Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 10:45:10 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 13/03/2013, at 4:53 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: We're talking about the basic principle of determinism though. We should use a basic example of it. What special ingredient does complexity add which changes the nature of determinism? One stone rolling or a trillion digital stones rolling and colliding and sticking together and breaking apart - what difference does it make to the ontology of determinism? If you can't demonstrate that one carbon atom is intelligent or conscious does that mean that trillions of them together can't be either? If your model of physics doesn't include intelligence then it can't interpret any behaviors as intelligent or conscious. Determinism is not even physics, it is an ideology based on the behaviors of objects. The problem with it is that rather than making the obvious discovery that no amount of pure objects equals a subject, it tries to insert some cloud of endless possibilities in between one object and many objects which obscures the obvious. If trillions of something make a subject, then you have to explain why that should be the case - what deterministic purpose does the subject serve, how does it come to be even a possibility if it serves no purpose, etc. -- 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 Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:56:00 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 12/03/2013, at 12:30 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: No, it doesn't make sense to me that there would be a highly valued qualia of free will (and highly charged qualia of responsibility) if our participation did not actually contribute causally in determining the universe. A free spectator in a deterministic machine can feel no responsibility or presence. That many believe something or that something seems true at a gut level does not make it true. Sure, but if you understand why the belief has to be true ontologically, then it does strongly suggest that it could be true. If you can explain why a free spectator in a deterministic machine would feel presence or responsibility toward that machine, even though there is no possibility that they can change the machine in any way, then I would be interested in hearing about that. I was watching a CGI cartoon this morning and was noticing that the sterility of the medium must be fought every step of the way by the animators to inject some warmth and character. The digital medium is not neutral, it is anesthetically biased. Because computation is devoid both of the gravity of realism and the vitality of animation, the CGI animator must compensate with low level visual distractions at all times - plugging the holes in the audience's experience with lots of clever details. A non-CGI movie on a medium such as DVD is digitally encoded so is potentially generable by computer. Indeed, it is generable by a program enumerating all possible movies. Potentially but not necessarily actually. Copying a photograph pixel by pixel is not the same as generating an image. This is at the heart of the issue - the recognition of the different levels of quality of consciousness: Y1. detection: input/output - amplitude/intensity, frequency, presence/participation. Y2. sensation: color/tone, attraction/repulsion, association potential Y3. perception: image, experienced gestalt. Y4: feeling: episodic awareness, fluid continuum of perceptions. Y5: awareness: worldly embeddedness, narrative continuity, parallel experiences of others. Y6. consciousness: awareness of self as other, abstract thought and language. Y7: intuition: awareness of synchronicity, symbolic depths, super-personal archetypes Y8: fusion: identification with the eternal, loss of body identity, Satori/enlightenment/Nirvana Information processing is on the opposite axis. Where Y0 is Sense, X0 is the opposite - Logic. Logic replaces sense with a structure that can be referred to instead of relying on a subject's sensations and feelings. Logic is about controlling functions and needs no feelings at all (ask Mr. Spock's Dad). X1. information: low level discernment only - digital universal. Binary code. Bits. X-1. switching: a device used to register and store a discrete, testable state of a physical object. X2. Meta-data. Grouping of bits into bytes, Kb, Mb, Gb... Copy and paste. Sequential analysis. X-2. Meta-switches. Grouping of devices by division of labor. Routing and nesting of functions. X3. Programs. Logical groupings of functions which are composed independently of hardware but executed as data. X-3. Machines. Devices which compute, route, switch, execute programs (silently, invisibly, without experience) X4. Meta-programs. Self-extending programs which use logic to edit themselves. Turing Machines. X-4. Universal Machines. Devices driven by Meta-programs to modify their own hardware (or meta-software in Comp). That's just a rough run-down of course, my point is only to show that the considerations of information are completely perpendicular to those of sense. We use logic, we use computation, and computation and logic use us - but - we are not computation or logic, we are genuine sensory-motor experience which is anchored permanently into the on-and-only, authentically and concretely real narrative of eternity. Craig -- 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 Wednesday, March 13, 2013 6:51:56 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:18 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: But physics does describe how high you will decide to throw the ball, since physics describes the movement of the ball and the movement of the matter in your body. If you don't accept this then you believe that your body will behave CONTRARY TO PHYSICS. If you claim that you can use physics to decide exactly how high I will decide to throw the ball, then how exactly would you do it? How far in advance of my throwing the ball do you claim that you can know what I decide? Since I can decide right now approximately how far I will throw it 30 days from now, you would have to be able to predict my decision before this conversation. This is not contrary to physics, but your expectation is CONTRARY TO REALITY. There is no physical sign in my brain of how hard I will try to throw the ball. I could change it at the last minute also. I may not be able to predict what your brain will do 30 days from now, but that does not necessarily mean your brain is not deterministic. And it certainly doesn't mean your brain is neither deterministic nor probabilistic. But I *can* predict what my brain will do 30 days from now if I decide to do something in 30 days. That means that what is determining my brain's behavior (in addition to whatever physiological realities are in play) is my personal will. What you have not considered is that your assumptions about the universe could be based on jumping to the wrong conclusions about matter and consciousness. The physical system which is actually determining how high I will throw the basketball is not what you would see under a microscope with your body - billions of cells interacting in a microbiotic environment, or smaller still, quadrillions of molecules interacting in a nanoscale environment... the basketball doesn't exist there. What is physically determining the force on the ball is the part of me that knows about basketballs and throwing, and control of my body's actions in a world not of biochemistry but of people and real objects. These are the differences that matter - this is what the universe is made of; perceptual relativism. Top down, bottom up, center out, periphery in... all contribute, all make their own sense and motives. Your view is a toy model of bottom up behaviorism that has nothing to do with reality at all. Because of the plasticity of sense, the universe ensures that there will always be enough evidence for you to feel justified in pursuing and believing your view, just as it will ensure every view reflects enough of the whole truth that it can seem true enough. You think that the universe is a machine, but it is you who wants the universe to be a machine. There is a chain of causation between you reading these words and you throwing the ball. Where exactly do you think is the break in this causal chain? There is no break at all. Did you not see the part about top-down, bottom-up, center-out, and periphery-in causal influences all being dynamically interactive? When I make a decision about throwing the ball, the public symptoms of that decision can be seen as billions of simultaneous and near-simulataneous events, retro-causal events, premonitory events. That is what contrary to physics means! It would be easy to show that something funny was going on in a laboratory. I don't think that it is possible for you to understand what I am talking about. I understand what you mean completely though. No, I think you believe the brain does things by itself and you don't understand how an experiment could be set up to demonstrate this. When did I ever say that the brain does things by itself? Why do you keep pointing at this straw man? You could take a neuron and measure the transmembrane potential which will indicate according to our knowledge of physics that the neuron will not fire, but then observe that - CONTRARY TO PHYSICS - the neuron does fire. The whole point is that the transmembrane potential can and does change at any time. That's how neurons fire normally. You act as if everything that happens in the brain is a pinball machine where each neuron can only fire if another one tells it to fire. That is not at all how it is. Every neuron is an independent living organism which contributes directly to the chemical and electric environment of the brain... then there's the glial cells. How do you explain how they improve mouse brain performance without any electrical signalling? Do you know how the transmembrane potential is set? It is due to the difference between the sum of positive and negative ions on either side of the membrane. Do you know how
Re: Brain teaser
On 12 Mar 2013, at 14:55, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/12/2013 9:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Mar 2013, at 22:16, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/11/2013 9:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Mar 2013, at 21:51, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/10/2013 5:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Mar 2013, at 09:31, Stephen P. King wrote: OK, what generates or requires the stratification into levels? To ask a machine about herself (like in self-duplication experiences), you need to represent the machine in the language available to the machine. This generates the stratification. Hi, ...represent the machine (to the interviewer) in the language available to the machine... OK, like the links in a spreadsheet... It is more subtle than that. I will come back on this soon or later (on FOAR). It is more like defining a non founded relation in a founded structure. Is that not doing it backwards? Why not start with the non-well founded structure first and then show well founded substructures in it? Because we want to explain the complex things from the simpler one, not the contrary. So you seem to be OK with only using reductionism... ISTM that we should consider our ontological theory to have the most general primitives and build subtractively to our level. ? It is not reductionism. It is Occam razor. We should not introduce unnecessary hypotheses. It is not eliminativism nor reductionism, as it provides the most general notion at some other (epistemological) levels. Bruno 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: Toward a solution to the Arithmetic Body problem
On 12 Mar 2013, at 18:54, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/12/2013 12:22 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Mar 2013, at 14:10, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/12/2013 8:58 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: Dear Bruno, I have found a paper that seems to cover most of my thoughts about the arithmetic body problem: Models of axiomatic theories admitting automorphisms by A. Ehrenfeucht A. Mostowski http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/fm/fm43/fm4316.pdf More on related concepts are found in the Vaught conjecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaught_conjecture The topological Vaught conjecture is the statement that whenever a Polish group acts continuously on a Polish space, there are either countably many orbits or continuum many orbits. The topological Vaught conjecture is more general than the original Vaught conjecture: Given a countable language we can form the space of all structures on the natural numbers for that language. If we equip this with the topology generated by first order formulas, then it is known from A. Gregorczyk, A. Mostowski, C. Ryall-Nardzewski, Definability of sets of models of axiomatic theories, Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences (series Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics), vol. 9(1961), pp. 163–7 that the resulting space is Polish. There is a continuous action of the infinite symmetric group (the collection of all permutations of the natural numbers with the topology of point wise convergence) which gives rise to the equivalence relation of isomorphism. Given a complete first order theory T, the set of structures satisfying T is a minimal, closed invariant set, and hence Polish in its own right. Let me refine my concerns a bit. Is there a method to consider the Vaught conjecture on finite lattice approximations of Polish spaces? Please relate all this, as formally as in the Ehrenfeucht Mostowski paper, to what has already been solved, in the ideal toy case of simple ideally correct machine, at the propositional level (that is: the X, Z and S4Grz1) logics. There might be a way, but it sounds to me like a very difficult problem for expert in both provability logics and model theory. I think you will need the diagonal algebra of Magari. You will need to relate the work of the Italians, the Polish and the Georgians, hmm... That is a work for the Russians (the mathematicians!) :) I agree! ;-) Maybe there might already exist a solution in a Russian Journal now. I am trying to re-engage Pratt on this but I may have to go for alternatives, via Topos possibly. You can do that. The arithmetical topos is the one you can extract from the SGrz1 logic, by reversing the Boolos-Goldblatt morphism. Again the arithmetical topos will give the (non boolean) first person picture only. The inner god, or the universal, in Plotinus term. This is only 1/8 of the comp global picture. But it is important. As Plotinus understood, the soul as already a foot in matter, and the S4Grz1 logic is already quantum-like. Bruno -- 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. 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: Toward a solution to the Arithmetic Body problem
On 12 Mar 2013, at 19:31, Stephen P. King wrote: I suspect that we need to look at the associativity properties of the algebra as per Kevin Knuth's work: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0881 Really interesting, but hard to directlky used for the comp body problem, as it assumes too much physics. Yet, it might confirm some aspect of comp, a bit like string theory, but also topological computers. Bruno 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: Toward a solution to the Arithmetic Body problem
On 3/13/2013 12:22 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Mar 2013, at 18:54, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/12/2013 12:22 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Mar 2013, at 14:10, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/12/2013 8:58 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: Dear Bruno, I have found a paper that seems to cover most of my thoughts about the arithmetic body problem: Models of axiomatic theories admitting automorphisms by A. Ehrenfeucht A. Mostowski http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/fm/fm43/fm4316.pdf More on related concepts are found in the Vaught conjecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaught_conjecture The topological Vaught conjecture is the statement that whenever a Polish group acts continuously on a Polish space, there are either countably many orbits or continuum many orbits. The topological Vaught conjecture is more general than the original Vaught conjecture: Given a countable language we can form the space of all structures on the natural numbers for that language. If we equip this with the topology generated by first order formulas, then it is known from A. Gregorczyk, A. Mostowski, C. Ryall-Nardzewski, Definability of sets of models of axiomatic theories, Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences (series Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics), vol. 9(1961), pp. 163–7 that the resulting space is Polish. There is a continuous action of the infinite symmetric group (the collection of all permutations of the natural numbers with the topology of point wise convergence) which gives rise to the equivalence relation of isomorphism. Given a complete first order theory T, the set of structures satisfying T is a minimal, closed invariant set, and hence Polish in its own right. Let me refine my concerns a bit. Is there a method to consider the Vaught conjecture on finite lattice approximations of Polish spaces? Please relate all this, as formally as in the Ehrenfeucht Mostowski paper, to what has already been solved, in the ideal toy case of simple ideally correct machine, at the propositional level (that is: the X, Z and S4Grz1) logics. There might be a way, but it sounds to me like a very difficult problem for expert in both provability logics and model theory. I think you will need the diagonal algebra of Magari. You will need to relate the work of the Italians, the Polish and the Georgians, hmm... That is a work for the Russians (the mathematicians!) :) I agree! ;-) Maybe there might already exist a solution in a Russian Journal now. I am trying to re-engage Pratt on this but I may have to go for alternatives, via Topos possibly. You can do that. The arithmetical topos is the one you can extract from the SGrz1 logic, by reversing the Boolos-Goldblatt morphism. Again the arithmetical topos will give the (non boolean) first person picture only. The inner god, or the universal, in Plotinus term. This is only 1/8 of the comp global picture. But it is important. As Plotinus understood, the soul as already a foot in matter, and the S4Grz1 logic is already quantum-like. Hi Bruno, Nice, so to find more people that understand what a Boolos-Goldblatt morphism is and how to reverse it *and* how it might be parametrized is my mission. -- 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: Toward a solution to the Arithmetic Body problem
On 3/13/2013 12:28 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Mar 2013, at 19:31, Stephen P. King wrote: I suspect that we need to look at the associativity properties of the algebra as per Kevin Knuth's work: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0881 Really interesting, but hard to directly used for the comp body problem, as it assumes too much physics. Yet, it might confirm some aspect of comp, a bit like string theory, but also topological computers. Hi Bruno, That was my thought, yes. There is a strong connection between classical and quantum via the notion of an encrypted channel, as explored by Mike Stay. This research is so new that the ink has not dried on the papers yet... -- 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 Mon, Mar 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Your view is that emotion must be local to the brain There is no other logical conclusion to make given the FACT that if your brain chemistry changes your emotions change, AND if your emotions change your brain chemistry changes. There is no evidence to support the locality of emotional experience to neurochemistry, only that access to such experience is modulated locally. Modulated locally? OK so the brain neurochemistry can modulate happiness into sadness and love into hate and fear into calm and consciousness into unconsciousness, and all Santa Clauses workshop provides is a blank generic carrier wave. It sounds to me like Santa Clauses workshop is not very important and is in fact a bit of a bore. so I am trying to ask what role would it possibly serve. How can we justify its existence other than just saying Evolution did it. Well that's enough because Evolution most certainly did do it, and given the fact that Evolution can only see behavior and not consciousness the only logical conclusion to make is that consciousness must be the byproduct of something that Evolution can see, and intelligence seems to be the best bet. A data format is a schema of bits and bytes. It represents the encoding protocols which are required to be implemented for decoding. IT HAS ZERO TO DO with video or audio qualities. If that's true, if IT HAS ZERO TO DO with video or audio qualities then yes the computer couldn't tell if it was audio or video, but then neither could you. I can tell if it has video or audio qualities because I experience them directly with human perception. Baloney. If IT HAS ZERO TO DO with video or audio qualities then neither you nor anybody or anything can tell if it is audio or video because it is neither. IT HAS ZERO AUDIO OR VIDEO QUALITIES! John K Clark -- 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 Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: There is no reason to think that a deterministic universe universe had to have a beginning, or a non-deterministic one either for that matter. Then determinism, having no prior cause, violates determinism. No, every state in the universe would have a cause determined by a previous state of the universe, the fact there are a infinite number of such states is irrelevant. John K Clark -- 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 Wednesday, March 13, 2013 12:32:34 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: the phrase dragons exist or God exists is not gibberish just wrong, and free will is not even wrong. I'm saying that if free will doesn't exist and “free will” doesn't not exist then that’s just another way of saying that free will is gibberish. I'm not saying that free will doesn't exist though, I know, you’re not talking about something that does not exist, you’re talking about something that is not deterministic and not not deterministic. In other words you’re talking gibberish. It's mind boggling to me that you have no capacity to tolerate the obvious non-Aristotelian qualities of nature. The color white is not red, but since white cannot be made without using red wavelengths, then it can't be said that it is not not red either. Warm water can be said not to be hot but also not to be not hot either, in that it includes hot water mixed with cold. Where are you getting this fantasy expectation that everything fits into one box or the opposite box? Why do you put free will in a different category from dragons or God Because both dragons and God are well defined concepts, just concepts that don’t happen to have the attribute of existence. In contrast “free will” is not only incoherently defined it is every bit as self contradictory as the largest prime number is. Free will doesn't need to be defined because it is inescapable and obvious. Color doesn't need to be defined either, or hunger, or itching. When the computer reaches its goal we know because when it reaches the billionth digit of PI the machine will stop. The machines stops because the programmer has programmed it to stop, Yes. So what? Just exactly like you the program is the way it is for a reason OR it is the way it is for no reason. The reason that the machine stops has nothing to do with the goals of the machine. Your view has no way to accommodate the reality that meaning can be projected onto actions by the audience. To give a machine a full range of human emotions in your world is to simply use emoticons. A smiley face can't just be ASCII text, it must be a smile because how things look to you is how they must actually be. not because the machine had a goal which was satisfied. There is a huge difference. If there is a huge difference it’s a bit odd that you are unable to rationally describe even a tiny difference without just decreeing without evidence or argument that certain things do or do not have subjective states; and after all logically investigating those states is the entire point of the debate so your faith based assertions are not helpful. Do you believe that this ;-) has an emotion? Does the computer have an emotion about it? Do the bits in RAM or pixels on the screen have a feeling about what ;-) means? Why not? I can catch a mouse in a trap and the mouse will stop moving. True, and the mouse trap will stop moving too. You could make one that resets itself. What's the difference? That doesn't mean that the mouse has achieved some kind of personal mouse goal. Also true, not every living thing successfully reaches its goal and not everything even has a goal but the mouse trap certainly did, it was built to move very fast and then stop if it was touched, and that is exactly what happened. It could have been a child's finger broken in the trap instead. The trap would have broken it with exactly the same indifference. The mouse trap has no goal. And the motion of your thumb on the joystick of the computer game you were playing were sent into motion by the computer which will stop when it reaches its goal, the end of the game. I respond to the game voluntarily, So you responded the way you did for a reason, namely because you wanted to. The computer game responds the way it does for a reason too. 'Because I wanted to' is the opposite of 'because it is programmed to'. The former intentionally creates and initiates a sequence of actions, the latter executes and acts as a consequence of unintentional following. the game responds to me unconsciously As I said the entire point of this conversation is to investigate what is conscious and what is not, so for you to decree without evidence or argument that this this and this is conscious but that that and that is not just doesn’t get us very far. Consciousness itself cannot be accessed by third person evidence. That doesn't mean that we have no access to valid intuition and judgment beyond the evidence of objects. That gets us as far as we need to get. There might be a way to conduct some useful experiments to prove whether or not people can unconsciously detect the presence of living organisms. I'd be in favor of that, but I don't need it to know
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:36:36 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: There is no reason to think that a deterministic universe universe had to have a beginning, or a non-deterministic one either for that matter. Then determinism, having no prior cause, violates determinism. No, every state in the universe would have a cause determined by a previous state of the universe, the fact there are a infinite number of such states is irrelevant. You are not including determinism itself as a state in the universe. Craig John K Clark -- 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 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The computer as a whole is not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only looks like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our personal experience to relate to personally. At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not really being a computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. It's not a matter of how it could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. No you don't, or at least I don't. I experience many things but I don't experience being determined or not-determined. 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: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:14:00 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: Your view is that emotion must be local to the brain There is no other logical conclusion to make given the FACT that if your brain chemistry changes your emotions change, AND if your emotions change your brain chemistry changes. So if I type comments on my computer and I see your answers on my computer, then there is no other logical conclusion to make than that you live in my computer. There is no evidence to support the locality of emotional experience to neurochemistry, only that access to such experience is modulated locally. Modulated locally? OK so the brain neurochemistry can modulate happiness into sadness and love into hate and fear into calm and consciousness into unconsciousness, and all Santa Clauses workshop provides is a blank generic carrier wave. It sounds to me like Santa Clauses workshop is not very important and is in fact a bit of a bore. My computer shows your words and letters. It modulates your comments and meanings. So all you provide is a blank generic carrier wave for my computer to give form. so I am trying to ask what role would it possibly serve. How can we justify its existence other than just saying Evolution did it. Well that's enough because Evolution most certainly did do it, Because Evolution is God? and given the fact that Evolution can only see behavior and not consciousness the only logical conclusion to make is that consciousness must be the byproduct of something that Evolution can see, and intelligence seems to be the best bet. Except that intelligence could not benefit in any way by consciousness. A data format is a schema of bits and bytes. It represents the encoding protocols which are required to be implemented for decoding. IT HAS ZERO TO DO with video or audio qualities. If that's true, if IT HAS ZERO TO DO with video or audio qualities then yes the computer couldn't tell if it was audio or video, but then neither could you. I can tell if it has video or audio qualities because I experience them directly with human perception. Baloney. If IT HAS ZERO TO DO with video or audio qualities then neither you nor anybody or anything can tell if it is audio or video because it is neither. IT HAS ZERO AUDIO OR VIDEO QUALITIES! The file has no audio or video qualities, but certainly hearing music has audio qualities and seeing a video has video qualities. The point is that the computer can neither see or hear, and all that a camera or microphone does is convert video or audio phenomena into generic data for the blind, deaf, senseless computer. Craig John K Clark -- 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 Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The computer as a whole is not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only looks like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our personal experience to relate to personally. At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not really being a computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a person, saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then every part of the person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was correcting him saying that in fact a person is an animal through and through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels because of perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human, but we can be fooled. A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy. Please avoid putting words in my mouth - my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not likely to ever be conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid out above, but not the Y axis. It's not a matter of how it could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. No you don't, or at least I don't. I experience many things but I don't experience being determined or not-determined. If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being determined. If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts rather than the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you experience being not-determined. 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: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 3/13/2013 3:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The computer as a whole is not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only looks like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our personal experience to relate to personally. At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not really being a computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a person, saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then every part of the person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was correcting him saying that in fact a person is an animal through and through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels because of perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human, So you say. but we can be fooled. How do you're not already fooled; that what you take to be humans beings really are computers - including yourself? A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy. Please avoid putting words in my mouth - The above was a direct quote extracted from your email. my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not likely to ever be conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid out above, but not the Y axis. It's not a matter of how it could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. No you don't, or at least I don't. I experience many things but I don't experience being determined or not-determined. If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being determined. And what if I don't get food because I want to be slimmer. Is that *not* determined? If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts rather than the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you experience being not-determined. Are you claiming my own thoughts are distinct from the neurochemistry of my brain? Brent The first principle of science is don't fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. --- Richard Feynman -- 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 Wednesday, March 13, 2013 7:38:24 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 3:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The computer as a whole is not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only looks like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our personal experience to relate to personally. At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not really being a computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a person, saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then every part of the person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was correcting him saying that in fact a person is an animal through and through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels because of perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human, So you say. but we can be fooled. How do you're not already fooled; that what you take to be humans beings really are computers - including yourself? Because experience by definition cannot be simulated. You may be experiencing something other than what you think you are experiencing, but the fact that you experience is not something that you can doubt. How would you know that your doubt were real? A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy. Please avoid putting words in my mouth - The above was a direct quote extracted from your email. It was taken out of context so that it appeared to mean the opposite of what I was trying to say. my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not likely to ever be conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid out above, but not the Y axis. It's not a matter of how it could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. No you don't, or at least I don't. I experience many things but I don't experience being determined or not-determined. If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being determined. And what if I don't get food because I want to be slimmer. Is that *not* determined? It depends on whether you want to be slimmer more because it is something that you decided for yourself or more because of social conditioning, peer pressure, etc. There are different degrees to which our behavior is influenced externally. If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts rather than the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you experience being not-determined. Are you claiming my own thoughts are distinct from the neurochemistry of my brain? Is the plot of a TV show distinct from the pixels on your TV screen? Craig Brent The first principle of science is don't fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. --- Richard Feynman -- 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 Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If you can't demonstrate that one carbon atom is intelligent or conscious does that mean that trillions of them together can't be either? If your model of physics doesn't include intelligence then it can't interpret any behaviors as intelligent or conscious. Determinism is not even physics, it is an ideology based on the behaviors of objects. The problem with it is that rather than making the obvious discovery that no amount of pure objects equals a subject, it tries to insert some cloud of endless possibilities in between one object and many objects which obscures the obvious. If trillions of something make a subject, then you have to explain why that should be the case - what deterministic purpose does the subject serve, how does it come to be even a possibility if it serves no purpose, etc. The theory is that lots of atoms put together in a specific way lead to intelligence, just as lots of atoms put together in a specific way lead to gas giant planets. The potential for the gas giant planet was in the atoms and the potential for intelligence was also in the atoms. -- 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 Wednesday, March 13, 2013 7:53:23 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: If you can't demonstrate that one carbon atom is intelligent or conscious does that mean that trillions of them together can't be either? If your model of physics doesn't include intelligence then it can't interpret any behaviors as intelligent or conscious. Determinism is not even physics, it is an ideology based on the behaviors of objects. The problem with it is that rather than making the obvious discovery that no amount of pure objects equals a subject, it tries to insert some cloud of endless possibilities in between one object and many objects which obscures the obvious. If trillions of something make a subject, then you have to explain why that should be the case - what deterministic purpose does the subject serve, how does it come to be even a possibility if it serves no purpose, etc. The theory is that lots of atoms put together in a specific way lead to intelligence, just as lots of atoms put together in a specific way lead to gas giant planets. How is that different in principle from the theory that particular incantations lead to the appearance of demons? The potential for the gas giant planet was in the atoms and the potential for intelligence was also in the atoms. The gas giant planet makes sense given our experience of seeing many small objects from a distance as a cloud or haze. A planet is just a collection of atoms at different densities. Why would that equate to an expectation for intelligence in atoms (or empathy, imagination, sense of humor, or any other magical powers)? Craig -- 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 3/13/2013 4:47 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 7:38:24 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 3:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The computer as a whole is not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only looks like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our personal experience to relate to personally. At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not really being a computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a person, saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then every part of the person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was correcting him saying that in fact a person is an animal through and through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels because of perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human, So you say. but we can be fooled. How do you're not already fooled; that what you take to be humans beings really are computers - including yourself? Because experience by definition cannot be simulated. You may be experiencing something other than what you think you are experiencing, but the fact that you experience is not something that you can doubt. How would you know that your doubt were real? But you don't experience not being a computer or being a computer. You experience images, sounds, taste,... The rest is inference. A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy. Please avoid putting words in my mouth - The above was a direct quote extracted from your email. It was taken out of context so that it appeared to mean the opposite of what I was trying to say. My apologies. my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not likely to ever be conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid out above, but not the Y axis. It's not a matter of how it could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. No you don't, or at least I don't. I experience many things but I don't experience being determined or not-determined. If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being determined. And what if I don't get food because I want to be slimmer. Is that *not* determined? It depends on whether you want to be slimmer more because it is something that you decided for yourself or more because of social conditioning, peer pressure, etc. There are different degrees to which our behavior is influenced externally. If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts rather than the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you experience being not-determined. Are you claiming my own thoughts are distinct from the neurochemistry of my brain? Is the plot of a TV show distinct from the pixels on your TV screen? The latter are causally related to the first. 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: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 8:59:04 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 4:47 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 7:38:24 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 3:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The computer as a whole is not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only looks like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our personal experience to relate to personally. At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not really being a computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a person, saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then every part of the person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was correcting him saying that in fact a person is an animal through and through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels because of perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human, So you say. but we can be fooled. How do you're not already fooled; that what you take to be humans beings really are computers - including yourself? Because experience by definition cannot be simulated. You may be experiencing something other than what you think you are experiencing, but the fact that you experience is not something that you can doubt. How would you know that your doubt were real? But you don't experience not being a computer or being a computer. You experience images, sounds, taste,... The rest is inference. So you have experiences which you can't deny, and which you can't explain as being necessary or sensible for a computer to have in any way. Why would you decide to infer that computers have superfluous phenomena attached to their computations and that your own experiences are somehow connected with those? The key is understanding that there are different levels of pattern recognition, and that lower levels of copying and pasting or matching and sequencing have never added up to higher levels of empathy or imagination. Our AI research has been based on simulating high level responsiveness using low level computation, but it doesn't really work. The results are never any better than we would expect from a machine imitating some narrow aspect of intelligence. A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy. Please avoid putting words in my mouth - The above was a direct quote extracted from your email. It was taken out of context so that it appeared to mean the opposite of what I was trying to say. My apologies. Thanks. No problem, it was an awkward phrasing anyhow. I was surprised that I had said it until I pieced it together. my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not likely to ever be conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid out above, but not the Y axis. It's not a matter of how it could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. No you don't, or at least I don't. I experience many things but I don't experience being determined or not-determined. If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being determined. And what if I don't get food because I want to be slimmer. Is that *not* determined? It depends on whether you want to be slimmer more because it is something that you decided for yourself or more because of social conditioning, peer pressure, etc. There are different degrees to which our behavior is influenced externally. If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts rather than the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you experience being not-determined. Are you claiming my own thoughts are distinct from the neurochemistry of my brain? Is the plot of a TV show distinct from the pixels on your TV screen? The latter are causally related to the first. I would say the situation is similar. There are a lot of possible ways that experiences can be expressed neurologically and there are a lot of possible experiences in consciousness which can express a given neurological event. There is a lot of overlap and underlap I would guess. You could have many different TV shows with the same plot and many different plots dubbed into the dialogue of the same silent movie. I used to assume that there was a one to one correspondence to brain states, but I don't think it has to be that way any more. Looking at the experiments with congenitally blind people helps clarify the role that experience has in the quality of sensory experience. Identical brain
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: So you have experiences which you can't deny, and which you can't explain as being necessary or sensible for a computer to have in any way. Why would you decide to infer that computers have superfluous phenomena attached to their computations and that your own experiences are somehow connected with those? Who are you to say that natural phenomena are superfluous? -- 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 Wednesday, March 13, 2013 10:51:20 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: So you have experiences which you can't deny, and which you can't explain as being necessary or sensible for a computer to have in any way. Why would you decide to infer that computers have superfluous phenomena attached to their computations and that your own experiences are somehow connected with those? Who are you to say that natural phenomena are superfluous? Who are you to say that they aren't? Craig -- 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 Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:53 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I may not be able to predict what your brain will do 30 days from now, but that does not necessarily mean your brain is not deterministic. And it certainly doesn't mean your brain is neither deterministic nor probabilistic. But I *can* predict what my brain will do 30 days from now if I decide to do something in 30 days. That means that what is determining my brain's behavior (in addition to whatever physiological realities are in play) is my personal will. And what is determining your personal will is your brain, which follows the laws of physics. There is a chain of causation between you reading these words and you throwing the ball. Where exactly do you think is the break in this causal chain? There is no break at all. Did you not see the part about top-down, bottom-up, center-out, and periphery-in causal influences all being dynamically interactive? When I make a decision about throwing the ball, the public symptoms of that decision can be seen as billions of simultaneous and near-simulataneous events, retro-causal events, premonitory events. If the atoms bouncing around in your brain follow a causal chain then so does your brain. If you believe that your free will somehow acts to cause atoms to move or electrical fields to change in a not determined, not probabilistic way then that would be obvious in experiments as a break in the causal chain. There's no way to escape this. No, I think you believe the brain does things by itself and you don't understand how an experiment could be set up to demonstrate this. When did I ever say that the brain does things by itself? Why do you keep pointing at this straw man? You frequently say that the brain does things due to free will, while I say the brain only does things due to its components blindly following the laws of physics, like a pinball machine (your example). Do you know how the transmembrane potential is set? It is due to the difference between the sum of positive and negative ions on either side of the membrane. Do you know how the ion concentrations are set? Ions diffuse across the membrane following their concentration gradients, diffuse more quickly through specific ion channels, and are transported against concentration gradients via energy-dependent transmembrane proteins. Let's say that you are looking at a live video of someone's neurons as they decide to throw a basketball four inches in the air or three feet in the air. What happens? What does it matter? The result is the same. Whether it is at the level of the entire brain, a particular neural pathway, a group of neurons, membranes, ion channel, molecule... it doesn't matter at all because they all are changed according to what the person decides. The person's decision could be pushed from the neural level also, but we would need to do that intentionally because transmembrane potentials don't know what a basketball is. Also, your entire model needs a complete revision since human glial cells have been discovered to increase the performance of mouse brains. All of our assumptions about coded electric signals as fundamental factors of consciousness could now easily be wrong. Does a ball roll down the hill because of the pull of gravity or does gravity pull on the ball because it rolls down the hill? This is the problem with your insistence on saying that the neurons change because of your decision, rather than that your decision occurs because your neurons change. You would be surprised if the balls in a pinball machine just started levitating or something all by themselves, and yet that is what you claim happens in the brain. Where does it happen, and why has it never been observed? It is observed any time a person exercises their voluntary will and we look at what the brain does. Look at Libet even. We don't see sudden responses coming out of any inevitable physiology of ions, we see semantic responses to sensory events. What is your claim, that the test just happens to correspond to a moment when the ion balance was drifting toward an action potential anyways? What is your theory of how membranes react to non-local changes? The semantic changes and sensory events supervene on the biochemical changes. You still seem to believe that this isn't the case and an ion channel might open by itself, in the absence of the normal stimulus, because you decide to do something. If the general does not behave mechanistically then the army as a whole doesn't either. Why? Where is that dictum from? From you: The general makes a decision personally, and the army follows mechanically. I only disagree with you when you are wrong or incoherent. The only way the general could behave non-mechanistically is if some part of him does not; for if every part behaved mechanistically then he and the army would behave mechanistically. So which part exactly of
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Who are you to say that natural phenomena are superfluous? Who are you to say that they aren't? The natural world is as it is. It's not my place to say the the Great Red Spot of Jupiter is superfluous, that the electron is superfluous, or that intelligent apes are superfluous. -- 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 Thursday, March 14, 2013 12:13:47 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:53 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: I may not be able to predict what your brain will do 30 days from now, but that does not necessarily mean your brain is not deterministic. And it certainly doesn't mean your brain is neither deterministic nor probabilistic. But I *can* predict what my brain will do 30 days from now if I decide to do something in 30 days. That means that what is determining my brain's behavior (in addition to whatever physiological realities are in play) is my personal will. And what is determining your personal will is your brain, which follows the laws of physics. What law of physics makes my will decide to get my house painted in exactly 30 days? Does electromagnetism have some 30 day cycle that is predicted by gravity for me and nobody else? There is a chain of causation between you reading these words and you throwing the ball. Where exactly do you think is the break in this causal chain? There is no break at all. Did you not see the part about top-down, bottom-up, center-out, and periphery-in causal influences all being dynamically interactive? When I make a decision about throwing the ball, the public symptoms of that decision can be seen as billions of simultaneous and near-simulataneous events, retro-causal events, premonitory events. If the atoms bouncing around in your brain follow a causal chain then so does your brain. You act as if there were one single chain reaction from neuron to neuron. That is not a viable model. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2H6UdQVEFY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhCF-zlk0jY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJLdNRebeWE The last one is especially cool. As you can see, the brain's behavior reflects massive, simultaneous, spontaneously formed patterns that have nothing whatsoever to do with physical laws. The same physical laws are in place whether the subject has meditated or not, so there is no basis for your claim of flat biochemical momentum somehow being responsible for orchestrating mental changes. If you believe that your free will somehow acts to cause atoms to move or electrical fields to change Not really a belief, it is an observable fact. As you can see in the third video, the subject uses free will to meditate and change the behavior of electric fields in their brain. in a not determined, not probabilistic way then that would be obvious in experiments as a break in the causal chain. There's no way to escape this. There's nothing to escape. Your causal chain is a fantasy. Watch the videos. We control (some) of our brain activity. How can you argue against that obvious fact based on your 19th century expectations of atomic physics? We already know that QM reveals uncertainty and entanglement beneath all atomic interactions. We are that uncertainty, and we will see that if we do physics experiments on living brains. No, I think you believe the brain does things by itself and you don't understand how an experiment could be set up to demonstrate this. When did I ever say that the brain does things by itself? Why do you keep pointing at this straw man? You frequently say that the brain does things due to free will, while I say the brain only does things due to its components blindly following the laws of physics, like a pinball machine (your example). Do the videos make the brain look like a pinball machine? What would it have to look like for you to be able to entertain the idea that you are 100% wrong? Do you know how the transmembrane potential is set? It is due to the difference between the sum of positive and negative ions on either side of the membrane. Do you know how the ion concentrations are set? Ions diffuse across the membrane following their concentration gradients, diffuse more quickly through specific ion channels, and are transported against concentration gradients via energy-dependent transmembrane proteins. Let's say that you are looking at a live video of someone's neurons as they decide to throw a basketball four inches in the air or three feet in the air. What happens? What does it matter? The result is the same. Whether it is at the level of the entire brain, a particular neural pathway, a group of neurons, membranes, ion channel, molecule... it doesn't matter at all because they all are changed according to what the person decides. The person's decision could be pushed from the neural level also, but we would need to do that intentionally because transmembrane potentials don't know what a basketball is. Also, your entire model needs a complete revision since human glial cells have been discovered to increase the performance of mouse brains. All of our assumptions
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 3/13/2013 10:09 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: The last one is especially cool. As you can see, the brain's behavior reflects massive, simultaneous, spontaneously formed patterns that have nothing whatsoever to do with physical laws. The same physical laws are in place whether the subject has meditated or not, But the same external influences are not. The physical laws just connect one state of the world to another - not the state of one brain to a later state of that brain; all influences must be considered. 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: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Thursday, March 14, 2013 12:37:21 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Who are you to say that natural phenomena are superfluous? Who are you to say that they aren't? The natural world is as it is. I agree, and as part of the natural world, I am evidence of intention and free will as physical facts of the natural world. It's not my place to say the the Great Red Spot of Jupiter is superfluous, that the electron is superfluous, or that intelligent apes are superfluous. My point was not to claim that consciousness is actually superfluous in the real world but to point out the absurdity of your worldview, the logic of which insists that consciousness must be superfluous since it adds nothing to the functions which you claim the universe can only consist of. Of course my view is always that consciousness is the indispensable ground of existence itself, so I am not suggesting by any means that consciousness could ever be actually superfluous in this universe. Craig -- 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 Thursday, March 14, 2013 1:12:37 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/13/2013 10:09 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: The last one is especially cool. As you can see, the brain's behavior reflects massive, simultaneous, spontaneously formed patterns that have nothing whatsoever to do with physical laws. The same physical laws are in place whether the subject has meditated or not, But the same external influences are not. The physical laws just connect one state of the world to another - not the state of one brain to a later state of that brain; all influences must be considered. All influences, apparently, except for the blindingly obvious influence of the subject themselves voluntarily influencing their own brain. What external influences are you claiming account for the differences seen in the video? 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.
