Re: measure problem
On 3/3/2013 12:37 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi, When Bruno claims that physics can be derived from the UD, would a proof of that represent, on some level, a (partial) solution to the measure problem? Terren -- Hi Terren, It would seem so, or more accurately the other-way around. I just found this paper http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Tong_integers.pdf which has as an abstract: I review how discrete structures, embodied in the integers, appear in the laws of physics, from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics to the Standard Model. I argue that the integers are emergent. If we are looking to build the future laws of physics, discrete mathematics is no better a starting point than the rules of scrabble. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On 02 Mar 2013, at 21:58, meekerdb wrote: On 3/2/2013 1:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Mar 2013, at 20:37, meekerdb wrote: On 3/1/2013 8:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Mar 2013, at 16:28, meekerdb wrote: On 3/1/2013 7:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Feb 2013, at 20:29, meekerdb wrote: On 2/28/2013 10:59 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/28/2013 10:33 AM, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: It is a basic law of logic that if X is not Y and X is not not Y then X is gibberish, X = alcohol Y = poison. becomes alcohol is not poison and alcohol isn't not poison Exactly, and 2 negatives, like isn't not cancel each other out so you get alcohol is not a poison and alcohol is a poison which is gibberish just like I said. Alcohol both is and isn't a poison, duh! It is the quantity that makes the difference. Are you too coarse to notice that there are distinctions in the real world that are not subject to the naive representation of Aristotelian syllogisms. If there were no free will then nobody could choose to assert anything, abandon anything, or speak anything other than gibberish. Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII symbols free will mean. And we can safely assume that all text that is emitted from the email johnkcl...@gmail.com is only accidentally meaningful, aka gibberish as well, as it's referents where not chosen by a conscious act. I think we're safe in assuming that they are emitted by a process that is either random or deterministic. It could also be partially random and partially deterministic. Sure. It's hard to even define what might be meant by completely random. Algorithmic incompressability (Chaitin, Martin Loef, Solovay ...) make good attempts. This makes sense with Church's thesis. I guess you know that. Sequences algorithmically incompressible contains maximal information, but no way at all to decode it. But those always implicitly assume infinite sequences. Not at all. The interest of algorithmic information theory is that it defines a notion of finite random sequence (any sequence whose length is as long as the shortest program to generate it). The notion is not constructive and is defined only up to a constant, but it has its purpose). Infinite random sequence are defined by having all their finite initial segment non compressible. But isn't any finite sequence tivial compressible - just not all by the same compression algorithm? When you say a random sequence is defined by having all its finite initial segments non-compressible, don't you mean not compressible by the same algorithm. Not at all. Up to a constant, if a string is not compressible it is not compressible by any algorithm. A constant appears, related to the fact that all universal machine can emulate all other universal machine, and the constant will be related to the length of the interpreter translation. This makes the notion a bit useless for little string (compared to that constant), but makes sense for almost all finite strings (all, except a finite number of them). Then it makes sense for the infinite strings. (Of course this makes sense only through Church thesis). Bruno Brent -- 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?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Sunday, March 3, 2013 2:56:18 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: It's still random. No, it isn't. If it were, then his book would be about the Neuronal Basis for The Illusion of Free Will. Free will is an illusion if you define it as incompatible with either determinism or randomness. People fall into the following categories: The world is deterministic, free will is true The world is random, free will is true The world is deterministic, free will is false The world is random, free will is false Whether the world is deterministic or random is an empirical question. Whether you define free will as compatible with determinism or randomness is not an empirical question but a question of the use of language which is of philosophical interest. If free will looks deterministic or random to a sufficiently distant observer, then all empirical questions depend on perceptual relativism. If this view is true, then it explains why other views, even when opposing each other, would seem to be the only possible truth. Each perspective is generated by exclusion of the truth of the others. It doesn't matter though, no amount of scientific evidence will budged your entrenched bias. I could easily think of evidence that would convince me, for example, that the moon landing was a hoax, but no conceivable evidence would have any bearing on the fact that everything is either determined or random, since this is true a priori. There is no a priori truth there at all. Your view is your choice. If it were a priori true, then I could not conceive of a third option other than randomness or determinism, but obviously both of those options are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain intention. I could claim that random events in my brain are a manifestation of the mental acting on the physical but that's meaningless, since there is no substantive difference between that claim and its contradiction. Except for the constant waking experience of every human being in history. But don't let that count for anything. You haven't explained what difference it would make if random events in my brain ARE or ARE NOT a manifestation of the mental acting on the physical. It's not a simple matter of mental acting on physical. It is multiple levels of private and public physical acting on each other. The difference is that we have a realistic physics driven by experience, or we have a meaningless jumble of computations that accidentally thinks that its an experience. You have to ask yourself 'Am I having an experience, or is the world which I think I experience the side effect of a compression algorithm which exists for no reason?' The answer to that is actually an IQ test. If you are dumb enough to disavow the profound reality of your experience - if it is a higher priority for you to remain impartial on the question of your own existence, then you deserve to live in a world in which you have no free will and are a computer program. It seems to me that I would feel exactly the same in both cases and someone examining my brain would observe exactly the same things in both cases. Do you disagree? Yes. This has nothing to do with what someone would see looking at your brain. Consciousness isn't visible in the brain, so by that criteria, its not just free will that doesn't exist, it's color, sound, feeling, flavor, beauty, thinking, science, etc. What matters is how to justify the feeling that we clearly and obviously have free will. We distinguish between voluntary and involuntary muscles quite easily. Some processes of our body, like breathing or blinking, we share with reflex. What could this mean in a world of determinism? Why would I feel that I can blink intentionally but also unintentionally? Once you stop trying to reconcile the private qualia of free will with public bodies (which you should know already can never work and does not stop qualia from being the most important factors in our individual and collective life), then you can get on to examining what this particular private qualia really means, how it cannot be simulated, and why it is more primitive than causality itself. It has to be either random or determined. Says who? The entity whose every uttering is a random or determined jittering of meaningless neural activity? Yes, and everyone else who understands what random and determined mean, including apparently Tse. So you admit that what you say contradicts the fact that you are intentionally saying it? Intentional, as far as I can understand its use in philosophy, is more or less equivalent to mental or conscious. No. You can be conscious of an unintentional act. A spasm for example. Intention is explicit, primitive, and obvious to the subject. You
The roles of efficient causation and final causation in the double aspect theory of mind
The roles of efficient causation and final causation in the double aspect theory of mind The double aspect theory of mind considers the brain and its actions according to two aspects, the brain and the mind. There is no assignment of causation, there is only correlation. Leibniz's metaphysics, on the other hand, allows for two forms of causation. All bodies have various degrees of each type and his pre-established harmony guarantees that no conflicts result. Efficient causation, which is deterministic and therefore not goal-oriented, is characteristic of physical objects such as the brain. At the same time, the state of the brain or nervous system can cause changes in the mind, such as occurs in perception. Final causation is characteristic of mind, which Leibniz stipulates to be present in various degrees in all bodies, even physical bodies. However, it is present to a higher degree in living bodies, such as living brain, plant life, animals and man. What Leibniz calls Spirit what we commonly refer to as soul in human monads, which have intellectual faculties. He calls Soul the controlling/perceiving feature of this entity present in animals and plants, and bare, naked soul its The physical body, being in spacetime, is what science, such as thermodynamics and the Second Law, deal with, causation is deterministic and the body is propelled by efficient causes. The mental or spiritual component of a monad is not physical and so is not controlled and not controls by its perspections and appetites, the former being its overall state (where and how it is mentally or spiritually) and the latter its intentions, desires, where it intends to go next. Where it intends to go next, since it is alive, is goal-oriented or purposeful to various degrees, so that most human mental action, such as thinking, must be goal-oriented to some extend. -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: measure problem
Hi Stephen, That's a nice read but written under the materialist assumption so doesn't really apply to my question. Terren On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 3/3/2013 12:37 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi, When Bruno claims that physics can be derived from the UD, would a proof of that represent, on some level, a (partial) solution to the measure problem? Terren -- Hi Terren, It would seem so, or more accurately the other-way around. I just found this paperhttp://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Tong_integers.pdfwhich has as an abstract: I review how discrete structures, embodied in the integers, appear in the laws of physics, from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics to the Standard Model. I argue that the integers are emergent. If we are looking to build the future laws of physics, discrete mathematics is no better a starting point than the rules of scrabble. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On 03 Mar 2013, at 01:46, meekerdb wrote: On 3/2/2013 1:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Mar 2013, at 21:02, meekerdb wrote: On 3/1/2013 9:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: In physics we sometimes get big numbers, like 10^88 or 10^120, but we never need 10^120 + 1. But physics is no more assumed in the TOE derived from comp. I'll bet you've never needed to calculate 10^120 + 1 in the world whose TOE is derived from comp either. :-) False. because now I need to calculate it to make my point: 10^120 + 1 = 100 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 I told you, an infinitesimal! Nothing compare to the finite, but really huge, number that I described some years ago, to illustrate some use of diagonalization, on this list (omega + [omega] + omega, if you remember). I'll be you haven't added 1 to it. :-) I did :) But I don't want to get us involve in a two easy infinite conversation. So I kept is for myself :) The number of chess games is about 10^120. The number of GO games is far bigger. And string theory points on 10^500 theories. Exactly why almost all chess, go games, and string theories are uninteresting. The number of possible brain connection, and thus possible subjective state is about equal to 60,000 ^ 10. Does that makes all brains non interesting? No, it makes almost all (in the technical sense) brain states uninteresting - they correspond to insanities. Our task is the open task of delimiting sanities from insanities. and helping a flow from the second to the first. The number of sane brain is also very huge, I mean that type of numbers, but also, they are exquisitely complex, in the theoretical computer science hierachies, even starting from elementary beliefs in arithmetic. Look, if you argue seriously that comp is not interesting because it uses that for all x we have x ≠ x + 1, I think most people will conclude that comp is winning. No, many interesting theories assume that - but I wonder how essential it is. It certainly produces antinonmies like Hilbert's hotel and Godel's incompleteness. But that is solved in ZF, and first order arithmetic has never led to any antinomies. On the contrary it is part of the finitist part Hilbert wanted to solved the antinomies in set theory. And my friends the Roses have never seen a gardener dying. Some rare Roses have heard rumors that can happen, but all rational Roses knows that belong to fiction. Frankly, for a logician, 10^100 looks really like an infinitesimal :) And to mathematicians too, almost all numbers are infinitesimal. Hmm... It depends of the context. The cardinal of the monstrous finite simple group is usually considered as a big number, as nobody expected such a big number to occur there. And 10^-122 was a surprisingly big number to physicists measuring the vacuum energy density - because they expected it to be zero. Indeed. Compared to 1/(omega+[omega]+omega), the number 10^-122 is an incredible giant. Bruno Brent -- http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: measure problem
On 03 Mar 2013, at 06:37, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi, When Bruno claims that physics can be derived from the UD, would a proof of that represent, on some level, a (partial) solution to the measure problem? Yes. UDA gives the large shape (cf Plato versus Aristotle), and the translation in arithmetic gives already a quantum logic, and the open problems we need to solve and to progress. It would astonishing that the Theaetetus gives directly physics, without change in the theory of knowledge, but up to now, the TOY theory works, thanks to QM. But the task is big and we are at the beginning, and that why I present this often as a translation of the mind body problem into arithmetic/computer science. Bruno Terren -- 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?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The roles of efficient causation and final causation in the double aspect...
Questions. In your opinion, are Leibniz's monads individual thoughts, are the just another word for the soul, the who thing wrapped up together? How do these monads become part of the human brain? Are they generated by the brain, or do they emit out of some Platonic realm, to activate the neurochemicals that the brain, as part of the body is? Thanks. Mitch -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 3/2/2013 11:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: So you admit that what you say contradicts the fact that you are intentionally saying it? Intentional, as far as I can understand its use in philosophy, is more or less equivalent to mental or conscious. You seem to take it as an a priori fact that something that is either deterministic or random cannot have intentionality. This seems to me obviously wrong. Me too. Intentionality just consists in having a hierarchy of goals which drive actions. To say something is done intentionally just means it is done pursuant to some goal. When the Mars rover steers around rock it does so intentionally in order to reach some place beyond which is a higher level goal. Brent -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: measure problem
On 3/3/2013 10:11 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Stephen, That's a nice read but written under the materialist assumption so doesn't really apply to my question. Terren Hi Terren, Hummm, I can translate it in my mind over to the dual... On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/3/2013 12:37 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi, When Bruno claims that physics can be derived from the UD, would a proof of that represent, on some level, a (partial) solution to the measure problem? Terren -- Hi Terren, It would seem so, or more accurately the other-way around. I just found this paper http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Tong_integers.pdf which has as an abstract: I review how discrete structures, embodied in the integers, appear in the laws of physics, from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics to the Standard Model. I argue that the integers are emergent. If we are looking to build the future laws of physics, discrete mathematics is no better a starting point than the rules of scrabble. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Sunday, March 3, 2013 2:35:10 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: On 3/2/2013 11:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: So you admit that what you say contradicts the fact that you are intentionally saying it? Intentional, as far as I can understand its use in philosophy, is more or less equivalent to mental or conscious. You seem to take it as an a priori fact that something that is either deterministic or random cannot have intentionality. This seems to me obviously wrong. Me too. Intentionality just consists in having a hierarchy of goals which drive actions. To say something is done intentionally just means it is done pursuant to some goal. When the Mars rover steers around rock it does so intentionally in order to reach some place beyond which is a higher level goal. Goals which drive actions are not necessary nor sufficient to define intention. If Jimmy slaps a kid in school, it doesn't matter whether there was a hierarchy of goals which drive his actions. If Jimmy suffers from a motor coordination disease, and slaps someone because of that, it doesn't matter whether the outcome of that action furthers his position in some way theoretically, as long as it was the disease making his arms flail around rather than a personal action, then the slap is unintentional. Most things that are done intentionally are not done to serve a goal. We might doodle on a piece of paper intentionally for no other reason than that we are bored. We waste time and money, we countermand the goals of evolution and mechanism to do all kinds of everyday pastimes, like keeping up with sports statistics or watching a movie that we've already seen. Intention doesn't have to take us anywhere, it is just the way that we participate directly in our sensory context. Craig Brent -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The roles of efficient causation and final causation in the double aspect...
Mitch, My opinion is that monads are everywhere at a density of 10^90/cc, and they precipitated out of space in the big bang http://yanniru.blogspot.com/2013/ Richard On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 12:46 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Questions. In your opinion, are Leibniz's monads individual thoughts, are the just another word for the soul, the who thing wrapped up together? How do these monads become part of the human brain? Are they generated by the brain, or do they emit out of some Platonic realm, to activate the neurochemicals that the brain, as part of the body is? Thanks. Mitch -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The roles of efficient causation and final causation in the double aspect...
In a message dated 3/3/2013 3:30:06 PM Eastern Standard Time, yann...@gmail.com writes: Mitch, My opinion is that monads are everywhere at a density of 10^90/cc, and they precipitated out of space in the big bang http://yanniru.blogspot.com/2013/ Richard Thanks, Richard. So you view monads appearing with the Big Bang, at the Planck Cell level of the universe? Let me see your website in a bit to better understand what you are saying. I will be following up with questions on the nature of these monads. Mitch -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: measure problem
Ok, maybe I'm missing something but I'm not sure how a paper that assumes physics can say anything about how physics might emerge from arithmetic. On Mar 3, 2013 2:49 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/3/2013 10:11 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Stephen, That's a nice read but written under the materialist assumption so doesn't really apply to my question. Terren Hi Terren, Hummm, I can translate it in my mind over to the dual... On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 3/3/2013 12:37 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi, When Bruno claims that physics can be derived from the UD, would a proof of that represent, on some level, a (partial) solution to the measure problem? Terren -- Hi Terren, It would seem so, or more accurately the other-way around. I just found this paperhttp://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Tong_integers.pdfwhich has as an abstract: I review how discrete structures, embodied in the integers, appear in the laws of physics, from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics to the Standard Model. I argue that the integers are emergent. If we are looking to build the future laws of physics, discrete mathematics is no better a starting point than the rules of scrabble. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The roles of efficient causation and final causation in the double aspect...
Richard, a very good paper you have there. The Mindspace recording mechanism you invoked sounds exactly like the Hindu akashic records feature to their religion. For people like myself, you'd need to expand on the particular physics of the recording, such as what is analogous to the read-write head, and what is analogous to disk memory? Yes, indeed, as the Japanese expression goes: To a hammer, everything in the world looks like a nail. But it would be helpful to see the How of the Recording might physically occur? Are Leibniz's monads emerging from a virtual space, a phase space, a Platonian great beyond? Are these monads conscious, semi-consciousness waiting a brain to actualize them? It sounds also like not only Tegmark, but Beckenstein, with the Beckenstein Bound (1 x 10^120). How could or does intelligence make use of this aspect of the universe, if it at all can? Its a bit like Stephen Wolfram thinking, he can re-create the knowledge of unknown extra-terrrestial life, if we, but merely, compute it properly, and extract the useful data. Wolfram has not spoken at all on this, since he made his conjecture over ten years ago. Perhpas it was a bit of flipancy on his part? Very good paper(s) at your site, indeed. Thanks. -Mitch -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: measure problem
On 3/3/2013 3:43 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Ok, maybe I'm missing something but I'm not sure how a paper that assumes physics can say anything about how physics might emerge from arithmetic. Check out this paper: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf On Mar 3, 2013 2:49 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/3/2013 10:11 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Stephen, That's a nice read but written under the materialist assumption so doesn't really apply to my question. Terren Hi Terren, Hummm, I can translate it in my mind over to the dual... On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/3/2013 12:37 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi, When Bruno claims that physics can be derived from the UD, would a proof of that represent, on some level, a (partial) solution to the measure problem? Terren -- Hi Terren, It would seem so, or more accurately the other-way around. I just found this paper http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Tong_integers.pdf which has as an abstract: I review how discrete structures, embodied in the integers, appear in the laws of physics, from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics to the Standard Model. I argue that the integers are emergent. If we are looking to build the future laws of physics, discrete mathematics is no better a starting point than the rules of scrabble. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I could easily think of evidence that would convince me, for example, that the moon landing was a hoax, but no conceivable evidence would have any bearing on the fact that everything is either determined or random, since this is true a priori. There is no a priori truth there at all. Your view is your choice. If it were a priori true, then I could not conceive of a third option other than randomness or determinism, but obviously both of those options are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain intention. I don't think you *can* conceive of a third option. I think you're just saying you can, like saying that you can conceive of a four-sided triangle. You haven't explained what difference it would make if random events in my brain ARE or ARE NOT a manifestation of the mental acting on the physical. It's not a simple matter of mental acting on physical. It is multiple levels of private and public physical acting on each other. The difference is that we have a realistic physics driven by experience, or we have a meaningless jumble of computations that accidentally thinks that its an experience. You have to ask yourself 'Am I having an experience, or is the world which I think I experience the side effect of a compression algorithm which exists for no reason?' The answer to that is actually an IQ test. If you are dumb enough to disavow the profound reality of your experience - if it is a higher priority for you to remain impartial on the question of your own existence, then you deserve to live in a world in which you have no free will and are a computer program. I don't doubt that I have experiences and that I exist, I doubt your claim that this is incompatible with mechanism. It seems to me that I would feel exactly the same in both cases and someone examining my brain would observe exactly the same things in both cases. Do you disagree? Yes. This has nothing to do with what someone would see looking at your brain. Consciousness isn't visible in the brain, so by that criteria, its not just free will that doesn't exist, it's color, sound, feeling, flavor, beauty, thinking, science, etc. What matters is how to justify the feeling that we clearly and obviously have free will. We distinguish between voluntary and involuntary muscles quite easily. Some processes of our body, like breathing or blinking, we share with reflex. What could this mean in a world of determinism? Why would I feel that I can blink intentionally but also unintentionally? The voluntary actions are those where cognition plays a part and the involuntary actions are those where it doesn't. This says nothing about whether cognition is based on deterministic processes or not. From mere introspection, I haven't any clue that I even have a brain, let alone whether it is deterministic or not. Intentional, as far as I can understand its use in philosophy, is more or less equivalent to mental or conscious. No. You can be conscious of an unintentional act. A spasm for example. Intention is explicit, primitive, and obvious to the subject. Perhaps that is what intentional should mean, but the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines it differently. This is why we have to be clear about what we mean by the terms we are using. Operational definitions are usually easier. http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/intentionality/ You seem to take it as an a priori fact that something that is either deterministic or random cannot have intentionality. To the contrary, I think that all appearances of determinism or randomness reflect an disconnection from an intention on some scale. Why is that contrary to what I said? Do you believe it is possible for a deterministic or random system to have intentionality? This seems to me obviously wrong. I can easily conceive of my brain being either deterministic or random and, at the same time, being conscious. If it was random, how would it be conscious? By accident? If it was deterministic, why would it be conscious? Why would there be a such thing as conscious either way? Randomness can be random and determinism can be deterministic without consciousness. I don't really understand your argument. If my very existence in the world is an accident why couldn't my consciousness also be an accident? It's a legitimate question to ask why consciousness should exist at all, since evolution would have done just as well with zombies. The most plausible explanation is that consciousness is a necessary side-effect of intelligence. Even incompatibilists can see this. They claim that if the world is deterministic then free will is a delusion, not that consciousness is a delusion. It's complicated because we have a lot of different levels of participation. It's qualia, not quanta, so there is a huge variety of contexts in which we participate to different degrees of
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Sunday, March 3, 2013 6:54:27 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: I could easily think of evidence that would convince me, for example, that the moon landing was a hoax, but no conceivable evidence would have any bearing on the fact that everything is either determined or random, since this is true a priori. There is no a priori truth there at all. Your view is your choice. If it were a priori true, then I could not conceive of a third option other than randomness or determinism, but obviously both of those options are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain intention. I don't think you *can* conceive of a third option. I think you're just saying you can, like saying that you can conceive of a four-sided triangle. I don't have to conceive of a third option, my will embodies it. That's why you are missing the obvious. You are filtering every possibility as a posteriori to intellect, but you don't see that intellect itself only makes sense as part of this third option. It isn't the third option, it's the first and only option, with randomness and determinism being two halves of its reflection. You haven't explained what difference it would make if random events in my brain ARE or ARE NOT a manifestation of the mental acting on the physical. It's not a simple matter of mental acting on physical. It is multiple levels of private and public physical acting on each other. The difference is that we have a realistic physics driven by experience, or we have a meaningless jumble of computations that accidentally thinks that its an experience. You have to ask yourself 'Am I having an experience, or is the world which I think I experience the side effect of a compression algorithm which exists for no reason?' The answer to that is actually an IQ test. If you are dumb enough to disavow the profound reality of your experience - if it is a higher priority for you to remain impartial on the question of your own existence, then you deserve to live in a world in which you have no free will and are a computer program. I don't doubt that I have experiences and that I exist, I doubt your claim that this is incompatible with mechanism. I don't think that mechanism is incompatible with exclusive awareness, but awareness is incompatible with exclusive mechanism. You are welcome to doubt, but can you say that this doubt is based on anything more substantial than a desire to find a way of making awareness fit into your understanding of nature as mechanism? It seems to me that I would feel exactly the same in both cases and someone examining my brain would observe exactly the same things in both cases. Do you disagree? Yes. This has nothing to do with what someone would see looking at your brain. Consciousness isn't visible in the brain, so by that criteria, its not just free will that doesn't exist, it's color, sound, feeling, flavor, beauty, thinking, science, etc. What matters is how to justify the feeling that we clearly and obviously have free will. We distinguish between voluntary and involuntary muscles quite easily. Some processes of our body, like breathing or blinking, we share with reflex. What could this mean in a world of determinism? Why would I feel that I can blink intentionally but also unintentionally? The voluntary actions are those where cognition plays a part Voluntary action is more primitive than cognition. Thinking, paying attention, making decisions, etc require first that there is a capacity for participation. Cognition is a range of activities which we can participate in, some voluntary (like speaking or writing), some involuntary (like worrying), and some a combination (like deciding what position to take in a debate). and the involuntary actions are those where it doesn't. I hope you see why that isn't true. Much of our cognition is not entirely voluntary, and not all of our voluntary participation is strictly cognitive. The great basketball player might not have any cognitive awareness of their moves on the court, but that doesn't mean that they cannot control them precisely and voluntarily. This says nothing about whether cognition is based on deterministic processes or not. From mere introspection, I haven't any clue that I even have a brain, let alone whether it is deterministic or not. It's only through the senses of your body that you have a belief that you have a brain. That you choose to take one set of experiences as indicating truth and another as 'mere' introspection is itself mere introspection. Intentional, as far as I can understand its use in philosophy, is more or less equivalent to mental or conscious. No. You can be conscious of an unintentional act. A spasm for
Re: The roles of efficient causation and final causation in the double aspect...
On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 4:00 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Richard, a very good paper you have there. The Mindspace recording mechanism you invoked sounds exactly like the Hindu akashic records feature to their religion. For people like myself, you'd need to expand on the particular physics of the recording, such as what is analogous to the read-write head, and what is analogous to disk memory? The recording mechanism is a product of computation. The CY particles in a cubic lattice (BTW they are 1000 planck lengths across according to Yau) compute everything that could possibly happen anywhere and anytime. If MWI is correct, then everything that could happen does happen and its all written in the Mindspace ahead of and behind time. If SWI is correct, then everything possible is still written in the virtual Mindspace but only a small part (one world) becomes physical and which part is physical also is written there. I cannot say much about the actual recording mechanism. It appears that the flux that compactifies 6 space dimensions (and is also somewhat like eigenfunctions if not actually)-- that the flux is part of the computation process. The flux may even be what consciousness is made out of. Anyway the results of computation determines the configuration of the flux. The flux BTW is a higher- order kind of EM flux. As I said in the paper, only flux and dimension seem to be fundamental to string theory, and dimension can be computed. So maybe flux (or consciousness) is fundamental. During the Big Bang the flux creates a number system out of Calabi-Yau compact manifolds, which in turn makes mathematics from the natural numbers, which in turn makes mind and matter. Consciousness-Math-Mind-Matter-Life After all most eastern religions say that consciousness is where everything comes from. Yes, indeed, as the Japanese expression goes: To a hammer, everything in the world looks like a nail. But it would be helpful to see the How of the Recording might physically occur? It does not happen physically. The recording of everything that will or has happened is in the virtual mindspace Are Leibniz's monads emerging from a virtual space, a phase space, a Platonian great beyond? They exist in a singular physical space (like the non-zero volume of a black hole singularity) as 9 uniform, orthogonal space dimensions, 3 of which inflate as 6 dimnesions curl up into the CY particles or monads during the Big Bang. Are these monads conscious, semi-consciousness waiting a brain to actualize them? I did not write about that in the paper, but each monad appears to see or sense every other monad in the universe instantly. So they have extreme awareness, something the Buddhists attribute to Indra's jeweles. The monads compute the brain. The monads actualize everything physical. It sounds also like not only Tegmark, but Beckenstein, with the Beckenstein Bound (1 x 10^120). I believe the Lloyd limit is the same as the Bekenstein-Hawking Bound for a black hole S=kA/4 where A is the surface area of the black hole. The number you quote is the result if you use for A the area of the observable universe. Then it's called the Lloyd limit. How could or does intelligence make use of this aspect of the universe, if it at all can? I would say that the computations that the monads are capable of are intelligent when the resources (comp power) required are within that bound; and the conjecture is that consciousness emerges when the required comp power in bits of information exceed that bound (not to be confused with the speculation above that flux is consciousness) Its a bit like Stephen Wolfram thinking, he can re-create the knowledge of unknown extra-terrrestial life, if we, but merely, compute it properly, and extract the useful data. Wolfram has not spoken at all on this, since he made his conjecture over ten years ago. Perhpas it was a bit of flipancy on his part? Like I said in the paper, Tegmark was not the first one with a math ToE but perhaps the most famous. I did not know about Wolfram's statement. I bet that such thinking goes way back to Pythagoras. I agree that Pythagoras is more famous than Tegmark. I sent the paper to Tegmark last week but have not heard back. He may have thrown it into the crack pot. Richard Very good paper(s) at your site, indeed. Thanks. The second paper down speaks more about the recording process and motivates the 14/12 dimension split between the Metaverse and the universe. Thanks for the kudos Richard -Mitch -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. --
Re: measure problem
Well if what emerges from comp is not physics, then physics refutes comp. So that means that you can use physics to say what comp must emerge. On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, maybe I'm missing something but I'm not sure how a paper that assumes physics can say anything about how physics might emerge from arithmetic. On Mar 3, 2013 2:49 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/3/2013 10:11 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Stephen, That's a nice read but written under the materialist assumption so doesn't really apply to my question. Terren Hi Terren, Hummm, I can translate it in my mind over to the dual... On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/3/2013 12:37 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi, When Bruno claims that physics can be derived from the UD, would a proof of that represent, on some level, a (partial) solution to the measure problem? Terren -- Hi Terren, It would seem so, or more accurately the other-way around. I just found this paper which has as an abstract: I review how discrete structures, embodied in the integers, appear in the laws of physics, from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics to the Standard Model. I argue that the integers are emergent. If we are looking to build the future laws of physics, discrete mathematics is no better a starting point than the rules of scrabble. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: measure problem
On 3/3/2013 8:17 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: Well if what emerges from comp is not physics, then physics refutes comp. So that means that you can use physics to say what comp must emerge. what is proposed is that both comp and physics are co-emergent and co-defining. Neither is ontologically primitive. On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, maybe I'm missing something but I'm not sure how a paper that assumes physics can say anything about how physics might emerge from arithmetic. On Mar 3, 2013 2:49 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/3/2013 10:11 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Stephen, That's a nice read but written under the materialist assumption so doesn't really apply to my question. Terren Hi Terren, Hummm, I can translate it in my mind over to the dual... On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 3/3/2013 12:37 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi, When Bruno claims that physics can be derived from the UD, would a proof of that represent, on some level, a (partial) solution to the measure problem? Terren -- Hi Terren, It would seem so, or more accurately the other-way around. I just found this paper which has as an abstract: I review how discrete structures, embodied in the integers, appear in the laws of physics, from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics to the Standard Model. I argue that the integers are emergent. If we are looking to build the future laws of physics, discrete mathematics is no better a starting point than the rules of scrabble. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Ectopic Eyes Experient: Supports my view of sense, Invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes.
Supports my view of sense, Invalidates mechanistic assumptions about eyes. The genie about the reality of sense just doesn't seem to want to stay in the bottle... Craig http://www.newswise.com/articles/ectopic-eyes-function-without-connection-to-brain *Experiments with tadpoles show ectopic eyes that see* Newswise — MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (February 27, 2013) – For the first time, scientists have shown that transplanted eyes located far outside the head in a vertebrate animal model can confer vision without a direct neural connection to the brain. Biologists at Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences used a frog model to shed new light – literally – on one of the major questions in regenerative medicine, bioengineering, and sensory augmentation research. One of the big challenges is to understand how the brain and body adapt to large changes in organization, says Douglas J. Blackiston, Ph.D., first author of the paper Ectopic Eyes Outside the Head in Xenopus Tadpoles Provide Sensory Data For Light-Mediated Learning, in the February 27 issue of the *Journal of Experimental Biology*. Here, our research reveals the brain's remarkable ability, or plasticity, to process visual data coming from misplaced eyes, even when they are located far from the head.” Blackiston is a post-doctoral associate in the laboratory of co-author Michael Levin, Ph.D., professor of biology and director of the Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology at Tufts University. Levin notes, A primary goal in medicine is to one day be able to restore the function of damaged or missing sensory structures through the use of biological or artificial replacement components. There are many implications of this study, but the primary one from a medical standpoint is that we may not need to make specific connections to the brain when treating sensory disorders such as blindness. In this experiment, the team surgically removed donor embryo eye primordia, marked with fluorescent proteins, and grafted them into the posterior region of recipient embryos. This induced the growth of ectopic eyes. The recipients’ natural eyes were removed, leaving only the ectopic eyes. Fluorescence microscopy revealed various innervation patterns but none of the animals developed nerves that connected the ectopic eyes to the brain or cranial region. To determine if the ectopic eyes conveyed visual information, the team developed a computer-controlled visual training system in which quadrants of water were illuminated by either red or blue LED lights. The system could administer a mild electric shock to tadpoles swimming in a particular quadrant. A motion tracking system outfitted with a camera and a computer program allowed the scientists to monitor and record the tadpoles' motion and speed. Eyes See Without Wiring to Brain The team made exciting discoveries: Just over 19 percent of the animals with optic nerves that connected to the spine demonstrated learned responses to the lights. They swam away from the red light while the blue light stimulated natural movement. Their response to the lights elicited during the experiments was no different from that of a control group of tadpoles with natural eyes intact. Furthermore, this response was not demonstrated by eyeless tadpoles or tadpoles that did not receive any electrical shock. This has never been shown before, says Levin. No one would have guessed that eyes on the flank of a tadpole could see, especially when wired only to the spinal cord and not the brain. The findings suggest a remarkable plasticity in the brain’s ability to incorporate signals from various body regions into behavioral programs that had evolved with a specific and different body plan. Ectopic eyes performed visual function, says Blackiston. The brain recognized visual data from eyes that impinged on the spinal cord. We still need to determine if this plasticity in vertebrate brains extends to different ectopic organs or organs appropriate in different species. One of the most fascinating areas for future investigation, according to Blackiston and Levin, is the question of exactly how the brain recognizes that the electrical signals coming from tissue near the gut is to be interpreted as visual data. In computer engineering, notes Levin, who majored in computer science and biology as a Tufts undergraduate, this problem is usually solved by a header—a piece of metadata attached to a packet of information that indicates its source and type. Whether electric signals from eyes impinging on the spinal cord carry such an identifier of their origin remains a hypothesis to be tested. Research reported in this publication was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under award number MH081842-02 and the National Eye Institute, also
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think you *can* conceive of a third option. I think you're just saying you can, like saying that you can conceive of a four-sided triangle. I don't have to conceive of a third option, my will embodies it. That's why you are missing the obvious. You are filtering every possibility as a posteriori to intellect, but you don't see that intellect itself only makes sense as part of this third option. It isn't the third option, it's the first and only option, with randomness and determinism being two halves of its reflection. I don't know what you mean by any of this. The question is whether my actions are entirely determined by antecedents, or not. This says nothing about whether cognition is based on deterministic processes or not. From mere introspection, I haven't any clue that I even have a brain, let alone whether it is deterministic or not. It's only through the senses of your body that you have a belief that you have a brain. That you choose to take one set of experiences as indicating truth and another as 'mere' introspection is itself mere introspection. By mere introspection I mean thinking in the absence of any empirical data that comes to me through the senses. I can't tell a lot from this, but you claim to be able to tell that science will not find that the brain is deterministic. So if tomorrow it is announced that beyond all reasonable doubt, human behaviour is governed by a complex clockwork mechanism, what will you do? Declare that there must be some mistake because the finding is a priori impossible? Why is that contrary to what I said? Do you believe it is possible for a deterministic or random system to have intentionality? Only if intention was already a possibility to begin with. If the universe was exclusively deterministic or random, then where would intention come from, and why? Beyond that, how would it ever become aware of itself, and if it could, how could it doubt that awareness of itself? It's about as likely as this conversation turning into a Big Mac. Well obviously, if the universe is deterministic or random, intention comes from that. I don't see the problem you have with it. Hamburgers did not exist before the Big Bang, but now we have hamburgers. On other planets, they may not have hamburgers. Do we have to explain this in terms of a special essence of hamburger separate from regular matter and energy? I don't really understand your argument. If my very existence in the world is an accident why couldn't my consciousness also be an accident? If the world is made of things, then you are going to be one of those things whether you call it an accident or not. Why there should be a such thing as consciousness though, doesn't make any sense in a world of exclusively accidental things. Again, it's an ontological problem - you can't have nonsense without sense. You can't have an accident before you have something which has an expectation of 'on-purpose', and you can't have an expectation of on-purpose in a universe where it isn't possible to conceive of 'on-purpose'. Why doesn't consciousness make sense in an accidental or deterministic world? If I accidentally end up with arms and legs why can't I also accidentally end up with consciousness? It's a legitimate question to ask why consciousness should exist at all, since evolution would have done just as well with zombies. That's the key point. The most plausible explanation is that consciousness is a necessary side-effect of intelligence. Why would it be? Why would consciousness assist intelligence any more than it would evolution? Even if it did, how does intelligence suddenly conjure phenomenology out of thin air? As I keep pointing out, time travel, invisibility, or the ability to turn into a rock when threatened would be infinitely more plausible and effective. It appears that when you have intelligence, goals, self-reflection and so forth you also have consciousness. This is a deduction from observing the types of things that we believe have consciousness. It's perhaps a bit mysterious, but you haven't said anything that makes it any less mysterious, while you have said many things that are irrational or ad hoc, such as your claim that you know from your feeling of free will that your brain is not deterministic. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Sunday, March 3, 2013 11:02:02 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: I don't think you *can* conceive of a third option. I think you're just saying you can, like saying that you can conceive of a four-sided triangle. I don't have to conceive of a third option, my will embodies it. That's why you are missing the obvious. You are filtering every possibility as a posteriori to intellect, but you don't see that intellect itself only makes sense as part of this third option. It isn't the third option, it's the first and only option, with randomness and determinism being two halves of its reflection. I don't know what you mean by any of this. The question is whether my actions are entirely determined by antecedents, or not. I see the question as being how there could be a such thing as actions which are 'yours' in a deterministic universe, This says nothing about whether cognition is based on deterministic processes or not. From mere introspection, I haven't any clue that I even have a brain, let alone whether it is deterministic or not. It's only through the senses of your body that you have a belief that you have a brain. That you choose to take one set of experiences as indicating truth and another as 'mere' introspection is itself mere introspection. By mere introspection I mean thinking in the absence of any empirical data that comes to me through the senses. You only think that you have data that comes to you through your senses because your introspective qualia defines it that way for you. I can't tell a lot from this, but you claim to be able to tell that science will not find that the brain is deterministic. It's not an important question. What matters is that determinism itself is a shadow or reflection of intention. So if tomorrow it is announced that beyond all reasonable doubt, human behaviour is governed by a complex clockwork mechanism, what will you do? It's not a realistic suggestion. You are saying, 'imagine tomorrow that they discover that circles are absolutely square'. They won't, not because I care whether they would or not, or that it would upset me, but because I understand why it can't happen. Fully half of the universe is not governed by mechanism. Declare that there must be some mistake because the finding is a priori impossible? I wouldn't need to declare anything, because they will be disgraced eventually on their own. Why is that contrary to what I said? Do you believe it is possible for a deterministic or random system to have intentionality? Only if intention was already a possibility to begin with. If the universe was exclusively deterministic or random, then where would intention come from, and why? Beyond that, how would it ever become aware of itself, and if it could, how could it doubt that awareness of itself? It's about as likely as this conversation turning into a Big Mac. Well obviously, if the universe is deterministic or random, intention comes from that. That's begging the question. If the universe is black and white, does red come from that? It's worthless to reach for a nonsense solution like that. I don't see the problem you have with it. Hamburgers did not exist before the Big Bang, but now we have hamburgers. But hamburgers are a perfectly reasonable expectation from the Big Bang, given the nature of matter. On other planets, they may not have hamburgers. Do we have to explain this in terms of a special essence of hamburger separate from regular matter and energy? Who said anything about a special essence? I am saying that sense (intention) is the the fabric of the cosmos, and that there can certainly be no other. There could in theory be another universe where that isn't the case, but it won't have people living in it. I don't really understand your argument. If my very existence in the world is an accident why couldn't my consciousness also be an accident? If the world is made of things, then you are going to be one of those things whether you call it an accident or not. Why there should be a such thing as consciousness though, doesn't make any sense in a world of exclusively accidental things. Again, it's an ontological problem - you can't have nonsense without sense. You can't have an accident before you have something which has an expectation of 'on-purpose', and you can't have an expectation of on-purpose in a universe where it isn't possible to conceive of 'on-purpose'. Why doesn't consciousness make sense in an accidental or deterministic world? Because you are assuming an a priority possibility which you are then denying. It's not meaningful to say that a birthday cake can appear out of nowhere on the surface of the
