Re: Losing Control
On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 1:55 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You insist that free will is incompatible with determinism or randomness. If I accept this definition, then free will is impossible. Control can be defined in such a way that it is possible even if free will is impossible. I don't think that control can be defined in such a way that it is possible without free will. Not literally. We can project control onto an inanimate system figuratively, via the pathetic fallacy, and say that rainfall controls crop yields or something like that, but there is no intention on the part of rainfall to manipulate crop yields. While it may not always be easy to discern what exactly makes a given process unintentional or intentional when it is a public observation, but privately the difference between what we can possibly control and what we may not ever be able to control is abundantly clear. As I said, a common definition of control is the ability to determine something's behaviour according to your wishes. That you have wishes is independent of whether you have free will, whatever the definition of free will. However, if you define control as incompatible with determinism or randomness then control is impossible I would not say that free will/self-controlcontrol is incompatible from unintentional processes (determinism or randomness), but just as the yellow traffic light implies the customs and meanings of both red and green lights, there is a clear distinction between intention and unintention. also. We will have to use an alternative word to indicate what was previously called control in order to avoid confusion in our discussions. Why, getting too close to something that you can't deny and conflate? I know exactly what I mean by free will and control but if you define them differently then I'll happily agree that these things are impossible according to your definition. We are disagreeing about language in this case, not about facts. We disagree about facts in other cases, such as whether judges believe that the brain of the accused works according to deterministic or random processes. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Sunday, March 17, 2013 3:16:15 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 1:55 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: You insist that free will is incompatible with determinism or randomness. If I accept this definition, then free will is impossible. Control can be defined in such a way that it is possible even if free will is impossible. I don't think that control can be defined in such a way that it is possible without free will. Not literally. We can project control onto an inanimate system figuratively, via the pathetic fallacy, and say that rainfall controls crop yields or something like that, but there is no intention on the part of rainfall to manipulate crop yields. While it may not always be easy to discern what exactly makes a given process unintentional or intentional when it is a public observation, but privately the difference between what we can possibly control and what we may not ever be able to control is abundantly clear. As I said, a common definition of control is the ability to determine something's behaviour according to your wishes. That you have wishes is independent of whether you have free will, whatever the definition of free will. What turns a wish into action other than free will? We have many wishes, what determines which ones we promote to effort? Craig However, if you define control as incompatible with determinism or randomness then control is impossible I would not say that free will/self-controlcontrol is incompatible from unintentional processes (determinism or randomness), but just as the yellow traffic light implies the customs and meanings of both red and green lights, there is a clear distinction between intention and unintention. also. We will have to use an alternative word to indicate what was previously called control in order to avoid confusion in our discussions. Why, getting too close to something that you can't deny and conflate? I know exactly what I mean by free will and control but if you define them differently then I'll happily agree that these things are impossible according to your definition. We are disagreeing about language in this case, not about facts. We disagree about facts in other cases, such as whether judges believe that the brain of the accused works according to deterministic or random processes. I disagree that we are disagreeing about language. I have always proposed that free will is orthogonal to deterministic or random processes, which are both opposite kinds of unintentional phenomena. Free will is an intentional process which explicitly opposes both external determination and randomness. Intention is voluntary. As unintentional phenomena can be described as the polarity of randomness and determination, intentional phenomena might similarly be described in the polarity of active creativity and reactive preference. As far as judges go, any judge that believes that those they pass judgment over are ruled by randomness or determinism would be a fraud, as all such acts are by definition innocent. Likewise, to believe in their own capacity for judgment they would be frauds to believe that their choices are random or passively received by fate yet still present themselves as personally responsible for their own judgments. I don't doubt that some judges do feel this way, but they are still frauds if they could really take their beliefs seriously. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Re: A Consistent QM Histories explanation of synchronicity andSheldrake's morphisms.
Hi tjp.bayley My point of view is not realism or materialism but idealism, at least Leibniz's form of it: http://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-met/ which I find curiously similar to that of QM. Its is similar to classical idealism (berkeley) , except that at least for us, and only when we perceive it, there is also, but only when perceived, a parallel but only partial view of reality-- reality only from our individual point of view-- called te phenomenal world. You can always stub your toe. I didn't mean anything by live other than exist. But before we perceive it, acccording to QM, it's just random quantum fields, at least to us. However. we are conscious of what is within us all of the time, and we apperceive-- are conscious of the process od pereceiving. So there is us (a subject) which is doing the perceiving and a subject-- what we are perceiving. So consciousness consists of a pair-- a subject plus an object. Neither one is fundamentally a piece of matte, because fundamentally everythuing according to QM is just a quantum field. Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 3/17/2013 Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous. - Albert Einstein - Receiving the following content - From: tjp.bayley Receiver: everything-list Time: 2013-03-16, 13:55:20 Subject: Re: A Consistent QM Histories explanation of synchronicity andSheldrake's morphisms. On Saturday, March 16, 2013 3:39:55 PM UTC, Roger Clough wrote: We live in an indefinite world of superposed quantum states, Doesn't it depend what you mean by 'live'? As far as I can see, I live in a definite world, but I am aware of having an imagination and a bunch of concepts about life (same thing?) Since I observe my imagination I can say it is also definite, though what it purports to reference is not observed and therefore is not definite. Linking this with another current thread, if you have a QM-realistic view of life, can you hold to a materialist view of consciousness? -- 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 16 Mar 2013, at 23:48, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/16/2013 3:15 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Mar 2013, at 20:38, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, March 15, 2013 3:04:24 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote: No, I think that you haven't understood it, That's because you are only working with a straw man of me. What is it that you think that I don't understand? The legacy view is that if you have many molecular systems working together mechanically, you will naturally get emergent properties that could be mistaken for teleological entities. You can't tell the difference between a brain change that seems meaningful to you and a meaningful experience which causes a brain change. Just because you feel like you are moving your arm doesn't mean that isn't just a narrative fiction that serves a valuable evolutionary purpose. All of that is fine, in some other theoretical universe. In our universe however, it can't work. There is no evolutionary purpose for consciousness or narrative fictions. The existence of the feeling that you can control your body makes no sense in universe where control is impersonal and involuntary. There is no possibility for teleology to even be conceived in a universe of endless meaningless chain reactions - no basis for proprietary attachment of any kind. It's circular to imagine that it could be important for an epiphenomenal self to believe it is phenomenal. Important how? It's like adding a steering wheel to a mountain. due to whatever biases have led you to invest so much in your theory - a theory which is AFAICT completely unfalsifiable and predicts nothing. No theory which models consciousness will ever be falsifiable, because falsifiability is a quality within consciousness. As far as prediction goes, one of the things it predicts that people who are bound to the extremes of the philosophical spectrum will be intolerant and misrepresent other perspectives. They will cling pathologically to unreal abstractions while flatly denying ordinary experience. Materialism + computationalism can lead to nihilism. But computationalism, per se, does not deny ordinary experiences. It starts from that, as it is a principle of invariance of consciousness for a digital substitution made at some level. Dear Bruno, Could you elaborate on what you mean by 'nihilism' here? Person eliminativism, like the Churchland and almost Dennett, as it seems. It comes from comp + physicalism. But comp alone does not. It leads only to the body problem, that is the very natural idea that the laws of physics have a non physical (arithmetical) reason. 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 17 Mar 2013, at 03:47, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, March 16, 2013 3:15:43 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Mar 2013, at 20:38, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, March 15, 2013 3:04:24 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote: No, I think that you haven't understood it, That's because you are only working with a straw man of me. What is it that you think that I don't understand? The legacy view is that if you have many molecular systems working together mechanically, you will naturally get emergent properties that could be mistaken for teleological entities. You can't tell the difference between a brain change that seems meaningful to you and a meaningful experience which causes a brain change. Just because you feel like you are moving your arm doesn't mean that isn't just a narrative fiction that serves a valuable evolutionary purpose. All of that is fine, in some other theoretical universe. In our universe however, it can't work. There is no evolutionary purpose for consciousness or narrative fictions. The existence of the feeling that you can control your body makes no sense in universe where control is impersonal and involuntary. There is no possibility for teleology to even be conceived in a universe of endless meaningless chain reactions - no basis for proprietary attachment of any kind. It's circular to imagine that it could be important for an epiphenomenal self to believe it is phenomenal. Important how? It's like adding a steering wheel to a mountain. due to whatever biases have led you to invest so much in your theory - a theory which is AFAICT completely unfalsifiable and predicts nothing. No theory which models consciousness will ever be falsifiable, because falsifiability is a quality within consciousness. As far as prediction goes, one of the things it predicts that people who are bound to the extremes of the philosophical spectrum will be intolerant and misrepresent other perspectives. They will cling pathologically to unreal abstractions while flatly denying ordinary experience. Materialism + computationalism can lead to nihilism. But computationalism, per se, does not deny ordinary experiences. It starts from that, as it is a principle of invariance of consciousness for a digital substitution made at some level. It may not deny ordinary experiences, but it doesn't support them rationally either. It supports them as much as possible. It supports some irrationalism like non communicable truth on the par of the machine. What is a reason why computation would be processed as an ordinary experience, when we clearly can be accomplished through a-signifying mechanical activities? You lost me here. Bruno Craig Bruno Craig On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday, March 15, 2013 1:55:26 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote: On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: Exactly. It is interesting also in that it seems to be like one of those ambiguous images, in that as long as people are focused on one fixed idea of reality, they are honestly incapable of seeing any other, even if they themselves are sitting on top of it. The irony in that statement is staggering. I couldn't satirize you any better if I tried. Why, do you think that I have never considered the bottom up model of causation? -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@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. 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
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Sunday, March 17, 2013 10:47:05 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Mar 2013, at 03:47, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, March 16, 2013 3:15:43 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Mar 2013, at 20:38, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Friday, March 15, 2013 3:04:24 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote: No, I think that you haven't understood it, That's because you are only working with a straw man of me. What is it that you think that I don't understand? The legacy view is that if you have many molecular systems working together mechanically, you will naturally get emergent properties that could be mistaken for teleological entities. You can't tell the difference between a brain change that seems meaningful to you and a meaningful experience which causes a brain change. Just because you feel like you are moving your arm doesn't mean that isn't just a narrative fiction that serves a valuable evolutionary purpose. All of that is fine, in some other theoretical universe. In our universe however, it can't work. There is no evolutionary purpose for consciousness or narrative fictions. The existence of the feeling that you can control your body makes no sense in universe where control is impersonal and involuntary. There is no possibility for teleology to even be conceived in a universe of endless meaningless chain reactions - no basis for proprietary attachment of any kind. It's circular to imagine that it could be important for an epiphenomenal self to believe it is phenomenal. Important how? It's like adding a steering wheel to a mountain. due to whatever biases have led you to invest so much in your theory - a theory which is AFAICT completely unfalsifiable and predicts nothing. No theory which models consciousness will ever be falsifiable, because falsifiability is a quality within consciousness. As far as prediction goes, one of the things it predicts that people who are bound to the extremes of the philosophical spectrum will be intolerant and misrepresent other perspectives. They will cling pathologically to unreal abstractions while flatly denying ordinary experience. Materialism + computationalism can lead to nihilism. But computationalism, per se, does not deny ordinary experiences. It starts from that, as it is a principle of invariance of consciousness for a digital substitution made at some level. It may not deny ordinary experiences, but it doesn't support them rationally either. It supports them as much as possible. It supports some irrationalism like non communicable truth on the par of the machine. Being non-communicable is a property of experience but non-communicability itself doesn't imply experience at all. Experience can imply a use for computation, as a method of distributing access to experiential qualities, but computation cannot imply a use for experience. As someone brought up on another conversation on FB, the construction of neural networks coincides with the end of conscious involvement - the disappearance of personal attention into automatism. Learning makes consciousness redundant. Repetition allows awareness to withdraw from the act, which becomes robotic. What is a reason why computation would be processed as an ordinary experience, when we clearly can be accomplished through a-signifying mechanical activities? You lost me here. We see that generic mechanical activities can be used to imitate experiences without actually embodying them. Illuminated pixels can stimulate our consciousness to experience characters and scenes which are not literally present in the pixels. The pixel arrangements do not literally become people and places. Craig Bruno Craig Bruno Craig On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Friday, March 15, 2013 1:55:26 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote: On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: Exactly. It is interesting also in that it seems to be like one of those ambiguous images, in that as long as people are focused on one fixed idea of reality, they are honestly incapable of seeing any other, even if they themselves are sitting on top of it. The irony in that statement is staggering. I couldn't satirize you any better if I tried. Why, do you think that I have never considered the bottom up model of causation? -- 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-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the
Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis
On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: So all free will means is that sometimes we can make correct predictions about what we will do before we do it, and sometimes we cannot, and in general beforehand there is no way to tell which ones we can make good predictions for and which ones we can't. And even when we make a correct prediction about what we will do (I will never do X for example) sometimes we'll have to wait literally forever to know it was the correct prediction. A pretty useless definition don't you think? It is useful to decide if some one must be send in a jail or in an hospital That has nothing to do with the free will noise. If you determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the murderer's mind can be repaired and his murderous inclination eliminated then you send him to a hospital, if you determine he cannot be repaired with existing technology then you warehouse him in a jail unless you judge him to be so dangerous that would be too cruel to the other residence of the warehouse, in which case you give him a nice little dirt nap. 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 aren'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. Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking. And a powerful demon could be able to look into your head and quickly deduce that you would eventually choose to go to the left. Meanwhile you, whose mind works much more slowly than the demon's, hasn't completed the thought process yet. You might be saying to yourself I haven't decided yet, I'll have to think about it, I'm free to go either way but the demon already knows for a fact that despite your present uncertainty by the time you reach the fork you will decide to go to the left. No problem with that, unless the daemon interfere, but I am remain free to contradict him, if he decides to talk In my example the demon did not tell you of his prediction, but now lets pretend he did. Suppose also that you are of an argumentative nature and was determined to do the exact opposite of what the demon predicted. Now our poor demon would be in a familiar predicament. Because the demon's decision now influences your actions the demon must forecast his own behavior, but he will have no better luck in this regard than you did and for the same reason. What we would need in a situation like this is a mega-demon able to look into the demon's head. Now the mega-demon would have the problem unless he did not tell you or the demon what his prediction was and instead wrote it down and put it into a sealed envelope. 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
John: you answered YES on questions not drawing it: (see your post copied below) 1st YES: can you (yes) or can you not (yes?) see? 2nd YES: can you NOT control? Yes, I can, Yes I cannot. I was glad not to see a third YES. YES John A Mikes On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 12:22 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 , Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If someone sells you into slavery, or brainwashes you in a cult, can you not see that you have lost something? Yes. Can you not 'control' your lungs to a greater extent than you can control your heartbeat? Yes How do you define this difference in your worldview? The only logical conclusion to make is that not everything the brain does has something to do with consciousness, there must be more than one subsystem in operation inside that bone box resting on your shoulders. Sigmund Freud figured that out a long time ago. 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. -- 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.
