Re: free will and mathematics
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 6:42 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/11/2012 8:45 AM, R AM wrote: But what I'm saying here is not ontological determinism but in fact, about the subjective experience. I'm defending that we cannot imagine ourselves in exactly the same subjective situation and still think that we could have done otherwise. I can certainly imagine that. But I wonder if your use of subjective situation is ambiguous. Do you mean exactly the same state, including memory, conscious and unconscious thoughts..., or do you just mean satisfying the same subjective description? I would say exactly the same conscious state. If we are put again in the same conscious state, I don't think that we can consistently imagine ourselves doing otherwise. If at subjective situation t we decided x, why would we decide otherwise if *exactly* the same subjective situation was again the case? Of course, unconscious processes might make the difference (in fact, they do), but this is no help for a defender of free will, because he cannot maintain that decisions have, at bottom, an unconscious origin. Brent Or something equivalent, if we were put again in exactly the same subjective situation, would we do otherwise? I don't think so, but If yes, why? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ **googlegroups.com everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: free will and mathematics
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:18 AM, RMahoney rmaho...@poteau.com wrote: I'm assuming you mean by exactly the same situation, every atom in it's exact same physical state. Not really. I mean the same conscious or subjective situation. From the free will point of view, decisions are conscious and can only be based on what is available to consciousness at the moment of decision. Defenders of free will are commited to say that, no matter how long and deep we ponder a question before making a decision, if we were put again in exactly the same subjective situation (after all the pondering, etc) we could still do otherwise. Now the question that came up, is this person not responsible for his/her actions if only at the mercy of the physical laws of the universe (no free will). The answers I've been hearing that suggest she/he may not be responsible miss the point. The measure of wrongness was defined by society. I agree. People is not responsible in some ontological way. But society considers us responsible (i.e. punishable). And we take that into account. The important fact is not whether we have free will or not, but to know that we are considered responsible. It's interesting to notice that discussions about free will almost always go hand in hand with discussions about responsability and punishment. If history and experience yields a member of society that does a horrendous wrong, he/she is a defect of society and needs to be removed, rehabilitated, or whatever society dictates. Here's where I don't agree with aquitting someone due to mental defect. If the defect is there, the result is the same. Fix it if it's fixable or if it's not fixable remove them from society. I agree, but we have to be careful here, lest we consider people to be machines (something that has to be fixed or removed, like in the Clockwork Orange movie). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 11 Jun 2012, at 15:09, David Nyman wrote: On 11 June 2012 13:04, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Why do you think that pure indexicality (self-reference) is not enough? It seems clear to me that from the current state of any universal machine, it will look like a special moment is chosen out of the others, for the elementary reason that such a state individuates the present moment here and now from her point of view. Yes, but the expression from the current state of any universal machine (different sense of universal, of course) already *assumes* the restriction of universal attention to a particular state of a particular machine. But is that not the result of the fact that each machine has only access to its own configuration? Hoyle on the other hand is considering a *universal state of attention* and hence needs to make such isolation of particulars *explicit*. The beam stands for the unique, momentary isolation in experience of that single state from the class of all possible states (of all possible machines). Why could not each machine do the same? Consider the WM-duplication. The body reconstituted in Moscow has access only to the memory reimplemented in M, + the further new change, which includes the feeling Oh I am the one in Moscow. From the point of view of the universal person this is only a particular windows, and both are lived, but not (at this stage at least) from the point of view of the subject in M. I am not sure a beam has to focus on him, for making his experience more genuine. Would the beam have to dovetail on the two reconstitution, making recurrently one of a them into a zombie? It seems to me that the beam introduces only supplementary difficulties. The reason why we feel disconnected is related to our self-identification with our most recent memories, which become disconnected in the differentiation of consciousness. We are all the same person, in a sense similar to the W-guy and the M- guy are the same Helsinki-guy, just with different futures, and by work, they can understand the significance of this, or even experience it through some induced amnesia. The beam is like to reintroduce a sort of conscious selection on some conscious order, which seems to me made unnecessary by the use of indexicals (self-reference being what theoretical computer science handles the best). Thus, momentarily, the *single* universal knower can be in possession of a *single* focus of attention, to the exclusion of all others. He always focus on the whole experience of consciousness, which might be the same for similar creature, and the *relative* truth differentiate by themselves. He lives them out of time, and time +personal differentiation is the fate of those machine which individuates themselves to such personal memories. It is useful when doing shopping or any concrete things locally. No doubt evolution has put some pressure, and every day life pushes a bit in that direction, but eventually your first person identity remains a private matter, and there is matter of choice. This is the only intelligible meaning of mutually-exclusive, considered at the *universal level*. I don't see this. It looks like adding something which seems to me precisely made unnecessary with comp. If you remove such a principle of isolation, how can the state of knowledge of the universal knower ever be anything other than a sum over all experiences, which can never be the state of any single mind? Hmm... You don't know that! Jouvet, others, including myself in my dream diary notes, have described (experimented) the possibility of awakening from two simultaneous dreams. I can conceive this easily for any finite number of experiences, and less easily for an infinite numbers. The implementation is simple, just connect the memories so that the common person in all different experiences awaken in a state having all those memories personally accessible. For the two experiences/dreams case, Jouvet suggested that it might be provoked by the paralysis of the corpus callosum, indeed, in some REM sleep. And the UD generates all possible type of corpus callosum *possible (consistent)*. In such a state we might be able to relativize more the difference, and build on more universal things, and then differentiate again. Sure, the states are all there at once, but what principle allows you, in the person of the universal knower, to restrict your attention to any one of them? He looks at all of them, from out of time (arithmetic). It is only from each particular perspective that it looks like it is disconnected from the others. That is, with comp, just an illusion, easily explainable by the locally disconnected memories of machines sharing computations/dreams. It seems to me that, if one wants to make sense of the notion of a *universal* locus of experience, with personal
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 11 Jun 2012, at 17:44, Stephen P. King wrote: On 6/11/2012 8:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Jun 2012, at 22:57, David Nyman wrote: On 10 June 2012 17:26, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I am not sure I understand your problem with that simultaneity. The arithmetical relations are out of time. It would not make sense to say that they are simultaneously true, because this refer to some time, and can only be used as a metaphor. I agree with almost everything you say. I would say also that the moments of experience, considered as a class, are themselves out of time. What it takes to create (experiential) time - the notorious illusion - is whatever is held to be responsible for the irreducible mutual-exclusivity of such moments, from the perspective of the (universal) knower. Hoyle does us the service of making this mutual-exclusivity explicit by invoking his light beam to illuminate the pigeon holes at hazard; those who conclude that this function is redundant, and that the structure of pigeon holes itself somehow does the work of creating personal history, owe us an alternative explanation of the role of Hoyle's beam. I understand, of course, that these are just ways of thinking about a state of affairs that is ultimately not finitely conceivable, but all the same, I think there is something that cries out for explanation here and Hoyle is one of the few to have explicitly attempted to address it. David, I can't see the role of Hoyles' beam. The reason of the mutual exclusivity of moments seems to me to be explained (in comp) by the fact that a machine cannot address the memory of another machine, or of itself at another moment (except trough memory). Hoyles' beam seem to reintroduce a sort of external reality, which does not solve anything, it seems to me, and introduces more complex events in the picture. Dear Bruno, Here we seem to be synchronized in our ideas! This cannot access the memory of another machine and (cannot access memory ) of itself at another moment is exactly the way that the concurrency problem of computer science is related to space and time! I don't think so. With comp you have to distinguish completely the easy concurrency problem, from the harder physical concurrency problem. It is easy to emulate interacting program in the sense I have to use to explain that a machine cannot access the meory of another machine. And obviously the UD or arithmetic implements ad nauseam such kind of interactions. But then the physical laws emerge from the statistics on *all* computation, and all such interaction, and from this we must justify physics, including the physical logic of interaction. But that is a separate problem, and the Z and X logic suggest how to proceed by already given a reasonable arithmetical quantization (it shows also that it is technically difficult to progress). But now I am confused as you seem to recognize that a machine has and needs the resource of memory; This is quite typical in computer science. Most machines have memories. Like they have often read and write intructions to handle those memories. it was my (mis)understanding that machines are purely immaterial, existing a a priori given strings of integers. You were right. This has nothing to do that the program i in the list of the phi_i, can have memories. A large part of computer science can be entirely arithmetized. You might think to study a good book on theoretical computer science to swallow definitely that fact. All proposition on machine are either arithmetical statements, or arithmetically related statements. I work both in comp, and in arithmetic. How does memory non-access become encoded in a string? Why would we need to encode the non access. It is enough that the numbers involved have no access. The computation phi_i(j)^k has no access to the computation phi'(j')^k, if i ≠ i' and j ≠ j', for example. But non-access can be implemented in various ways. It is just not relevant. Is it the non-existence of a particular Godelization within a particular string that would relate to some other portion of a string? It is more simple. See above. Why do you think that pure indexicality (self-reference) is not enough? It seems clear to me that from the current state of any universal machine, it will look like a special moment is chosen out of the others, for the elementary reason that such a state individuates the present moment here and now from her point of view. How is the index establish a form of sameness? It seems to me that one needs at least bisimilarity to establish the connectivity. Of course, the idea that some time exists is very deep in us, and I understand that the big comp picture is very counter-intuitive, but in this case, it is a kind of difficulty already present in any atemporal static view of everything,
Re: free will and mathematics
On 11 Jun 2012, at 17:45, R AM wrote: On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 5:34 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: OK, for the sake of the argument, let's suppose that you ate spaghetti because that's what you liked at that moment. Do you think you could have done otherwise? Now, let's suppose a gangster decides to rob a bank after considering all his options. Later he might be judged and told that he could have done otherwise? Could he really have done otherwise? At the level of the arithmetical laws, or physical laws, the answer is no. But we don't live at that level, so at the level of its first person impression the answer is yes. OK. So that means that if you (or the ganster) were put again in exactly the same subjective situation (same beliefs, likings, emotions, intentions, memories, same everything) you could do otherwise? No. But the gangster does not know this determination. So although at that level he could not do otherwise, from his perspective, it still can make genuine sense that he could have done otherwise, from our embedded pov perspective. Only for God, it does not make sense, but locally we are not God. More specifically. You are in a situation where you crave for spaghetti, you haven't had spaghetti in the last month, you know spaghetti is good for er ... whatever. You therefore make the decision to eat spaghetti. Now, you are put again in exactly the same situation and ... do you really think you could choose strawberries instead? would you choose strawberries? If I am craving spaghetti I could not do otherwise. But then I would not have said it. The situation is when I remember having hesitate, and the day after, despite the determination, I can think that I could have done otherwise, because I cannot be aware of the complete determination. And, indeed, after that hesitation, I might well have taken the strawberry. Determinism is just not incompatible with genuine free will or will, for the will is not playing at the same level than the determination. If they were on the same level, you could trivially justify all your act by I am just obeying the physical laws, which is just false, because you are an abstract person, not a body. A guy rapes and tortures 10 children, could he have done otherwise? Well, there is a sense for some medical expert to say that he could have done otherwise, for the guy is judged responsible and not under some mental disease (for example). Now, if the guy defends himself in saying that he was just obeying to the physical laws, he will convince nobody, and rightly so. He will convince nobody because we all believe that he (and all of us) could have done otherwise. And we all believe that because, for some reason, we believe it is unfair to punish someone if he cannot do otherwise. What I'm saying is that belief in free-will is just a justification for punishing people. OK. And rightly so, unless unfair trial of course. But in fact, we punish people, not because he could have done otherwise but because next time, he will think twice. Actually this is not proved, and some argue that going in jail can augment the probability of recurrence of certain type of crime. But that's not relevant. So OK. Next time, he will not be in the same subjective situation: he will have the memories of his punishment and he will take that into account. He learned to do otherwise. If next time he is in exactly the same subjective situation, he will do exactly the same. Why would he do otherwise? Why didn't he already? The point is not that he is determinate, but that he is aware of his non knowledge of determination, making him capable to think correctly that he might have done otherwise; perhaps having a slight change of state of mind, or awaken in different mood, or any detail he knows that he did not know. Sometimes, we might become aware of the reason which might have invite us to do otherwise, so we prepare ourselves better for the future hesitation. Let's suppose that a person forgets everything every morning. Would it make any sense to punish someone like that, because he just could have done otherwise? Someone like that must go to an hospital, be cured, and then can be judged responsible or not. It can depend on many factors. There are no general rules, nor any scientific criteria for judging with any certainty the responsibility. We are determinate, but we cannot known completely our determination, so from our point of view there is a genuine spectrum of different possibilities and we can choose freely among them. It does not matter that a God, or a Laplacean daemon can predict our actions, for *we* can't, and have no other choice than choosing without complete information, and in some case it makes sense that we could have
Re: inside vs outside
On 11 Jun 2012, at 20:08, Abram Demski wrote: On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 09 Jun 2012, at 21:53, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, Wei, I've been reading the book saving truth from paradox on and off, and it has convinced me of the importance of the inside view way of doing foundations research as opposed to the outside view. At first, I simply understood Field to be referring to the language vs meta-language distinction. He criticises other researchers for taking the outside view of the system they are describing, meaning that they are describing the theory from a meta-language which must necessarily exist outside the theory. Since Gödel we know that for rich theory we can embed the metatheory in the theory. That is what Gödel's provability predicate does, and what Kleene predicate does for embedding the reasoning on the Turing machines, and the phi_i, in terms of number relations. Arithmetic contains its own interpreter(s). Hm, well, such is not the case for Truth. According to Tarski, we are forbidden from embedding the metalanguage in the language. This follows from simple, intuitive assumptions, showing that the Liar paradox will spring up in any 'reasonable' theory of truth. Kripke showed how to weaken our notion of truth to the point where the truth predicate could be within the language, but his theory does not allow is to say everything which seems natural to assert about truth, so many more theories have been created after. Every theory seems to suffer from the revenge problem: in order to define a notion of truth which can fit into the language, a more complicated semantics for that truth predicate must be described. The Strengthened Liar Paradox is then describable in that semantics, if we try to fit it within the same language. So, we are again forced to create a meta-language outside of our language to describe its semantics. (But who describes the semantics of the meta-language?) So, the cases for syntactic meta-theories and semantic meta-theories diverge widely. I thought that his complaint was frivolous; of course you need to describe a theory of truth via a meta-language. That is part of the structure of the problem. Yes, it makes the entire theory dubious; but without a concrete alternative, the only reply to this is such is life!. So I was confused when he refused to take other logicians literally (accepting the logic which they put forward as the logic which they put forward), and instead claimed that their logic corresponded to the 1-higher theory (the metalanguage in which they describe their theory). At some point, though, the technique clicked for me, and I understood that he was saying something very different. For example, the outside view of Kripke's theory of truth says that truth is a 'partial' notion, with an extension and an anti- extension, but also a 'gap' between the two where it is undefined. (It is a gap theory.) I am not sure I understand well. I hope the previous explanation helped. Field claims to get around the revenge problem by not really providing a meta-language to give a semantics to the truth predicate. He does provide something similar, but it is really a semantics for a restricted domain, to give an intuition for the working of the theory. (He argues that Kripke's semantics must be viewed in this way, too.) Field wrote a book science without number which I found not really convincing, except for Newtonian gravitation, but not physical sciences or the theological sciences in general (rather trivially once you assume the comp hypothesis). You might elaborate on his argument. I am problem driven, and I think comp entails big change in fundamental science that we have to take into account. I am not sure it makes sense to interpret Kripke semantics literally, as opposed to arithmetic and most of computer science. The right ([]*) modal hypostases have no Kripke semantics, for example. For arithmetic, I use Tarski theory of truth. So ExP(x) is true if it exists a natural number n so that it is the case that P(n). That is enough to describe the behavior of machines (but not their mind!). Then I use, implicitly thanks to Solovay theorem, what simple arithmetical machine (relations) can prove and not prove about them, and how they can interpret their relation with some other universal numbers. I let the machine develop her own semantics, and facilitate my task by studying only the correct one (by definition). Some Kripke semantics occur more or less naturally, but not all arithmetical modalities have a Kripke semantics. Note that for G* you can develop a semantics is term of sequences of Kripke models. Then p is satisfied by such a sequence if p is eventually satisfy in the models in that models sequence. Bruno On the inside view, however, it does not make
Re: free will and mathematics
On 6/12/2012 1:31 AM, R AM wrote: On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 6:42 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/11/2012 8:45 AM, R AM wrote: But what I'm saying here is not ontological determinism but in fact, about the subjective experience. I'm defending that we cannot imagine ourselves in exactly the same subjective situation and still think that we could have done otherwise. I can certainly imagine that. But I wonder if your use of subjective situation is ambiguous. Do you mean exactly the same state, including memory, conscious and unconscious thoughts..., or do you just mean satisfying the same subjective description? I would say exactly the same conscious state. If we are put again in the same conscious state, I don't think that we can consistently imagine ourselves doing otherwise. Well then it seems to come down to a question of timing. If this 'same conscious state' is before the action, then I can certainly imagine changing my mind. And this holds all the way up to the action, which is why you are even unpredictable by yourself. You don't know (for sure) what you'll do until you do it. If the 'same conscious state' is at the moment of action, then it's not so clear. It's not the usual case, but sometimes we are surprised by our own action. If at subjective situation t we decided x, why would we decide otherwise if *exactly* the same subjective situation was again the case? Of course, unconscious processes might make the difference (in fact, they do), but this is no help for a defender of free will, because he cannot maintain that decisions have, at bottom, an unconscious origin. Why not. That's the compatibilist view of 'free will' and that's apparently why Sam Harris disagrees with compatibilism: he defines 'free will' to be *conscious* authorship of decisions. In the course of a day almost all my decisions are made without conscious thought, like which keys to strike in typing the previous line. Earlier today I had to enter a computer generated random security code; I had to think about each character. So was the latter an exercise of free will and the former wasn't?? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: modal logic's meta axiom
On 12 Jun 2012, at 00:47, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Jun 07, 2012 at 01:33:48PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: In fact we have p/p for any p. If you were correct we would have []p for any p. This is what I thought you said the meta-axiom stated? How else do we get p/[]p for Kripke semantics? Because if p is true in all worlds, then []p is true in all worlds OK? If p is true in all worlds (validity) then p is true in particular in all worlds accessible from alpha, and so []p is true in alpha, and this works for any alpha, so []p is true in all worlds. In a deduction, without proviso, p means that we have already proved p, (or in some case, that it is an assumption but you have to be careful). The meta-semantics of a rule is dependent on the theory, and the way we define what constitutes a proof. In modal logic it usually mean, in p/[]p that p occur at the end of a proof. Self-reference is confusing because deduction p/q get represented by [](p-q), or []p-[]q. []p is the machine's language for the machine asserts (believes, proves) p. All universal machine, when they asserts p, will soon or later asserts []p. So []p - [][]p is true about all universal (correct) machines. The löbian machine are those for which []p - [][]p is not only true, but they actually can justify why they know that []p - [][]p. It is the kind of truth they can communicate. So the fact p/q is modeled by []p-[]q, in the language of the machine. Löbian machines are close for the Löb rule. If they asserts []p - p, they will inevitably asserts soon or later p. And they know that, which means they can prove []([]p-p)-[]p, for each p arithmetical sentences, in the arithmetical interpretations. Bruno -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: One subject
On 12 Jun 2012, at 04:19, Pierz wrote: On Monday, June 11, 2012 10:46:42 PM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Jun 2012, at 03:12, Pierz wrote: I'm starting this as a new thread rather than continuing under 'QTI and eternal torment', where this idea came up, because it's really a new topic. It seems to me an obvious corollary of comp that there is in reality (3p) only one observer, a single subject that undergoes all possible experiences. In a blog post I wrote a while back (before I learned about comp) I put forward this 'one observer' notion as the only solution to a paradox that occurred to me when thinking about the idea of cryogenic freezing and resuscitation. I started wondering how I could know whether the consciousness of the person being resuscitated was the 'same consciousness' (whatever that means) as the consciousness of the person who was frozen. That is, is a new subject created with all your memories (who will of course swear they are you), or is the new subject really you? This seems like a silly or meaningless point until you ask yourself the question, If I am frozen and then cryogenicaly resurrected should I be scared of bad experiences the resurrected person might have? Will they be happening to *me*, or to some person with my memories and personality I don't have to worry about? It becomes even clearer if you imagine dismantling and reassembling the brain atom by atom. What then provides the continuity between the pre- dismantled and the reassembled brain? It can only be the continuity of self-reference (the comp assumption) that makes 'me' me, since there is no physical continuity at all. But let's say the atoms are jumbled a little at reassembly, resulting in a slight personality change or the loss of some or all memories. Should I, about to undergo brain disassembly and reassembly, be worried about experiences of this person in the future who is now not quite me? What then if the reassembled brain is changed enough that I am no longer recognizable as me? Following this through to its logical conclusion, it becomes clear that the division between subjects is not absolute. What separates subjectivities is the contents of consciousness (comp would say the computations being performed), not some kind of other mysterious 'label' or identifier that marks certain experiences as belonging to one subject and not another (such as, for instance, being the owner of a specific physical brain). I find this conclusion irresistible - and frankly terrifying. It's like reincarnation expanded to the infinite degree, where 'I' must ultimately experience every subjective experience (or at least every manifested subjective experience, if I stop short of comp and the UD). What it does provide is a rationale for the Golden Rule of morality. Treat others as I would have them treat me because they *are* me, there is no other! If we really lived with the knowledge of this unity, if we grokked it deep down, surely it would change the way we relate to others. And if it were widely accepted as fact, wouldn't it lead to the optimal society, since everyone would know that they will be/are on the receiving end of every action they commit? Exploitation is impossible since you can only steal from yourself. I can agree, but it is not clear if it is assertable (it might belong to variant of G*, and not of G making that kind of moral proposition true but capable of becoming false if justified too much, like all protagorean virtues (happiness, free-exam, intelligence, goodness, etc.). Cf hell is paved with good intentions. Also, a masochist might become a sadist by the same reasoning, which, BTW, illustrates that the (comp) moral is not don't do to the others what you don't want the others do to you, but don't do to the others what *the others* don't want you do to them. In fact, unless you defend your life, just respect the possible adult No Thanks. (It is more complex with the children, you must add nuances like as far as possible). I don't know what G* and G are, but I get the gist, and I agree. In fact, questions like how to deal with punishment become interesting when considered through this 'one subject' lens. When 'I' am the offender, I don't want to be punished for my crimes, but 'I' as the victim and the broader community think the offender should be. We have to balance competing views. Also, there is sense in looking after oneself ahead of others to the extent that I of all people am best equipped to look after my own needs, and I have the same rights to happiness, material wellbeing etc as others. The question is, what course of action brings the greatest good if all adopt it as their moral code? It's no use everybody giving away all their worldly goods to charity - there will be no-one to receive them! Of course, if comp is true, moral action becomes meaningless in one sense since everything happens anyway, so you
Re: free will and mathematics
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 7:44 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Well then it seems to come down to a question of timing. If this 'same conscious state' is before the action, then I can certainly imagine changing my mind. Yes, but why would you do that? You didn't change your mind in the first situation. Why would you change your mind if exactly the same conscious state is repeated? And this holds all the way up to the action, which is why you are even unpredictable by yourself. You don't know (for sure) what you'll do until you do it. I agree, but that's not exactly what I'm saying. I'm trying to make sense of the I could have done otherwise. What does it mean? Or in other words, if the same situation is repeated I would do otherwise. But it's difficult to explain (I might be wrong too). OK, let's suppose that exactly the same conscious state is repeated N times. If each time we do a different action, even opposite ones (such as killing or not killing someone), then our decision making is basically random. I don't think that is what is meant by free will. Let's go to an extreme case. We have to make an important decision. We spend one year pondering our alternatives, and a decision is reached (we will kill someone). We are pretty certain about it. Do you think that if we repeat the same conscious state of just before making the decision, we would conclude not to kill? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: free will and mathematics
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 7:23 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: No. But the gangster does not know this determination. So although at that level he could not do otherwise, from his perspective, it still can make genuine sense that he could have done otherwise, from our embedded pov perspective. Only for God, it does not make sense, but locally we are not God. More specifically. You are in a situation where you crave for spaghetti, you haven't had spaghetti in the last month, you know spaghetti is good for er ... whatever. You therefore make the decision to eat spaghetti. Now, you are put again in exactly the same situation and ... do you really think you could choose strawberries instead? would you choose strawberries? If I am craving spaghetti I could not do otherwise. Well, parents routinely punish their children for eating too much candy. Why do they do that, if their children could not do otherwise? But then I would not have said it. The situation is when I remember having hesitate, and the day after, despite the determination, I can think that I could have done otherwise, because I cannot be aware of the complete determination. And, indeed, after that hesitation, I might well have taken the strawberry. Yes, but for the sake of the argument, I wanted you to consider the case where you are pretty certain about eating spaghetti. Defenders of free will would say that free will is active whenever you make a decision, hesitating or not hesitating. Determinism is just not incompatible with genuine free will or will, for the will is not playing at the same level than the determination. If they were on the same level, you could trivially justify all your act by I am just obeying the physical laws, which is just false, because you are an abstract person, not a body. I am not really talking about physical determination. But in any case, I think the justification is correct. This is not important, though, because we do not actually punish people because they could have done otherwise. We punish people so that they will not repeat their bad behaviour in the future (among other reasons). He will convince nobody because we all believe that he (and all of us) could have done otherwise. And we all believe that because, for some reason, we believe it is unfair to punish someone if he cannot do otherwise. What I'm saying is that belief in free-will is just a justification for punishing people. OK. And rightly so, unless unfair trial of course. What i'm saying is that we believe in free will (although it is a false belief) so that we can punish people without feeling guilty. Usually, the opposite is claimed: we punish people because they have free will (but I'm claiming that's wrong). Actually this is not proved, and some argue that going in jail can augment the probability of recurrence of certain type of crime. But that's not relevant. So OK. I agree, but if that's the case, we should change the punishment. He learned to do otherwise. Agreed. But that's what I'm saying. Making people responsible has nothing to do with their free will, but with reinforcement and learning. Belief in free will is just a excuse to discipline people. Let's suppose that a person forgets everything every morning. Would it make any sense to punish someone like that, because he just could have done otherwise? Someone like that must go to an hospital, be cured, and then can be judged responsible or not. It can depend on many factors. There are no general rules, nor any scientific criteria for judging with any certainty the responsibility. Agreed. However, If we punish people because they have free will (i.e. they could have done otherwise), then this person should also be punished. Again and again. It's not his free will that is failing, it's his memory. However, it makes no sense to punish such a person, because having no memory, the punishment will not change his future behavior. But exactly the same subjective experience is ambiguous. Our doing depends also on unconscious processing, of the luminosity of the sky, of possible subliminal messages from peers, of hormone concentration, and all those factors might be unknown. But that's basically randomness! you cannot be sent to Hell because of the luminosity of the sky! I don't think that would be considered free will. Free will should be the result of deliberation, even if at the end you decide to do something random. Or something equivalent, if we were put again in exactly the same subjective situation, would we do otherwise? I don't think so, but If yes, why? We can't. Given your condition. But the determination being unknown, we can correctly conceive of having done otherwise, for a little unknown reason which would have influence the choice made after some hesitation. Even without hesitation, there is still, even more, free will. If we make up our mind, and we are
Re: free will and mathematics
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 7:44 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Why not. That's the compatibilist view of 'free will' and that's apparently why Sam Harris disagrees with compatibilism: he defines 'free will' to be *conscious* authorship of decisions. I think that is what is meant by typical defenders of free will too. In the course of a day almost all my decisions are made without conscious thought, like which keys to strike in typing the previous line. Earlier today I had to enter a computer generated random security code; I had to think about each character. So was the latter an exercise of free will and the former wasn't?? That's a good question for defenders of free will to answer. I think they would say that you can always stop consciously your unconscious will (that's one of the defences against Libet's experiments). However, Most of the day we are not even conscious that we could exercise that kind of free will, so ... I gues 99% of the time our decisions are not free willed. And it makes no difference, of course. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: free will and mathematics
On 6/12/2012 11:42 AM, R AM wrote: On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 7:44 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Well then it seems to come down to a question of timing. If this 'same conscious state' is before the action, then I can certainly imagine changing my mind. Yes, but why would you do that? You didn't change your mind in the first situation. Why would you change your mind if exactly the same conscious state is repeated? And this holds all the way up to the action, which is why you are even unpredictable by yourself. You don't know (for sure) what you'll do until you do it. I agree, but that's not exactly what I'm saying. I'm trying to make sense of the I could have done otherwise. What does it mean? I means that, in retrospect, I can't trace back to external (to me) causes, a deterministic sequence that inevitably led me to do that. Conceivably we could make an intelligent machine that could keep a record of all its internal states so that when did something it could then cite the sequence of internal states and say, See I had to do it. It was just physics. Or in other words, if the same situation is repeated I would do otherwise. But it's difficult to explain (I might be wrong too). OK, let's suppose that exactly the same conscious state is repeated N times. If each time we do a different action, even opposite ones (such as killing or not killing someone), then our decision making is basically random. I don't think that is what is meant by free will. I think that's wrong. You are equating unpredictable with random. Suppose the same conscious state is repeated and one second later you either shoot someone or you punch him. In that second different unconscious processes may determine what you do; so that which you do is unpredictable. But it is only 'random' within a range which is determined by who you are - and in this case you are very angry with the someone - so it is still an exercise of your will. And it's not constrained or coerced, so it's 'free will'. Let's go to an extreme case. We have to make an important decision. We spend one year pondering our alternatives, and a decision is reached (we will kill someone). We are pretty certain about it. Do you think that if we repeat the same conscious state of just before making the decision, we would conclude not to kill? Yes, it's possible. Of course there are feelings of resolve or hesitancy that make it more or less likely we will carry out a plan. But in that moment some different unconscious process could change our mind, or an external event, such as seeing child might remind us our intended victim was once an innocent child, might change our mind. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: free will and mathematics
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 9:39 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I means that, in retrospect, I can't trace back to external (to me) causes, a deterministic sequence that inevitably led me to do that. Isn't that randomness? Conceivably we could make an intelligent machine that could keep a record of all its internal states so that when did something it could then cite the sequence of internal states and say, See I had to do it. It was just physics. And the machine would be right ... Or in other words, if the same situation is repeated I would do otherwise. But it's difficult to explain (I might be wrong too). OK, let's suppose that exactly the same conscious state is repeated N times. If each time we do a different action, even opposite ones (such as killing or not killing someone), then our decision making is basically random. I don't think that is what is meant by free will. I think that's wrong. You are equating unpredictable with random. Suppose the same conscious state is repeated and one second later you either shoot someone or you punch him. In that second different unconscious processes may determine what you do; so that which you do is unpredictable. Agreed, but then the reason is unconscious. To me, that's not free will. But it is only 'random' within a range which is determined by who you are - and in this case you are very angry with the someone - OK, but I think a defender of free will would say that you could have also kissed that person instead of attacking him. so it is still an exercise of your will. And it's not constrained or coerced, so it's 'free will'. But you are removing all possible decisions except different ways of attaking the victim, so it is not free will, at least not that feeling that I could have done anything no matter what. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI and eternal torment
On 12 June 2012 17:36, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Yes, but the expression from the current state of any universal machine (different sense of universal, of course) already *assumes* the restriction of universal attention to a particular state of a particular machine. But is that not the result of the fact that each machine has only access to its own configuration? That's too quick for me. To say that each machine has only access to its own configuration, is still merely to generalise; to go from this to *some particular machine* requires one instance to be discriminated from the whole class. So what, you may retort, your states just discriminate themselves as you. The problem to my mind, with looking at things in this way, is that for there to be a *universal* knower, each state must * primarily* belong to you qua that knower (which is what makes it universal) and only secondarily to you qua some local specification. If this be so, it is circular to invoke those secondary characteristics, which become definite only after discrimination, to justify the discrimination in the first place. ISTM that the two of us must actually be thinking of something rather different when we conceive a universal person or knower. For you, IIUC, this idea is consistent with many different states of consciousness obtaining all together; consequently the viewpoint of this species of universal person can never be reducible to any particular single perspective. I'm unsatisfied with this (as presumably was Hoyle) because it leaves me with no way of justifying why am I David that isn't circular. I can of course say that I'm David because the given state (here, now) happens to be one of David's states of mind, but the problem in this view is that this is completely consistent, mutatis mutandis, with Bruno's saying exactly the same. By contrast, Hoyle's heuristic allows me to say I'm David because a state of David happens momentarily to be the *unique perspective* of the whole. As Schrödinger puts it, not a *piece* of the whole, but in a *certain sense* the whole; Hoyle's heuristic makes explicit that certain sense. I suspect that the difference between us is that it is not your intention to justify the feeling of change directly from your mathematical treatment, but rather to demonstrate the existence of an eternal structure from which that experience could be recovered extra-mathematically. You often refer to the inside view of numbers in this rather inexplicit manner (forgive me if I have inadvertently missed your making the details explicit elsewhere). Hoyle however seemed to be directly concerned with rationalising this feeling by associating it with a unique dynamic process operating over the system as whole. That's the difference, I think, and it may be irreconcilable. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: modal logic's meta axiom
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 08:17:38PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Jun 2012, at 00:47, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Jun 07, 2012 at 01:33:48PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: In fact we have p/p for any p. If you were correct we would have []p for any p. This is what I thought you said the meta-axiom stated? How else do we get p/[]p for Kripke semantics? Because if p is true in all worlds, then []p is true in all worlds OK? No. I didn't say that. p means p is true in a world. p true in all worlds would be written []p. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: One subject
On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 12:14:26 AM UTC+10, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 6/11/2012 10:19 PM, Pierz wrote: On Monday, June 11, 2012 10:46:42 PM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Jun 2012, at 03:12, Pierz wrote: I'm starting this as a new thread rather than continuing under 'QTI and eternal torment', where this idea came up, because it's really a new topic. It seems to me an obvious corollary of comp that there is in reality (3p) only one observer, a single subject that undergoes all possible experiences. In a blog post I wrote a while back (before I learned about comp) I put forward this 'one observer' notion as the only solution to a paradox that occurred to me when thinking about the idea of cryogenic freezing and resuscitation. I started wondering how I could know whether the consciousness of the person being resuscitated was the 'same consciousness' (whatever that means) as the consciousness of the person who was frozen. That is, is a new subject created with all your memories (who will of course swear they are you), or is the new subject really you? This seems like a silly or meaningless point until you ask yourself the question, If I am frozen and then cryogenicaly resurrected should I be scared of bad experiences the resurrected person might have? Will they be happening to *me*, or to some person with my memories and personality I don't have to worry about? It becomes even clearer if you imagine dismantling and reassembling the brain atom by atom. What then provides the continuity between the pre- dismantled and the reassembled brain? It can only be the continuity of self-reference (the comp assumption) that makes 'me' me, since there is no physical continuity at all. But let's say the atoms are jumbled a little at reassembly, resulting in a slight personality change or the loss of some or all memories. Should I, about to undergo brain disassembly and reassembly, be worried about experiences of this person in the future who is now not quite me? What then if the reassembled brain is changed enough that I am no longer recognizable as me? Following this through to its logical conclusion, it becomes clear that the division between subjects is not absolute. What separates subjectivities is the contents of consciousness (comp would say the computations being performed), not some kind of other mysterious 'label' or identifier that marks certain experiences as belonging to one subject and not another (such as, for instance, being the owner of a specific physical brain). I find this conclusion irresistible - and frankly terrifying. It's like reincarnation expanded to the infinite degree, where 'I' must ultimately experience every subjective experience (or at least every manifested subjective experience, if I stop short of comp and the UD). What it does provide is a rationale for the Golden Rule of morality. Treat others as I would have them treat me because they *are* me, there is no other! If we really lived with the knowledge of this unity, if we grokked it deep down, surely it would change the way we relate to others. And if it were widely accepted as fact, wouldn't it lead to the optimal society, since everyone would know that they will be/are on the receiving end of every action they commit? Exploitation is impossible since you can only steal from yourself. Hi Pierz, A few comments. What is the process or relation that defines the I? If there is one I, as you discuss here, would not that I have experiences that are mutually contradictory? How would this not do damage to the idea that a conscious experience is an integrated whole and thus contains no contradiction? The idea of a single mind or observer does not imply that everything is happening at once in that mind - or rather, it does not imply that the I is aware of everything at once. That is patently not the case. It is hard to define in objective terms what is meant by the 'I', because the I is the process of subjectivity itself and so not amenable to objectification. But one way I have conceptualised it as follows. Our normal view posits the existence of multiple separate minds, each of which has extension in time (but, oddly, not space - we aren't talking about brains). Whereas the one mind view would see that all apparently separate minds are as it were different perspectives of and on the same single mind. An examination of the logical consequences of an extension of mind in time (the cryogenic paradox or the disassembly/reassembly thought experiment) shows that there can be no hidden identity to consciousness beyond the contents of that consciousness. No mutual contradiction occurs in the same way that the shape of the underside of an elephant does not
Re: One subject
On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 4:27:29 AM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Jun 2012, at 04:19, Pierz wrote: On Monday, June 11, 2012 10:46:42 PM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Jun 2012, at 03:12, Pierz wrote: I'm starting this as a new thread rather than continuing under 'QTI and eternal torment', where this idea came up, because it's really a new topic. It seems to me an obvious corollary of comp that there is in reality (3p) only one observer, a single subject that undergoes all possible experiences. In a blog post I wrote a while back (before I learned about comp) I put forward this 'one observer' notion as the only solution to a paradox that occurred to me when thinking about the idea of cryogenic freezing and resuscitation. I started wondering how I could know whether the consciousness of the person being resuscitated was the 'same consciousness' (whatever that means) as the consciousness of the person who was frozen. That is, is a new subject created with all your memories (who will of course swear they are you), or is the new subject really you? This seems like a silly or meaningless point until you ask yourself the question, If I am frozen and then cryogenicaly resurrected should I be scared of bad experiences the resurrected person might have? Will they be happening to *me*, or to some person with my memories and personality I don't have to worry about? It becomes even clearer if you imagine dismantling and reassembling the brain atom by atom. What then provides the continuity between the pre- dismantled and the reassembled brain? It can only be the continuity of self-reference (the comp assumption) that makes 'me' me, since there is no physical continuity at all. But let's say the atoms are jumbled a little at reassembly, resulting in a slight personality change or the loss of some or all memories. Should I, about to undergo brain disassembly and reassembly, be worried about experiences of this person in the future who is now not quite me? What then if the reassembled brain is changed enough that I am no longer recognizable as me? Following this through to its logical conclusion, it becomes clear that the division between subjects is not absolute. What separates subjectivities is the contents of consciousness (comp would say the computations being performed), not some kind of other mysterious 'label' or identifier that marks certain experiences as belonging to one subject and not another (such as, for instance, being the owner of a specific physical brain). I find this conclusion irresistible - and frankly terrifying. It's like reincarnation expanded to the infinite degree, where 'I' must ultimately experience every subjective experience (or at least every manifested subjective experience, if I stop short of comp and the UD). What it does provide is a rationale for the Golden Rule of morality. Treat others as I would have them treat me because they *are* me, there is no other! If we really lived with the knowledge of this unity, if we grokked it deep down, surely it would change the way we relate to others. And if it were widely accepted as fact, wouldn't it lead to the optimal society, since everyone would know that they will be/are on the receiving end of every action they commit? Exploitation is impossible since you can only steal from yourself. I can agree, but it is not clear if it is assertable (it might belong to variant of G*, and not of G making that kind of moral proposition true but capable of becoming false if justified too much, like all protagorean virtues (happiness, free-exam, intelligence, goodness, etc.). Cf hell is paved with good intentions. Also, a masochist might become a sadist by the same reasoning, which, BTW, illustrates that the (comp) moral is not don't do to the others what you don't want the others do to you, but don't do to the others what *the others* don't want you do to them. In fact, unless you defend your life, just respect the possible adult No Thanks. (It is more complex with the children, you must add nuances like as far as possible). I don't know what G* and G are, but I get the gist, and I agree. In fact, questions like how to deal with punishment become interesting when considered through this 'one subject' lens. When 'I' am the offender, I don't want to be punished for my crimes, but 'I' as the victim and the broader community think the offender should be. We have to balance competing views. Also, there is sense in looking after oneself ahead of others to the extent that I of all people am best equipped to look after my own needs, and I have the same rights to happiness, material wellbeing etc as others. The question is, what course of
Re: free will and mathematics
On 6/12/2012 1:06 PM, R AM wrote: On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 9:39 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I means that, in retrospect, I can't trace back to external (to me) causes, a deterministic sequence that inevitably led me to do that. Isn't that randomness? No, it's unpredictablity - something we may fruitfully model by a mathematical theory of randomness even though the dynamics are perfectly deterministic, when we don't know enough to use the dynamics to predict results. Except in quantum mechanics, where events may be inherently random, 'randomness' is just modeling uncertainty due to ignorance and so it is relative to what is known. Conceivably we could make an intelligent machine that could keep a record of all its internal states so that when did something it could then cite the sequence of internal states and say, See I had to do it. It was just physics. And the machine would be right ... Or in other words, if the same situation is repeated I would do otherwise. But it's difficult to explain (I might be wrong too). OK, let's suppose that exactly the same conscious state is repeated N times. If each time we do a different action, even opposite ones (such as killing or not killing someone), then our decision making is basically random. I don't think that is what is meant by free will. I think that's wrong. You are equating unpredictable with random. Suppose the same conscious state is repeated and one second later you either shoot someone or you punch him. In that second different unconscious processes may determine what you do; so that which you do is unpredictable. Agreed, but then the reason is unconscious. To me, that's not free will. That's a problem with 'free will'. Some people, like Sam Harris, insist that it means the same thing it did in the middle ages, a supernatural ability to do the nomologically impossible by conscious thought. Some people, like Daniel Dennett, look at how the concept functions in society and redefine it so it doesn't require the supernatural but has the same extension in social and legal discourse. But it is only 'random' within a range which is determined by who you are - and in this case you are very angry with the someone - OK, but I think a defender of free will would say that you could have also kissed that person instead of attacking him. But would he be wrong? We, as external observers, might say that if his brain had been in exactly that state a second earlier it's extremely unlikely that he could have done differently (he might have been hit by a gamma ray, but...). Or suppose we, as external observer, knew exactly that part of state of his brain that determined his *conscious* purpose, but not the other part, the unconscious. Then we would assign a probability measure over the unconscious part and some part of it would result him doing the same and some in doing differently and we could assign probabilities to the various outcomes. We're modeling our ignorance of the unconscious part by a random model. And so we'd conclude he could (in light of our imperfect knowledge) have done xi with probability pi for i=0,1,... And that's exactly the same position he is in. He has access to the conscious part of his brain, but not the unconscious. so it is still an exercise of your will. And it's not constrained or coerced, so it's 'free will'. But you are removing all possible decisions except different ways of attaking the victim, so it is not free will, at least not that feeling that I could have done anything no matter what. But you know that's not the case. You have a certain character, a certain consistency of behavior so that your friends can trust you NOT to do anything at random. And having this consistency is essentially part of defining you and defining who it is who has compatibilist free will. The fact that almost all this character is subconscious is irrelevant to the social meaning of 'free will'. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: One subject
On 6/12/2012 4:40 PM, Pierz wrote: I didn't say that we would all turn into self-deniers concerned only to help others. I said we would achieve an optimal moral society. Such a society would always bear in mind the absolute equality of all subjects (not in the 'royal subject' sense!), with each person knowing their actions are received by none other than themselves. The best moral action would be the selfish action, seen from the perspective of the entire self rather than the fragmentary self. Imagine you share an island with a person for one year, and you know that the next year, you will become the other person on the island at the start of the same year again - ie, you will experience everything from their perspective. How will it change the way you behave? So does this universal person include dogs? apes? spiders? rocks? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
