from the streets lawbreakers who prove overaggressive, underempathetic, and poor at controlling their impulses. Consider, for example, that the majority of known serial killers were abused as children. Does this make them less blameworthy? Who cares? It’s the wrong question. The knowledge that they were abused encourages us to support social programs to prevent child abuse, but it does nothing to change the way we deal with the particular serial murderer standing in front of the bench. We still need to keep him off the streets, irrespective of his past misfortunes. The child abuse cannot serve as an excuse to let him go; the judge must keep society safe. -- And even if by chemical or other means we could be sure he would not re-offend the judge would still punish him because of (1) and (2) supra. Maybe, maybe not. The chemical treatment might itself be considered sufficient punishment. Alternatively, incentives might be offered to encourage at-risk people to proactively seek that treatment - if it's really so mild as to not be considered punishment. Note that the article points out that Whitman did talk to a doctor before his
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 24 Jun 2011, at 17:49, Rex Allen wrote: Awareness and self-awareness aren't related to the question of consciousness. They fall well within the realm of the easy problems. I have deduced this from some posts. You, and Dennett are begging the question. I don't follow you. To which question are you referring? Why should science be based only on observation? What would that mean? It means that the primary goal of science is to allow the prediction of future observations in as convenient and useful a way as possible. If science didn't do this, there would be no point in messing with it. The core requirement for a scientific theory is that it must be consistent with what we have observed in the past, what we currently observe in the present, and what we will observe in the future. Thus, science is based on observation. However - coming up with stories that are consistent with observation but which aren't useful for prediction isn't science, though it might count as entertainment or religion. Science, and already observation itself, are based on many layers of theories, some innate in our brain, some developed through symbolic reasoning, reflexion and imagination. The computationalist theory illustrates well that we *can* explain the third person description of the first person discourses. So we can make progress. That computational theory allows us to build third person models of first person discourses is neither here nor there with respect to it's metaphysical significance. To abandon the scientific study of consciousness is like to abandon the notion of God to the authorities. As I said: it is a form of shut up and calculate. Instrumentalism is about like abandoning the fundamental questions to the engineering science. Many engineers do understand that it will lead in less genuine engineering in the long run, so that eventually, even instrumentalists with long term goal can defend a non-instrumentalist philosophy here and now. That less engineering would result is an interesting supposition, but I doubt that it's true. This is identical to Christians saying that we need the idea of heaven and hell in order to keep people in line. We need to believe that our theories are approaching some metaphysically truth, otherwise people will stop trying to improve them! Possible, but unlikely. The practical benefits of more accurate and useful theories should be more than sufficient to keep people motivated. And then, if we assume like Dennett the comp hypothesis, we have just no choice than to recover the physical relations by the number relations (unless there is a flaw ...). Even an instrumentalist cannot ignore that. Comp, among other possible everything-like idea, leads to a real concrete and terribly complex mathematical measure problem. Which is? Consciousness is not like life. We can say that molecular biology has solved the conceptual problem of life, and this has evacuate vitalism. But comp, per se, does not solve the consciousness problem: it transforms it into a conceptual matter problem, which can be solved only by evacuating materialism, by reducing the origin of matter to a machine psychological self-perception problem. You're assuming that there is some explanation for consciousness which exists beyond consciousness. But this isn't warranted. Conscious experience is a fact. That I can extrapolate from past observations to predict future observations using calculational frameworks is a fact. But there are no further facts beyond this, and none are needed. What's real is the world of experience. Everything else is (sometimes useful) fiction. The reduction of the mind-body problem into the arithmetical bodies appearance problem *has* been done. The fact that minds and bodies can be represented arithmetically doesn't mean that they *are* arithmetic in nature. The fact that minds and bodies can be so represented just tells us about the representational power of arithmetic...which is to say, the representational power of the human mind, which is what arithmetic reduces to. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 4:33 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/26/2011 12:58 PM, Rex Allen wrote: Possible, but unlikely. The practical benefits of more accurate and useful theories should be more than sufficient to keep people motivated. The idea that our theories are approaching some metaphysical truth is essentially just the same as assuming there is some more comprehensive and coherent theory. Which is only important if it has practical consequences, like increased predictive power or reduced computational requirements. I note that Hawking and Mlodinow recently suggested that we might accept a kind of patch-work set of theories of the world, rather than insisting on a single coherent theory. Sounds reasonable to me. You're assuming that there is some explanation for consciousness which exists beyond consciousness. But this isn't warranted. Conscious experience is a fact. That I can extrapolate from past observations to predict future observations using calculational frameworks is a fact. But there are no further facts beyond this, and none are needed. What's real is the world of experience. Everything else is (sometimes useful) fiction. Maybe, but that's not a fact. Many times there are experiences that are illusions, dreams, hallucinations, misapprehensions. Of course you can say, Well I had an experience of seeing a leprechaun. But then becomes hard to give this any meaning. It's certainly hard to find any practical use for it. If we take experience as fundamental then it seems to imply that seeing a leprechaun is a real event even though leprechauns aren't. That's why we find it easier to work with a model of the world that we take to be provisionally real. I think we can ultimately dispense with even this notion of the provisionally real. It's not as essential as it initially seems. I wonder if in countries with more of a Theravadian Buddhist cultural heritage I would meet less resistance on this point? So far at least, trying to account for dream-leprechauns in the same way as we account for rocks and trees and water and lightbulbs and computers seems to make our theories less useful, not more - and so there's no point in expending much effort pursuing that angle, except for purposes of entertainment or religion. Dream-leprechauns seem harmless enough. Probably best to let them be and instead focus on the dream of building better ramjets! We can never be sure it's real (and in general it may incoherent patches), but on the other hand we can't be sure any particular part of it is not real. Right, but asserting that the theories are true of the world doesn't add anything to their usefulness, and so it's a pointless extra step that one is free to take or not take as the whim strikes - or in accordance with your personal psychological/religious/entertainment needs and desires. Logically, I think it's suspect to do so, because if the external world causes our experiences, then what causes the external world? What enforces the external world's order and consistency? And what enforces the enforcement of that? And what enforces the enforcement of the enforcement? And so on. Ultimately, in that view, what exists does so contingently. And so if our theories are true, they are only contingently (i.e., accidentally) true. Bruno's reification of logic is unappealing to me because it still suffers from what seems (to me) to be an unbridgeable explanatory gap between numbers as objectively existing things and the non-numeric feel of conscious experience. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
The Brain on Trial
So what does compatibilism have to say about this? Nothing useful, it seems to me... http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-brain-on-trial/8520/ Advances in brain science are calling into question the volition behind many criminal acts. A leading neuroscientist describes how the foundations of our criminal-justice system are beginning to crumble, and proposes a new way forward for law and order. ON THE STEAMY first day of August 1966, Charles Whitman took an elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower in Austin. The 25-year-old climbed the stairs to the observation deck, lugging with him a footlocker full of guns and ammunition. At the top, he killed a receptionist with the butt of his rifle. Two families of tourists came up the stairwell; he shot at them at point-blank range. Then he began to fire indiscriminately from the deck at people below. The first woman he shot was pregnant. As her boyfriend knelt to help her, Whitman shot him as well. He shot pedestrians in the street and an ambulance driver who came to rescue them... [...] WHILE OUR CURRENT style of punishment rests on a bedrock of personal volition and blame, our modern understanding of the brain suggests a different approach. Blameworthiness should be removed from the legal argot. It is a backward-looking concept that demands the impossible task of untangling the hopelessly complex web of genetics and environment that constructs the trajectory of a human life. Instead of debating culpability, we should focus on what to do, moving forward, with an accused lawbreaker. I suggest that the legal system has to become forward-looking, primarily because it can no longer hope to do otherwise. As science complicates the question of culpability, our legal and social policy will need to shift toward a different set of questions: How is a person likely to behave in the future? Are criminal actions likely to be repeated? Can this person be helped toward pro-social behavior? How can incentives be realistically structured to deter crime? The important change will be in the way we respond to the vast range of criminal acts. Biological explanation will not exculpate criminals; we will still remove from the streets lawbreakers who prove overaggressive, underempathetic, and poor at controlling their impulses. Consider, for example, that the majority of known serial killers were abused as children. Does this make them less blameworthy? Who cares? It’s the wrong question. The knowledge that they were abused encourages us to support social programs to prevent child abuse, but it does nothing to change the way we deal with the particular serial murderer standing in front of the bench. We still need to keep him off the streets, irrespective of his past misfortunes. The child abuse cannot serve as an excuse to let him go; the judge must keep society safe. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 8:24 PM, Colin Geoffrey Hales cgha...@unimelb.edu.au wrote: Can I recalibrate this a little so that you can scientifically handle consciousness? 1) science is based on observation. 2) scientific 'observation' is 100% implemented by the consciousness of scientists. 3) regularity (say Statements T) captured by (1) predicts the _contents_ of the consciousness of a scientific observer. 2a) Therefore the kind of science done by (1) can never account for the existence/nature of the observer (circular)/tautologous. 4) Scientific EVIDENCE is more than just the _contents_ of consciousness of scientists. 5) Scientific evidence of consciousness is the fact of an ability to do science. 6) The mere existence of consciousness (as witnessed in the outcomes T), therefore, justifies systems of regularity that serve to predict the existence and outward appearance of an observer. 7) The statements of regularity of (6) (say T') are NOT the same statements as (3). 8) statements T' are just as justified as T because they predict an observer that sees the world according to T. The problem we have is that we label T' as metaphysics before considering what science _itself_ delivers as evidence over and above the mere outcomes of scientific behaviour. So if there are predictions that can be made or useful concepts formulated in T' that aren't possible in T, then sure, why not. T' all the way. Though this still doesn't get you from instrumentalism to metaphysical realism. It's just trading up from one empirically adequate calculational framework to another which is, in some sense, better. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 8:49 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/26/2011 2:37 PM, Rex Allen wrote: We can never be sure it's real (and in general it may incoherent patches), but on the other hand we can't be sure any particular part of it is not real. Right, but asserting that the theories are true of the world doesn't add anything to their usefulness, But I think it does. To say the theories have some element of truth is just to say that any better theory must do just as well in predicting phenomena and must explain why the displaced theory worked as well as it did. So if some Super-Einstein came up with a complete predictive framework that had no concepts in common with QM + GR, but which was more accurate, easier to work with, more intuitive, and made important verified predictions that weren't made by QM + GR - the scientific community would *still* say No thanks...we're not interested unless you can *also* explain the success of QM+GR? That doesn't sound plausible to me. I think the scientific community would say: Ya, that does work a lot better, and makes sense. Let's use that. Being able to explain the success QM+GR might speed the adoption process, but not being able to explain QM+GR wouldn't stop it. Because nothing succeeds like success - and if it works better, it works better. But, given that the new theory must account for a super-set of the observations that QM+GR currently account for - maybe that fact alone guarantees that there's some way to connect the theories with some sort of bridging story. So it's an attitude that helps guide the development of better theories. Another Dennettian stance? The metaphysical stance. I don't have a problem with it, except that people tend to forget that it's just an attitude, taken for pragmatic reasons - which causes confusion amongst the masses. Even Bruno, who proposes a radically different theory of the world, recognizes that he cannot just discard the success of physics; he has to explain it. Bruno needs to have some plausible explanation of the success of physics in order to get people to help him develop his theory to the point that it can make testable predictions. He is, apparently (and understandably), not quite up to the task of doing it alone. We can't all be Super-Einsteins. In fact, maybe none of us can... Ultimately I think you're just describing an aspect of human psychology and social dynamics, which sometimes works out well and saves a lot of wasted effort, and other times probably doesn't work out quite as well and results in missed opportunities. But, regardless, if Bruno had in hand today a fully developed theory that made novel predictions which were subsequently verified and which further provided a practically useful framework for manipulating the world and making additional predictions...then Bruno would be golden, regardless of what his theory had to say about QM+GR. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 11:29 PM, Colin Geoffrey Hales cgha...@unimelb.edu.au wrote: There are empirical predictions made by T' that cannot be made by T and these are entirely confined to the implementation of an observer. What's an example of this? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Progress and Happiness
On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 5:18 PM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Jason Resch-2 wrote: I've posted this link before, and it is a long read, but I think it is a great piece which shows what technology ultimately can accomplish: http://frombob.to/you/aconvers.html I like the story. In my opinion it potrays advanced beings too much like human beings with more possibilities. But this is hard or impossible to avoid, as we can potray no concrete scenario that is totally unlike everything we know, anymore than worms can imagine human experience, obviously. I don't believe advanced beings will play around more or less aimlessly. They will have a very clear idea of what they want and how to achieve it. Why would you play roleplaying games that virtually set you back into the past for some time, if you can constantly creatively self-improve in a way that your very next experience will be mindblowingly different and better and more insightful than your current one? Another good story along these lines is Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum's True Names. http://craphound.com/?p=2021 Here's the first installment of a podcast reading of a new novella that I co-wrote with Hugo- and Nebula-nominee Benjamin Rosenbaum. The story's a big, 32,000-word piece called True Names (in homage to Vernor Vinge's famous story of the same name), and it involves the galactic wars between vast, post-Singularity intelligences that are competing to corner the universe's supply of computation before the heat-death of the universe. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: This is the Dream Time
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:03 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 22 Jun 2011, at 01:56, Rex Allen wrote: Related to the Progress and Happiness thread: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/this-is-the-dream-time.html But I am not sure there will be a point where everything worth knowing will be known. In the terrestrial realm (the left hypostases, the one without the *, like G) we will forever scratch the surface. And the right hypostases, like G*, are a sort of promise of an inexhaustible collection of bigger and bigger surprises, in the terrestrial realm and perhaps beyond). On the contrary, the more we will know, the more we will be aware of the ignorance. I guess the key phrase is worth knowing. Worth? I think that he is referring to a particular kind of knowledge...knowledge that gives you some advantage over your competitors or over your environment. And he doesn't say that we will know everything...just that truly new and important discoveries will be quite rare. But, again there's another ambiguous phrase: important discoveries. Important? To whom, in what sense? Again, I think that he is referring to a particular kind of discovery...discoveries that gives you some advantage over your competitors or over your environment. Ultimately he's asserting that humanity will never escape the competitive evolutionary framework. Our current golden age is just a temporary reprieve. Though, evolution takes on a different color in unchanging plenitudinous Platonia. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Progress and Happiness
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Pilar Morales pilarmorales...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Rex, thank you for generating this tread. Nice subject title. My comments below On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Even something that IS good for us will cause less happiness if its easily available, because there's no real harm in not being highly motivated to get it - since you'll get it even if you're relatively indifferent to it. Also, even good things can become detrimental if over-indulged in. So, over time entropy will eat away at the structure that underlies the desire for that thing. That is such a predominant masculine trait :) not to say that it is exclusively for males. Some people have a hard time valuing something that was easily obtained, for them, reciprocate love at first sight is probably out of the question. Our ancestors had to fight for desirable things, desirable lands, desirable women, desirable outcomes. Right! So I think there were two main points to my original post: 1) The hedonic treadmill operates at the level of the species as well as at the level of the individual, though for different reasons and by different mechanisms. 2) Any aspect of a species that doesn't contribute to increasing reproductive fitness (and isn't a spandrel), will eventually be mutated away. This includes happiness, pleasure, pain, what have you. And then, there's a further point: It seems unlikely that we'll ever escape this treadmill, since even if we've overcome all other challenges we'll still have each other to compete with. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 1:44 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/21/2011 8:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But comp denies that we can prove that a machine can think. Of course we can prove that some machine has this or that competence. But for intelligence/consciousness, this is not possible. (Unless we are not machine. Some non-machine can prove that some machine are intelligent, but this is purely academical until we find something which is both a person and a non-machine). But of course we can prove that a machine can think to the same degree we can prove other people think. That we cannot prove it from some self-evident set of axioms is completely unsurprising. This comports with my idea that with the development of AI the question of consciousness will come to be seen as a archaic, like What is life?. Actually, I think you may have a point. The question of what is life is really not a scientific question. Yet, nevertheless, I am alive. In the same way, the question of what is consciousness is not a scientific question either. And yet, I am conscious. Consciousness exists. Science is just not applicable to these questions, because these questions have nothing to do with the core purposes of science: prediction. Instrumentalism is the view that a scientific theory is a useful instrument in understanding the world. A concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality. So science is about formulating frameworks for understanding observations in a way that allows for accurate prediction. To ascribe metaphysical truth to any of these frameworks is to take a leap of faith *beyond* science. Taking the view of instrumentalism with a pinch of common sense, there is no reason to believe that every question that can be asked can be answered scientifically. Is there? Unless and until consciousness can be made useful for prediction, it will remain invisible and irrelevant to science. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Progress and Happiness
On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 11:35 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 6:08 PM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Rex Allen wrote: If evolution by natural selection were correct, then it seems to me that if the overall environment remained relatively stable for an extended period of time - then regardless of how it ended up, humans would be at about same level of happiness. I don't think it is generally true, though I think it is approximatly true if we assume humans are restricted to biological intelligence (which probably won't be the case in the future). Though, if our technological prowess were to plateau at a level advanced enough that we could maintain a stable environment for ourselves, but short of any type of Singularity...then what? I personally believe that development is an inevitable and universal part of the omniverse. Probably ever accelerating development (my guess is uncomputable fast development). I think there are plenty reasons to believe in development as an universal principle: Occam's Razor + evidence, pragmatic optimism, a consistent future for subjective immortality (which I assume)... Okay, let’s assume that we take complete control over every aspect of ourselves and our environment. And that we start spreading throughout the galaxy, leaping from solar system to solar system. Surely there will be some competition in this process, as the groups that “shape themselves” in the most efficient way “outcompete” those groups who do not. Surely this idea will occur to *someone* at *sometime* during the expansion process. Why wouldn’t it? More resources means you get to pursue *your* projects instead of someone else’s. It also means that you have more of a cushion against leans times. It also means that you can defend yourself better against someone else who gets the same idea. So groups that spread more quickly will gain access to more resources (assuming that the galaxy is empty of other intelligences), which they can then use to overwhelm groups that spread more slowly. But groups that spread *too* quickly will over extend and be undermined by groups that spread at a more optimal rate. Now we’re back in an “evolutionary” framework. Now we’re once again subject to nature, red in tooth and claw. But okay, let's grant this won't happen. In case technological progress might reach a plateau in a way that there are no big paradigm changes and no exponential progress or even constant progress anymore, it will still not absolutely halt. If you think it will, you could more plasubily believe that biological evolution will. There is no reason at all to assume technology will cease to change. I can imagine it going either way. Time will tell! Rex Allen wrote: Barring a Chinese-style birth control regime, eventually the more fertile sub-groups would seem likely proliferate and eventually population levels would rise until we were back in the same situation that most of our ancestors lived in...with just enough resources to sustain the existing population. Keep in mind wealthy societies tend to stop growing (even without governmental birth control), so what you say will likely not happen. There are subgroups even within wealthy societies that have very high birth rates. Over time, these subgroups will become the majority. Part of this is cultural - and so how long the high birthrates is a question of how the culture changes. But Mormons are about as wealthy as the average American, and have much larger families. The Amish are also doing quite well. And there are others. But there’s a biological aspect as well. If there’s a genetic component to the decision-making process of deciding how many children to have, then those gene-lines that favor larger families will eventually come to dominate the population, and eventually trigger another population explosion. And further “fertility-boosting” mutations could develop that push this even faster. Rex Allen wrote: You don't think that happiness and unhappiness play a significant role in the competition for social status and mates among humans? I would tend to think that our social relations (or lack thereof) are probably the largest contributor to most people's happiness *and* unhappiness. Yes, but I think in a world with a more benign environment social relations will be easier to acquire and keep stable (eg less deaths) and there will be less reason to compete. Absent unbounded resources, there are always reasons to compete. Winning works. Rex Allen wrote: Not everyone can be a winner. We can't *all* get the prettiest girl or handsomest guy. This is bound to cause unhappiness...which then (sometimes) motivates increased effort or a different approach on the next round. I don't see a reason why everyone couldn't be a winner. Evolution is just too dumb to find a good
Caenorhabditis elegans
Brain uploading for worms... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/science/21brain.html Caenorhabditis elegans, as the roundworm is properly known, is a tiny, transparent animal just a millimeter long. In nature, it feeds on the bacteria that thrive in rotting plants and animals. It is a favorite laboratory organism for several reasons, including the comparative simplicity of its brain, which has just 302 neurons and 8,000 synapses, or neuron-to-neuron connections. These connections are pretty much the same from one individual to another, meaning that in all worms the brain is wired up in essentially the same way. Such a system should be considerably easier to understand than the human brain, a structure with billions of neurons, 100,000 miles of biological wiring and 100 trillion synapses. The biologist Sydney Brenner chose the roundworm as an experimental animal in 1974 with this goal in mind. He figured that once someone provided him with the wiring diagram of how 302 neurons were connected, he could then compute the worm’s behavior. The task of reconstructing the worm’s wiring system fell onJohn G. White, now at the University of Wisconsin. After more than a decade’s labor, which required examining 20,000 electron microscope cross sections of the worm’s anatomy, Dr. White worked out exactly how the 302 neurons were interconnected. But the wiring diagram of even the worm’s brain proved too complex for Dr. Brenner’s computational approach to work. Dr. Bargmann was one of the first biologists to take Dr. White’s wiring diagram and see if it could be understood in other ways. [...] After studying the little animal for 24 years, she believes she is closer to understanding how its nervous system works. Why is the wiring diagram produced by Dr. White so hard to interpret? She pulls down from her shelves a dog-eared copy of the journal in which the wiring was first described. The diagram shows the electrical connections that each of the 302 neurons makes to others in the system. These are the same kind of connections as those made by human neurons. But worms have another kind of connection. Besides the synapses that mediate electrical signals, there are also so-called gap junctions that allow direct chemical communication between neurons. The wiring diagram for the gap junctions is quite different from that of the synapses. Not only does the worm’s connectome, as Dr. Bargmann calls it, have two separate wiring diagrams superimposed on each other, but there is a third system that keeps rewiring the wiring diagrams. This is based on neuropeptides, hormonelike chemicals that are released by neurons to affect other neurons. The neuropeptides probably help control the brain’s general status, or mood. A strong hint of how they work comes from the npr-1 gene, which makes a protein that responds to neuropeptides. When the npr-1 gene is active, its neuron becomes unavailable to its local circuit. That may be a reason why the worm’s behavior cannot be computed from the wiring diagram: the pattern of connections is changing all the time under the influence of the worm’s 250 neuropeptides. The connectome shows the electrical connections, and hence the quickest paths for information to move through the worm’s brain. “But if only a subset of neurons are available at any time, the connectome is ambiguous,” she says. The human brain, too, has neuropeptides that set mood and modify behavior. Neuropeptides are probably at work when the pain pathways are cut off in acute crises, allowing people to function despite serious wounds. The human brain, though vastly more complex than the worm’s, uses many of the same components, from neuropeptides to transmitters. So everything that can be learned about the worm’s nervous system is likely to help with the human system. Though the worm’s nervous system is routinely described as simple, that is true only in comparison with the human brain. The worm has 22,000 genes, almost as many as a person, and its brain is a highly complex piece of biological machinery. The work of Dr. Bargmann’s and other labs has deconstructed many of its operational mechanisms. What would be required to say that the worm’s nervous system was fully understood? “You would want to understand a behavior all the way through, and then how the behavior can change,” Dr. Bargmann says. “That goal is not unattainable,” she adds. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
This is the Dream Time
Related to the Progress and Happiness thread: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/this-is-the-dream-time.html In the distant future, our descendants will probably have spread out across space, and redesigned their minds and bodies to explode Cambrian-style into a vast space of possible creatures. If they are free enough to choose where to go and what to become, our distant descendants will fragment into diverse local economies and cultures. Given a similar freedom of fertility, most of our distant descendants will also live near a subsistence level. Per-capita wealth has only been rising lately because income has grown faster than population. But if income only doubled every century, in a million years that would be a factor of 10^3000, which seems impossible to achieve with only the 10^70 atoms of our galaxy available by then. Yes we have seen a remarkable demographic transition, wherein richer nations have fewer kids, but we already see contrarian subgroups like Hutterites, Hmongs, or Mormons that grow much faster. So unless strong central controls prevent it, over the long run such groups will easily grow faster than the economy, making per person income drop to near subsistence levels. Even so, they will be basically happy in such a world. Our distant descendants will also likely have hit diminishing returns to discovery; by then most everything worth knowing will be known by many; truly new and important discoveries will be quite rare. Complete introspection will be feasible, and immortality will be available to the few who can afford it. Wild nature will be mostly gone, and universal coordination and destruction will both be far harder than today. So what will these distant descendants think of their ancestors? They will find much in common with our distant hunting ancestors, who also continued for ages at near subsistence level in a vast fragmented world with slow growth amid rare slow contact with strange distant cultures. While those ancestors were quite ignorant about their world, and immersed in a vast wild nature instead of a vast space of people, their behavior was still pretty well adapted to the world they lived in. While they suffered many misconceptions, those illusions rarely made them much worse off; their behavior was usually adaptive. When our distant descendants think about our era, however, differences will loom larger -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Progress and Happiness
If evolution by natural selection were correct, then it seems to me that if the overall environment remained relatively stable for an extended period of time - then regardless of how it ended up, humans would be at about same level of happiness. A paradise or a hell, the species should evolve towards the same overall happiness level. We can only be excessively happy, or excessively unhappy, in a world that we aren't well adapted to. My reasoning is that happiness serves a purpose...it motivates us to do things that enhance our reproductive success. Unhappiness also serves a purpose...it motivates us to avoid things that decrease our reproductive success. Happiness is useless as a motivational tool if it's too hard *or* too easy to achieve. Unhappiness is useless as a motivational tool if it's too hard *or* too easy to avoid. There has to be some optimum motivational mix of happiness and unhappiness...and I'd think it's always approximately the same mix. Even in a hellish world, humans would be about as happy as they would be in a paradise...once they (as a species) had adapted. Which brings me to my next point. IF this evolutionary theory were true, then scientific advancements only increase human happiness to the extent that it puts us into situations that we're not well adapted to. AND, given enough time (and mutation), we should adapt to all scientific advancements...and a key part of this adaptation will be to reduce the amount of happiness that they generate. We can only be happier than cavemen when we are in a situation that we are not well adapted to. For instance, food. Most people really like sweets and salty greasy foods. Much more than they like bland vegetables and whatnot. The acquisition of junk food makes us happy *because* those things were hard to acquire a few hundred years ago...and if you're living in resource-poor circumstances, then calories and salt are just what the doctor ordered. BUT...we're now out of equilibrium. Junk food is at least as easy to get as vegetables, if not easier. So our evolved preferences push us to consume more than is good for us. Given time, and if we allowed heart disease and diabetes to do their work, the human race would eventually lose their taste for such unhealthy fare, as those with genetic tendencies in that direction died off. Anticipating a greasy meal of pizza and consuming it would no longer make us as happy. Because that happiness is too easily satisfied to provide the optimal level of motivation. In the future, I would think that our taste for junk food will decrease while our taste for vegetables and fruit will increase. Further, this adjustment process isn't just true of food. It should be true of everything. Even something that IS good for us will cause less happiness if its easily available, because there's no real harm in not being highly motivated to get it - since you'll get it even if you're relatively indifferent to it. Also, even good things can become detrimental if over-indulged in. So, over time entropy will eat away at the structure that underlies the desire for that thing. Ya? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Progress and Happiness
On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 5:58 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 03:04:19PM -0400, Rex Allen wrote: For instance, food. Most people really like sweets and salty greasy foods. Much more than they like bland vegetables and whatnot. The acquisition of junk food makes us happy *because* those things were hard to acquire a few hundred years ago...and if you're living in resource-poor circumstances, then calories and salt are just what the doctor ordered. BUT...we're now out of equilibrium. Junk food is at least as easy to get as vegetables, if not easier. So our evolved preferences push us to consume more than is good for us. Given time, and if we allowed heart disease and diabetes to do their work, the human race would eventually lose their taste for such unhealthy fare, as those with genetic tendencies in that direction died off. Anticipating a greasy meal of pizza and consuming it would no longer make us as happy. Because that happiness is too easily satisfied to provide the optimal level of motivation. Evolution won't help here - these diseases cause death after one's reproductive years, direct selection on dietary preference will not occur. They do generally cause death after one's reproductive years...especially for women, though less definitely for men (e.g., James Doohan!). And those late life babies might add up over the long haul. Also, these diseases (and the obesity that often accompanies them) also cause problems earlier in life, which also seems likely to lower reproductive success. And even a small reduction in reproductive success will add up over many generations. There is an indirect effect by not being grandparents for your kids, but so long as some of the grandparents are around, this would effectively be nullified. If your one of your grandfathers dies of diabetes related complications, meanwhile I've still got two grandfathers - then all other things being equal I seem to have a slight edge over you. If for no other reason than as insurance against plain old bad luck. If we then both lose another grandfather to the same freak airplane crash, then you're out of grandfathers, while I've still got one left. So the advantage to me might be small, but again, added up over many generations, that will still presumably turn the tide in favor of my genetic line. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Progress and Happiness
On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 6:08 PM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Rex Allen wrote: If evolution by natural selection were correct, then it seems to me that if the overall environment remained relatively stable for an extended period of time - then regardless of how it ended up, humans would be at about same level of happiness. I don't think it is generally true, though I think it is approximatly true if we assume humans are restricted to biological intelligence (which probably won't be the case in the future). Though, if our technological prowess were to plateau at a level advanced enough that we could maintain a stable environment for ourselves, but short of any type of Singularity...then what? Barring a Chinese-style birth control regime, eventually the more fertile sub-groups would seem likely proliferate and eventually population levels would rise until we were back in the same situation that most of our ancestors lived in...with just enough resources to sustain the existing population. There's a finite amount of energy and resources available on Earth, or even in the solar system, if we make it that far. Once our technological prowess has plateaued and we've bumped up against those energy and resource limits...then what? My guess is it doesn't really matter. The rate of change will slow from it's current breakneck speed (except for the occasional supervolcano/giant asteroid) and the species will adapt to whatever the situation is and people (or whatever) will be about as happy as they ever were. Rex Allen wrote: We can only be excessively happy, or excessively unhappy, in a world that we aren't well adapted to. My reasoning is that happiness serves a purpose...it motivates us to do things that enhance our reproductive success. Unhappiness also serves a purpose...it motivates us to avoid things that decrease our reproductive success. But whether it serves that purpose is dependent on the circumstances, not only on the relative amount of happiness and unhappiness. It's not clear that there couldn't be circumstances where it is not useful for beings to feel much more or much less happiness (though I hope the latter isn't the case). If there are less treats in the environment, I guess that we would tend to be happier, because negative feelings are needed for avoiding (mostly rather acute) treats. We don't need to be unhappy to get along with each other, for example. You don't think that happiness and unhappiness play a significant role in the competition for social status and mates among humans? I would tend to think that our social relations (or lack thereof) are probably the largest contributor to most people's happiness *and* unhappiness. Hell is other people. Homo homini lupus. Man is wolf to man. So in a world where there are less treats (let's say more stable climate) there would be less pressure for negative feelings and more room for usefulness of happiness (let's say due to increased social interaction), so we would be happier on average. I think increased social interaction is just as likely to result in unhappiness as happiness. Especially in Malthusian situations where we eventually bump up against available resources. Not everyone can be a winner. We can't *all* get the prettiest girl or handsomest guy. This is bound to cause unhappiness...which then (sometimes) motivates increased effort or a different approach on the next round. I find it probable that there are many biological and pre-industrial beings in the multiverse that are significantly more happy than us because of this (it's very unlikely that it would be close to paradise, though, I guess). In an infinite multiverse...I tend to think that every possible variation would occur a (countably) infinite number of times. And so there would be the same number of happy and unhappy people...a countable infinity of each. Rex Allen wrote: There has to be some optimum motivational mix of happiness and unhappiness...and I'd think it's always approximately the same mix. I think this is a too simplified conception of what happiness and unhappiness are for. Whether we are motivated does not only depend on whether there is an appropiate mix of happiness and unhappiness (though this I agree this is factor), but whether in the situations where it is useful to be unhappy we are unhappy and when it is useful to be happy, we are happy. If there are less reasons that would make unhappiness a useful thing, there will be less unhappiness (see my example above). I'll agree that there is likely a certain degree of dependence on contingent circumstance. In an infinite universe improbable things will happen infinitely often... Rex Allen wrote: Which brings me to my next point. IF this evolutionary theory were true, then scientific advancements only increase human happiness to the extent that it puts us into situations that we're not well adapted
Genuine Fortuitousness
Interesting paper by Aage Bohr, Nobel prize laureate and son of Niels Bohr: The Principle Underlying Quantum Mechanics http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/832204/files/cer-002518578.pdf The present article reports on the finding of the principle behind quantum mechanics. The principle, referred to as genuine fortuitousness, implies that the basic event, a click in a counter, comes without any cause and thus as a discontinuity in spacetime. From this principle, the formalism of quantum mechanics emerges with a radically new content, no longer dealing with things (atoms, particles, or fields) to be measured. Instead, quantum mechanics is recognized as the theory of distributions of uncaused clicks that form patterns laid down by spacetime symmetry and is thereby revealed as a subject of unexpected simplicity and beauty. The departure from usual quantum mechanics is strikingly borne out by the absence of Planck’s constant from the theory. The elimination of indeterminate particles as cause for the clicks, which the principle of genuine fortuitousness implies, is analogous to the elimination of the ether implied by the principle of relativity. [...] It is a hallmark of the theory based on genuine fortuitousness that it does not admit physical variables. It is, therefore, of a novel kind that does not deal with things (objects in space), or measurements, and may be referred to as the theory of no things. [...] The intuitive feeling of the necessity of particles as cause for the clicks may be compared with the adherence to the ether. This medium appeared necessary as a carrier of the electromagnetic waves, but obscured the discovery of the principle of relativity. Genuine fortuitousness with its two faces, lack of cause and discontinuity, is found to be the principle that underlies quantum mechanics. The acceptance of the completely uncaused clicks goes against deeply held beliefs, but is consistent with all evidence and provides a simple principle for the theory. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
The Man Behind The Curtain
Instrumentalism, anyone? http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.12395,y.2011,no.3,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx The range of phenomena physics has explained is more than impressive; it underlies the whole of modern civilization. Nevertheless, as a physicist travels along his (in this case) career, the hairline cracks in the edifice become more apparent, as does the dirt swept under the rug, the fudges and the wholesale swindles, with the disconcerting result that the totality occasionally appears more like Bruegel’s Tower of Babel as dreamt by a modern slumlord, a ramshackle structure of compartmentalized models soldered together into a skewed heap of explanations as the whole jury-rigged monstrosity tumbles skyward. [...] Such examples abound throughout physics. Rather than pretending that they don’t exist, physics educators would do well to acknowledge when they invoke the Wizard working the levers from behind the curtain. Even towards the end of the twentieth century, physics was regarded as received Truth, a revelation of the face of God. Some physicists may still believe that, but I prefer to think of physics as a collection of models, models that map the territory, but are never the territory itself. That may smack of defeatism to many, but ultimate answers are not to be grasped by mortals. Physicists have indeed gone further than other scientists in describing the natural world; they should not confuse description with understanding. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: The Man Behind The Curtain
On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 3:55 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/11/2011 7:51 AM, Rex Allen wrote: Instrumentalism, anyone? I'll have a helping. And I'll also note that instrumentalism with a pinch of common sense is as good as it gets. Common sense? What is this common sense that you speak of? Let me guess: If you have to ask, you ain't ever gonna know. It seems to me that this view of science, instrumentalism with a pinch of common sense, isn't the view that's generally presented to the general public - or at least hasn't been in the past, though maybe that's changing now. It seems like you hear it more now than 15 years ago, but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention then. What impact do you think it would have if that were the public face of science? Positive? Negative? None? It seems to me that it would be a big change - probably positive, but who knows. The mystery of consciousness takes on a bit of a different color when set against an instrumentalist background though. http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.12395,y.2011,no.3,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx The range of phenomena physics has explained is more than impressive; it underlies the whole of modern civilization. Nevertheless, as a physicist travels along his (in this case) career, the hairline cracks in the edifice become more apparent, as does the dirt swept under the rug, the fudges and the wholesale swindles, with the disconcerting result that the totality occasionally appears more like Bruegel’s Tower of Babel as dreamt by a modern slumlord, a ramshackle structure of compartmentalized models soldered together into a skewed heap of explanations as the whole jury-rigged monstrosity tumbles skyward. [...] Such examples abound throughout physics. Rather than pretending that they don’t exist, physics educators would do well to acknowledge when they invoke the Wizard working the levers from behind the curtain. Even towards the end of the twentieth century, physics was regarded as received Truth, a revelation of the face of God. Some physicists may still believe that, but I prefer to think of physics as a collection of models, models that map the territory, but are never the territory itself. That may smack of defeatism to many, but ultimate answers are not to be grasped by mortals. Physicists have indeed gone further than other scientists in describing the natural world; they should not confuse description with understanding. Confusing a good detailed, tested description with understanding is a lot better than confusing arm-chair philosophizing with understanding. In either case, at the end of the story you're still confused. But at least in the latter case it ends with you sitting in a comfortable arm-chair... Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: The Man Behind The Curtain
On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 11 Jun 2011, at 16:51, Rex Allen wrote: Instrumentalism, anyone? It is not because a theology fails that we have to abandon all theologies. That would lead indeed to instrumentalism, and this would kill all inquiries. It leads to shut up and calculate. I wouldn't think that this would necessarily be the case. There's always a demand for faster, more accurate ways to calculate. Surely that would be sufficient to drive progress. Why bring theology and faith into it? Maybe there's less fame and glory to be had in an instrumentalist approach? Is realism in science driven by a desire for higher social status amongst professional scientists? Is that what stops them from more aggressively promoting the instrumentalism with a pinch of common sense view of science? Robin Hanson should be all over this. Rex There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature. -- Niels Bohr -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 09 Jun 2011, at 07:14, Rex Allen wrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 5:42 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2011, at 00:52, Rex Allen wrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: It is not that hard to get, so would be worth your while trying to understand. I think I understand this already. The whole teleporting moscow-washington thing, right? In Platonia, there are many computational paths that branch out from the current state that represents me. Each of these paths looks like a possible future from my subjective standpoint. But, they're not possible, they're actual. In Platonia, they all exist. And they do so timelessly...so they're not futures they're a series of nows. So, subjectively, I have the illusion of an undetermined future. But...really, it's determined. Every one of those paths is objectively actualized. So how does this prove what I said false? All those static futures are mine. They're all determined. I'm still on rails...it's just that the rails split in a rather unintuitive way. Even if we say that what constitutes me is a single unbranched path...this still doesn't make what I said false. I'm one of those paths, I just don't know which. But ignorance of the future is not indeterminism. Ignorance of the future is ignorance of the (fully determined) future. This is an argument against any determinist theory, or any block-universe theory. It is an argument again compatibilist theory of free will, and an argument against science in general, not just the mechanist hypothesis. Hard determinism is incompatible with science in general? ? On the contrary. It was your argument against determinism which I took as incompatible with science or scientific attitude. I'm not arguing against determinism. I'm fine with determinism and it's consequences. But third person determinism does not entails first person determinism, nor do determinism in general prevents genuine free will. Determinism doesn't prevent your redefined version of free will, which of course isn't free will at all - but rather a psychological coping mechanism disguised as a reasonable position. BUT...I didn't say third person determinism. I said hard determinism...the alternative to the soft determinism of compatibilism. People believing that determinism per se makes free will impossible confuse themselves with God. No, people who believe that determinism is incompatible with free will have a firm understanding of the meaning of both determinism and free will. But now I am no more sure what you are saying. Are you OK with hard determinism? Are you OK with block-multiverse, or block-mindscape? I'm fine with hard determinism. I am a hard determinist...which is the position that determinism is incompatible with free will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_determinism I'm also fine with block-multiverse. And with a block-mindscape. Neither of which allow for free will. Since both of which are static, unchanging, and unchangeable - making it impossible that anyone could have done otherwise than they actually did. No one can be free of that fact - and therefore no one has free will. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: ? On the contrary. It was your argument against determinism which I took as incompatible with science or scientific attitude. But third person determinism does not entails first person determinism, nor do determinism in general prevents genuine free will. People believing that determinism per se makes free will impossible confuse themselves with God. But now I am no more sure what you are saying. Are you OK with hard determinism? Are you OK with block-multiverse, or block-mindscape? I think your position rests on an invalid conflation between the fact that it posits multiple *actual* futures, all of which *will* occur - and the folk intuition that there are multiple *possible* futures, and that it is *ultimately* our conscious experience of making a choice which determines which one of those possible futures becomes actual. You say the former, but in doing so you allude to the latter. Which is true of all compatibilist positions...and that's why compatibilists insist on redefining existing words like free will and choice and responsibility. Because if you don't re-use those words - retaining their flavor without their substance - it becomes impossible for compatibilists to connect to their traditional meaning in any convincing way. Using less misleading terms would make it obvious that compatibilism has nothing to do with free will at all. Compatibilism is about building a world view that makes it possible for society to continue largely as before while accepting determinism. Dr. StrangeDennett: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Determinism. Repurposing the term free will is a propaganda move, to make the medicine go down easier. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 10:00 AM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: I'm also fine with block-multiverse. And with a block-mindscape. Neither of which allow for free will. Since both of which are static, unchanging, and unchangeable - making it impossible that anyone could have done otherwise than they actually did. No one can be free of that fact - and therefore no one has free will. 'making it impossible that anyone could have done otherwise than they actually did.' Right. A necessary (but not sufficient) condition of freedom is that they must have been able to have done otherwise. This alone isn’t sufficient, because quantum randomness (in a non-block context) also makes it possible that they could have done otherwise - but random decisions aren't free either. You say it is impossible that anyone could have done otherwise from what they did. Well what determined what they did? Their mind? Their biology? Their chemistry? The physics of the subatomic motions of the particles in their brain? I don’t think it matters in a “block” context, does it? To say the mind is not doing any decision making because its behavior can be explained at a level where the mind's operation cannot be understood, is like saying a computer is not computing or a car is not driving, because if you look at a computer or a car at a low enough level you see only particles moving in accordance with various forces applied to them. The ability to make decisions is ubiquitous. Ants, wasps, lizards, turtles, mice, dogs - whatever. They can all be said to make decisions. Do ants have free will? Even computers can be said to make decisions...and saying that they do seems just as valid as saying that humans do. Do the computerized monitoring and control systems at nuclear power plants have free will? If they automatically decide to close some valve in response to sensor readings, are they exercising free will? You can render meaningless almost any subject by describing it at the wrong level. Wrong? What would make some level the “wrong” level and another the “right” level? If a subject *can* be described at some level (or should be describable in theory), then that has to be of some significance, doesn’t it? If human behavior ought to be describable at the level of quarks and electrons, just as computer behavior ought to be describable at the level of quarks and electrons, and just as rock behavior ought to be describable at the level of quarks and electons - then this shared “describability” has to tell us something significant - doesn’t it? The fact that all of these things are describable at the same level, the level of quarks and electrons, surely this means something. If humans could *not* be described at the level of quarks and electrons, but computers could, *that* would definitely tell us something significant, wouldn’t it? You might as well say there is no meaningful difference between a cat and a rock, since they are after all, just electrons and quarks. There’s a meaningful difference between a cat and a rock - *to me*. But maybe not in any other sense. If you describe the mind at the correct level, you find it is making decisions. I can interpret it that way, yes. Or I can interpret it as just moving through a sequence of states. I can interpret it either way I want, as the whim strikes me. It’s like looking at the picture of the candlestick and then seeing the two faces. I can go back and forth between the two interpretations. I’m flexible that way. The interpretation that the mind is making decisions is not *forced* on me. Can you interpret the mind as just moving through a sequence of states? Maybe if you concentrate? You say it is impossible that the decision it makes could have been otherwise. This is good for the mind, it means it is guaranteed that its will is carried out. It also means that the mind’s will is not free. That said, I don't mean to say there are not interesting implications for some of the concepts discussed on this list, such as the definition of personal identity or the view that we are all part of one mind/self/soul. Part of the same mind/self/soul? That doesn’t sound too plausible to me. If it were true in any meaningful way, I think I would have noticed. Though, it may be true in the same way that we could be part of the same zip code or something. Regarding personal identity, does it make sense to punish the 50 year old man with a prison sentence if it was a different person who committed the act 20 years ago? (If you regard the two as different persons). Further, is there any role of punishment / retribution in the justice system when had we been born in another persons shoes we would have made the same decisions and ended up in the same place as that person? If ultimately we are the same person, we should have much more
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 8:18 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/9/2011 3:41 PM, Russell Standish wrote: As I always say, free will is the ability to do something stupid. And from an evolutionary point of view, that is actually a useful ability. We are in violent agreement. :-) Get a room, you two. I'll reply to Bruno, et al., tomorrow or Saturday! Must sleep! Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 5:42 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2011, at 00:52, Rex Allen wrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: It is not that hard to get, so would be worth your while trying to understand. I think I understand this already. The whole teleporting moscow-washington thing, right? In Platonia, there are many computational paths that branch out from the current state that represents me. Each of these paths looks like a possible future from my subjective standpoint. But, they're not possible, they're actual. In Platonia, they all exist. And they do so timelessly...so they're not futures they're a series of nows. So, subjectively, I have the illusion of an undetermined future. But...really, it's determined. Every one of those paths is objectively actualized. So how does this prove what I said false? All those static futures are mine. They're all determined. I'm still on rails...it's just that the rails split in a rather unintuitive way. Even if we say that what constitutes me is a single unbranched path...this still doesn't make what I said false. I'm one of those paths, I just don't know which. But ignorance of the future is not indeterminism. Ignorance of the future is ignorance of the (fully determined) future. This is an argument against any determinist theory, or any block-universe theory. It is an argument again compatibilist theory of free will, and an argument against science in general, not just the mechanist hypothesis. Hard determinism is incompatible with science in general? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: I don't understand what is the purpose of such a comment... one that I've seen too many times. Which comment? In general, the purpose of my comments is just to articulate my thoughts in some more-or-less coherent and permanent form, and to see if there are any interesting responses that point to other avenues of investigation. After all, I could be mistaken! The only logical conclusion is Nothing is explainable ! well ok then I will gonna eat my banana ! Bananas are good. I like bananas. If your premises is Nothing is explainable then it is logical that you conclude that Nothing is explainable, going in parabolic wording about it won't make it better. It wasn't my starting premise, but it's pretty much the conclusion I've come to. My basic point is this: 1. Explanation is subordinate to description. 2. Description is subordinate to observation. 3. Observation is subordinate to experience. 4. And now we want to close the circle by explaining experience. However, our explanation of experience can only be justified by appeal to experience - plus reason. But what is reason? Where does it come from? What explains it? What do experience and reason have to say about reason? Another circle. So if our experiences correspond to something external to themselves, and our reasoning is correct, then the equations of our descriptive framework will be true of the world as well as of our observations, and our explanations will true of the world as well as of our framework. But what reason do we have to believe that our experiences do so correspond to an external world, and what reason do we have to trust reason? Our experience of dreams and hallucinations and delusions are enough to plant the seeds of doubt about the reliability of both experience and reason. And then there are more abstract arguments, like the brain-in-vat argument, the Cartesian method of doubt, and the simulation argument (which hinges on multiple realizability, btw). And there’s just the general question of what “reason” means in a deterministic world, or a probabilistic world, or a purely contingent world. So, to the extent that reason is reliable, there are reasons not to take Step Four seriously. Despite all that, one could ask, why not take step four? What’s the harm? But, alternatively one could also ask, why take step four...what’s the benefit? Steps one through three are perfectly compatible with an instrumental approach to science, and don’t require any metaphysical commitments. Only step four *requires* a metaphysical leap of faith...and that makes step four suspect. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 8:34 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Perhaps so, perhaps there is only Rex's beliefs. Perhaps only rex's beliefs at this exact moment. Not obviously impossible. Thought not obviously necessitated either. Does the possibility that there are only Jason’s beliefs at this exact moment scare you? Would you prefer it to be otherwise? It makes the universe much smaller, less varied, less fascinating, etc. to believe my current thought is all there is. It also makes answering any questions futile (why does this thought exist?, can I change it? Am I a static thought or an evolving thought? What determines or controls the content of this thought?) How can any of those questions be approached if only thought exists? How can any of those questions be approached by conscious entities in a deterministic computational framework? Everything you’ll ever learn, every mistake you’ll ever make, every belief you’ll ever have is already locked in. Your life is “on rails”. Maybe your final destination is good, maybe it’s bad - but both the destination and the path to it are static and fixed in Platonia. Further, nothing about computationalism promises truth or anything else desirable...or even makes them likely. In fact, surely lies are far more common than truths in Platonia. There are few ways to be right, but an infinite number of ways to be wrong. If you think you exist in Platonia, then surely you also have to conclude that nearly everything else you believe is a lie. *** Computationalism’s answers to the questions you pose are: Why does this thought exist? There is no reason except that computation exists. Big whoop. Can I change it? No. Am I a static or evolving thought? Neither. Your are computation. What determines or controls the content of this thought? The brute fact of computational structure. *** Why did your momma love you? It was computationally entailed. Why did Jeffry Dahlmer kill those people? It was computationally entailed. Why 9/11, Auschwitz, AIDS, famine, bigotry, hate, suffering? They are computationally entailed. Platonia actually sounds like more hell than heaven. SO...what is it that computationalism gives you over solipsism, exactly? What makes this picture more varied, more fascinating, less futile? I’m not saying you’re position is worse than mine, but surely it’s no better. What is the engine providing the computations which drive the universe? That assumes that computations do drive the universe. Which is the assumption that I’m questioning. The physical universe may be computational or it may be a mathematical structure, but what enforces its consistency and constancy of its laws? If it were a mathematical structure, or a computation then the consistency comes for free. But doesn’t computationalism predict that their should be conscious entities whose experience is of inconsistent, contradictory, shifting laws? In fact, this sounds like the experiences described by schizophrenics, or people on drugs. In fact, I would think that Platonia should contain far more chaotic experiences than not. So this virtue that you highlight isn’t a virtue at all. The idea that “oh, those all cancel out when we average across all computations” or something is pretty ad hoc sounding. You’ve lost whatever intuitive appeal that computationalism had in fell swoop. We’re back to, “why would that result in conscious experience if non-averaged computation didn’t???” It just does? Pah. Do you think pi has an objective (not human invented or approximated) value, whether or not any person computed it? I think that everyone who starts from the same assumptions and makes the same inferences will always reach the same conclusions regarding the value of pi. So that would make pi an objectively studiable object, would it not? Everyone who starts with the same assumptions about the Incredible Hulk and Spiderman, and makes the same inferences from those assumptions, will reach the same conclusions regarding the outcome of an arm-wrestling match between them. Does that make Spiderman objectively studiable? What makes the study of such objects less valid than the study of other objects in science, for example in biology? I’m not saying it’s less valid. It’s equally valid. But that’s saying less than you think. To define a bacterium as a life form Earth scientists and alien scientists both have to start from similar assumptions and make similar inferences. Based on different starting assumptions some might say a virus is alive others may not, this doesn't mean that viruses don't exist. In your postings you seem to suggest that given there could be disagreement on what starting assumptions to use the reality of mathematical objects should be called
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 04:42:46PM -0400, Rex Allen wrote: How can any of those questions be approached by conscious entities in a deterministic computational framework? Everything you’ll ever learn, every mistake you’ll ever make, every belief you’ll ever have is already locked in. Your life is “on rails”. Maybe your final destination is good, maybe it’s bad - but both the destination and the path to it are static and fixed in Platonia. This is provably false. What, exactly, are you claiming is provably false? One of Bruno's important results is 3-determinism implies 1-indeterminism. This is sort of anti-climactic after your initial statement. One of Bruno's important results is that if my future is determined, in some sense it's not determined for me as an individual. It is not that hard to get, so would be worth your while trying to understand. I think I understand this already. The whole teleporting moscow-washington thing, right? In Platonia, there are many computational paths that branch out from the current state that represents me. Each of these paths looks like a possible future from my subjective standpoint. But, they're not possible, they're actual. In Platonia, they all exist. And they do so timelessly...so they're not futures they're a series of nows. So, subjectively, I have the illusion of an undetermined future. But...really, it's determined. Every one of those paths is objectively actualized. So how does this prove what I said false? All those static futures are mine. They're all determined. I'm still on rails...it's just that the rails split in a rather unintuitive way. Even if we say that what constitutes me is a single unbranched path...this still doesn't make what I said false. I'm one of those paths, I just don't know which. But ignorance of the future is not indeterminism. Ignorance of the future is ignorance of the (fully determined) future. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Perhaps you haven't understood the full import yet. I understand. I just don't find your story to be compelling. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 10:00 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: How can any of those questions be approached by conscious entities in a deterministic computational framework? Everything you’ll ever learn, every mistake you’ll ever make, every belief you’ll ever have is already locked in. This is fatalism. By AR+Comp you will experience all possible experiences, perhaps an infinite number of times (recurring endlessly?). But this does not mean we are powerless to affect the measure of those experiences. A simple example: Some think that QM implies that in half the universes they put on the seatbelt and in half the others they don't. This is not true, if the person is conscientious enough they probably put on the seat belt in 99% of the universes. That depends entirely on them. A less safety-concerned individual may have the opposite probabilities. If the evolution of the universal wavefunction is deterministic, then it doesn't depend entirely on them...it depends entirely on the universal wavefunction. How could it depend entirely on them - using depend and them in the usual senses of the words? You're not surreptitiousness using non-standard definitions of words without making that explicit, are you? Once the initial state of the wavefunction are fixed and the rules that determine its evolution are fixed - then everything else, including seatbelt usage, is also fixed. If anything depends on anything, *everything* depends on the initial state and the rules that govern (describe?) how the state changes. In your example, they don't put on their seatbelt 99% of the time *because* they are conscientious - rather, they are labeled conscientious because they put on their seatbelt 99% of the time. See how the arrow is reversed there? Your life is “on rails”. Maybe your final destination is good, maybe it’s bad - but both the destination and the path to it are static and fixed in Platonia. Further, nothing about computationalism promises truth or anything else desirable...or even makes them likely. In fact, surely lies are far more common than truths in Platonia. There are few ways to be right, but an infinite number of ways to be wrong. If you think you exist in Platonia, then surely you also have to conclude that nearly everything else you believe is a lie. What is true in this universe may be false or meaningless in most of the universes, but there might be some things which are true in every universe (such as 2+2 = 4). It seems conceivable to me that you might have trouble convincing the inhabitants of every (or even most) universes of that, even by appeal to experience. Just set up the initial conditions correctly, and the state changes correctly, and viola! A whole universe of people who have funky beliefs that are reinforced by experience at every check. Or are contradicted, but the contradictions as misinterpreted as confirmations. Maybe that's us... Maybe my imagination is more vivid, or my checks on it less stringent. Have you tried imagining such a thing? Living in such a universe? As a spur to imagination: Have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? The role of madness? The gentleman with thistle-down hair? (I can easily prove to you at least one thing must be self-existent for there to be anything at all) Conscious experience. Can I change it? No. Then why bother to get food when you are hungry? It's entailed by the brute computational structure of Platonia, I assume. Why 9/11, Auschwitz, AIDS, famine, bigotry, hate, suffering? They are computationally entailed. This is just reductionism taken beyond the level where it should be taken. You might as well answer: It is physically entailed, chemically entailed, biologically entailed, etc. I don't see the point of the argument. H...I don't see how you could miss the point of the argument...? See above on seat-belts. Platonia actually sounds like more hell than heaven. You base that on the small part of Platonia you have seen in your decades as a human on this remote planet floating through an infinitesimal part of the universe. Perhaps life in other alien civilizations is comparatively a heaven. Actually I would tend to think that the number of hedonists and masochists in Platonia would balance each other. For every entity that loves pleasure, there's another who loves pain. Just flip a few bits, and there you have it - heaven transformed into hell, or vice versa. Oh wait...maybe I can’t invent such a book, because I’m not a very good writer, and people don’t find the structure of my fantasies compelling or believable or interesting or useful. Rats. My point was that mathematics has its own rules, it is not something where anyone can add their own arbitrary axioms as they see fit. I would tend that good fiction also has its own rules. At least fiction
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 04 Jun 2011, at 19:06, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 12:21 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: One thing I thought of recently which is a good way of showing how computation occurs due to the objective truth or falsehood of mathematical propositions is as follows: Most would agree that a statement such as 8 is composite has an eternal objective truth. Assuming certain of axioms and rules of inference, sure. But everyone agree on the axioms of arithmetic. I’m not sure what you mean here. “Agree” in what sense? Everyone agrees that the axioms of arithmetic are...what? Interesting? Useful? Who is “everyone”? Does everyone also agree that there are other axiomatic systems? And we could take any universal (in the Turing sense) system instead. The physical laws cannot depend on the choice of the universal base. What exactly are “physical laws”? You’re really saying “the regularities in our experience cannot depend on the choice of the universal base”? Other recursive formulae may result in the evolution of structures such as our universe or the computation of your mind. Is extraordinary complexity required for the manifestation of mind? If so, why? Is it that these recursive relations cause our experience, or are just a way of thinking about our experience? Is it: Recursive relations cause thought. OR: Recursion is just a label that we apply to some of our implicational beliefs. I think you are confusing computability, which is absolute (assuming Church thesis), and provability, which is always relative to theories, machines, entities, etc. What are your justifications for assuming the Church thesis? Do oracles exist in Platonia? In HyperPlatonia perhaps? If not, what precludes their existence? Jason is right, computation occurs in arithmetical platonia, even in a tiny part of it actually, independently of us. Ya, I have my doubts about that. This tiny part is assumed in the rest of science, and comp makes it necessarily enough (by taking seriously the first and third person distinction). What is science in a deterministic universe? What is science in a probabilistic universe? What other kinds of universes could there be? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Jun 4, 2011, at 1:03 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Godel showed no single axiomatic system captures all mathematical truth, any fixed set of axioms can at best approximate mathematical truth. If mathematical truth cannot be fully captured by a set of axioms, it must exist outside sets of axioms altogether. Then perhaps the correct conclusion to draw is that there is no such thing as mathematical truth? Perhaps there is just human belief. Perhaps so, perhaps there is only Rex's beliefs. Perhaps only rex's beliefs at this exact moment. Not obviously impossible. Thought not obviously necessitated either. Does the possibility that there are only Jason’s beliefs at this exact moment scare you? Would you prefer it to be otherwise? What model for decision making can there be with such a world view? But we don’t need metaphysics for decision making. We must act. And there’s nothing guide those actions except that which can be “distilled” from past experience. But what to make of the distillate? Is it just a compact description of past observations? Or is it a “true” description of reality? Classical mechanics turned out to be a compact description of past observations. No one looks to Newton’s equations for metaphysical guidance, do they? But computationalism is, you think, a true description of reality? But what explanatory power does that offer? It seems plausible to me that physics (or computationalists) may be able to generate a complete, compact framework that describes the world that I observe. And since I observe behavior of the people around me, and the framework is a compact description of my observations, then I should be able to “explain” people’s behavior in terms of the framework. And if I can explain my neighbor’s behavior in terms of the framework, maybe I can explain my own behavior in those terms as well. However... Explanation is something that occurs *within* a descriptive framework. Those explanations don’t reach beyond the framework. Going “metaphysical” (instead of instrumental) with an explanatory framework could only be justified if we had some reason to believe that our observations plus our reason gave us reliable access to what is real. But notice that “reason” shows up twice in that sentence...which is a problem. The fractal is just an example of a simple formula leading to very complex output. The same is true for the UDA: for i = 0 to inf: for each j in set of programs: execute single instruction of program j add i to set of programs That simple formula executes all programs. Following those instructions will let someone execute all programs. What is the engine providing the computations which drive the universe? That assumes that computations do drive the universe. Which is the assumption that I’m questioning. Or, alternatively, configuring a physical system in a way that represents those instructions will allow someone to interpret the system's subsequent states as being analogous to the execution of all programs. Do you think pi has an objective (not human invented or approximated) value, whether or not any person computed it? I think that everyone who starts from the same assumptions and makes the same inferences will always reach the same conclusions regarding the value of pi. Is there an answer to the question what is the googleplexth decimal digit of pi given no one in this universe could ever computed it? Is there an answer to the question of whether this penny would have melted had I taken an oxyacetylene torch to it yesterday - given that this didn’t actually happen? If there is an answer to the inner question, and that answer is “yes” (or “no” for that matter), what makes it “yes” (or “no”)? So I can answer the question today relative to some explanatory framework. But given that the framework is just the distillation of past experience, and is only intended as a guide to action...the answer I give today about what would have happened yesterday isn’t meaningful except in relation to the framework. It’s “for entertainment purposes only”. In the “real world” (whatever that is), I’d guess that there is no fact of the matter about what would have happened yesterday with the penny and the torch. SO...applying the same reasoning to your question: I’ll say that relative to some framework that includes my experience with the assumptions and inferences and rules needed to calculate pi - the answer is yes. Because in that framework, given enough time and enough “universe”, it seems likely that someone *could* calculate the googleplexth digit of pi. But that answer is for entertainment purposes only...since it is an answer based on a framework distilled from past experience for the purposes of guiding action which is instead being
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 12:21 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: One thing I thought of recently which is a good way of showing how computation occurs due to the objective truth or falsehood of mathematical propositions is as follows: Most would agree that a statement such as 8 is composite has an eternal objective truth. Assuming certain of axioms and rules of inference, sure. But isn't that true of nearly anything? How many axiomatic systems are there? Likewise the statement: the Nth fibbinacci number is X. Has an objective truth for any integer N no matter how large. Let's say N=10 and X = 55. The truth of this depends on the recursive definition of the fibbinacci sequence, where future states depend on prior states, and is therefore a kind if computation. Since N may be infinitely large, then in a sense this mathematical computation proceeds forever. Likewise one might say that chaitin's constant = Y has some objective mathematical truth. For chaintons constant to have an objective value, the execution of all programs must occur. Simple recursive relations can lead to exraordinary complexity, consider the universe of the Mandelbrot set implied by the simple relation Z(n+1)= Z(n)^2 + C. Other recursive formulae may result in the evolution of structures such as our universe or the computation of your mind. Is extraordinary complexity required for the manifestation of mind? If so, why? Is it that these recursive relations cause our experience, or are just a way of thinking about our experience? Is it: Recursive relations cause thought. OR: Recursion is just a label that we apply to some of our implicational beliefs. The latter seems more plausible to me. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Mathematical closure of consciousness and computation
On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 12:21 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: One thing I thought of recently which is a good way of showing how computation occurs due to the objective truth or falsehood of mathematical propositions is as follows: Most would agree that a statement such as 8 is composite has an eternal objective truth. Assuming certain of axioms and rules of inference, sure. Godel showed no single axiomatic system captures all mathematical truth, any fixed set of axioms can at best approximate mathematical truth. If mathematical truth cannot be fully captured by a set of axioms, it must exist outside sets of axioms altogether. Then perhaps the correct conclusion to draw is that there is no such thing as mathematical truth? Perhaps there is just human belief. The fractal is just an example of a simple formula leading to very complex output. The same is true for the UDA: for i = 0 to inf: for each j in set of programs: execute single instruction of program j add i to set of programs That simple formula executes all programs. Following those instructions will let someone execute all programs. Or, alternatively, configuring a physical system in a way that represents those instructions will allow someone to interpret the system's subsequent states as being analogous to the execution of all programs. Is extraordinary complexity required for the manifestation of mind? If so, why? I don't know what lower bound of information or complexity is required for minds. Then why do you believe that information of complexity is required for minds? Is it that these recursive relations cause our experience, or are just a way of thinking about our experience? Is it: Recursive relations cause thought. OR: Recursion is just a label that we apply to some of our implicational beliefs. The latter seems more plausible to me. Through recursion one can implement any form of computation. But, ultimately, what is computation? Recursion is common and easy to show in different mathematical formulas, while showing a Turing machine is more difficult. Many programs which can be easily defined through recursion can also be implemented without recursion, so I was not implying recursion is necessary for minds. Then what do you believe is necessary for minds? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: FREE WILL--is it really free?
By coincidence, I recently came across the following quote from Roger Penrose's paper “Beyond the Doubting of a Shadow - A Reply to Commentaries on Shadows of the Mind”. Offered without comment. I just thought it was interesting: == What kind of a theory might it be that determines these choices? Many people who are unhappy with computationalism would be just as unhappy with any other type of mathematical scheme for determining them. For they might argue that it is here that free will makes its entry, and they would be unhappy that their free-will choices could be determined by any kind of mathematics. My own view would be to wait and see what kind of non-computable scheme ultimately emerges. Perhaps a sophisticated enough mathematical scheme will turn out not to be so incompatible with our (feelings of) free will. However, McCarthy takes the view that I am quite confused about free will, and that my ideas are not repairable. I am not really clear about which of my confused ideas McCarthy is referring to. In Shadows, I did not say much about the issue of free will, except to raise certain issues. Indeed, I am not at all sure what my views on the subject actually are. Perhaps that means that I am confused, but I do not see that these ideas are remotely well enough defined to be irreparable! == Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: On the Sequencing of Observer Moments
On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 1:40 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 5/16/2011 7:13 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote: [SPK] I was trying to be sure that I took that involves the possibility that the OMs are computationally disjoint into account. This covers your example, I think... I am wondering how they are strung together, to use the analogy of putting beads on a string. My point is that we cannot appeal to a separate dimension of time to act as the sequencer of the OMs. So how do they get sequenced? How does the information (if I am allowed that term) of one OM get related to that of another? Onward! Stephen I think they must be strung together by overlapping, since as computations I don't think they correspond to atomic states of the digital machine but rather to large sequences of computation (and in Bruno's theory to equivalence classes of sequences). The other theory that Stathis is explicating takes OM's to be atomic and discrete. In that case they would have to be strung together by some internal reference, one to another. I don't think that's a viable theory since in order to make them atomic, they must have only small amounts of information - when I have a thought it doesn't necessarily include any memory of or reference to previous thoughts. It is also difficult to see how the empirical experience of time can be accounted for in this theory. It seems to me that the time that we experience can’t be “real” time. I don’t see how we could have direct access to time any more than we have direct access to anything else “in the world”. The time that we know must be an artifact of how we represent the world...an artifact of our model of the world...an aspect of our experience. I’m not a materialist, but if I were I would take a computationalist/representationalist view of the mind. In this view, our experience of the world would be “represented” in some information storage medium, and then changes to that representation would result in changes to our experience. What would be the mapping from the representation to any particular experience? Well, for any *change* in experience, there would have to be a change in the representation. But you can’t notice anything, can’t experience anything, *unless* there is a change in the underlying representation that would represent “noticing it” or “experiencing it”. So your awareness of time would have to be within the “bits” of information representing your experience...it could not be anywhere else. Not every change in the bits would *necessarily* equate to a change in experience - but no change in experience could occur without a change in the underlying representation. And of course change wouldn't necessarily have to happen in time. The X value of a line on a 2D graph changes with respect to the Y value...but this is not a change in time. So time would exist within experience, not external to or independent of it. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: On the Sequencing of Observer Moments
On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:38 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 5/18/2011 7:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That is how meditation and dissociative drug can help you to remind the consciousness of the blanche machine, the consciousness of the virgin Löbian machine. Memories only differentiate consciousness. Are you claiming that every thought includes a memory? A memory of what? The immediately preceding thought? You lost me. I was pretending the contrary. I was with you on this. It is *because* a thought (a conscious thought) does not necessarily include a memory or a reference to previous thoughts that you can remain conscious when taking a drug which disconnect you from all memories. Ok. I mistook your point. I agree that memory is not necessary for consciousness - though I think it is necessary for self-consciousness. I tend to disagree. What is memory? Just representation in some material substrate? When you “recall” a memory into the present is it still a memory or part of the present? What about false memories? Isn’t the experience of reflecting on a memory just another kind of experience, no different really than day-dreaming about something that never happened? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 1:26 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/18/2011 9:55 AM, Rex Allen wrote: If there are commonalities in individuals who manifest certain behaviors, then it makes sense to look at those commonalities as causal (especially once a plausible mechanism can be identified), and to no longer treat those behaviors as free. In most situations it doesn't make sense to look at each individual as unique and free...instead it makes sense to look at what is common accross individuals and assume the existence of a mechanism that accounts for those commonalities. So if almost everyone is deterred from committing crimes by community approbation and fear of punishment, the person who does commit a crime should be treated as free? If we consider the case of this person, and are unable to see any plausible explanation that could account for their behavior - no commonalities with other cases, nothing that matches against any other statistics, no plausible mechanisms from sociology, neurology, psychiatry, medicine, biology, genetics, chemistry, or physics...then sure, treat him as “free”. That was exactly the situation we were in a thousand years ago. And it was justifiable - in that the approach does “work” to some extent, and they didn’t know of any better way to go about it. I just think that there are better ways to go about it now. It would be odd if we have access to all of the above information, and all of the productivity and wealth of the modern world - and yet we can’t really come up with any significantly better approaches to ordering society than “Getting Tough on Crime” or “Three Strikes” laws. Maybe we should try getting smart about crime and societal dysfunction. We can always go back to “tough” later if it doesn’t work. And, if you want to improve things, to focus your ameleorative efforts to the mechanism, not to the individuals who are subject to it. Treat the disease, not the symptoms. The concept of individual moral responsibility isn't needed and serves no good purpose. The argument that we need the concept of moral responsibility lest society fall apart is the same as the argument that we need God and an afterlife to motivate good behavior. Individuals respond to incentives and deterrents. Get those right, and the system will work. Get those wrong and people will rationalize around morality anyway. All we need to justify some particular incentive or deterrent is: 1) It works. 2) We can't think of anything that would work better. Talk of moral responsibility and free will just serve to distract and confuse. If a policy can't be justified on the above two points, then adding moral responsibility and free will to the equation *still* won't justify it. The actual context in which free will comes up is in prosecution for a crime. Did the defendant act of his own free will or was he under some compulsion or coercion. This already takes what is common to individuals into account. If most individuals in that circumstance would not commit that crime, then the defendant is judged to have acted out of his own free will. If most individuals would have committed the crime, e.g. in defense of ones family, then the defendant may be excused. Obviously that’s *not* the only context in which “free will” and “moral responsibility” come up. It comes up when the laws are written and punishments specified, it comes up in terms of what policies the government implements for the disadvantaged and unfortunate, it comes up when voters evaluate politicians promising to get tough on criminals, it comes up in the ways we treat prisoners - both in jail and upon release, it comes up in the conduct of prosecutors and their choices about which case to even bring to trial, it comes up in terms of what jurors (and thus the public at large) find plausible from expert witnesses. Society's views on free will and moral responsibility affect all of those things. Of course, things are changing, generally for the better. And will likely continue to change - so the system is adapting to the new information available. Just more slowly than seems reasonable to me. In some part due to the obfuscation of compatibilism. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 6:32 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: We exercise a decisionmaking 'will' that is a product of the 'mini' everything we are under the influences of. But free it is not. Well put. So, here is a summary of Dennett's position: Dennett makes use of his treatment of the intentional stance to argue for compatibilism. Just as the decision to adopt the intentional stance towards a system is a pragmatic one, so too is it a pragmatic decision to adopt towards a system the stance that it is a morally responsible person. Dennett calls this latter stance the personal stance (1973, pp. 157–8). As with the intentional stance, there is nothing metaphysically deep required to interpret legitimately a system as a person (no special faculty of the will, for instance). Such systems are morally responsible agents if interpreting them according to the personal stance pays off (1984a, pp. 158–63). And of course, just as the physical (or the deterministic) stance is compatible with the intentional stance, so too, according to Dennett, is it compatible with the personal stance. Furthermore, just as he treats the intentional stance, Dennett argues that, due to the complexity of such systems, it is practically impossible to interpret and predict the system purely from the physical (deterministic) stance. Hence, the physical stance will never supplant the personal stance. We persons involved in the everyday commerce of interacting with each other need the personal stance; it is not threatened by the specter of determinism. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ So he also appeals to pragmatism. If it is useful to treat someone (or something) as morally responsible, then they are. The reasoning there seems suspect to me, and again gets into definitional issues - but even if I accept his point, I still say that this stance is *not* useful when dealing with society as a whole. The system of interest is society, not the individual. If there are commonalities in individuals who manifest certain behaviors, then it makes sense to look at those commonalities as causal (especially once a plausible mechanism can be identified), and to no longer treat those behaviors as free. In most situations it doesn't make sense to look at each individual as unique and free...instead it makes sense to look at what is common accross individuals and assume the existence of a mechanism that accounts for those commonalities. And, if you want to improve things, to focus your ameleorative efforts to the mechanism, not to the individuals who are subject to it. Treat the disease, not the symptoms. The concept of individual moral responsibility isn't needed and serves no good purpose. The argument that we need the concept of moral responsibility lest society fall apart is the same as the argument that we need God and an afterlife to motivate good behavior. Individuals respond to incentives and deterrents. Get those right, and the system will work. Get those wrong and people will rationalize around morality anyway. All we need to justify some particular incentive or deterrent is: 1) It works. 2) We can't think of anything that would work better. Talk of moral responsibility and free will just serve to distract and confuse. If a policy can't be justified on the above two points, then adding moral responsibility and free will to the equation *still* won't justify it. If a policy *can* be justified on the above two points, then it should be implemented regardless of issues involving moral responsibility and free will. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 15 Apr 2011, at 21:16, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Apr 2011, at 22:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Hence Rex might well be right that the discussion here continues because we do not have free will. This shows only that we don't have free-will in the absolute incompatibilist sense, but there are compatibilist theories, which explains well the correctness of a relative (to the subject) incompatibilist feature of free will. The free will that we don't have in the absolute incompatibilist sense is the free will that most people believe in. How can you know that? “In a massive survey of people in 36 countries, more than 70% agreed with the statement that their fate is in their own hands (International Social Survey Programme, 1998).” Okay, so that rules out incompatibilism for “most people”. How many of that 70% do you think answered that question in the affirmative as compatibilists? I’ve met a lot of people who are libertarians on free will, and I’ve met a few who are incompatibilists, but I’ve never actually met a compatibilist in person. The idea that I might not have libertarian free will didn’t even occur to me until I was 22, and I had a degree in engineering by then. I didn’t come across the idea that someone could accept determinism but still believe in “free will” until several years later. Now, admittedly, most of that time was “pre-internet” and certainly “pre-Google”, but still, I’m thinking most of the people surveyed aren’t compatibilists or even aware of the possibility. Hell, 40% of Americans believe that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years. I think I’m right on this. Compatibilist free will should be called faux will. Or more charitably, subjective will. Then earth does not exist. Because most people was think that earth is a flat object. When we do some dioscovery it is better to adapt our word instead of throwing the baby with the bath water. What you are proposing would be more like biology reusing the word “soul”. Or when physicists talk about knowing the mind of God and whatnot. It just causes confusion amongst the layman, for no good purpose. “Free will” has too much baggage to be re-used. So why keep it? Why not start fresh with a nice new term that you can use to mean exactly what you want, with no misunderstandings? Think of a new term that you can make your own. What could compatibilists possibly have against that? BUT...maybe compatibilists don’t want to make things clear? Maybe they welcome the confusion that reusing the older term causes amongst the layman? Th fact that you say that compatibilist free will is faux will or worst subjective will means that you *do* believe in incompatibilist free will. Huh? You act like atheist who defends a very particular definition so as to better mock the concept. Libertarian free will deserves to be mocked. If you don’t want compatibilist free will to be painted with the same brush, then use a term besides “free will”. It’s that easy. Critics of free-will are based on error confusion level. Critics of free will in the absolute incompatibilist sense are correct. So we agree on the sense. Hmmm? Critics of compatibilist free will object to the misuse of terms by compatibilists, not to the concepts described by those terms. There is no confusion. The problem is quite clear...combatibilists are engaged in word-jugglery. Not at all. They realized that 68% of the reasoning done by the incompatibilist are valid, so it is worth to save the notion and recast it in a consistent theory. That is what we do all the time in science. We change the definition a little bit, to save the interesting theories and abandon the inconsistent ideas. What possible experiment could decide the question of whether “free will” is compatible with determinism? What predictions does compatibilism make? What phenomena does it explain? Compatibilism isn’t science, it’s propaganda. This is an inconvenient truth, 1) Why? 2) Science is not wishful thinking. See above. Science isn't wishful thinking, but that doesn't make scientists immune to it. and no amount of word-jugglery gets around it. Best to just deal with it squarely, rather than try to hide it under the rug as with compatibilism. Compatibilism show that we are really free (even if partially only). It is not an illusion. It is subjective, but consciousness is also subjective. The error of the aristotelians is that they use subjective as meaning illusory or false (as you did above), That is close to person elimination. I agree that the experience of making a choice is not an illusion. The experience is real. It’s just that the beliefs you hold within your experience are untrue beliefs. Your beliefs about the meaning and implications of your experiences
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 1:24 AM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Th fact that you say that compatibilist free will is faux will or worst subjective will means that you *do* believe in incompatibilist free will. Ah, I see what you're saying. I've mentioned this before. I think that libertarians are referring to *something* when they use free will. It's just something that doesn't exist. Like unicorns, or the bibilical Triune God. They are referring to an imaginary ability to make decisions that are neither caused nor random - but instead are something else, something that can't be clearly conceived of or described but which somehow gives them ultimate responsibility for their actions. It isn't a coherent concept, or rational...but that's people for you. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 4:41 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 15.04.2011 21:16 Rex Allen said the following: On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think it is a bit dangerous, especially that there is already a social tendency to dissolve responsibility among those taking decisions. Rewarding bad behavior will get you more bad behavior - but this is a consequence of human nature, and has nothing to do with free will. Even if we take a purely deterministic, mechanistic view of human nature, the question remains: What works best in promoting a well-ordered society? Society, in that crime is only an issue when you have more than one person involved. Is more criminal behavior due to correctable conditions that can be alleviated through education programs or by a more optimal distribution of the wealth that is generated by society as a whole? In other words, can criminal behavior be minimized proactively? Or is most criminal behavior an unavoidable consequence of human nature, and thus deterrence by threat of punishment is the most effective means of minimizing that behavior? In other words, can criminal behavior only be addressed reactively? The question is: As a practical matter, what works best? What results in the greatest good for the greatest number? Whatever it is, I vote we do that. It seems that your question As a practical matter, what works best? implies that there is still some choice. Could you please comment on how such a questions corresponds to your position in respect on free will? That I don’t believe in free will doesn’t imply that I shouldn't act. It just means that I don’t believe that I am the ultimate author of my actions. A welding robot in a car factory has no free will, and yet it goes about it’s business anyway. Free will is not required for action. If the robot reacts to sensor input, it’s reactions don't require free will in order to explain. And neither do my actions and reactions require free will to explain. Determinism, randomness, or some mixture of the two are sufficient for explanation. But even without free will, I still have things that I want. And if I want to do something and I’m able to do it, then I will do it. If I don’t want to do something, then I won’t. Determinism doesn’t change this...it just states that I don’t *freely choose* what I want or how I act on those wants. What ultimately matters to me is the quality of my experiences. And I act accordingly. When my head hurts, I take aspirin. But a robot could be programmed to make that same kind of “choice”: if damage detected, then activate repair routines. It's not indicative of free will. Returning to your original question - I want to live in a well ordered society, and I act accordingly...by voting that we focus on pragmatic solutions, and by advising against muddying the water with nonsensical concepts like free will and moral responsibility that come with compatibilism. Why do I want to live in a well ordered society, and why do I feel that the approach mentioned above is the best way to achieve that goal? Why does it matter to me? Well...to the extent that this isn't determined by the causal structure of reality, it's random. But it still matters to me, even though I recognize that it doesn't matter in any other sense. And this subjective meaning is enough. The libertarians and compatibilists are focused on the wrong thing. It’s not the choices that matter...it’s the experience. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Apr 2011, at 22:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: This week in Die Zeit there were two papers about love and fidelity. One more scientific, another more philosophic. In the latter there is a couple of paragraphs related to Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” that are 100% in agreement with Rex: Die Utopie der Liebe http://www.zeit.de/2011/15/Ps-Treue-Philosophie Fidelity is mere an idea that fails due to the natural laws. The materialistic calculation that Goethe has reviewed in a sharp game becomes clear in a remark by the captain, with whom Charlotte felt reluctant in love: “Think of an A that is intimately connected with a B, such that one cannot separate them without violence; think of a C that is connected in a similar way with a D; now bring the two couples in touch: A goes to D, C goes to B, without that one can say who first left, who first joined the other.“ So it happens. And is it not devilish near to a common way of thinking? The fact that we are not masters of our decisions, but products of biochemical processes (or some others)? Hence Rex might well be right that the discussion here continues because we do not have free will. This shows only that we don't have free-will in the absolute incompatibilist sense, but there are compatibilist theories, which explains well the correctness of a relative (to the subject) incompatibilist feature of free will. The free will that we don't have in the absolute incompatibilist sense is the free will that most people believe in. Compatibilist free will should be called faux will. Or more charitably, subjective will. Critics of free-will are based on error confusion level. Critics of free will in the absolute incompatibilist sense are correct. Critics of compatibilist free will object to the misuse of terms by compatibilists, not to the concepts described by those terms. There is no confusion. The problem is quite clear...combatibilists are engaged in word-jugglery. I think it is a bit dangerous, especially that there is already a social tendency to dissolve responsibility among those taking decisions. Rewarding bad behavior will get you more bad behavior - but this is a consequence of human nature, and has nothing to do with free will. Even if we take a purely deterministic, mechanistic view of human nature, the question remains: What works best in promoting a well-ordered society? Society, in that crime is only an issue when you have more than one person involved. Is more criminal behavior due to correctable conditions that can be alleviated through education programs or by a more optimal distribution of the wealth that is generated by society as a whole? In other words, can criminal behavior be minimized proactively? Or is most criminal behavior an unavoidable consequence of human nature, and thus deterrence by threat of punishment is the most effective means of minimizing that behavior? In other words, can criminal behavior only be addressed reactively? The question is: As a practical matter, what works best? What results in the greatest good for the greatest number? Whatever it is, I vote we do that. We are just not living at the level were we are determined. But we are nonetheless determined, and thus not free from what determines us. This is an inconvenient truth, and no amount of word-jugglery gets around it. Best to just deal with it squarely, rather than try to hide it under the rug as with compatibilism. If we were, we could replace jail by hospital, and people would feel having the right to justify any act by uncontrollable pulsions. All acts are justifiable in that sense. But, just as we don't allow malfunctioning machines to run amuck, neither should we allow malfunctioning people to do so. To the greatest extent possible, malfunctions should be minimized through proper configuration and maintenance. When malfunctions inevitably occur, the damage should be minimized and repairs made if possible. Free will is irrelevant at best, and more likely a counter-productive distraction. As before, the question is what works best? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@charter.net wrote: -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, April 15, 2011 3:45 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [OT] Love and free will On 14 Apr 2011, at 22:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: This week in Die Zeit there were two papers about love and fidelity. One more scientific, another more philosophic. In the latter there is a couple of paragraphs related to Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” that are 100% in agreement with Rex: Die Utopie der Liebe http://www.zeit.de/2011/15/Ps-Treue-Philosophie Fidelity is mere an idea that fails due to the natural laws. The materialistic calculation that Goethe has reviewed in a sharp game becomes clear in a remark by the captain, with whom Charlotte felt reluctant in love: “Think of an A that is intimately connected with a B, such that one cannot separate them without violence; think of a C that is connected in a similar way with a D; now bring the two couples in touch: A goes to D, C goes to B, without that one can say who first left, who first joined the other.“ So it happens. And is it not devilish near to a common way of thinking? The fact that we are not masters of our decisions, but products of biochemical processes (or some others)? Hence Rex might well be right that the discussion here continues because we do not have free will. This shows only that we don't have free-will in the absolute incompatibilist sense, but there are compatibilist theories, which explains well the correctness of a relative (to the subject) incompatibilist feature of free will. Critics of free-will are based on error confusion level. I think it is a bit dangerous, especially that there is already a social tendency to dissolve responsibility among those taking decisions. We are just not living at the level were we are determined. If we were, we could replace jail by hospital, and people would feel having the right to justify any act by uncontrollable pulsions. This leads to person and conscience eliminativism. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ ** Hi Bruno, Well said! I wonder if such eliminatists are subconsciously attempting to justify psychotic thoughts, tendencies and/or impulses. Parenthetically, it has been noticed that almost all of the serial (and mass) murderers in history where highly intelligent but did not even care to justify their pathological acts. You think Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Mark Twain were closet psychopaths? I would think that you should focus on refuting their arguments rather than defaming their character. Besides, if we are ascribing unsavory motives to our opponents, what equally dark impulses might we conclude drive the believer in free will? That knife cuts both ways. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 3:48 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/15/2011 12:16 PM, Rex Allen wrote: Critics of free will in the absolute incompatibilist sense are correct. Critics of compatibilist free will object to the misuse of terms by compatibilists, not to the concepts described by those terms. There is no confusion. The problem is quite clear...combatibilists are engaged in word-jugglery. It is not word-jugglery. It's legal terminology and distinguishes what someone does out of their personal desires as compared to what they do under threat of coercion. Compatibilist free will corresponds with the legal term. What court has ever ruled that libertarian free will does not exist? What percentage of legislators, judges, lawyers, and jurors do you think are compatibilists vs. libertarian on free will? I would guess that the legal system, and the people who work within it, and the jurors who participate, and the legislators who write the laws that are enforced are *all* heavily biased towards a libertarian view of free will. Compatibilism corresponds to the legal term because that's the whole *point* of compatibilism...to be compatible with the libertarian view of free will which underlies every aspect of the legal system. Change the definitions and justifications, keep everything else the same. Compatibilism. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:53 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/15/2011 1:36 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 3:48 PM, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/15/2011 12:16 PM, Rex Allen wrote: Critics of free will in the absolute incompatibilist sense are correct. Critics of compatibilist free will object to the misuse of terms by compatibilists, not to the concepts described by those terms. There is no confusion. The problem is quite clear...combatibilists are engaged in word-jugglery. It is not word-jugglery. It's legal terminology and distinguishes what someone does out of their personal desires as compared to what they do under threat of coercion. Compatibilist free will corresponds with the legal term. What court has ever ruled that libertarian free will does not exist? What court has ever ruled that it does exist? None. That's not a question courts rule on. They decide on coerced vs not coerced, competent vs not competent. They don't address metaphysics. Then compatibilism is not legal terminology, and so gains no legitimacy there. Compatibilism involves redefining words associated with the traditional notion of free will in such a way as to make determinism seem compatibile with free will. But if I get to redefine terms unilaterally, I can make anything seem compatible with anything else. On paper at least. Compatibilism is just a technical term for free will related word jugglery. I'm not sure what you meant by your claim that it was legal terminology. What percentage of legislators, judges, lawyers, and jurors do you think are compatibilists vs. libertarian on free will? What percentage are pre-destinationists? What percentage are fatalists? Who cares? People who claim that compatibilism is a legal term, I assume. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: [OT] Love and free will
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Could someone recommend a nice and not that long reading (the best in the form of en executive summary) on absolute incompatibilist sense and compatibilist theories of free will? On the compatibilism side, maybe Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room? On the incompatibilist side...maybe Galen Stawson's Freedom and Belief? Here is a recent article in the NY Times by Strawson on free will: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/your-move-the-maze-of-free-will/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: 1P-causality
On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 4:59 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: In fundamental physics where evolution is time-symmetric, the distinction between cause and effect is just an arbitrary choice. In more practical terms cause usually refers to some part of a process we could chose to control. If a cable breaks and drops something, we say the accident was caused by cable failure - because what we think we could have done to prevent the accident is use a better cable. We don't say gravity caused it because we can't turn off gravity. Quoting Bill Vallicella: “Suppose a man dies in a fire while in bed. The salient cause might be determined to be smoking in bed. No one will say that the flammability of the bedsheets and other room furnishings is the cause of the man's incineration. Nevertheless, had the room and its furnishings not been flammable, the fire would not have occurred. The flammability is not merely a logical, but also a causal, condition of the fire. It is part of the total cause, but no one will consider it salient. The word is from the Latin salire to leap, whence our word 'sally' as when one sallies forth to do battle at a chess tournament, say. A salient cause, then, is one that jumps out at you, grabbing you by your epistemic shorthairs as it were, as opposed to being a mere background condition. What these examples show is that there is an ordinary-language use of 'cause' which is context-sensitive and interest-relative and (if I may) point-of-view-ish. A wholly objective view of nature, a Nagelian view from nowhere, would not be able to discriminate the salient from the nonsalient in matters causal. In terms of fundamental physics, the whole state of the world at time t determines its state at subsequent times. At this level, a short-circuit and the current's being on are equally causal in respect of the effect of a fire. Our saying that the short-circuit caused the fire, not the current's being on, simply advertises the fact that for us the latter is the normal and desired state of things, the state we have an interest in maintaining, and that the former is the opposite.” -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Maudlin How many times does COMP have to be false before its false?
On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 10:18 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Brent and 1Z, The paper you referenced says the following: No doubt life, as we know it, depends sensitively on the parameters of our universe. However, other forms of life might exist under different conditions. I agree with that statement. Certainly there are other arrangements of laws which would permit life to exist. The question is how often is it, among all possible structures, that intelligent life is possible? It does not appear easy. Try inventing your own set of physical laws which if followed from the beginning to the end which would permit life to evolve and exist. It takes a lot of consideration and thought for people to design virtual realities which support artificial life (alife), even when it is very simple compared to the life we know. Consider what is necessary just to support evolution: Why does life have to evolve? Rather than fine-tune the laws, why not fine-tune the initial conditions? Life could be present in the first instant...no need for evolution. 1. An chemistry rich enough to construct self-replicating machines Why does life need to replicate? It's present in the first instant. Just arrange things so that it stays safe. Mating, children, alimony, child support payments...all unnecessary. 2. The ability for life to reliably encode, read and copy information (necessary to record results of natural experiments, as DNA does for us) Why experiment? You got your life in the initial conditions. Also arrange things so that our new life believes that it has interesting, meaningful, fulfilling stuff to do. 3. Unreachable entities (in our case stars) which provide limited energy/resources at a fixed rate for life forms to compete over during the course of trillions of generations Competition. That's for losers. Just build an unlimited energy store into the initial conditions. 4. This energy source must not easily attainable or duplicated by life (if fusion were biologically possible life would consume all the potential energy long before it could evolve intelligence) Evolution is for losers. Initial conditions or bust. 5. No easy shortcut to get an unlimited or infinite amount of energy (Something like the laws of thermodynamics, otherwise life has no incentive to increase in complexity once it discovers such a trick) Build incentive and complexity into the life-form's initial configuration. No need to evolve it via fine-tuned incentive and complexity increasing laws. Hey, we're fine-tuning either way. Go for broke. 6. Re-usability or resupply of materials used by life (If biological material or waste can't be broken down to be reused by other life forms then such material or resources would run out) Screw other life forms. 7. Long term stability of environment and constancy of physical laws, otherwise life would be quickly wiped out or the validity of the information recorded from natural experiments becomes invalidated Okay. Stability is good. We'll keep that. I think the above rules are necessary not just for life as we know it in this universe, but life anywhere. Our own universe seems just complex enough, but no more complex than is necessary, to provide each of these requirements. What do you think the chances are that any random object in Plato's heaven, or any random Turing machine will support intelligent life? 1 in 10, 1 in 1000, 1 in a billion? We can make the laws much less complex if we make the initial state more complex. And why shouldn't we? Why are you prejudiced against initial states? I think the universe's apparent Fine-Tuning is controversial only to a few general types of audiences: 1. Physicists who believe in a grand theory of everything which will explain logically why this universe has to have the physical laws it does, and why no other physical laws are possible A necessary being who creates only the best of all possible worlds should do the trick. That the Anthropic Principle + Mathematical Realism explains the appearance of Fine Tuning is just one of its many attractions. Among the other appeals of mathematical realism are that it answers some longstanding questions: Eugene Wigner's The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. If I were a materialist I'd say that math is related to our evolved ability to detect causal patterns and extrapolate from those to predict future events. Once you have that a well developed form of that ability, then any rule-following system would seem to be, in theory, comprehensible. Einstein's The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible. I like Wittgenstein's version better: It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. John Wheeler's Why these
Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness”
On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 11:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 1/27/2011 8:34 PM, Rex Allen wrote: I would have thought that dreams would be a pretty clear counter-example to the claim that consciousness requires a world to interact with...? Do you think you could have dreams if you had never interacted with the world? Yes. Why wouldn't I be able to? I assume your point is, Where would the contents of your dreams come from? Well, where do the contents of the external world come from? Why do they have to come from somewhere? They can just exist. But in that case, conscious experience could also just exist. I don't see that adding the extra metaphysical layer beneath consciousness does any good. Especially since this brutely existing, fundamental and uncaused layer completely determines our conscious experience (no free will). So you haven't gained anything at all by that move. Our conscious experiences still just exist...but you are adding the additional claim that they do so on top of an inferred scaffolding of matter and causal laws. It's basically the same proposition. Your version just gratuitously introduces a substructure - an unexplained foundation to explain observations. Taking an instrumentalist view of science makes such a leap of faith unnecessary, doesn't it? You haven't answered any questions by introducing the external world...every question you can ask about a dream is still a valid question for the external world. Sure I have. It explains why this interchange is different from a dream. Sometimes a useful way of looking at things, but that doesn't make it true. Let's just say it has instrumental value. But it raises as many questions as it answers, perhaps even more - so I reject it as a metaphysical explanation. If you have instrumentalism, why fall for the first metaphysical explaination that comes your way? Don't be so easy. Play the field a little. Isn't it? What am I missing, do you think? What has been accomplished by introducing the extra metaphysical layer of the external world? You're missing the intellectual honesty to admit that live your life as if there is an external world with different people in it and that you are as certain of the existence of this world as you are of anything (which is not to say perfectly certain). How would you expect me to act if I truly believed that consciousness is fundamental and uncaused? My position is similar to that of not believing in free will, I think. Once you accept that your beliefs, experiences, and choices are either strictly or probabilistically determined by history and causal laws (or are altogether uncaused) then you've already gotten past 90% of the hard to accept stuff. Or do you question my intellectual honesty with respect to free will also? Determinism is a much more common belief than idealism, obviously, so I have more company on this point. I do go to work, obey traffic laws, and pay my taxes. Why do I do these things? If my choices have causes, then the choices were determined by the causes. If the causes are due to the brutely existing scaffolding of the universe discussed above - which itself is uncaused - then ultimately there is no reason I do those things. It's just my fate. If there is no scaffolding that underlies and causes my experiences, then ultimately there *still* is no reason that I do those things. It's still just my fate. All paths lead to pretty similar conclusions. It's just that your proposed path takes a lot of unnecessary metaphysical detours along the way. On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 1/27/2011 8:34 PM, Rex Allen wrote: But then the material world we observe doesn't cause our consciousness. Rather, the underlying emulation substrate (which we have no access to) causes both the material world and consciousness. That's possible, or it may be that the emulatated matter causes the emulated consciousness; in which case we have the same questions about consciousness we had before assuming the world is an emulation. But isn't emulated matter just patterns in the substrate? So by saying emulated matter causes consciousness, aren't you effectively saying that patterns cause consciousness? I'm saying that emulated patterns in a particular substrate my cause consciousness to be an attribute of other patterns in that substrate. Seeing patterns is then a relation between processes in that substrate. But what is the ontological nature of this relation? It sounds somewhat like emergence. Jerry Fodor: === Maybe the hard problem shows that not all basic laws are laws of physics. Maybe it shows that some of them are laws of emergence. If that's so, then it's not true after all that if Y emerges from X there must be something about X in virtue of which Y emerges from it. Rather, in some cases, there wouldn't be any way of accounting for what emerges from
Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness”
On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 11:10 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 1/28/2011 7:54 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 1/27/2011 10:08 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But if the emulation attempts to be local then it must include inherent randomness - which I think is not Turing computable. The Turing machine could draw the required randomness from a tape of random bits, couldn't it? The question might then be asked: Where did the tape of random bits come from? To which I guess a response of sorts might be: Well, where did the Turing machine come from? Probably from there. If you can have unexplained order, then you can have unexplained randomness, can't you? Sure, but then you've gone beyond Turing emulation. A tape providing the random numbers would have to be a realized (not just potential) infinity. Going beyond Turing emulation? Doesn't the definition of a Turing Machine involve infinite memory and and infinite tape? And infinite tape which is all blank except for a finite header. So adding the random tape does take you beyond the standard Turing Machine...all the to Probabilistic Turing Machine. Not that long a journey, really. You believe that space-time is finite? You believe that there isn't an infinite causal chain behind us? You believe that there was a first cause? I think a first cause is probably incoherent. But the past could be finite without there being a first cause. Some sort of circular time? Or like Hawking's and Hartle's no boundary proposal? Even if you have some sort of closed causal loop, or an eternally existing space-time block, the question is still there...what caused this to exist, in the way that it does, instead of something else or nothing at all? Stephen Barr: In fact, however, the requirement that there be no boundary is itself just a special kind of boundary condition among many others that are logically possible. As the Harvard physicist Sidney Coleman pungently remarked in the introduction of one of his technical papers, Although the 'no-boundary' boundary condition may be pretty, it is not divinely ordained, and thus [we shall also] investigate alternative boundary conditions. Don Page: Whether or not the Universe has a beginning has no relevance to the question of its creation, just as whether an artist's line has a beginning and an end, or instead forms a circle with no end, has no relevance to the question of its being drawn. And Hawking himself: Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the question of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness”
On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 6:48 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Rex, Well here I disagree (with Wikipedia, not with Turing, although he is responsible for this widespread misconception). Well, I'll buy that, I reckon. Though the usage of the term infinite tape is pretty widespread. I see it lots of books, when I google around. Often they use infinite tape. Less frequently, infinitely extensible tape, or potentially infinite tape. Infinite is usually in the mix somewhere. Does their (and Turing's) use of the term infinite tape reflect an actual difference of opinion? Or just imprecise wording on their part? Or does it really make no difference, given that it's just an abstract theoretical concept? The discovery of the universal machine by Turing is the discovery of a finite Turing machine capable of emulating all the other machine from a number description (a program). Turing machine are finite object. Their tape plays a role of always finite, but unbounded memory space. You personal computer is a universal (Turing) machine, and then this explains why, regularly, it asks for a supplement of memory, and the user usually obliged by buying a bigger hard disk. Universal numbers and universal machine are finite objects. All machine are finite objects. Human universality shows up when humans used walls and papers to process their calculation. Universal entity are typically growing self-extending entities. They always want more 'memory-space-time'. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness”
On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 1/27/2011 10:08 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But if the emulation attempts to be local then it must include inherent randomness - which I think is not Turing computable. The Turing machine could draw the required randomness from a tape of random bits, couldn't it? The question might then be asked: Where did the tape of random bits come from? To which I guess a response of sorts might be: Well, where did the Turing machine come from? Probably from there. If you can have unexplained order, then you can have unexplained randomness, can't you? Sure, but then you've gone beyond Turing emulation. A tape providing the random numbers would have to be a realized (not just potential) infinity. Going beyond Turing emulation? Doesn't the definition of a Turing Machine involve infinite memory and and infinite tape? Referring to his 1936 publication, Turing wrote that the Turing machine, here called a Logical Computing Machine, consisted of: ...an infinite memory capacity obtained in the form of an infinite tape marked out into squares, on each of which a symbol could be printed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine OR: A Turing machine has an infinite one-dimensional tape divided into cells. Traditionally we think of the tape as being horizontal with the cells arranged in a left-right orientation. The tape has one end, at the left say, and stretches infinitely far to the right. Each cell is able to contain one symbol, either ‘0’ or ‘1’. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/ But, beyond that...you believe that there are no actual infinities? Why do you believe that? You believe that space-time is finite? You believe that there isn't an infinite causal chain behind us? You believe that there was a first cause? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness”
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: What does locally mean in this context? I doubt that consciousness is strictly local in the physical sense; it requires and world to interact with. I would have thought that dreams would be a pretty clear counter-example to the claim that consciousness requires a world to interact with...? On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: I think the whole world probably is Turing emulable, but then that does not get rid of materialism. Material just becomes one of the things emulated along with consciousness. But then the material world we observe doesn't cause our consciousness. Rather, the underlying emulation substrate (which we have no access to) causes both the material world and consciousness. For instance, it would not be the case that neurons cause consciousness...neurons wouldn't be an extra layer that existed between us and the emulation substrate. What exists would be the emulation substrate, going about it's business of existing. As a (presumably) accidental side-effect of that existence, there would be us with our experience of the world. But, given the example of dreams - which aren't of anything external to us (again, presumably) - why assume that there actually is a world beyond our experience . Perhaps the emulation substrate produces nothing but dreams? Would there be any reason to predict that such an emulation substrate would be governed by principles that we could comprehend? How would it be different from the Kantian noumenal realm? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness”
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But if the emulation attempts to be local then it must include inherent randomness - which I think is not Turing computable. The Turing machine could draw the required randomness from a tape of random bits, couldn't it? The question might then be asked: Where did the tape of random bits come from? To which I guess a response of sorts might be: Well, where did the Turing machine come from? Probably from there. If you can have unexplained order, then you can have unexplained randomness, can't you? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. 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.
Re: Against Mechanism
On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 12/7/2010 10:13 AM, Rex Allen wrote: So I don't strenuously deny the possibility of something non-experiential existing - but ultimately I'm not sure what it means to say that something exists outside of experience. So let's take the set of all things that I know about rocks. Now, let's remove the properties from this set that are just aspects of my experience. For instance, any property possessed by dream-rocks or hallucinated-rocks, we will subtract from the set of properties that belong to real rocks. Now...after this subtraction, what is left that is unique to real rocks, as opposed to experiential rocks? Nothing, right? So what are we talking about when we discuss real rocks? If you know that rocks are hard then that is a true belief, independent of your experience. Otherwise you don't know it. You are right that if it’s not true or it’s not a belief, then you don’t know it. Additionally, if your belief about the hardness of rocks isn’t justified, then you don’t know it. It seems to me that there is nothing conceivable about the in-itself except the idea that its existence doesn't depend on our experience of it. This is a pretty slim reed. Therefore, I don't really see why we should assume the existence of something that we can't conceive of. You've slip from existence of things to treating existence itself as a thing. What kind of thing do you feel that I’m treating it as? It is easy to conceive of a rock as existing, even if you can't conceive of its existence as a ding an sich. If you can’t conceive of it’s existence as a thing-in-itself, then what does your conception consist of? When I think about rocks, I can only think of them in terms of how they seem to me. 3. Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist. No. All right then. But this contradicts other posts you send. My other posts said that only conscious experience exists. I never said only *my* conscious experience. Why suppose that they do? Where's your proof? No proof required. I’m not asserting that they definitely exist. Or that they don’t exist. It just seems plausible to me that they might, based on the facts of my own consciousness. That is non sense. It is like saying, before trying to build a pendulum we need a plausible explanation of gravity. Your analogy doesn't hold since we don't have to infer the existence of our consciousness from what we observe via our intersubjective experience. So we observe the pendulum and infer the existence of gravity to account for it's behavior. I don't infer the existence of my consciousness from observing my interactions with other people. I might infer other people's consciousness from my interactions with them. What them? My imaginary friends. 1Z was right: you ask for an absolute explanation. Just that makes you a solipsist, given that only personal consciousness can be considered as absolute. An absolute explanation is available. Meillassoux discusses it in his book, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. The absolute explanation is that there is no reason for how things are. But what is the explanation for there being no reason? I refer you to the “absolute explanation”. There is no reason for anything, not even that. Just setting up an infinite series of questions does not an infinite regress make. I assume that’s where you were going with that. But then how could *you* infer anything from this, given that you don't have an account of consciousness when your own theory asks for it. Conscious experience is fundamental, therefore no account can be given of it. Fundamental things can't be explained in terms of anything else. That's what makes them fundamental. But that's what makes them useful for explaining other things. There are no other things that need explaining. There's just conscious experience. And no conscious experience explains any other. Again, metaphysical answers are never useful in any practical sense. They never add anything over instrumentalism, except perhaps to spark the imagination via metaphor and analogy. Which is very useful. It sometimes feels that way. Rex -- 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 Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 12:12 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 02 Dec 2010, at 19:29, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 11/27/2010 1:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: 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? If it were consistent it would be solipism. By inconsistency I assume that you are referring to my use of you and your while claiming that, ultimately, Jason's conscious experience has nothing to do with my conscious experience? If there are no causal connections between our experiences then...why am I addressing him in my emails as though there were? There are three answers to this question: 1) To be consistent, I have to conclude that ultimately there is no reason for this. It's just the way things are. That I do this is just a fact, and not causally connected to any other facts. 2) The related fact that, lacking free will, I have no real choice but to do this. 1) and 2) are contradictory. How so? 1) There is no reason for what I do. (My actions are random.) 2) Therefore I have no free-will. I see no contradiction...? 3) My experienced justification is that these emails are mostly an opportunity to articulate, clarify, and develop my own thoughts on these topics. I take an instrumentalist view of the process...it doesn't matter what Jason's metaphysical status is. As to solipsism, meh. In what sense do you mean? Methodological solipsism, yes. Metaphysical solipsism, no. 1. My mental states are the only things I have access to. Yes. This depends what you mean by access. I am accessing and modifying your thought processes right now. This assumes the existence of a causal chain between you and I. What is the nature of this causal link, do you think? In your ontology how is it that you cause me to act differently? 2. From my mental states I cannot conclude the existence of anything outside of my mental states. Yes. No. You cannot prove the existence of anything outside. Conclude. Prove. I don't see a significant difference? But you cannot prove the inexistence of anything outside too. Right...that was my point in #3. You are confusing ~Bp with B~p. From your inability to prove p, you conclude that you have proved ~p. No no no. I think there are things that exist in addition to my current mental state. Namely, other mental states. My past mental states, my future mental states, other mental states that aren't mine. These all exist, I would venture. So I don't strenuously deny the possibility of something non-experiential existing - but ultimately I'm not sure what it means to say that something exists outside of experience. So let's take the set of all things that I know about rocks. Now, let's remove the properties from this set that are just aspects of my experience. For instance, any property possessed by dream-rocks or hallucinated-rocks, we will subtract from the set of properties that belong to real rocks. Now...after this subtraction, what is left that is unique to real rocks, as opposed to experiential rocks? Nothing, right? So what are we talking about when we discuss real rocks? It seems to me that there is nothing conceivable about the in-itself except the idea that its existence doesn't depend on our experience of it. This is a pretty slim reed. Therefore, I don't really see why we should assume the existence of something that we can't conceive of. Maybe there are things that exist but are inconceivable to me...but where can you go with that? What is the point of trying to proactively account for something you can't conceive of and have no reason to believe actually exists? The idea of a physical world is superfluous to the world of experience, has no clear definition, and can't even be described except in experiential terms. It's a chimera - purely a creation of the mind. Do you think? 3. Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist. No. All right then. But this contradicts other posts you send. My other posts said that only conscious experience exists. I never said only *my* conscious experience. So, I only score two out three on the metaphysical solipsism checklist. Why do I reject #3? This comes back to taking a deflationary view of personage. It isn't mental states belonging to Rex so much as mental states whose contents include a Rex-like-point-of-view. I have recollections of mental states which did not include a Rex-like point of view (Salvia!). Based on those recollections I
Re: Against Mechanism
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: 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: 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 one has abandoned libertarian free will, I don’t see that the concept of “persons” matters much anyway. Meillassoux’s solution uses Cantorian detotalization to counter proposed resolutions to Hume’s “problem of induction” that involve probabilistic logic depending upon a totality of cases. Meillassoux's main point with this digression into Cantorian set theory is that just as there can be no end to the process of set formation and thus no such thing as the totality of all sets, there is also no absolute totality of all possible cases. Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress. Doesn’t seem promising, and doesn’t seem necessary. Meissaloux seems to ignore that the set of partial computable is closed for the Cantorian diagonalization. That is the key technical point which makes Church thesis possible and *digital* mechanism so powerful (and computer science a science). If one doesn’t accept that conscious experience is the result of computable functions, then I don’t see that this is relevant. So the Church-Turing thesis is basically that everything computable is computable by a Turing machine. Further, since an algorithm is a finite string of characters from a finite alphabet, the number of computable functions is countable. You can’t use Cantorian diagonalization in this case because doing so would require you to write a computable function that could generate a list of the other computable functions, and then create it’s own output for input “n” by sampling the nth output of the nth computable function and adding 1 - with the problem being that because of the halting problem you can never generate a list of *only* the computable functions. Which means that Meillassoux’s idea won’t work *if* one assumes that conscious experience is computable...since in that case there is, in some sense, a set of possible conscious experiences. But if one doesn’t start from the assumption that conscious experience is computable, then your point has no bearing on Meillassoux’s argument. Right? And, as an accidentalist, I don’t assume that conscious experience is computable. While some sequences of experience may have aspects that lend themselves to being accurately described via computable functions, I see no reason to accept that *all* aspects of *all* experiences are thus describable. So...an interesting argument, but I think not applicable. Rex -- 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 Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 2:36 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com 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. Do you believe as you type these responses into your computer you are helping bring new thoughts into existence? Bringing new thoughts into existence? No, I don't think I'm doing anything like that. To the extent that I exist at all, I do so only as a spectator to thought, not as a generator of it. Though, you do introduce here the question of time. Since my position is that only conscious experience exists...time can only be an aspect of conscious experience, not something that exists in addition to conscious experience. As I mentioned to Bruno earlier, even assuming physicalism, we can only be consciously aware of what is represented by the neural structure of our brains. Our awareness of time can only be of our internal representation of it. We can't be directly aware of the external passage of time, can we? So I would say that time exists within conscious experience, conscious experience doesn't exist within time. All experiences that exist, do so eternally and timelessly. There are no new thoughts coming 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? Well, there is the possibility that I'm wrong and that someone will point out something I've overlooked. Other than that, ya it's pointless. And yet I do it. Damn my lack of free will... 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? Nope. Meillassoux addresses your mistaken feeling of surprise in his paper: Such an astonishment thus rests upon reasoning that is dearly probabilistic. The anthropist begins by being surprised by a coincidence too strong to be imputed to chance alone, and then infers the idea of an enigmatic finality having predetermined our universe to comprise the initial constants and givens which render possible the emergence of man. Anthropism thus reactivates a classical topos of finalist thought: the remarking of the existence of a highly-ordered reality (inherent to the organised and thinking being) whose cause cannot reasonably be imputed to chance alone, and which consequently imposes the hypothesis of a hidden finality. Now, we can see in what way the critique of the probabilist sophism permits us to challenge such a topos in a new way. 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. Which all sounds very neat, if taken out of context. But what is the significance of evolving brains? What is evolution? What causes it? What is the significance of understanding worlds? Let's just assume deterministic physicalism. In that case, such understanding was baked in from the first instant of existence wasn't it? It isn't a surprising accomplishment...it was inevitable. Even moving to probabilistic laws just adds a constrained element of chance. The thoughts of those life forms is not likely to look like random snow, since that would not be useful for their survival. The contents of thoughts and the survival
Re: Against Mechanism
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 2:45 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 27, 7:40 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:08 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 27, 6:49 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is caused by a biological brain? Or even by a representation of a biological brain? Occam's razor: BIV, matrix and other sceptical scenarios are always more complex, and therefore less likely than things are the way they seem to be Actually not. We have our experience of the world, which is not direct (e.g. colors, illusions, delusions, dreams, etc.). How do you know? You can't maintain that indirect realism is true independent of any metaphysical presumptions. I don’t maintain that indirect realism is true. Only that direct realism isn’t, as it can’t account for colors, illusions, delusions, dreams, hallucinations, etc. You can't maintain that it is true because that is the way the brain works, since it is a metaphysical presumption that there is such a thing as a brain as distinct from experience. I can maintain that if conscious experience is caused by the brain, then direct realism isn’t plausible. And if conscious experience isn’t caused by the brain...then direct realism still isn’t plausible. You can't maintain that it is a direct subjective fact that your experiences are only of mental representations. There is nothing about an experience that labels it as indirect. You experience would be the same if it actually was direct experience of objects. I see no way that my experience of a chair in a dream could be a direct experience of a real object. 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 The Vat/Matrix is part of the World, not something that exists in addition to the World. That’s obvious enough. Assuming functionalism/computationalism (which is necessary for the BIV/Matrix scenario to even get off the ground), consciousness isn’t in the quarks and electrons of the brain. If you smush the brain, the quarks and electrons are still there but the consciousness is gone. Rather consciousness is associated with the arrangement of the quarks and electrons of the brain. Therefore the question is: what kinds of arrangements of quarks and electrons will give rise to a particular experience...say of sitting under a tree. One such arrangement is a person actually sitting under a tree. But most of the quarks and electrons in this scene are only there to provide surfaces for photons to bounce off of before reaching the persons eyes and to provide surfaces for skin contact. To generate sensory inputs in other words. For the BIV scenario, we leave the brain intact, but reorganize all of the other quarks and electrons so that the sensory inputs are generated by a computer and fed to the brain directly. Note that we don’t need a perfect simulation of the tree and ground and air molecules and intestinal bacteria. Only good enough to produce the same experience...and experience is obviously pretty course-grained. Many different microscopic states will produce the same macroscopic experience. Theoretically we don’t even need a simulation...just a table of time indexed sensory input values to feed to the brain. Given this, it’s not clear that a real body sitting under a real tree on a real planet orbiting a real sun is even the simplest way to generate the experience of sitting under a tree. Where would the Vat/Matrix come from? Well, where did the tree, planet, and sun come from? It just takes a rearrangement of initial conditions to get a vat/computer instead of a tree/planet/sun. What would make one set of initial conditions more complex than the other? I assume that you somehow feel that the BIV scenario must be more complicated because it is a vat AND it is somehow a representation/simulation of the environment that the brain experiences. But this is false. The vat/computer is just what it is. The fact that it can be interpreted as representing an environment adds no additional complexity. It’s just another way to arrange things. BIV, matrix, etc. don't introduce additional elements, they just arrange the causal elements differently. Wrong. The vat is an additional element Wrong. It’s just a different arrangement of quarks and electrons. None are more or less complex than the others. Wrong How so? *My* preferred option is simpler. Only conscious experience exists, uncaused and fundamental. There is nothing else. That's non-explanatory. No-one thinks Occams' razor means you should give up on explanation. Explanations
Re: Against Mechanism
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 11/28/2010 8:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote: ... Things might be that way. But this requires an explanation of the existence of the information and the interpreter. And then an explanation of the explanation. And then an explanation of the explanation of the explanation. And so on. Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress. Doesn’t seem promising, and doesn’t seem necessary. Why not just accept accidental idealism? Rex Maybe I would if you could explain it. Which part do you not understand? Rex -- 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 Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 11/27/2010 1:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: 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? If it were consistent it would be solipism. By inconsistency I assume that you are referring to my use of you and your while claiming that, ultimately, Jason's conscious experience has nothing to do with my conscious experience? If there are no causal connections between our experiences then...why am I addressing him in my emails as though there were? There are three answers to this question: 1) To be consistent, I have to conclude that ultimately there is no reason for this. It's just the way things are. That I do this is just a fact, and not causally connected to any other facts. 2) The related fact that, lacking free will, I have no real choice but to do this. 3) My experienced justification is that these emails are mostly an opportunity to articulate, clarify, and develop my own thoughts on these topics. I take an instrumentalist view of the process...it doesn't matter what Jason's metaphysical status is. As to solipsism, meh. In what sense do you mean? Methodological solipsism, yes. Metaphysical solipsism, no. 1. My mental states are the only things I have access to. Yes. 2. From my mental states I cannot conclude the existence of anything outside of my mental states. Yes. 3. Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist. No. So, I only score two out three on the metaphysical solipsism checklist. Why do I reject #3? This comes back to taking a deflationary view of personage. It isn't mental states belonging to Rex so much as mental states whose contents include a Rex-like-point-of-view. I have recollections of mental states which did not include a Rex-like point of view (Salvia!). Based on those recollections I find it entirely plausible (though not certain) that non-Rex-flavored mental states exist. But beyond that I can't say anything further about what kinds of mental states do or don't exist. Maybe Jason's mental states exist, maybe they don't. It's not really important. It's when your conscious experience infers that you are communicating with another conscious experience that the need for an explanation of the similarity of the experiences is needed. Objective = intersubjective agreement. And I would say that trying to explain intersubjective experience is getting a little ahead of things until one has a plausible explanation of subjective experience. What can you reliably infer from your conscious experience without knowing what conscious experience is? It's building a foundation on top of something which has no foundation. From conscious experience, I'd think that you can only reliably infer things about conscious experience, not about what exists outside of or behind conscious experience. As Hans Moravec says: A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict logic of the program, which defines the 'laws of physics' of the simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be. Without a limit on how indirect the relationship can be, then there's no conclusions that can be drawn. And, as always, if the simulation of conscious experience can just exist, then why can't conscious experience itself just exist? Rex -- 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
Re: Compatibilism
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. 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. 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. Also, “do you believe in ultimate responsibility” is not a technically hard question. 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 of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.” People will not like that, but in the long run, they will prefer that to the idea that *they* have no free will themselves. It is still genuine partial free will. You can manage some of your classes of futures, you have a partial control. What causes you to manage them one way as opposed to another way? If you ask “most people”, they will not agree that the human choice is random, and they will not agree that human choice can be explained by causal forces. Such question are known to be hot, and most people disagree with each other. Many among those who criticizes determinism often relies on sacred texts, and show an unwillingness to even reason. This is true. And it could be that your sneaky approach is the best way to
Re: Compatibilism
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 11/27/2010 12:53 PM, Rex Allen wrote: Free will = ability to make choices that are neither random nor caused This is a false dichotomy. If a deterministic algorithm evaluates the probability of success for three different actions as A=0.5 B=0.45 and C=0.05 and then a choice between A and B is made at random, then the process has made a choice that is both deterministic and random. Then we have two processes. The deterministic process evaluated the probabilities and deterministically rejected C. Then the deterministic process deterministically chose between A and B by using the output from some other random process. The deterministic process's use of the random process’s output was deterministically constrained to A or B. If it had *become* a random process in the sense I mean - it might have gone in with the options of (A or B) but then ended up taking entirely unrelated action X. Or not taken any action at all. Or turned into a bird. By random, I’m using the Merriam-Webster definition of: “without definite aim, direction, rule, or method”. I don’t mean: “relating to, having, or being elements or events with definite probability of occurrence”. As I’ve said before, I think that probabilistic processes still count as caused. Ultimately I think the difference between deterministic and probabilistic laws is not significant. If a law is deterministic then under it's influence Event A will cause Result X 100% of the time. Why does Event A always lead to Result X? Because that's the law. There is no deeper reason. If a law is probabilistic, then under it's influence Event B will cause Result Q, R, or S according to some probability distribution. Let's say that the probability distribution is 1/3 for each outcome. If Event B leads to Result R, why does it do so? Because that's the law. There is no deeper reason. Event A causes Result X 100% of the time. Event B causes Result R 33.% of the time. Why? For fundamental laws (if such things exist) there is no reason. That's just the way it is. Determinism could be seen as merely a special case of indeterminism...the case where all probabilities are set to either 0% or 100%. Yes? Or no? -- 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 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. 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? 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? 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? 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. Here’s the link to that earlier post that you refer to: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/msg/74a368a670efaf16 Also the Meillassoux paper that I attached to the original post (“Probability, Necessity, and Infinity”) that spawned this thread is in this same vein: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/18406fb83d9fbebd This paper addresses the exact question you raise...how to explain the consistency and predictability that we observe, but without invoking the unexplained brute existence of “physical laws”. Meillassoux’s solution uses Cantorian detotalization to counter proposed resolutions to Hume’s “problem of induction” that involve probabilistic logic depending upon a totality of cases. Meillassoux's main point with this digression into Cantorian set theory is that just as there can be no end to the process of set formation and thus no such thing as the totality of all sets, there is also no absolute totality of all possible cases. In other words: There is no set of all possible worlds. And thus we cannot legitimately construct any set within which the foregoing probabilistic reasoning could make sense. Another interesting Meillassoux thread: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/ff5eae94f201a8cf/bd5a16097ea8d8e7 So the problem becomes
Against Mechanism
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: But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except by fiat declaration that it does). Rex, I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism. Assume there is were an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained the same information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way. I started out as a functionalist/computationalist/mechanist but abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that representation will do all that you're asking it to do. For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my experience changes over time. However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or anger or what it's like to see red. The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information. What matters is not the bits, nor even the arrangements of bits per se, but rather what is represented by the bits. 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. 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. Thinking that the bit representation captures my conscious experience is like thinking that a photograph captures my soul. Though, obviously this is as true of biological brains as of computers. But so be it. This is the line of thought that brought me to the idea that conscious experience is fundamental and uncaused. The behavior between these two brains is in all respects identical, since the mechanical neurons react identically to their biological counterparts. However for some unknown reason the computer has no inner life or conscious experience. I agree that if you assume that representation invokes conscious experience, then the brain and the computer would both have to be equally conscious. But I don't make that assumption. So the problem becomes that once you open the door to the multiple realizability of representations then we can never know anything about our substrate. You *think* that your brain is the cause of your conscious experience...but as you say, a computer representation of you would think the same thing, but would be wrong. Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is caused by a biological brain? Or even by a representation of a biological brain? Why not some alternate algorithm that results in the same *conscious* experiences, but with entirely different *unconscious* elements? How could you notice the difference? Information can take many physical forms. Information requires interpretation. The magic isn't in the bits. The magic is in the interpreter. Rex -- 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 Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:08 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 27, 6:49 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is caused by a biological brain? Or even by a representation of a biological brain? Occam's razor: BIV, matrix and other sceptical scenarios are always more complex, and therefore less likely than things are the way they seem to be Actually not. We have our experience of the world, which is not direct (e.g. colors, illusions, delusions, dreams, etc.). And then we have the cause of our experience. This is true in all cases: scientific realism, scientific materialism, BIV, matrix, other skeptical scenarios. BIV, matrix, etc. don't introduce additional elements, they just arrange the causal elements differently. None are more or less complex than the others. *My* preferred option is simpler. Only conscious experience exists, uncaused and fundamental. There is nothing else. -- 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 Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 7:17 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 26, 6:01 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: So Agrippa's Trilemma revolves around the question of how we can justify our beliefs. It seems to me that an entirely acceptable solution is just to accept that we can't justify our beliefs. ..in an absolute way. We still can relative to other beliefs. And that isn;t a problem specific to higher-level categories such as reason and logic. The Trilemma applies just as much to microphysical causality How do you justify your belief that you can justify your beliefs relative to other beliefs? As for microphysical causality, right, it doesn’t solve any ontological problems to introduce it as an explanation because it just raises the question “what causes microphysical causality?” And also, if you buy multiple realizability, then you can’t justify your belief in one particular microphysical causal structure instead of some other functionally isomorphic one. As I said before, materialism could conceivably explain human ability and behavior, but in my opinion runs aground at human consciousness. Therefore, I doubt that humans are a complex sort of robot. Is human consciousness causally effective? I don't believe so, no. Then the sense in which we are not robots is somewhat honorific: we are not because we have consciousness, but consc. doesn't explain out behaviour since it doesn't cause anything , so we behave as determined... OR, there is no reason we behave as we do. And claiming that consciousness is itself caused just runs into infinite regress, as you then need to explain what causes the cause of conscious experience, and so on. The claim is more that it causes. And it could be causal under interactive dualism (brain causes consc causes different brains state) and it could be causal under mind brain identity: mind is identical to brain; brain causes; therefore mind identically causes. If you anesthetize me, the brain is still there. Where is the mind? If you lightly smush my brain in a press, the brain is still there. Is the mind still there? Assuming multiple realizability, if you run a simulation of me on a computer, the mind is there. Where is the brain? Mind-brain identity doesn’t seem so convincing to me. Therefore, taking the same approach as with Agrippa's Trilemma, it seems best to just accept that there is no cause for conscious experience either. Again, the trillema only means there is no non-arbitrary ultimate cause. Well, the Agrippa’s trilemma applies to justification, not “cause” per se. I just said we should apply the same approach and do away with the “causal trilemma” by denying its assumptions. Though your right in that the causal trilemma does look pretty similar to Agrippa’s trilemma. Our three choices are: 1) An uncaused first cause. 2) Some sort of circular causation. 3) An infinite number of prior causes. Kant was pretty close to this with his first antinomy of pure reason. The trillema does not mean that nothing whatsoever is caused. In any case it is a rather poor reason for dismissing the causal efficacy of consciousness. The causal trilemma just shows that attempting to explain our experiences by invoking a cause merely results in the question “what causes the cause”. You don’t get anywhere. You could just be satisfied with the predictive success of your “useful” explanation and not inquire further...but people don’t seem to like to stop there. They go on to ascribe metaphysical/ontological significance to it. But if you do, then you have to face the causal trilemma. You are saing that you are not causally responsible for what you have written here, for instance I am saying that, correct. Is it a useful answer? Maybe not. But where does it say that all answers have to be useful? If true knowledge is unobtainable, it makes a lot of sense to settle for useful knowledge. Sure, if you believe that your beliefs are useful, that’s fine with me. Just don’t go pretending that they’re justified. Besides, what causes you to care about usefulness? Evolution. What causes evolution? Initial conditions and causal laws. What causes initial conditions and causal laws? And so on. We've been through this before I think. Yep. That it is in a sense caused by evolution does not make it wrong. Doesn’t make it right either. Rex -- 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 Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 7:44 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 26, 6:31 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: Any defense of free will must allow for ultimate responsibility for actions. Mine does Random events don't qualify as free will. A deterministic process doesn't qualify as free will. Random events feeding into a deterministic process don't qualify as free will. It doesn't matter how complex you make the whole system, it's still doesn't have free will. This system isn't ultimately responsible since it isn't responsible for the random events that feed into it, and it isn't responsible for the deterministic rules that filter the random events. Every act this system executes is traceable to those two things, and it can never be free of them. Neither is sufficient for ultimate responsibility The only way you can get free will from this is to redefine free will. And I still don't understand why your so desperate to do so. Free will, like square circle, refers to something that doesn't exist. Free will = ability to make choices that are neither random nor caused square circle = an object that is both a square and a circle -- 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 Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Nov 2010, at 19:47, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But your reasoning does not apply to free will in the sense I gave: the ability to choose among alternatives that *I* cannot predict in advance (so that *from my personal perspective* it is not entirely due to reason nor do to randomness). So that is a good description of the subjective feeling of free will. I was not describing the subjective feeling of free will, which is another matter, and which may accompany or not the experience of free will. Free-will is the ability to choose among alternatives that *I* cannot genuinely predict in advance so that reason fails, and yet it is not random. The ability to choose among unpredictable alternatives? What??? In no way does “ability to choose from unpredictable alternatives” match my conception of free will. Nor would you find many people in agreement amongst the general populace. You’re just redefining “free will” in a way that allows you to claim that it exists but which bears little relation to the original conception. In a deterministic universe, there are no alternatives. Things can only unfold one way. Our being unable to predict that unfolding is neither here nor there. Again, ignorance is not free will. Ignorance is just ignorance. But if you question most people closely, this isn't what they mean by “free will”. You have interpret too much quickly what I was describing. Free-will as I define it is not the subjective feeling of having free-will. It is really due to the fact that the choice I will make is not based on reason, nor on randomness from my (real) perspective (which exists). I didn’t say that the options were choices based on “reason or randomness” I said: “Either there is *a reason* for what I choose to do, or there isn't.” By “a reason” I mean “a cause”. I don’t mean “reason” in the sense of rationality. Subjective does not mean inexisting. Free-will is subjective or better subject-related, but it exists and has observable consequences, like purposeful murdering, existence of jails, etc. It is the root of moral consciousness, or conscience. How does my inability to predict my choices or alternatives in advance serve as the root for moral conscience? They mean the ability to make choices that aren't random, but which also aren't caused. And this becomes, with the approach I gave: the ability to make choices that aren't random, but for which they have to ignore the cause. And I insist: they might even ignore that they ignore the cause. They will say because I want do that or things like that. The vast majority of the populace certainly does not equate free will with ignorance of causes. I disagree that many people would accept your definition, because it would entail (even for religious rationalist believers) that free-will does not exist, and the debate would be close since a long time. If you ask “most people”, they will not agree that the human choice is random, and they will not agree that human choice can be explained by causal forces. Rather, they claim that human choice is something not random *and* not caused. Though they can’t get any more specific than that. The debate isn’t settled because they won’t admit that there is no third option. They feel free, therefore they *believe* that they must actually be free. Free from randomness and free from causal forces. “I feel free, therefore I must be free.” That reasoning is what keeps the free will debate alive. They have the further belief that since the choices aren't random or caused, the chooser bears ultimate responsibility for them. They are right. That is what the materialist eliminativist will deny, and eventually that is why they will deny any meaning to notion like person, free-will, responsibility or even consciousness. How does ignorance of what choice you will make lead to ultimate responsibility for that choice? I deny the possibility of ultimate responsibility and I’m not a eliminative materialist. But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except by fiat declaration that it does). As to “person”, I take a deflationary view of the term. There’s less to it than meets the eye. This further belief doesn't seem to follow from any particular chain of reasoning. It's just another belief that this kind of person has. Because as a person she is conscious and feel a reasonable amount of sense of responsibility, which is genuine and legitimate from her first person perspective (and from the perspective of machine having a similar level of complexity). This comes back to my earlier point. She “feels” a sense of responsibility and therefore believes that she is genuinely and legitimately responsible. But the fact that she feels responsibility in no way means that she actually
Re: Compatibilism
On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 4:12 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 21, 6:43 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:36 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: No-one is. They are just valid descriptions. There is no argument to the effect that logic is causal or it is nothing. It is not the case that causal explanation is the only form of explanagion “Valid descriptions” don’t account for why things are this way rather than some other way. If a higher level description is a valid description of some microphysics, then it will be an explanation of why the result happened given the initial conditions It won't solve the trilemma, but neither will microphysical causality So Agrippa's Trilemma revolves around the question of how we can justify our beliefs. It seems to me that an entirely acceptable solution is just to accept that we can't justify our beliefs. As I said before, materialism could conceivably explain human ability and behavior, but in my opinion runs aground at human consciousness. Therefore, I doubt that humans are a complex sort of robot. Is human consciousness causally effective? I don't believe so, no. And claiming that consciousness is itself caused just runs into infinite regress, as you then need to explain what causes the cause of conscious experience, and so on. Therefore, taking the same approach as with Agrippa's Trilemma, it seems best to just accept that there is no cause for conscious experience either. Is it a useful answer? Maybe not. But where does it say that all answers have to be useful? Besides, what causes you to care about usefulness? Evolution. What causes evolution? Initial conditions and causal laws. What causes initial conditions and causal laws? And so on. We've been through this before I think. -- 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 Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 4:20 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 21, 6:35 pm, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:28 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 18, 6:31 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: If there is a reason, then the reason determined the choice. No free will. Unless you determined the reason. How would you do that? By what means? According to what rule? Using what process? If you determined the reason, what determined you? Why are you in the particular state you're in? If there exists some rule that translates your specific state into some particular choice, then there's still no free will. The rule determined the choice. And if there isn't...you have an action that is reasoned yet undetermined, as required If there is no rule that translates your specific state into some particular choice, then what is it connects the state to the choice? The state occurs. Then the choice occurs. But nothing connects them? That is accidentalism isn't it? I.1.v Libertarianism — A Prima Facie case for free will As for the rest of it, I read it, but didn't find it convincing on any level. RIG + SIS Free Will A random process coupled to a deterministic process isn't free will. It's just a random process coupled to a deterministic process. If you insist that FW is a Tertium Datur that is fundamenally different from both determinism and causation, then you won't accept a mixture. However, I don;t think Tertium Datur is a good definition of DW sinc e it is too question begging It seems to me that when people discuss free will, they are always really interested in ultimate responsibility for actions. Any defense of free will must allow for ultimate responsibility for actions. I say that ultimate responsibility is impossible, because neither caused actions nor random actions nor any combination of cause and randomness seems to result in ultimate responsibility. Ultimate responsibility means that reward and punishment are justified for acts *even after* setting aside any utilitarian considerations. So *if* it were possible to be ultimately responsible for a bad act, we wouldn't need to justify the offender's punishment in terms of deterring future bad behavior by the offender or others. We wouldn't need to justify the offender's punishment in terms of rehabilitating the offender so that they don't commit similar bad acts in the future. We wouldn't need to justify the offender's punishment in terms of motivating better behavior by them or others in the future. We wouldn't need to justify the offender's punishment in terms of compensating their victims or insuring social stability. Instead, we could justify the offender's punishment purely in terms of their ultimate responsibility for it. Using their free will, they chose to commit the bad act, and therefore they deserve the punishment. End of story. So, given that the punishment would no longer need to be justified in terms of anything other than ultimate responsibility, how would one justify limits on the punishment's severity? -- 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 Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:28 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On Nov 18, 6:31 am, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: My position is: So either there is a reason for what I choose to do, or there isn't. If there is a reason, then the reason determined the choice. No free will. Unless you determined the reason. How would you do that? By what means? According to what rule? Using what process? If you determined the reason, what determined you? Why are you in the particular state you're in? If there exists some rule that translates your specific state into some particular choice, then there's still no free will. The rule determined the choice. =*=*=*= As for my definition of free will: The ability to make choices that are neither random nor caused. Obviously there is no such ability, since random and caused exhaust the possibilities. But some people believe in the existence of such an ability anyway. Free Will is defined as the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances. How does this differ in meaning from my definition? I don't think it does. Not that according to this definition: 1. Free will is not deterministic behaviour. It is not driven by external circumstances. OK. Not in conflict with my definition. 2. Nor is free will is randomness or mere caprice. (Rationally choose and consciously perform). OK. Not in conflict with my definition. 3. Free will requires independence from external circumstances. It does not require independence or separation from one's own self. Ones actions must be related to ones thoughts and motives Related by what? Deterministic rules? Probabilistic? If one's actions are determined by ones thoughts and motives, what determines one's thoughts and motives? And why do some particular set of thoughts and motives result in one choice instead of some other? If there is no reason for one choice instead of the other, the choice was random. 4. But not complete independence. Free will does not require that all our actions are free in this sense, only that some actions are not entirely un-free. (...at least some of which...). OK. Not in conflict with my definition. 5. Free will also does not require that any one action is entirely free. In particular, free will s not omnipotence: it does not require an ability to transcend natural laws, only the ability to select actions from what is physically possible. Select using what rule? What process? What mechanism? Magic? Either there is a reason that you selected the action you did, in which case the reason determined the selection - or there isn't, in which case the selection was random. Also the phrase from what is physically possible is suspicious. If the natural laws determine what is physically possible, don't they determine everything? Where does this leave room for free will? the ability to select actions from what is physically possible Select by means that is neither random nor caused. Okay. That's what I said. 6. Free will as defined above does not make any assumptions about the ontological nature of the self/mind/soul. There is a theory, according to which a supernatural soul pulls the strings of the body. That theory is all too often confused with free will. It might be taken as an explanaiton of free will, but it specifies a kind of mechanism or explanation — not a phenomenon to be explained. OK. Not in conflict with my definition. I.1.v Libertarianism — A Prima Facie case for free will As for the rest of it, I read it, but didn't find it convincing on any level. RIG + SIS Free Will A random process coupled to a deterministic process isn't free will. It's just a random process coupled to a deterministic process. If you ask most people is this free will? - they will say no. Free will (in most peoples estimation) requires a process that is neither random *nor* determinstic. Not one that is both. -- 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 Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Nov 2010, at 07:31, Rex Allen wrote: As for my definition of free will: The ability to make choices that are neither random nor caused. Obviously there is no such ability, since random and caused exhaust the possibilities. But some people believe in the existence of such an ability anyway. Why? Well...either there's a reason that they do, or there isn't... Lol. I agree with you. With your definition of free will, it does not exist. I think that if you question most people who believe in free will closely, my definition is what their position boils down to. But your reasoning does not apply to free will in the sense I gave: the ability to choose among alternatives that *I* cannot predict in advance (so that *from my personal perspective* it is not entirely due to reason nor do to randomness). So that is a good description of the subjective feeling of free will. But if you question most people closely, this isn't what they mean by “free will”. They mean the ability to make choices that aren't random, but which also aren't caused. They have the further belief that since the choices aren't random or caused, the chooser bears ultimate responsibility for them. This further belief doesn't seem to follow from any particular chain of reasoning. It's just another belief that this kind of person has. Silly, I know. When you say random or not random, you are applying the third excluded middle which, although arguably true ontically, is provably wrong for most personal points of view. We have p v ~p, but this does not entail Bp v B~p, for B used for almost any hypostasis (points of view). I'd think that ontically is what matters in this particular case? Why would I care about whether or why I or anyone else *seem* to have free will from their personal points of view? -- 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 Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:36 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: 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 No-one is. They are just valid descriptions. There is no argument to the effect that logic is causal or it is nothing. It is not the case that causal explanation is the only form of explanagion “Valid descriptions” don’t account for why things are this way rather than some other way. Only causal explanations do that. . 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 Sometimes we do...see Dennett;s intentional stance See my other post in the previous thread on shortcuts, forests, and trees. - and while human behavior and ability is much more complex and extensive, I think it can be put in the same general category. Dennett would agree, but push the logic in the other direction: Humans are a complex sort of robot. Wild speculation. As I said before, materialism could conceivably explain human ability and behavior, but in my opinion runs aground at human consciousness. Therefore, I doubt that humans are a complex sort of robot. Humans have intentionality. Granted. I do anyway. So at least one human does. Therefore some other, sufficiently complex, robots have intentionality Not proven. -- 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 Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 8:51 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Have I understood you correctly, that the current discussion has been already predetermined by the initial conditions of the Universe? Well...maybe. But I'm not overly concerned with the question of whether the causal laws of the universe are deterministic or probabilistic. The implications are mostly the same either way. And it's the implications of there being causal laws that mainly interests me. So we have orderly perceptions and ask where the order comes from. Perhaps causal laws? But then where do causal laws come from? What causes causal laws? And why our causal laws instead of some others? Do these causal laws actually cause some things to happen and actively prohibit other things from happening? Or do they merely describe what happens, without any actual causation? In other words, is it the case that A) nothing *can* violate the laws of physics, or is it merely that B) nothing *does* violate the laws of physics. If A), why not? What enforces the causal laws? If B) why not? Why do things happen *as though* there were governing laws? I lean towards B. There are no causal laws, and there is no reason that things happen as though there were. Which is the gist of the Meillassoux paper that started the other thread. I am not sure that I agree but at least with computational irreducibility there is some logic in all this. Do you agree with Stephen Wolfram? I thought it was an interesting talk. Things could be that way I reckon. Though the problem is that things could be lots of other ways instead. If reality is as Wolfram believes instead of as Leibniz believed (e.g., in Monadology), why is that? What explains the difference? And then, what explains the explanation of the difference? And then, what explains the explanation of the explanation of the difference? And so on. If reality is one particular way, we're faced with the question of why this way and not some other?. Which leads directly to infinite regress, as above. The only way to avoid this is to accept, as with Meillassoux, that there *is* no reason that reality is this way. -- 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 Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 11/21/2010 10:43 AM, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:36 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Therefore some other, sufficiently complex, robots have intentionality Not proven. Proof is for mathematics. Not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, in the juridical sense. -- 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.
