Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 13 Mar 2013, at 17:32, John Clark wrote: 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. You have yourself provided a counter-example to this claim. We have concluded that the free-will based on non determinacy is non sensical, but not so for the notion of free-will based on determinacy. Free-will does makes sense in that case: it is the ability to follow our own self-determination, and that notion can be defined in a precise mathematical way using the usual technic of computer self- reference. 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 13 Mar 2013, at 17:37, Stephen P. King wrote: 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. They need to have read my work, as S4Grz is not enough, you need S4Grz1, and thus the sigma_1 restriction, and thus UDA and the comp mind body problem. 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: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On 14 Mar 2013, at 05:37, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 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. Hmm... Keep in mind that IF the brain work like a digital computer, THEN the physical reality is emerging in a special way from number relations. Up to now, the quantum reality seems completely OK with computationalism, but we must keep open the possibility of a refutation of comp. In that case a physicalist association between a non computable matter and a non computable mind would be necessary. So Craig's point might make sense. But most of his argument does not and he begs the question systematically. What we know today (or should know) is that the mind body problem is necessarily reduced to the problem of justifying the emergence of the physical laws from arithmetic/computer science. As long as this is not done (compeletely: propositional physics has already been isolated) we must remain open to a refutation of computationalism. In a sense, with comp, nature is *superfluous* as it is the border of the possible arithmetical mind. Nature is something complex with a quite precise logical, or logico-arithmetical origin. 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: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Thursday, March 14, 2013 10:59:14 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Mar 2013, at 05:37, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: 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. Hmm... Keep in mind that IF the brain work like a digital computer, THEN the physical reality is emerging in a special way from number relations. Up to now, the quantum reality seems completely OK with computationalism, but we must keep open the possibility of a refutation of comp. In that case a physicalist association between a non computable matter and a non computable mind would be necessary. So Craig's point might make sense. But most of his argument does not and he begs the question systematically. What we know today (or should know) is that the mind body problem is necessarily reduced to the problem of justifying the emergence of the physical laws from arithmetic/computer science. As long as this is not done (compeletely: propositional physics has already been isolated) we must remain open to a refutation of computationalism. In a sense, with comp, nature is *superfluous* as it is the border of the possible arithmetical mind. Nature is something complex with a quite precise logical, or logico-arithmetical origin. Bruno My argument only seems to you to beg the question because you frame the question from the start in a way that unfairly places a theory about experience as being equivalent to experience itself. Comp assumes that third person realism is reality and the question is only who does first person experience fit in with that reality. I see that this assumption takes the foundation of experience itself for granted. Arithmetic and machines are conjured into Platonic non-locality and erupt spontaneously into florid locality, when in fact no such geometric expression is explainable by Comp. I have pointed out many times that all arithmetic operations supervene on lower level input-output sense ontologies, but you seem to avoid this stark revelation and try to patch it up with the expediencies of theory. You say 'we have to start somewhere', but that too is an intuitive anchor rather than something which can be produced by machine logic. The logic of Comp rests on the unacknowledged physics of sense, which it mistakes for a disembodied arithmetic primitive - the shadow of sense reflected on disowned idealized matter (digital, solid body groupings). Craig http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: 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. If that's true, and you're the one who keeps telling me that the qualia color has nothing to do with wavelengths of electromagnetism, then either your assumption is wrong and the white is red or you are talking gibberish again. It's mind boggling to me that I must continually explain grade school logic to someone who thinks he's unraveled the secrets of the universe. Warm water can be said not to be hot but also not to be not hot either, BULLSHIT. If warm is not hot and warm is not not hot then the concept of warm is as useful as a bucket of warm spit. Free will doesn't need to be defined because it is inescapable and obvious. I've escaped it and free will is not obvious to me, I don't know what the hell you're talking about! And not only can't you define free will you can't point to example of it that is not deterministic and not random and not gibberish. 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. You continue to make oracular declarations and insisting without evidence or argument that you speak the truth, but I don't believe the Pope when he engages in that sort of crap so I don't see why I should believe you either. 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? The difference is that then the mouse trap would have a different goal. It could have been a child's finger broken in the trap instead. And the trap moved very fast and then stopped when it was touched. 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'. Both the program and you behaved the way they did for a reason. Or are you saying its opposite because a program does what it does because it doesn't want to? The former intentionally creates and initiates a sequence of actions, the latter executes and acts as a consequence of unintentional following. So if we follow your chain of reasoning its voluntary because its intentional and its intentional because its voluntary. Well, that's as illuminating as much of what modern philosophers say so there may be a future for you in that line of work yet. That doesn't mean that we have no access to valid intuition and judgment beyond the evidence of objects. As a practical matter both you and I judge that something is conscious in exactly the same way, we look for intelligence. That's why neither of us believes our fellow human beings are conscious when they are sleeping or under anesthesia or dead. There might be a way to conduct some useful experiments to prove whether or not people can unconsciously detect the presence of living organisms ESP parapsychology junk science. I'd be in favor of that, I sure as hell don't want my tax money funding that crap. but I don't need it to know exactly why machines built from the bottom up from human motives are different from organisms who grow from the inside out from their own motives. Organisms grow according to digital instructions encoded in their DNA, and they learn from their environment. Machines are built from written digital instructions and can learn from the environment as we do, and they are continually getting better at it. People are not. And people have control over their actions for a reason and so are deterministic or they have control over their actions for no reason and so are random, and if they have no control over their impulses to murder then they should be treated more harshly not less than those that do because they are far more dangerous. What do you mean by control over their impulses? How does such a concept fit in with determinism? Some systems are more nonlinear than others and allow trivial fluctuations in the environment to grow without bound and overpower everything else in the system. I was reading about a guy in a movie theater who got up to get popcorn and accidentally stepped on a stranger's foot, so the stranger got out a knife and stabbed popcorn guy to death. Knife guy was a very nonlinear system, that is to say poor impulse control. Deterrence makes no sense to a machine. Nonsense. The environment is a important factor in determining the way machines behave, just like with people. without free will, their want isn't connected to anything that can cause changes in the universe. Cannot comment, don’t know what ASCII sequence “free will” means. Deterrence
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Thursday, March 14, 2013 4:27:17 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: 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. If that's true, and you're the one who keeps telling me that the qualia color has nothing to do with wavelengths of electromagnetism, then either your assumption is wrong and the white is red or you are talking gibberish again. It's mind boggling to me that I must continually explain grade school logic to someone who thinks he's unraveled the secrets of the universe. Maybe you should stop trying to use grade school logic to understand the universe? Color qualia has something to do with electromagnetic wavelengths, but it is not the former which is caused by the latter. Remember, I never deny any observations of nature. Color mixing, reflection, and absorption do make sense when modeled mathematically - just as sentences can be analyzed grammatically. The mistake that people make is to jump to the conclusion that sentences are make themselves through grammar, or that 'wavelengths of light' are colorful. You can readily observe by the pixels of your monitor that white areas of the screen can be seen as red, green, and blue pixels at full brightness and equal balance. That is all that is necessary to understand that white is both not red and not not red. Warm water can be said not to be hot but also not to be not hot either, BULLSHIT. If warm is not hot and warm is not not hot then the concept of warm is as useful as a bucket of warm spit. No, concepts don't have to communicate a single unambiguous meaning, they can contain all kinds of indirect associations and subtle understandings. Again, your view of the universe seems arrested at some adolescent level. Free will doesn't need to be defined because it is inescapable and obvious. I've escaped it and free will is not obvious to me, You've escaped it using your free will. You choose to see the concept as ill-defined. I don't know what the hell you're talking about! And not only can't you define free will you can't point to example of it that is not deterministic and not random and not gibberish. Free will doesn't need to be defined any more than the color red needs to be defined. If you have not experienced free will then no example will help you experience it, and if you have experienced free will then no example is necessary. It is beneath the threshold of definition. It's not a big deal, it's not a mystical koan, it's the simple fact. You can't dehydrate water, and you can't get outside of your own free will to treat it as an object. 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. You continue to make oracular declarations and insisting without evidence or argument that you speak the truth, but I don't believe the Pope when he engages in that sort of crap so I don't see why I should believe you either. I try to explain with reason what cannot be understood with evidence. The evidence is already all around you, you just don't recognize it as such. It is incredibly obvious that a mouse trap does not have a goal of catching a mouse, yet you try to make even something so clear and sensible into a sleazy sales pitch. 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? The difference is that then the mouse trap would have a different goal. Why is it different? No goal repeated is still no goal. It could have been a child's finger broken in the trap instead. And the trap moved very fast and then stopped when it was touched. Not sure what you mean. My point is that whatever sets off the trap; mouse, finger, carrot, or just a loud thump nearby, it doesn't matter to the trap. The trap knows nothing. There is metal in a tense condition and when that condition is changed, the tension is relieved. That is the extent of the goal of the trap - to spring when it can, or to bend or break over time. Any option is equal for the piece of wire, it doesn't care about mice. 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'. Both the program and you behaved the way they did for a reason. Or are you saying its opposite because a program does what it does because it doesn't want to? Yes, the program neither wants to execute the program nor doesn't want to. The program is constructed
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: 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? What laws of physics will make it rain in exactly 30 days? Why will it rain in Singapore but not in Kuala Lumpur? 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. Would you be as amazed to see the pattern of charge changing in the memory of a computer playing chess? Would it prove to you that planning its next move caused the charge shifts, rather than the physics of electric circuits? 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. And the computer uses the chess game to change charge distribution in memory. 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. Quantum level events are still mechanistic in your sense, in that they follow probabilistic rules. But you don't need quantum level events to make the brain unpredictable. Classical complexity is enough for that. 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? The videos make the brain look just like a complex pinball machine, yes. What would be remarkable would be if there were no physical change in the brain at all while the subject was thinking. That would show that thinking is not done with the brain but with something else, perhaps an immaterial soul. Closer to what you claim, it would be remarkable if we could zoom in on some of the neuronal activity and see that there was activity in neurons not explainable in terms of biochemistry, such as a transmembrane voltage other than what is calculated from measuring the concentration of anions and cations. That would be relatively simple to show and it would be consistent with the idea that the mind is not just epiphenomenal but can have a direct effect on the body. 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. No, it is not a problem, because if you claim that it is the neurons who change, then you are just asserting that I don't have free will because my neurons do. You have the exact same mind-body problem that you had with me, only now it is hundreds of billions of tiny bodies who have formed this civilization of independent beings, all coordinating their activities in response to an outside world that must be perceived by all of them as a coherent whole. Your view only makes more problems. The neurons still change in response to semantic conditions rather than blind physics - which doesn't care about anything except thermodynamic states, field strength, ionic bonds, etc. None of those things change with meditation. I still don't see where you find any evidence in science that neurons change in response to anything other than blind physics. The semantic changes and sensory events supervene on the biochemical changes. Look at the video. Where do you see biochemical changes as being relevant at all? What biochemical conditions would be changing millisecond to
Logical games
Dear Bruno, This is a nice lecture by Johan van Benthem that covers the kind of approach that I am trying to use in my critique of comp: http://videolectures.net/esslli2011_benthem_logic/ It gives a nice alternative to the concept of a universal Platonic Mind or secular God to whom all true statements are known to be true. It might help you understand my thinking. ;-) -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Thursday, March 14, 2013 6:42:10 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: 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? What laws of physics will make it rain in exactly 30 days? Why will it rain in Singapore but not in Kuala Lumpur? Geographic variation and water content contribute to determining where and when it is likely to rain, but they do not determine when I will have my house painted. The rain certainly does not find its way to Singapore because of an appointment that it sets intentionally. 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. Would you be as amazed to see the pattern of charge changing in the memory of a computer playing chess? Would it prove to you that planning its next move caused the charge shifts, rather than the physics of electric circuits? Would meditation change the pattern like it does for a human brain? 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. And the computer uses the chess game to change charge distribution in memory. If you have the computer play the same game of chess you will see the same charge distribution whether or not the computer has meditated. 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. Quantum level events are still mechanistic in your sense, in that they follow probabilistic rules. The events in our brain follow non-probabilistic, spontaneous, intentional rules. But you don't need quantum level events to make the brain unpredictable. Classical complexity is enough for that. 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? The videos make the brain look just like a complex pinball machine, yes. What would be remarkable would be if there were no physical change in the brain at all while the subject was thinking. That would show that thinking is not done with the brain but with something else, perhaps an immaterial soul. That is exactly what NDE studies seem to suggest. I don't require that to be true since I think that brain activity is the public-spatial view of a moment out of a private-temporal experience. The videos clearly show that the brain is not merely reacting to outside stimulation, nor is there any sign of a linear pattern of cause and effect in place. They show that awareness drives spontaneous brain activity - not that it is dormant until interacted with. Closer to what you claim, it would be remarkable if we could zoom in on some of the neuronal activity and see that there was activity in neurons not explainable in terms of biochemistry, such as a transmembrane voltage other than what is calculated from measuring the concentration of anions and cations. You still don't understand why that is a ridiculous straw man. It's like saying that for me to choose these letters there would
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: 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? What laws of physics will make it rain in exactly 30 days? Why will it rain in Singapore but not in Kuala Lumpur? Geographic variation and water content contribute to determining where and when it is likely to rain, but they do not determine when I will have my house painted. The rain certainly does not find its way to Singapore because of an appointment that it sets intentionally. But if there were consciousness associated with the rain, it might. We would have no way of knowing, would we? Would you be as amazed to see the pattern of charge changing in the memory of a computer playing chess? Would it prove to you that planning its next move caused the charge shifts, rather than the physics of electric circuits? Would meditation change the pattern like it does for a human brain? Yes, of course. Do you think that the computer could do computations without any physical change? And the computer uses the chess game to change charge distribution in memory. If you have the computer play the same game of chess you will see the same charge distribution whether or not the computer has meditated. But if meditation changes the computer then it may play a different game, just as if meditation changes the human player's brain he may play a different game. Quantum level events are still mechanistic in your sense, in that they follow probabilistic rules. The events in our brain follow non-probabilistic, spontaneous, intentional rules. If they are non-probabilistic they are deterministic. They can be intentional and spontaneous whether probabilistic or deterministic. Intentional means the person wants to do it and spontaneous could mean the person decides to do it without any obvious external stimulus. The videos make the brain look just like a complex pinball machine, yes. What would be remarkable would be if there were no physical change in the brain at all while the subject was thinking. That would show that thinking is not done with the brain but with something else, perhaps an immaterial soul. That is exactly what NDE studies seem to suggest. I don't require that to be true since I think that brain activity is the public-spatial view of a moment out of a private-temporal experience. The videos clearly show that the brain is not merely reacting to outside stimulation, nor is there any sign of a linear pattern of cause and effect in place. They show that awareness drives spontaneous brain activity - not that it is dormant until interacted with. Of course the brain is not dormant until stimulated. Even under anaesthesia there is complex, continuous brain activity. Closer to what you claim, it would be remarkable if we could zoom in on some of the neuronal activity and see that there was activity in neurons not explainable in terms of biochemistry, such as a transmembrane voltage other than what is calculated from measuring the concentration of anions and cations. You still don't understand why that is a ridiculous straw man. It's like saying that for me to choose these letters there would have to be some violation of the English language going on to allow words to appear from nowhere. Well, what else can I say when you deny that the activity of the brain is entirely determined by the biochemistry? You say it isn't just the biochemistry, then you say it is, then you say it isn't again. If it isn't then somewhere in the brain there must be an anomalous event you can point to. If you can't point to any such events then brain activity is mechanistic to the same extent that biochemistry is mechanistic. That would be relatively simple to show and it would be consistent with the idea that the mind is not just epiphenomenal but can have a direct effect on the body. Or you could just tell someone to imagine that they are playing tennis and then look at the area of the brain associated with motor activity and observe that it changes when they imagine playing tennis. Oh, wait, they did that. Case closed. Mind is not an epiphenomenon. To show the mental is not epiphenomenal you would have to show that a physical change is effected by the mental that cannot be explained entirely in physical terms. I still don't see where you find any evidence in science that neurons change in response to anything other than blind physics. See above. Does physical law detail how one 'imagines playing tennis'? Is that sudden re-orchestration of a region of the brain's activity just a coincidence that was going to happen anyways? The re-orchestration of the brain when someone thinks of playing tennis happens because of the physical interactions in the brain. If it were not so then we would see
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: 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. You have yourself provided a counter-example to this claim. We have concluded that the free-will based on non determinacy is non sensical, but not so for the notion of free-will based on determinacy. Free-will does makes sense in that case: it is the ability to follow our own self-determination, No that is the exact opposite of the truth, we cannot follow our own self determination. If you tell me that a system is deterministic you have added exactly zero information by telling me that the system also has free will, thus free will means nothing and is just a noise. Turing proved 80 years ago that even in a 100% deterministic system sometimes you can tell if that system will ever be in sate X (such as the stop state for example) BUT sometimes you can not and in general there is no way to tell when you can and when you can't, so the only way to know is to just watch it and see, and you might end up watching it literally forever. There is no shortcut, sometimes nobody, not even we ourselves know what we will do until we do it. You're walking down a road and spot a fork in the road far ahead. You know of advantages and disadvantages to both paths so you arn't sure if you will go right or left, you haven't finished the calculation yet, you haven't decided yet. Once you get to the fork you find yourself on the left path and retroactively conclude that you must have decided to go left. 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 Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:29:09 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: 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? What laws of physics will make it rain in exactly 30 days? Why will it rain in Singapore but not in Kuala Lumpur? Geographic variation and water content contribute to determining where and when it is likely to rain, but they do not determine when I will have my house painted. The rain certainly does not find its way to Singapore because of an appointment that it sets intentionally. But if there were consciousness associated with the rain, it might. We would have no way of knowing, would we? Knowing is not something that applies to consciousness. We can have a sense of sentience without knowing though. It's an open area of physics; perceptual relativity. When we open ourselves up to differently scaled phenomena, we can tune into super-personal awareness to some extent, but the more that we do, the harder it can be to discern between intuition and delusion. Would you be as amazed to see the pattern of charge changing in the memory of a computer playing chess? Would it prove to you that planning its next move caused the charge shifts, rather than the physics of electric circuits? Would meditation change the pattern like it does for a human brain? Yes, of course. Do you think that the computer could do computations without any physical change? There is no reason to assume that meditation has a computational equivalent. Computers don't ever meditate, nor could they benefit by it. And the computer uses the chess game to change charge distribution in memory. If you have the computer play the same game of chess you will see the same charge distribution whether or not the computer has meditated. But if meditation changes the computer then it may play a different game, just as if meditation changes the human player's brain he may play a different game. Meditation couldn't change a computer because a computer can't meditate. To a computer, there is only computing and pause. Quantum level events are still mechanistic in your sense, in that they follow probabilistic rules. The events in our brain follow non-probabilistic, spontaneous, intentional rules. If they are non-probabilistic they are deterministic. No. Where do you get this edict from? They are non-deterministic and non-probabilistic. They are neither red light or green light - they are yellow light; intentional. Probabilistic and deterministic systems are both equally *unintentional*. They do not *try* to do anything, ever. Intention is predicated on intensities of effort. Patience. Focus. There is none of that in deterministic or probabilistic systems - it is ontologically impossible. How is this so impossible to grasp? How can you sit on a mountain of stubborn intentions and deny that there is a mountain there? They can be intentional and spontaneous whether probabilistic or deterministic. No. Nothing intentional can be probabilistic or deterministic or random. It is the opposite of all three by definition. You can be coerced by deterministic circumstances to the point that you have no practical control over your own actions, but that does not make your action intentional. Intentional is more voluntary than involuntary. Intentional means the person wants to do it and spontaneous could mean the person decides to do it without any obvious external stimulus. That's fine, but where does the determinism come in? The videos make the brain look just like a complex pinball machine, yes. What would be remarkable would be if there were no physical change in the brain at all while the subject was thinking. That would show that thinking is not done with the brain but with something else, perhaps an immaterial soul. That is exactly what NDE studies seem to suggest. I don't require that to be true since I think that brain activity is the public-spatial view of a moment out of a private-temporal experience. The videos clearly show that the brain is not merely reacting to outside stimulation, nor is there any sign of a linear pattern of cause and effect in place. They show that awareness drives spontaneous brain activity - not that it is dormant until interacted with. Of course the brain is not dormant until stimulated. Even under anaesthesia there is complex, continuous brain activity. But machines can be dormant when they are not stimulated. Closer to what you claim, it would be remarkable if we could zoom in on some of the neuronal activity and see that there was activity in
Re: Comp: Geometry Is A Zombie
On Thursday, March 14, 2013 11:38:10 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: 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. In this lame analogy of yours what is the counterpart of my typing into the computer, who the hell is typing into my brain? John K Clark, who else? An experience which began at a certain place and time in history. When you die, you will be identified primarily by a name and two dates. That information is as close as you can get to a 'body' in public space. That is the footprint of your personal share of eternity. Evolution most certainly did do it Because Evolution is God? They say there is no such thing as a stupid question. They're wrong. Ah, another nervous tic is born I see. It doesn't satisfy the intent of my question though. You claim to know what evolution does and does not do, but evolution has only ever been implicated in the morphological structure of biological species. 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. Therefore, as I just said, consciousness MUST be the byproduct of something that Evolution CAN see, and as I also just said Evolution CAN see intelligence. But consciousness can't be a byproduct of anything because it would be completely unexplainable and superfluous no matter what you try to attach it to. It is completely implausible in every way. 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, You can't hear or see a computer file, all you can do is see or listen to the computers interpretation of that file. Well, I could theoretically look at the HD platter with an electron microscope. People must have collectively concluded that the computers interpretation is pretty damn good or information processing wouldn't be a multitrillion dollar industry. There you go back to the 'whoever is winning must be right and superior'. What does the popularity of porn and gossip have to do with the capacity of computers to think and feel? 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 Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: A wheel is just [...] a mouse trap does not [...] it doesn't care about [...] it doesn't matter to [...] This is really getting tedious. Again and again you are decreeing what is and what is not so but you're not even attempting to give us a reason for believing it is true except for your word. You're not the Pope and I don't believe what the Pope says without evidence or rational argument either. As a practical matter both you and I judge that something is conscious in exactly the same way, we look for intelligence. No, I would generally look for movement. Breathing. So when I undergo anesthesia I'm conscious but when Einstein holds his breath he's not. ESP parapsychology junk science. You must be psychic to know the results of experiments before they are even designed. These sort of experiments have been performed ad nauseam for at least 2 centuries and have produced null results, it's time to move on. Machines are getting better in some ways, but not in any way that matters to anything except human minds. A machine mattered very much to 2 champion human minds who got their ass beaten on Jeopardy by a certain machine. In your universe, the Free Will noise either exists for a reason or it does not. Obviously You don't seem to allow that it could have a reason, Not at all, there might be a reason people believe in free will just as there is a reason children believe in Santa Claws. nor do you allow that the belief in free will could be random Not at all, there might be no reason; but one thing is certain, there is a reason people believe in free will or there is not a reason people believe in free will You clearly believe that people intentionally choose their belief in free will and that they could and should correct this error by educating themselves in a particular way. Maybe, or maybe some people are just hardwired that way. 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.
