subject:"Re\: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis"



On Monday, March 18, 2013 7:57:06 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 3/18/2013 1:02 PM, John Mikes wrote:
>  
>
>  friends: 
> don't put so much brain-grease into Free Will, please! 
>  
>
> I'm not.  That's why I was careful to distinguish freedom and the feeling 
> of freedom from will and the feeling of resolve.  We can have them 
> together, but that doesn't make them into one thing.
>
>  It is the religious mambo-jumbo put into the mind of the poor-believers 
> in ancient times to make them responsible for deeds the powerful disliked - 
> and consequently: make them punishable. 
>
>
> I don't think that's right.  The idea of responsibility was taken for 
> granted.  It was only after the development of Newtonian mechanics that the 
> idea that human actions might be deterministic was conceived.  Then "free 
> will" became the reactionary idea to preserve the traditional ideas of 
> resposibility.
>

"The early Greek atomists such as Democritus (c.460-370 BCE) and Leucippus 
(c. 5th cent. BCE) were the first to see the universe as being purely 
mechanicalistic. The one surviving quote from Leucippus's work asserts a 
universal determinism: "Nothing happens at random, but everything from 
rational principle and of necessity."- 
http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/determinism.htm


Craig


> Brent
>
>  

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-18 Thread meekerdb


On 3/18/2013 1:02 PM, John Mikes wrote:


friends:
don't put so much brain-grease into Free Will, please!


I'm not.  That's why I was careful to distinguish freedom and the feeling of freedom from 
will and the feeling of resolve.  We can have them together, but that doesn't make them 
into one thing.


It is the religious mambo-jumbo put into the mind of the poor-believers in ancient times 
to make them responsible for deeds the powerful disliked - and consequently: make them 
punishable.


I don't think that's right.  The idea of responsibility was taken for granted.  It was 
only after the development of Newtonian mechanics that the idea that human actions might 
be deterministic was conceived.  Then "free will" became the reactionary idea to preserve 
the traditional ideas of resposibility.


Brent


Then it became a 'human treasure':
*"We are FREE to Will!" *(like a god) and now even smart, reasonable people like us 
spend centuries to discuss it.
A decision is right when it goes smoothly with the given and continuing circumstances it 
has to fit into (Think of the mis - construed 'evolution': if it does not 'fit' the 
mutant perishes).
We may (or may not) know about the given circumstances and for sure may have only 
desultory and unsafe notions about the 'coming' ones. Our evaluation (call it 
computing?)  results in a decision (conscious or not) for our activity - OR just way of 
thinking. Reasonably we try to abide by those circumstances we know of and formulate 
(consciously, or not) our decision according to our best belief (maybe this is contrary 
to our interest?). Hence emerges FREE WILL.
I am not faithful enough to believe in MY free will and go to hell by force of this 
misconception. I may make mistakes.
I am not deterministically forced to comply with all facets of the infinite complexity - 
known,  or unknown. I can revolt. Meaning: I can knowingly choose the wrong decision.

Is that free will? Maybe. That's a matter of definition.

Regards
John Mikes


On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Bruno Marchal > wrote:



On 15 Mar 2013, at 18:22, meekerdb wrote:


On 3/15/2013 7:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

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.


Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking. Except that I 
decided
consciously before acting. If not, it is like randomness, or unconscious 
decision,
and that is not free will. Free-will is when I want to go the left, and 
decide
accordingly to go to the left, and nobody coerce me to not go to the left. 
It is
not much different than will + freedom.


That seems to me just and explanation of a certain *feeling* of a feeling of
freedom and of will.  If you find yourself on the left path without having
consciously thought "I'll take the left." then you miss the feeling of 
will.  But
it may just be that your conscious thoughts are lagging a little.


?
I agree but that makes free-will independent of the feeling. With my 
definition of
free will, it is real,even if not felt, as the machine have the real 
possibility to
hesitate between subgoals and make choice hesitantly, knowing partially the
consequences.




When you're playing a game, say tennis, and you hit the ball to the left 
you may
have done so without conscious consideration yet it was just the right shot 
and so
was what you "willed" to win which you realize on reflection.


OK. Although I think that free-will is more typical for decision taking 
more time,
and more self-controversial, like the decision to drink some beer before 
driving a
plane with passengers ...





You have a feeling of freedom so long as you are not coerced or limited by
something you can consciously consider; that's essentially all the feeling 
of
freedom is, not being able to think of anything that is restricting or 
coercing you
from taking an action.  Since you can't be directly aware of deterministic 
or
random processes in your brain, whether they are random or deterministic 
has no
bearing on the freedom+will feeling.


I agree. But I think that free-will is more than a feeling. It is a real 
possibility
of reflected choice. Indeed it has nothing to so with determinacy or 
randomness.

Bruno




Brent



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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Monday, March 18, 2013 4:02:51 PM UTC-4, JohnM wrote:
>
>
> friends:
> don't put so much brain-grease into Free Will, please! 
> It is the religious mambo-jumbo put into the mind of the poor-believers in 
> ancient times to make them responsible for deeds the powerful disliked - 
> and consequently: make them punishable. Then it became a 'human treasure': 
> *"We are FREE to Will!" *(like a god) and now even smart, reasonable 
> people like us spend centuries to discuss it. 
> A decision is right when it goes smoothly with the given and continuing 
> circumstances it has to fit into (Think of the mis - construed 'evolution': 
> if it does not 'fit' the mutant perishes). 
> We may (or may not) know about the given circumstances and for sure may 
> have only desultory and unsafe notions about the 'coming' ones. Our 
> evaluation (call it computing?)  results in a decision (conscious or not) 
> for our activity - OR just way of thinking. Reasonably we try to abide by 
> those circumstances we know of and formulate (consciously, or not) our 
> decision according to our best belief (maybe this is contrary to our 
> interest?). Hence emerges FREE WILL. 
> I am not faithful enough to believe in MY free will and go to hell by 
> force of this misconception. I may make mistakes.
> I am not deterministically forced to comply with all facets of the 
> infinite complexity - known,  or unknown. I can revolt. Meaning: I can 
> knowingly choose the wrong decision. 
> Is that free will? Maybe. That's a matter of definition.
>
>
Even the possibility of conceiving of 'revolt' is free will. The idea that 
anything can be a 'matter of definition' is free will. Preferences.. 
departures from expectations. Can a computation revolt? Can the solution to 
a function be a matter of definition?

Craig

Regards 
> John Mikes
>  
>
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Bruno Marchal 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> On 15 Mar 2013, at 18:22, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>  On 3/15/2013 7:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>  
>>   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.
>>  
>>
>>  Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking. Except that I 
>> decided consciously before acting. If not, it is like randomness, or 
>> unconscious decision, and that is not free will. Free-will is when I want 
>> to go the left, and decide accordingly to go to the left, and nobody coerce 
>> me to not go to the left. It is not much different than will + freedom.
>>
>>
>> That seems to me just and explanation of a certain *feeling* of a feeling 
>> of freedom and of will.  If you find yourself on the left path without 
>> having consciously thought "I'll take the left." then you miss the feeling 
>> of will.  But it may just be that your conscious thoughts are lagging a 
>> little. 
>>
>>
>> ?
>> I agree but that makes free-will independent of the feeling. With my 
>> definition of free will, it is real,even if not felt, as the machine have 
>> the real possibility to hesitate between subgoals and make choice 
>> hesitantly, knowing partially the consequences.
>>
>>
>>
>> When you're playing a game, say tennis, and you hit the ball to the left 
>> you may have done so without conscious consideration yet it was just the 
>> right shot and so was what you "willed" to win which you realize on 
>> reflection. 
>>
>>
>> OK. Although I think that free-will is more typical for decision taking 
>> more time, and more self-controversial, like the decision to drink some 
>> beer before driving a plane with passengers ...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> You have a feeling of freedom so long as you are not coerced or limited 
>> by something you can consciously consider; that's essentially all the 
>> feeling of freedom is, not being able to think of anything that is 
>> restricting or coercing you from taking an action.  Since you can't be 
>> directly aware of deterministic or random processes in your brain, whether 
>> they are random or deterministic has no bearing on the freedom+will feeling.
>>
>>
>> I agree. But I think that free-will is more than a feeling. It is a real 
>> possibility of reflected choice. Indeed it has nothing to so with 
>> determinacy or randomness.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>> Brent
>>  
>>  -- 
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
>> "Everything List" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
>> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com .
>> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com
>> .
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>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-18 Thread John Mikes

friends:
don't put so much brain-grease into Free Will, please!
It is the religious mambo-jumbo put into the mind of the poor-believers in
ancient times to make them responsible for deeds the powerful disliked -
and consequently: make them punishable. Then it became a 'human treasure':
*"We are FREE to Will!" *(like a god) and now even smart, reasonable people
like us spend centuries to discuss it.
A decision is right when it goes smoothly with the given and continuing
circumstances it has to fit into (Think of the mis - construed 'evolution':
if it does not 'fit' the mutant perishes).
We may (or may not) know about the given circumstances and for sure may
have only desultory and unsafe notions about the 'coming' ones. Our
evaluation (call it computing?)  results in a decision (conscious or not)
for our activity - OR just way of thinking. Reasonably we try to abide by
those circumstances we know of and formulate (consciously, or not) our
decision according to our best belief (maybe this is contrary to our
interest?). Hence emerges FREE WILL.
I am not faithful enough to believe in MY free will and go to hell by force
of this misconception. I may make mistakes.
I am not deterministically forced to comply with all facets of the infinite
complexity - known,  or unknown. I can revolt. Meaning: I can knowingly
choose the wrong decision.
Is that free will? Maybe. That's a matter of definition.

Regards
John Mikes


On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 15 Mar 2013, at 18:22, meekerdb wrote:
>
>  On 3/15/2013 7:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>  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.
>
>
>  Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking. Except that I
> decided consciously before acting. If not, it is like randomness, or
> unconscious decision, and that is not free will. Free-will is when I want
> to go the left, and decide accordingly to go to the left, and nobody coerce
> me to not go to the left. It is not much different than will + freedom.
>
>
> That seems to me just and explanation of a certain *feeling* of a feeling
> of freedom and of will.  If you find yourself on the left path without
> having consciously thought "I'll take the left." then you miss the feeling
> of will.  But it may just be that your conscious thoughts are lagging a
> little.
>
>
> ?
> I agree but that makes free-will independent of the feeling. With my
> definition of free will, it is real,even if not felt, as the machine have
> the real possibility to hesitate between subgoals and make choice
> hesitantly, knowing partially the consequences.
>
>
>
> When you're playing a game, say tennis, and you hit the ball to the left
> you may have done so without conscious consideration yet it was just the
> right shot and so was what you "willed" to win which you realize on
> reflection.
>
>
> OK. Although I think that free-will is more typical for decision taking
> more time, and more self-controversial, like the decision to drink some
> beer before driving a plane with passengers ...
>
>
>
>
> You have a feeling of freedom so long as you are not coerced or limited by
> something you can consciously consider; that's essentially all the feeling
> of freedom is, not being able to think of anything that is restricting or
> coercing you from taking an action.  Since you can't be directly aware of
> deterministic or random processes in your brain, whether they are random or
> deterministic has no bearing on the freedom+will feeling.
>
>
> I agree. But I think that free-will is more than a feeling. It is a real
> possibility of reflected choice. Indeed it has nothing to so with
> determinacy or randomness.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> Brent
>
> --
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>
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
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Yo

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Monday, March 18, 2013 12:25:47 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 15 Mar 2013, at 18:22, meekerdb wrote:
>
>  On 3/15/2013 7:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>  
>  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.
>
>
1. Why would there be any such conclusion? Why would an incomplete 
computation invite some kind of experience of having 'decided' something?

2. The example is a straw man of free will. Try this. You're walking down a 
road and spot a fork in the road far ahead. You trudge off the road instead 
to see what's going on in another direction. 

>   
>  Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking. Except that I 
> decided consciously before acting. If not, it is like randomness, or 
> unconscious decision, and that is not free will. Free-will is when I want 
> to go the left, and decide accordingly to go to the left, and nobody coerce 
> me to not go to the left. It is not much different than will + freedom.
>
>
> That seems to me just and explanation of a certain *feeling* of a feeling 
> of freedom and of will.  If you find yourself on the left path without 
> having consciously thought "I'll take the left." then you miss the feeling 
> of will.  But it may just be that your conscious thoughts are lagging a 
> little. 
>
>
> ?
> I agree but that makes free-will independent of the feeling. With my 
> definition of free will, it is real,even if not felt, as the machine have 
> the real possibility to hesitate between subgoals and make choice 
> hesitantly, knowing partially the consequences.
>

Free will can only mean that you use your feelings to determine your 
actions. They are part of the action. If you feel strongly about something, 
that feeling translates directly into the intensity if not the 
effectiveness of the action. There is no computation which translates the 
degree of clarity of a logical decision into any kind of visceral power to 
enforce that decision. Computations have no killer instinct, no emotional 
intention.
 

>
>
>
> When you're playing a game, say tennis, and you hit the ball to the left 
> you may have done so without conscious consideration yet it was just the 
> right shot and so was what you "willed" to win which you realize on 
> reflection. 
>
>
> OK. Although I think that free-will is more typical for decision taking 
> more time, and more self-controversial, like the decision to drink some 
> beer before driving a plane with passengers ...
>

The tennis is a more complex example. You are talking about subconscious 
responses to entrained activity. You are acting on instinct on the personal 
level but there is presumably still free will on the sub-personal level.
 

>
>
>
>
> You have a feeling of freedom so long as you are not coerced or limited by 
> something you can consciously consider; that's essentially all the feeling 
> of freedom is, not being able to think of anything that is restricting or 
> coercing you from taking an action.  Since you can't be directly aware of 
> deterministic or random processes in your brain, whether they are random or 
> deterministic has no bearing on the freedom+will feeling.
>
>
> I agree. But I think that free-will is more than a feeling. It is a real 
> possibility of reflected choice. Indeed it has nothing to so with 
> determinacy or randomness.
>

I'll take that. I would go further than 'choice' as that still assumes a 
passive stance. Free will is not only reactive, but creative.

Craig
 

>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> Brent
>  
> -- 
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>  
>  
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On 18 Mar 2013, at 14:26, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Monday, March 18, 2013 6:01:18 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 17 Mar 2013, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:




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.


You are right. But knowledge of a non communicable truth has to be  
experienced, may be.


In reality, I agree, because I think that is the symmetry: Phenomena  
are extended publicly on the outside, and intended privately on the  
inside -



That is still Aristotelian philosophy. Mind is identified to matter,  
or -matter. But comp leads to the Plato view, where matter is more  
like the border of the universal mind. It is bigger than the physical.








but that is multisense realism physics, not arithmetic.



That's not a reason.




Arithmetic would have to provide a way to get to that quality  
theoretically.



But it has. Worst! We can't avoid them, and that can be show by  
accepting the simplest known theory of knowledge (S4), and the  
simplest definition of (correct belief, the axiom of PA, say).
And you get terrestrial qualities, but also divine qualities as well,  
in a sense which makes basically all theology, from Theaetetus to  
Proclus, a sequence of theorem in computer science, and in arithmetic.






Why, as far as numbers are concerned, does privacy equate to  
"experience"?


Nobody equated it. But machine can relay private experience.










Experience can imply  a use for computation, as a method of  
distributing access to experiential qualities, but computation  
cannot imply a use for experience.


That contradicts what machines already say when looking inward. It  
is not the computation which is thinking, but the person supported  
by one (and then an infinity of one).
You deny the existence of that person, and I don't see why. Bringing  
matter, time or indeterminacy does not help.


If machines all can be made to say the same thing when looking  
inward, then I don't think that they are having an experience.



This does not follow. All human have a quite similar experience if  
they put their hand in a fire, and that does not make them not having  
experience.
Looking inward leads to the same experience, because it leads to a  
Goddess, and there is only one Goddess. To be short.













As som

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On 17 Mar 2013, at 18:40, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Bruno Marchal   
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 fix the problem, you make it free. Please.

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.

That's all good and show, when made precise (Popper did this, but see  
also "conscience et mécanisme") that the notion of free will make  
sense, even in a deterministic reality.
You need the second recursion theorem of Kleene to handle the self- 
reference correctly.

Bruno

  John K Clark

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On 15 Mar 2013, at 18:07, meekerdb wrote:

Craig thinks his theory mind is perfectly compatible with physics  
because he thinks physics is different from what all those stupid  
physicists think it is.  They just don't know about his top-down  
physics, which no one has observed but which he *directly  
experiences* and therefore *just knows he's right*.  Give it up  
John, Stathis.  There's no point arguing with cranks and mystics.

There is no point discussing with a crank, but it is hard to be sure  
someone is a crank, or there is some hope to make someone a bit less  
crank ...

Now, there is no point to discuss with a mystic, but for an entirely  
different reason. He will remain silent. Mystics are not crank. Only  
chatting mystics are cranks.

To be short.

Bruno

Brent
There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it
swells and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in
concentrated pools here and there, almost disappearing from other
spots, leaving them parched for wonder. There are also those who
believe that if you stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it
will increase your intelligence.
-- "The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII"

On 3/15/2013 6:07 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Friday, March 15, 2013 6:59:42 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Craig Weinberg  
 wrote:

> I didn't say that. I said "When five billion of them jump to  
attention at
> once, it  is **often** because of something that the person is  
experiencing
> intentionally,". Biochemistry, among other things, can cause  
billions of
> neurons to react, but also intentional thought can do that with  
no external

> force.
>
>> You need to find
>> some experimental evidence for this, and astound the scientific  
world.

>
>
> Straw man cabaret continues..

You claim that I don't understand you and perhaps I don't. I'm not
deliberately constructing straw man arguments.

Then stop saying that my view must have something to do with  
violating physics.

The scientific conception of neurons is that *nothing* in them  
happens

without a physical reason, ever.

Which is why we those scientists have no idea what consciousness  
is. Physical is a meaningless term. Whatever happens is physical,  
whether it is smiling at a neighbor or welding a trashcan shut. The  
only good use for physical in my view is to discern relative  
presentations from representations. The letter A is not physical,  
but any particular instantiation of experience of object that we  
read as A is physical.

When a person decides to do
something, this corresponds to certain changes in his brain, and  
these

changes all follow absolutely rigidly from the physical laws
describing electrochemical reactions.

No, not all changes in the brain cannot be predicted at all from  
electrochemical reactions. If I decide to go on vacation next week,  
there is no electrochemical chain reaction which can explain why my  
body will drive to work today but not in a week. The explanation is  
only realized in the semantic content of the mind. This is why  
there is a clear and important different in our awareness between  
voluntary and involuntary reactions. To be addicted, coerced,  
enslaved, trapped, etc, are among the most dire conditions which  
humans confront, yet they have no chemical correlate at all.  
Whether someone is picking up trash on a prison chain gang or they  
are picking up trash on the grounds of their vast estate, there is  
no functional basis for either option being chemically preferable.

This applies to every molecule
in the brains in those fMRI pictures you have referenced.

There were mostly spontaneous changes of large groups of molecules  
and neurons in those images. That's why I included them, because it  
is so obvious that this is not some kind of rippling, ricocheting,  
cymatic pattern which could conceivably propagate from bottom up  
chemistry.

You may not
be able to predict exactly what the brain will do but you can't
predict much simpler systems such as where a billiard ball will end  
up
after bouncing off several cushions either, and that does not lead  
you

to doubt that it is mechanistic.

Prediction is not the test. We know for a fact that we experience  
direct participation in our lives. That cannot be explained by  
chemistry as it is currently assumed to be. The model is  
incomplete, not the validity of our own experience.

In the standard scientific view,

which is wrong.

spontaneously excitable cells are
just a special subtype of excitable cells and still follow absolutely
rigidly the physical laws describing electrochemical reactions.  
Google

"excitable cells" and you can read about it. If I understand your
view, you think that "spontaneous" means there is neuronal activity
not explained by these rigid physical laws.

Nothing is explained by any physical laws which cannot conceive of  
top-down voluntary control of muscle tissue, cells, and m

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On 15 Mar 2013, at 18:22, meekerdb wrote:


On 3/15/2013 7:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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.


Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking. Except that  
I decided consciously before acting. If not, it is like randomness,  
or unconscious decision, and that is not free will. Free-will is  
when I want to go the left, and decide accordingly to go to the  
left, and nobody coerce me to not go to the left. It is not much  
different than will + freedom.


That seems to me just and explanation of a certain *feeling* of a  
feeling of freedom and of will.  If you find yourself on the left  
path without having consciously thought "I'll take the left." then  
you miss the feeling of will.  But it may just be that your  
conscious thoughts are lagging a little.


?
I agree but that makes free-will independent of the feeling. With my  
definition of free will, it is real,even if not felt, as the machine  
have the real possibility to hesitate between subgoals and make choice  
hesitantly, knowing partially the consequences.




When you're playing a game, say tennis, and you hit the ball to the  
left you may have done so without conscious consideration yet it was  
just the right shot and so was what you "willed" to win which you  
realize on reflection.


OK. Although I think that free-will is more typical for decision  
taking more time, and more self-controversial, like the decision to  
drink some beer before driving a plane with passengers ...





You have a feeling of freedom so long as you are not coerced or  
limited by something you can consciously consider; that's  
essentially all the feeling of freedom is, not being able to think  
of anything that is restricting or coercing you from taking an  
action.  Since you can't be directly aware of deterministic or  
random processes in your brain, whether they are random or  
deterministic has no bearing on the freedom+will feeling.


I agree. But I think that free-will is more than a feeling. It is a  
real possibility of reflected choice. Indeed it has nothing to so with  
determinacy or randomness.


Bruno




Brent

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Monday, March 18, 2013 6:01:18 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 17 Mar 2013, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> 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. 
>
>
> You are right. But knowledge of a non communicable truth has to be 
> experienced, may be. 
>

In reality, I agree, because I think that is the symmetry: Phenomena are 
extended publicly on the outside, and intended privately on the inside - 
but that is multisense realism physics, not arithmetic. Arithmetic would 
have to provide a way to get to that quality theoretically. Why, as far as 
numbers are concerned, does privacy equate to "experience"? 

>
>
>
>
> Experience can imply  a use for computation, as a method of distributing 
> access to experiential qualities, but computation cannot imply a use for 
> experience. 
>
>
> That contradicts what machines already say when looking inward. It is not 
> the computation which is thinking, but the person supported by one (and 
> then an infinity of one).
> You deny the existence of that person, and I don't see why. Bringing 
> matter, time or indeterminacy does not help.
>

If machines all can be made to say the same thing when looking inward, then 
I don't think that they are having an experience. 


>
>
>
>
> As someone brought up on another conversation on FB, the construction of 
> neural networks coincides with the end of conscious involvement 
>
>
> If you decide so, it might as well lead to that. But this idea is based on 
> a confusion between syntax and semantics. Simple programs can have complex 
> semantics. Enough complex to be cautious about attribution or non 
> attribution of consciousness. 
>

I don't think it is a decision based on syntax and semantics at all, it is 
an observation about learning and memory. When we learn, we lose the 
necessity of conscious awareness of what we have learned, and at the same 
time, we observe that connections in our neural network or strengthened or 
extended.
 

>
>
>
>
> - the disappearance of personal attention into automatism. Learning makes 
> consciousness redundant. Repetition allows

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On 17 Mar 2013, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:




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.


You are right. But knowledge of a non communicable truth has to be  
experienced, may be.





Experience can imply  a use for computation, as a method of  
distributing access to experiential qualities, but computation  
cannot imply a use for experience.


That contradicts what machines already say when looking inward. It is  
not the computation which is thinking, but the person supported by one  
(and then an infinity of one).
You deny the existence of that person, and I don't see why. Bringing  
matter, time or indeterminacy does not help.






As someone brought up on another conversation on FB, the  
construction of neural networks coincides with the end of conscious  
involvement


If you decide so, it might as well lead to that. But this idea is  
based on a confusion between syntax and semantics. Simple programs can  
have complex semantics. Enough complex to be cautious about  
attribution or non attribution of consciousness.





- the disappearance of personal attention into automatism. Learning  
makes consciousness redundant. Repetition allows awareness to  
withdraw from the act, which becomes robotic.


No worry. Our environment should be enough rich to remind us that our  
lives should not be taken for granted.










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.



We can see that, but that's is only a partial view of truth. Even for  
machine, we know that the syntactical description of the behavior of  
its components does only give a pârtial description of what the  
machine is able to know, without any external observer capable of  
guessing that truth. You continue to treat the machines in a pre- 
Turing-Gödel way. You defend a reductionist conception of machine,  
which does not fit what we already know about them.




Illuminated pixels can stimulate our consciousness to experience  
characters and scenes which are not literally present in the pixels.  
The pixel arrangements do n

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-17 Thread John Mikes

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  wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 , Craig Weinberg  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
>
>  --
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>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-17 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Bruno Marchal  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

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-17 Thread Craig Weinberg



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 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 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?


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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-17 Thread Bruno Marchal



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  
 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  
 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?



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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-17 Thread Bruno Marchal



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





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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



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. What is a reason why computation would be processed as 
an ordinary experience, when we clearly can be accomplished through 
a-signifying mechanical activities?

Craig
 

>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> Craig
>
>  
>>
>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg 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 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?
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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>
>
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-16 Thread Stephen P. King

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?


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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-16 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 15 Mar 2013, at 22:14, Terren Suydam wrote:



"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Feynman

A great quote that admonishes us to never trust our beliefs 100%.  
Very few people I have met have Feynman's humility.


Wonderful (and funny) quote.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-16 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 15 Mar 2013, at 21:18, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:
>> 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.
>If you tell me that a system is deterministic you have added  
exactly zero information by telling me that the system also has  
"consciousness", thus "consciousness" means nothing and is just a  
noise.

Loss of consciousness such as in sleep or anesthesia has observable  
consequences for me, I formed no new memories and the external  
universe seems to have instantaneously jumped ahead, but loss of  
"free will" has no observable consequences to me or to anybody else  
because nobody has a clue what the dumb thing is supposed to mean.

Well it is either the loss of the will, like in some severe  
depression, or the loss of freedom, like in jail or camps.

> if you tell me that a black hole is deterministic you have added  
exactly zero information by telling me that the black hole also has  
also a mass, thus "mass" means nothing and is just a noise.

What the hell are you talking about?? Change the mass of a Black  
Hole and you change the event horizon and that can be measured.  
Black holes are the simplest macroscopic objects in the known  
universe but you've got to know the mass, if you know the mass, spin  
and electrical charge that the Black Hole has then you know  
everything that can distinguish one Black Hole from another.  You  
can know all there is to know about a Black Hole with just 3 numbers  
(2 really because for a actual Black Hole the electrical charge is  
always zero, or at least very small) but one of those numbers is the  
mass.

My point was just to invalidate the kind of reasoning you were doing.

> Having self-determination does not entail that we can self- 
determine ourself completely. I did not say "total self- 
determination".

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, or asylum, etc.

>> 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.

Bruno

  John K Clark

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-16 Thread Bruno Marchal



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.


Bruno





Craig





On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg   
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   
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?



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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Saturday, March 16, 2013 12:41:27 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
> > So all "free will" means is that sometimes we can make correct 
>> predictions about what we will do before we do it, 
>>
>

That's what you say, not me. I guess now you are trying your hand at 
putting words in my mouth and agreeing with your own positions.
 

>
> Then a Turing Machine has free will because it can correctly predict
>

No, prediction has nothing to do with free will. Intention is not a passive 
knowledge or belief that is true in the future, it is the active power to 
change aspects of public reality to suit your preference.
 

> that it will list all the factors of 128 and then stop, and it can 
> correctly it will never list all the prime numbers and then stop.  The 
> Turing machine doesn't know if it will ever print out the smallest  even 
> number greater than 4 is not the sum of two primes greater than 2 because 
> neither it nor we currently have a proof to show its true or a 
> counterexample to show its false.
>

If a Turing machine had free will, then it would decide what it would list 
and what it wouldn't.

Craig
 

>
>   John K Clark 
>
>   
>
>
>
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Saturday, March 16, 2013 12:22:19 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 , Craig Weinberg >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. 
>

Sure, but why do some subsystems have a quality of being under our control 
and some don't? What is the meaning of this quality?

Craig
 

>
>  John K Clark 
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-16 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> So all "free will" means is that sometimes we can make correct
> predictions about what we will do before we do it,
>

Then a Turing Machine has free will because it can correctly predict that
it will list all the factors of 128 and then stop, and it can correctly it
will never list all the prime numbers and then stop.  The Turing machine
doesn't know if it will ever print out the smallest  even number greater
than 4 is not the sum of two primes greater than 2 because neither it nor
we currently have a proof to show its true or a counterexample to show its
false.

  John K Clark

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-16 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 , Craig Weinberg  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

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Saturday, March 16, 2013 12:26:24 AM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
> This has to be my last response on this for a while. I will just say, 
> about consciousness arising from other premises: It is not the material 
> itself that is important, but the organization of it. 
>

I understand that premise completely, and as I have tried to clarify 
several times, my model of reality was that the universe was simply that - 
organization or 'pattern'. The big breakthrough however was more recently 
in the realization that pattern supervenes on pattern recognition and 
intention/projection (motive). The pattern/organization itself is an empty 
vehicle. If it were true that organization was the principle responsible 
for consciousness then we would expect anything this was organized in the 
same way would have the dame consciousness. An emoticon that looks like it 
is winking and smiling would literally have to at least be more winking and 
smiling than the same characters in a different arrangement. Common sense 
should tell us that cannot be true, and that this sequence of characters 
;-) is not symbolic in its own right and relies entirely on human 
expectations to define it as smiling. There are countless examples of where 
'the map is not the territory', and the 'menu is not the meal' which should 
help us understand that this 'pretending' or 'seeming like' is in the eye 
of the beholder and the sender (to some extent), not in the function of the 
form. There is a such thing as 'acting like' and that is all that a form or 
function can do.

> Consciousness *might* be what happens when certain kinds of organization 
> arise. 
>

I used to think that also. It's no less magical or religious than any other 
explanation though. Hand waving. Circumstantial evidence.

> The human brain might represent one particular kind of organization that 
> is conscious. 
>

I don't think that an organization can represent anything except within the 
presentation of some sensory experience.

> I am interested in theories of consciousness that describe that 
> organization, and what kinds of organization support consciousness and what 
> kinds don't.
>

Well, since the organization of someone who has just died no longer 
supports consciousness, I would focus on that difference. What is the 
difference in the way that a dead person's brain is organized?

> Note that when we take the emphasis off material and put it on 
> organization, it means that there many different kinds of structures that 
> could support consciousness, including virtual structures, structures made 
> out of networks of people, and so on.  I'm not saying this is right. But I 
> am saying that it is conceivable. 
>

It is conceivable in the sense that a square circle is conceivable. Yes, 
the idea that organization, function, or pattern could generate 
consciousness is an idea that is understandable, but does it really make 
sense beyond that? Does it make more sense than the idea of vitalism or 
materialism or idealism?

> You seem utterly closed to that possibility, and I don't understand why, 
>

Because I already have explored that possibility thoroughly, but with a 
clearer understanding of semiotics I began to see precisely why it is 
unworkable. Once you do, it all makes sense that what we see is neither 
what is 'real' nor is it unreal in every way at once, but rather all 
experience is filtered through various sense modalities, including the 
logical, cognitive, arithmetic, material, etc... all are senses and nothing 
more or less.

> except that you appear to be locked into your own beliefs, unwilling to 
> even set them aside for the sake of argument. 
>

You have to first assume that my ideas are true, and then try to disprove 
them. If you don't accept the premise, then you are still looking at my 
ideas through the filter of your own expectations and that of the legacy 
worldview. 

>
> Feynman's quote might make more sense if you realize that he was also 
> talking about himself. Obviously, he was one of the experts he warns about 
> in that quote.
>

Eh, not so much. I have seen Feynman humble, maybe, but mostly he was an 
*extremely* confident person, especially when it comes to clever insights - 
and for good reason. That quote refers specifically to his distrust of 
authority and intellectual elites and the recognition of that distrust as a 
key factor in thinking for yourself. He is not saying 'never trust 
yourself', but rather 'don't let someone's credentials make you doubt your 
own understanding'.

Craig

> Terren
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, March 15, 2013 5:14:16 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, March 15, 2013 4:11:32 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, March 15, 2013 3:04:24 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
>

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-16 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 12:07 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> The scientific conception of neurons is that *nothing* in them happens
>> without a physical reason, ever.
>
>
> Which is why we those scientists have no idea what consciousness is.
> Physical is a meaningless term. Whatever happens is physical, whether it is
> smiling at a neighbor or welding a trashcan shut. The only good use for
> physical in my view is to discern relative presentations from
> representations. The letter A is not physical, but any particular
> instantiation of experience of object that we read as A is physical.

Can we stick to "physical" as something that can be observed and
measured? Smiling at a neighbour has a component that can be observed
and measured, the objective component, and a component that can't, the
subjective component. The scientific conception of neurons is that
nothing in them that can be observed and measured happens without a
physical reason that can be observed and measured.

So you could say "his desire to move caused him to get up", which
would be true at one level, but at the microscopic level it will be
ionic fluxes, electrostatic forces between molecules, and so on that
caused him to get up. The desire to move cannot in itself be observed
and measured, so if it directly caused depolarisation of cell
membranes that would appear as miraculous to a scientist. Membrane
depolarisation is something that can be observed and measured so it
cannot happen without a physical reason that can itself be observed
and measured.

Now, do you think that the desire to move can cause membrane
depolarisation without any physical reason? Do you agree that, given
that scientists define "physical reason" as above, it would appear
miraculous to them if this happened?

>> When a person decides to do
>> something, this corresponds to certain changes in his brain, and these
>> changes all follow absolutely rigidly from the physical laws
>> describing electrochemical reactions.
>
>
> No, not all changes in the brain cannot be predicted at all from
> electrochemical reactions. If I decide to go on vacation next week, there is
> no electrochemical chain reaction which can explain why my body will drive
> to work today but not in a week. The explanation is only realized in the
> semantic content of the mind. This is why there is a clear and important
> different in our awareness between voluntary and involuntary reactions. To
> be addicted, coerced, enslaved, trapped, etc, are among the most dire
> conditions which humans confront, yet they have no chemical correlate at
> all. Whether someone is picking up trash on a prison chain gang or they are
> picking up trash on the grounds of their vast estate, there is no functional
> basis for either option being chemically preferable.

For every mental change there is a corresponding physical change. The
reverse is not the case. If it were possible to have a mental change
without a physical change then that would indicate that the mind had
an existence independent from the body - an immaterial soul, in
effect.

>> This applies to every molecule
>> in the brains in those fMRI pictures you have referenced.
>
>
> There were mostly spontaneous changes of large groups of molecules and
> neurons in those images. That's why I included them, because it is so
> obvious that this is not some kind of rippling, ricocheting, cymatic pattern
> which could conceivably propagate from bottom up chemistry.

If you show a video of an avalanche would it be reasonable to suppose
that it happened "spontaneously" in your sense or would it be
reasonable to suppose that even though the physical cause is not
obvious, it must be there somewhere?

>> You may not
>> be able to predict exactly what the brain will do but you can't
>> predict much simpler systems such as where a billiard ball will end up
>> after bouncing off several cushions either, and that does not lead you
>> to doubt that it is mechanistic.
>
>
> Prediction is not the test. We know for a fact that we experience direct
> participation in our lives. That cannot be explained by chemistry as it is
> currently assumed to be. The model is incomplete, not the validity of our
> own experience.

Even if you are right about that chemistry can *completely* explain
the observable behaviour of any biological system.

>> In the standard scientific view,
>
>
> which is wrong.
>
>>
>> spontaneously excitable cells are
>> just a special subtype of excitable cells and still follow absolutely
>> rigidly the physical laws describing electrochemical reactions. Google
>> "excitable cells" and you can read about it. If I understand your
>> view, you think that "spontaneous" means there is neuronal activity
>> not explained by these rigid physical laws.
>
>
> Nothing is explained by any physical laws which cannot conceive of top-down
> voluntary control of muscle tissue, cells, and molecules. Excitable doesn't
> exhaustively determine what it is excited by. In some cases

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

This has to be my last response on this for a while. I will just say, about
consciousness arising from other premises: It is not the material itself
that is important, but the organization of it. Consciousness *might* be
what happens when certain kinds of organization arise. The human brain
might represent one particular kind of organization that is conscious. I am
interested in theories of consciousness that describe that organization,
and what kinds of organization support consciousness and what kinds don't.
Note that when we take the emphasis off material and put it on
organization, it means that there many different kinds of structures that
could support consciousness, including virtual structures, structures made
out of networks of people, and so on.  I'm not saying this is right. But I
am saying that it is conceivable. You seem utterly closed to that
possibility, and I don't understand why, except that you appear to be
locked into your own beliefs, unwilling to even set them aside for the sake
of argument.

Feynman's quote might make more sense if you realize that he was also
talking about himself. Obviously, he was one of the experts he warns about
in that quote.

Terren


On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

>
>
> On Friday, March 15, 2013 5:14:16 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Friday, March 15, 2013 4:11:32 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>>>

 On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:38 PM, 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 entire field of evolutionary psychology would beg to differ.

>>>
>>> Argument from authority. If evolutionary psychologists assume
>>> consciousness has evolutionary benefits it is because they make the same
>>> mistake that you do in looking backward in 20/20 hindsight. Looking from a
>>> pre-conscious era in the past, the idea of consciousness is no more
>>> reasonable than magic appearing spontaneously. Once you take the emergence
>>> of consciousness for granted, sure it's easy to find all kinds of exciting
>>> (and utterly unfalsifiable) uses.
>>>
>>
>> It's not a mistake, it's science. They may be wrong, but they do
>> experiments in support of, or to refute, a given premise.
>>
>
> For example? What kind of experiment can tell you that consciousness could
> appear in the universe under some particular material condition?
>
>
>> Whether or not the premise is true is beside the point. But you don't
>> even want to entertain the proposition. You just dismiss it, simply because
>> it doesn't agree with your prejudices.
>>
>
> Not at all, it is because I understand how and why the entire approach is
> built on bad presumptions. I welcome ideas of all stripes; wacky,
> conservative, that doesn't bother me at all. What I care about is that it
> makes sense and plausibly reflects the fullness of reality.
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>


> 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.
>

 The fact that you can't conceive of how consciousness could arise from
 mechanism does not amount to an argument against it.

>>>
>>> You can't conceive of it either though. That is because it is
>>> inconceivable. Like a square circle. That it is inconceivable tells us
>>> about both squares and circles, as well as logic and sense.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Sure I can. I can easily conceive of it. I might be wrong, but I can
>> conceive of it. It's funny that you assume that I can't. Projection
>> fallacy?
>>
>
> What is it that you conceive of though? Is it a mechanis

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Friday, March 15, 2013 5:14:16 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, March 15, 2013 4:11:32 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:38 PM, 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 entire field of evolutionary psychology would beg to differ.
>>>
>>
>> Argument from authority. If evolutionary psychologists assume 
>> consciousness has evolutionary benefits it is because they make the same 
>> mistake that you do in looking backward in 20/20 hindsight. Looking from a 
>> pre-conscious era in the past, the idea of consciousness is no more 
>> reasonable than magic appearing spontaneously. Once you take the emergence 
>> of consciousness for granted, sure it's easy to find all kinds of exciting 
>> (and utterly unfalsifiable) uses.
>>
>
> It's not a mistake, it's science. They may be wrong, but they do 
> experiments in support of, or to refute, a given premise.
>

For example? What kind of experiment can tell you that consciousness could 
appear in the universe under some particular material condition?

> Whether or not the premise is true is beside the point. But you don't even 
> want to entertain the proposition. You just dismiss it, simply because it 
> doesn't agree with your prejudices.
>

Not at all, it is because I understand how and why the entire approach is 
built on bad presumptions. I welcome ideas of all stripes; wacky, 
conservative, that doesn't bother me at all. What I care about is that it 
makes sense and plausibly reflects the fullness of reality.

>  
>
>>  
>>
>>>   
>>>
 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.

>>>
>>> The fact that you can't conceive of how consciousness could arise from 
>>> mechanism does not amount to an argument against it.
>>>
>>
>> You can't conceive of it either though. That is because it is 
>> inconceivable. Like a square circle. That it is inconceivable tells us 
>> about both squares and circles, as well as logic and sense.
>>  
>>
>
> Sure I can. I can easily conceive of it. I might be wrong, but I can 
> conceive of it. It's funny that you assume that I can't. Projection 
> fallacy?  
>

What is it that you conceive of though? Is it a mechanism which switches on 
and some kind of green gas begins to leak out of a glob of protein? Is 
there a genie or a fanfare of some kind, or is it just a collection of 
inanimate objects that suddenly begins to do something that has never 
happened before? I think that when you say that you conceive of it, you 
haven't really even considered it, and what you actually consider is a 
broad abstraction about complexity and feedback.

>
> Anyway, even if I couldn't, it *still* would not be an argument against it 
> for the same reason as before.
>

Right, because when inanimate objects agree, then it's 'evidence', but when 
we agree it's fantasy.

>
>>  
>>>

> 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.

>>> But you don

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

>
>
> On Friday, March 15, 2013 4:11:32 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:38 PM, 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 entire field of evolutionary psychology would beg to differ.
>>
>
> Argument from authority. If evolutionary psychologists assume
> consciousness has evolutionary benefits it is because they make the same
> mistake that you do in looking backward in 20/20 hindsight. Looking from a
> pre-conscious era in the past, the idea of consciousness is no more
> reasonable than magic appearing spontaneously. Once you take the emergence
> of consciousness for granted, sure it's easy to find all kinds of exciting
> (and utterly unfalsifiable) uses.
>

It's not a mistake, it's science. They may be wrong, but they do
experiments in support of, or to refute, a given premise. Whether or not
the premise is true is beside the point. But you don't even want to
entertain the proposition. You just dismiss it, simply because it doesn't
agree with your prejudices.


>
>
>>
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> The fact that you can't conceive of how consciousness could arise from
>> mechanism does not amount to an argument against it.
>>
>
> You can't conceive of it either though. That is because it is
> inconceivable. Like a square circle. That it is inconceivable tells us
> about both squares and circles, as well as logic and sense.
>
>

Sure I can. I can easily conceive of it. I might be wrong, but I can
conceive of it. It's funny that you assume that I can't. Projection
fallacy?

Anyway, even if I couldn't, it *still* would not be an argument against it
for the same reason as before.


>
>>
>>>
>>>
 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.
>>>
>>>
>> But you don't have a theory of consciousness, because you assume it.
>>
>
> I don't assume it, it is assumed period. Consciousness is inescapable. How
> can you claim to construct any theory independently of it?
>

A real theory of consciousness explains consciousness in terms of other
premises. For instance, any theory of consciousness worth considering
should tell you why some things are conscious, and some things aren't...
something your theory cannot do because it assumes it from the outset.


> You beg the question. And if you are saying physics is wrong - something
>> you have asserted many times -
>>
>
> I do not say that physics is wrong, I say that is it incomplete. It is
> missing half of the universe, but in the half that it addresses, it
> addresses it remarkably well.
>

Then my point still stands. Describe to us an experiment that shows *how*
physics is incomplete.


>
>
>> then it should be possible to construct an experiment that shows that.
>>
>
> We are the experiment. All that is required is for us to think with
> honesty and curiosity - to avoid the traps of kneejerk arrogance, fear,
> conformity, idolatry for authority, etc.
>
>
Decades of literature in psychology is rife with examples of why
introspection is suspect. It has its place, but on

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Friday, March 15, 2013 4:18:58 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Bruno Marchal 
> > wrote:
>
>> >> 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. 
>>
>> >If you tell me that a system is deterministic you have added exactly 
>> zero information by telling me that the system also has "consciousness", 
>> thus "consciousness" means nothing and is just a noise.
>>
>
> Loss of consciousness such as in sleep or anesthesia has observable 
> consequences for me, I formed no new memories and the external universe 
> seems to have instantaneously jumped ahead, but loss of "free will" has no 
> observable consequences to me or to anybody else because nobody has a clue 
> what the dumb thing is supposed to mean. 
>

If someone sells you into slavery, or brainwashes you in a cult, can you 
not see that you have lost something?
... 

So all "free will" means is that sometimes we can make correct predictions 
about what we will do before we do it, 

No. I can make correct predictions about my heartbeat and my respiration. 
Of the two, I can only influence my lungs with my free will. Do you deny 
that there is a difference in your own body? Can you not 'control' your 
lungs to a greater extent than you can control your heartbeat? How do you 
define this difference in your worldview?
 
Craig


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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Friday, March 15, 2013 4:11:32 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:38 PM, 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 entire field of evolutionary psychology would beg to differ.
>

Argument from authority. If evolutionary psychologists assume consciousness 
has evolutionary benefits it is because they make the same mistake that you 
do in looking backward in 20/20 hindsight. Looking from a pre-conscious era 
in the past, the idea of consciousness is no more reasonable than magic 
appearing spontaneously. Once you take the emergence of consciousness for 
granted, sure it's easy to find all kinds of exciting (and utterly 
unfalsifiable) uses.
 

>  
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> The fact that you can't conceive of how consciousness could arise from 
> mechanism does not amount to an argument against it.
>

You can't conceive of it either though. That is because it is 
inconceivable. Like a square circle. That it is inconceivable tells us 
about both squares and circles, as well as logic and sense.
 

>  
>
>>  
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>>
> But you don't have a theory of consciousness, because you assume it. 
>

I don't assume it, it is assumed period. Consciousness is inescapable. How 
can you claim to construct any theory independently of it?
 

> You beg the question. And if you are saying physics is wrong - something 
> you have asserted many times - 
>

I do not say that physics is wrong, I say that is it incomplete. It is 
missing half of the universe, but in the half that it addresses, it 
addresses it remarkably well.
 

> then it should be possible to construct an experiment that shows that.
>

We are the experiment. All that is required is for us to think with honesty 
and curiosity - to avoid the traps of kneejerk arrogance, fear, conformity, 
idolatry for authority, etc.

"*Science* is the belief in the ignorance of *experts*." - Feynman

Craig

  
>
>>
>>
>>  
>>>
>>
>>>  
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg 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 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?

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-15 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> >> 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.
>
> >If you tell me that a system is deterministic you have added exactly zero
> information by telling me that the system also has "consciousness", thus
> "consciousness" means nothing and is just a noise.
>

Loss of consciousness such as in sleep or anesthesia has observable
consequences for me, I formed no new memories and the external universe
seems to have instantaneously jumped ahead, but loss of "free will" has no
observable consequences to me or to anybody else because nobody has a clue
what the dumb thing is supposed to mean.

> if you tell me that a black hole is deterministic you have added exactly
> zero information by telling me that the black hole also has also a mass,
> thus "mass" means nothing and is just a noise.
>

What the hell are you talking about?? Change the mass of a Black Hole and
you change the event horizon and that can be measured. Black holes are the
simplest macroscopic objects in the known universe but you've got to know
the mass, if you know the mass, spin and electrical charge that the Black
Hole has then you know everything that can distinguish one Black Hole from
another.  You can know all there is to know about a Black Hole with just 3
numbers (2 really because for a actual Black Hole the electrical charge is
always zero, or at least very small) but one of those numbers is the mass.

> Having self-determination does not entail that we can self-determine
> ourself completely. I did not say "total self-determination".
>

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?

>> 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.

  John K Clark

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:38 PM, 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 entire field of evolutionary psychology would beg to differ.


> 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.
>

The fact that you can't conceive of how consciousness could arise from
mechanism does not amount to an argument against it.


>
>
>> 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.
>
>
But you don't have a theory of consciousness, because you assume it. You
beg the question. And if you are saying physics is wrong - something you
have asserted many times - then it should be possible to construct an
experiment that shows that.


> Craig
>
>
>>
>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg 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 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?
>>>
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>>
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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

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.

Craig

>

>
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > 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 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?
>>
>>  -- 
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>>  
>>  
>>
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

No, I think that you haven't understood it, due to whatever biases have led
you to invest so much in your theory - a theory which is AFAICT completely
unfalsifiable and predicts nothing.



On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg 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 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?
>
>  --
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>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



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 
> 
> > 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?

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Craig Weinberg 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.

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Friday, March 15, 2013 1:28:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> On 3/15/2013 1:11 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > On Friday, March 15, 2013 1:07:19 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
> >> 
> >>  Craig thinks his theory mind is perfectly compatible with physics 
> >> because he thinks physics is different from what all those stupid 
> >> physicists think it is.  They just don't know about his top-down 
> physics, 
> >> which no one has observed but which he *directly experiences* and 
> therefore 
> >> *just knows he's right*.  Give it up John, Stathis.  There's no point 
> >> arguing with cranks and mystics.   
> >> 
> > 
> > I can't hear you, there's just some kind of deterministic neurological 
> > phenomenon babbling out its evolutionarily inevitable flatulence. 
> > 
> > Craig 
> Hi Craig, 
>
> LOL, right on. "Please Sir, can you be consistent with your own 
> claims?" Seriously! This is the trap that materialist fall in everyday, 
> the neglect that their statements mean things that can be contradicted 
> by physical facts and the converse is true as well. 
> Languaging - the active use of language - cannot be said to be 
> coherent 
> in its intensionality if it contradicts the means to make languaging! If 
> we are deterministic systems then there is no room for meaningfulness of 
> utterances. 
>

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.

What's frustrating for me though, is that these accusations of nonsense 
physics are the wrong criticism of my ideas. Since there is no 
physiological difference between the way that a voluntary action and an 
involuntary action initiates in the nervous system, these accusations that 
voluntary action would violate physics are also accusations on any kind of 
action initiating in the nervous system. The argument seems to be that the 
nervous system can only be entirely passive since physical forces are rigid 
and tend toward equilibrium. So much for growth, reproduction, struggling 
to survive, defying gravity by standing upright...the entire biological 
universe is witchcraft!

Craig

>
> -- 
> Onward! 
>
> Stephen 
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-15 Thread Stephen P. King

On 3/15/2013 1:11 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> 
> 
> On Friday, March 15, 2013 1:07:19 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>>
>>  Craig thinks his theory mind is perfectly compatible with physics 
>> because he thinks physics is different from what all those stupid 
>> physicists think it is.  They just don't know about his top-down physics, 
>> which no one has observed but which he *directly experiences* and therefore 
>> *just knows he's right*.  Give it up John, Stathis.  There's no point 
>> arguing with cranks and mystics.  
>>
> 
> I can't hear you, there's just some kind of deterministic neurological 
> phenomenon babbling out its evolutionarily inevitable flatulence.
> 
> Craig
Hi Craig,

LOL, right on. "Please Sir, can you be consistent with your own
claims?" Seriously! This is the trap that materialist fall in everyday,
the neglect that their statements mean things that can be contradicted
by physical facts and the converse is true as well.
Languaging - the active use of language - cannot be said to be coherent
in its intensionality if it contradicts the means to make languaging! If
we are deterministic systems then there is no room for meaningfulness of
utterances.


-- 
Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-15 Thread meekerdb

On 3/15/2013 7:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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.

Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking. Except that I decided
consciously before acting. If not, it is like randomness, or unconscious decision, and
that is not free will. Free-will is when I want to go the left, and decide accordingly
to go to the left, and nobody coerce me to not go to the left. It is not much different
than will + freedom.

That seems to me just and explanation of a certain *feeling* of a feeling of freedom and
of will. If you find yourself on the left path without having consciously thought "I'll
take the left." then you miss the feeling of will. But it may just be that your conscious
thoughts are lagging a little. When you're playing a game, say tennis, and you hit the
ball to the left you may have done so without conscious consideration yet it was just the
right shot and so was what you "willed" to win which you realize on reflection. You have
a feeling of freedom so long as you are not coerced or limited by something you can
consciously consider; that's essentially all the feeling of freedom is, not being able to
think of anything that is restricting or coercing you from taking an action. Since you
can't be directly aware of deterministic or random processes in your brain, whether they
are random or deterministic has no bearing on the freedom+will feeling.

Brent

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Friday, March 15, 2013 1:07:19 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  Craig thinks his theory mind is perfectly compatible with physics 
> because he thinks physics is different from what all those stupid 
> physicists think it is.  They just don't know about his top-down physics, 
> which no one has observed but which he *directly experiences* and therefore 
> *just knows he's right*.  Give it up John, Stathis.  There's no point 
> arguing with cranks and mystics.  
>

I can't hear you, there's just some kind of deterministic neurological 
phenomenon babbling out its evolutionarily inevitable flatulence.

Craig
 

>
> Brent
> There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it
> swells and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in
> concentrated pools here and there, almost disappearing from other
> spots, leaving them parched for wonder. There are also those who
> believe that if you stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it
> will increase your intelligence.
> -- "The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII"
>
>
> On 3/15/2013 6:07 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>  
>
>
> On Friday, March 15, 2013 6:59:42 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Craig Weinberg  
>> wrote: 
>>
>> > I didn't say that. I said "When five billion of them jump to attention 
>> at 
>> > once, it  is **often** because of something that the person is 
>> experiencing 
>> > intentionally,". Biochemistry, among other things, can cause billions 
>> of 
>> > neurons to react, but also intentional thought can do that with no 
>> external 
>> > force. 
>> > 
>> >> You need to find 
>> >> some experimental evidence for this, and astound the scientific world. 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > Straw man cabaret continues.. 
>>
>> You claim that I don't understand you and perhaps I don't. I'm not 
>> deliberately constructing straw man arguments. 
>>
>
> Then stop saying that my view must have something to do with violating 
> physics.
>  
>  
>>
>> The scientific conception of neurons is that *nothing* in them happens 
>> without a physical reason, ever. 
>
>
> Which is why we those scientists have no idea what consciousness is. 
> Physical is a meaningless term. Whatever happens is physical, whether it is 
> smiling at a neighbor or welding a trashcan shut. The only good use for 
> physical in my view is to discern relative presentations from 
> representations. The letter A is not physical, but any particular 
> instantiation of experience of object that we read as A is physical.
>  
>  
>> When a person decides to do 
>> something, this corresponds to certain changes in his brain, and these 
>> changes all follow absolutely rigidly from the physical laws 
>> describing electrochemical reactions. 
>
>
> No, not all changes in the brain cannot be predicted at all from 
> electrochemical reactions. If I decide to go on vacation next week, there 
> is no electrochemical chain reaction which can explain why my body will 
> drive to work today but not in a week. The explanation is only realized in 
> the semantic content of the mind. This is why there is a clear and 
> important different in our awareness between voluntary and involuntary 
> reactions. To be addicted, coerced, enslaved, trapped, etc, are among the 
> most dire conditions which humans confront, yet they have no chemical 
> correlate at all. Whether someone is picking up trash on a prison chain 
> gang or they are picking up trash on the grounds of their vast estate, 
> there is no functional basis for either option being chemically preferable.
>  
>  
>> This applies to every molecule 
>> in the brains in those fMRI pictures you have referenced. 
>
>
> There were mostly spontaneous changes of large groups of molecules and 
> neurons in those images. That's why I included them, because it is so 
> obvious that this is not some kind of rippling, ricocheting, cymatic 
> pattern which could conceivably propagate from bottom up chemistry.
>  
>  
>> You may not 
>> be able to predict exactly what the brain will do but you can't 
>> predict much simpler systems such as where a billiard ball will end up 
>> after bouncing off several cushions either, and that does not lead you 
>> to doubt that it is mechanistic. 
>>
>
> Prediction is not the test. We know for a fact that we experience direct 
> participation in our lives. That cannot be explained by chemistry as it is 
> currently assumed to be. The model is incomplete, not the validity of our 
> own experience.
>  
>  
>>
>> In the standard scientific view, 
>
>
> which is wrong.
>  
>  
>> spontaneously excitable cells are 
>> just a special subtype of excitable cells and still follow absolutely 
>> rigidly the physical laws describing electrochemical reactions. Google 
>> "excitable cells" and you can read about it. If I understand your 
>> view, you think that "spontaneous" means there is neuronal activity 
>> not explained by these rigid physical laws.
>
>
> Nothing is explained by any physical laws whi

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-15 Thread meekerdb

Craig thinks his theory mind is perfectly compatible with physics because he thinks 
physics is different from what all those stupid physicists think it is.  They just don't 
know about his top-down physics, which no one has observed but which he *directly 
experiences* and therefore *just knows he's right*.  Give it up John, Stathis.  There's no 
point arguing with cranks and mystics.

Brent
There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it
swells and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in
concentrated pools here and there, almost disappearing from other
spots, leaving them parched for wonder. There are also those who
believe that if you stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it
will increase your intelligence.
-- "The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII"

On 3/15/2013 6:07 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Friday, March 15, 2013 6:59:42 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Craig Weinberg >
wrote:

> I didn't say that. I said "When five billion of them jump to attention at
> once, it  is **often** because of something that the person is 
experiencing
> intentionally,". Biochemistry, among other things, can cause billions of
> neurons to react, but also intentional thought can do that with no 
external
> force.
>
>> You need to find
>> some experimental evidence for this, and astound the scientific world.
>
>
> Straw man cabaret continues..

You claim that I don't understand you and perhaps I don't. I'm not
deliberately constructing straw man arguments.

Then stop saying that my view must have something to do with violating physics.

The scientific conception of neurons is that *nothing* in them happens
without a physical reason, ever. 

Which is why we those scientists have no idea what consciousness is. Physical is a 
meaningless term. Whatever happens is physical, whether it is smiling at a neighbor or 
welding a trashcan shut. The only good use for physical in my view is to discern 
relative presentations from representations. The letter A is not physical, but any 
particular instantiation of experience of object that we read as A is physical.

When a person decides to do
something, this corresponds to certain changes in his brain, and these
changes all follow absolutely rigidly from the physical laws
describing electrochemical reactions. 

No, not all changes in the brain cannot be predicted at all from electrochemical 
reactions. If I decide to go on vacation next week, there is no electrochemical chain 
reaction which can explain why my body will drive to work today but not in a week. The 
explanation is only realized in the semantic content of the mind. This is why there is a 
clear and important different in our awareness between voluntary and involuntary 
reactions. To be addicted, coerced, enslaved, trapped, etc, are among the most dire 
conditions which humans confront, yet they have no chemical correlate at all. Whether 
someone is picking up trash on a prison chain gang or they are picking up trash on the 
grounds of their vast estate, there is no functional basis for either option being 
chemically preferable.

This applies to every molecule
in the brains in those fMRI pictures you have referenced. 

There were mostly spontaneous changes of large groups of molecules and neurons in those 
images. That's why I included them, because it is so obvious that this is not some kind 
of rippling, ricocheting, cymatic pattern which could conceivably propagate from bottom 
up chemistry.

You may not
be able to predict exactly what the brain will do but you can't
predict much simpler systems such as where a billiard ball will end up
after bouncing off several cushions either, and that does not lead you
to doubt that it is mechanistic.

Prediction is not the test. We know for a fact that we experience direct participation 
in our lives. That cannot be explained by chemistry as it is currently assumed to be. 
The model is incomplete, not the validity of our own experience.

In the standard scientific view, 

which is wrong.

spontaneously excitable cells are
just a special subtype of excitable cells and still follow absolutely
rigidly the physical laws describing electrochemical reactions. Google
"excitable cells" and you can read about it. If I understand your
view, you think that "spontaneous" means there is neuronal activity
not explained by these rigid physical laws.

Nothing is explained by any physical laws which cannot conceive of top-down voluntary 
control of muscle tissue, cells, and molecules. Excitable doesn't exhaustively determine 
what it is excited by. In some cases they are excited by surrounding conditions, in some 
cases they generate excitement internally - and that is who we are, the agency 
associated with the spontaneous internal excitement of those cells (as well as the

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-15 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 15 Mar 2013, at 04:19, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Bruno Marchal   
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.

That's a curious way of reasoning.

-If you tell me that a system is deterministic you have added exactly  
zero information by telling me that the system also has  
"consciousness", thus "consciousness" means nothing and is just a noise.

-If you tell me that a system is deterministic you have added exactly  
zero information by telling me that the system also has the american  
citizenship, thus "american citizenship" means nothing and is just a  
noise.

-If you tell me that a black hole is deterministic you have added  
exactly zero information by telling me that the black hole also has  
also a mass, thus "mass" means nothing and is just a noise.

etc.

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.

Having self-determination does not entail that we can self-determine  
ourself completely. I did not say "total self-determination".

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.

Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking. Except that I  
decided consciously before acting. If not, it is like randomness, or  
unconscious decision, and that is not free will. Free-will is when I  
want to go the left, and decide accordingly to go to the left, and  
nobody coerce me to not go to the left. It is not much different than  
will + freedom.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Friday, March 15, 2013 9:01:24 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 14 Mar 2013, at 17:10, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> 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   
>> >  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. 
>
>
> On the contrary. The theory of machine experience, which is expressible, 
> explains in all detail why most experiences are not expressible.
>

It is only expressible if expression is already possible. Theory in general 
is only possible through experience. You seem to place theory in a voyeur's 
position, above and beyond actual participation in experience. For you, 
theory is not an experience, but a pure commentary from elsewhere.
 

>
>
>
>
> 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. 
>
>
> You make too much negative assertion without any argument.
>

It's not an argument, its an observation. Comp has no reason to support 
geometry.
 

>
>
>
>
> I have pointed out many times that all arithmetic operations supervene on 
> lower level input-output sense ontologies, 
>
>
> "input-output sense ontologies" are too fuzzy to me, and a priori more 
> complex than elementary arithmetic.
>

A Turing machine needs to read and write. It needs tape that is 
addressable. These are sensory-motor capacities which arithmetic machines 
need to function. Storage, memory, processing momentum, nested cycling and 
orientation. Sense. Coherence. Sanity. These are more elementary than 
arithmetic.
 

>
>
>
>
> but you seem to avoid this stark revelation 
>
>
> I don't. But I show that comp + materialism can't avoid that avoidance.
>

Why not? Can you explain briefly without referencing any variables?
 

>
>
>
> and try to patch it up with the expediencies of theory. 
>
>
> You betray here that you are not interested in a theory. Yet you make 
> negative assertion about possibilities. Without a sharable set of 
> assumptions this look like arbitrariness.
>

I'm interested in theory only to the extent that it reflects reality. I 
don't think it's arbitrary, I'm just trying to avoid pointless distractions.
 

>
>
>
> 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).
>
>
> You clearly have not studied the theory. Your critics miss the point.
>

It is my theory that should be studied. My critics expose the entire class 
of possible theories as second order.

Craig
 

>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> Craig
>  
>
>>
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ 
>>
>>
>>
>>
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Friday, March 15, 2013 6:59:42 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> > I didn't say that. I said "When five billion of them jump to attention 
> at 
> > once, it  is **often** because of something that the person is 
> experiencing 
> > intentionally,". Biochemistry, among other things, can cause billions of 
> > neurons to react, but also intentional thought can do that with no 
> external 
> > force. 
> > 
> >> You need to find 
> >> some experimental evidence for this, and astound the scientific world. 
> > 
> > 
> > Straw man cabaret continues.. 
>
> You claim that I don't understand you and perhaps I don't. I'm not 
> deliberately constructing straw man arguments. 
>

Then stop saying that my view must have something to do with violating 
physics.

>
> The scientific conception of neurons is that *nothing* in them happens 
> without a physical reason, ever. 

Which is why we those scientists have no idea what consciousness is. 
Physical is a meaningless term. Whatever happens is physical, whether it is 
smiling at a neighbor or welding a trashcan shut. The only good use for 
physical in my view is to discern relative presentations from 
representations. The letter A is not physical, but any particular 
instantiation of experience of object that we read as A is physical.

> When a person decides to do 
> something, this corresponds to certain changes in his brain, and these 
> changes all follow absolutely rigidly from the physical laws 
> describing electrochemical reactions. 

No, not all changes in the brain cannot be predicted at all from 
electrochemical reactions. If I decide to go on vacation next week, there 
is no electrochemical chain reaction which can explain why my body will 
drive to work today but not in a week. The explanation is only realized in 
the semantic content of the mind. This is why there is a clear and 
important different in our awareness between voluntary and involuntary 
reactions. To be addicted, coerced, enslaved, trapped, etc, are among the 
most dire conditions which humans confront, yet they have no chemical 
correlate at all. Whether someone is picking up trash on a prison chain 
gang or they are picking up trash on the grounds of their vast estate, 
there is no functional basis for either option being chemically preferable.

> This applies to every molecule 
> in the brains in those fMRI pictures you have referenced. 

There were mostly spontaneous changes of large groups of molecules and 
neurons in those images. That's why I included them, because it is so 
obvious that this is not some kind of rippling, ricocheting, cymatic 
pattern which could conceivably propagate from bottom up chemistry.

> You may not 
> be able to predict exactly what the brain will do but you can't 
> predict much simpler systems such as where a billiard ball will end up 
> after bouncing off several cushions either, and that does not lead you 
> to doubt that it is mechanistic. 
>

Prediction is not the test. We know for a fact that we experience direct 
participation in our lives. That cannot be explained by chemistry as it is 
currently assumed to be. The model is incomplete, not the validity of our 
own experience.

>
> In the standard scientific view, 

which is wrong.

> spontaneously excitable cells are 
> just a special subtype of excitable cells and still follow absolutely 
> rigidly the physical laws describing electrochemical reactions. Google 
> "excitable cells" and you can read about it. If I understand your 
> view, you think that "spontaneous" means there is neuronal activity 
> not explained by these rigid physical laws.

Nothing is explained by any physical laws which cannot conceive of top-down 
voluntary control of muscle tissue, cells, and molecules. Excitable doesn't 
exhaustively determine what it is excited by. In some cases they are 
excited by surrounding conditions, in some cases they generate excitement 
internally - and that is who we are, the agency associated with the 
spontaneous internal excitement of those cells (as well as the unseen 
excitement or whatever it is going on in glial cells, etc)

> That must be evident in 
> some experiment or observation; for otherwise the brain would follow 
> the rigid physical laws in a machine-like way, which you do not 
> believe is the case. 
>

You are conceiving of the brain in a way which is so pathologically 
prejudiced that there is no possibility of your seeing beyond it. You have 
decided a priori that all there is is what physics has defined, and 
therefore no matter how absurd it is, everything that exists must 'really' 
be part of that. Your view makes it impossible for any organism to do 
anything other than passively wait until something external causes a chain 
reaction that makes their legs move around and their hands shove food into 
their mouth. The universe that you imagine cannot possibly include you or 
your ability

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-15 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 14 Mar 2013, at 17:10, Craig Weinberg wrote:

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
>  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.

On the contrary. The theory of machine experience, which is  
expressible, explains in all detail why most experiences are not  
expressible.

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.

You make too much negative assertion without any argument.

I have pointed out many times that all arithmetic operations  
supervene on lower level input-output sense ontologies,

"input-output sense ontologies" are too fuzzy to me, and a priori more  
complex than elementary arithmetic.

but you seem to avoid this stark revelation

I don't. But I show that comp + materialism can't avoid that avoidance.

and try to patch it up with the expediencies of theory.

You betray here that you are not interested in a theory. Yet you make  
negative assertion about possibilities. Without a sharable set of  
assumptions this look like arbitrariness.

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).

You clearly have not studied the theory. Your critics miss the point.

Bruno

Craig

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Friday, March 15, 2013 12:23:42 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
> > 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. 
>

You can believe what you like. I have not met anyone else who would even 
argue these kinds of self-evident facts. I use simple and obvious examples 
like a wheel and a mousetrap because no argument is required - everyone 
knows what happens with wheels and mousetraps so that it should not be 
controversial to say that they are devices which have no intentional 
capacities. It would be different if they arose naturally, then we might 
allow that they are part of a larger or smaller intentional system, but 
since we constructed them specifically to do what we want, we can be 
certain that there is nothing that they want.

>
> >> 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.
>

If you are breathing then you might be able to sustain consciousness. 
Holding your breath doesn't last long enough to consider, it isn't a stable 
condition. The less time you have to observe something like that, the more 
likely that you will make a mistake. A mannequin or a sock puppet can fool 
you for a moment, but in time, the artificiality and unconsciousness is 
revealed.

>   
>
>> >> 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.
>

Nah, we have barely begun. The more we know about communication in plants 
and bacteria, the more we see that consciousness is universal.

>
> > 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. 
>

A person made a machine to rapidly access a pool of data and parse it into 
a fixed format for other people to marvel at. Watson is an automated file 
cabinet of pre-loaded trivia.

>  
>
>> > 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.
>

What might be the reason?

>
>  > 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"
>

Either way, it is not their choice, nor is it yours. You disbelieve in free 
will for a reason or for no reason, but you can't change the reason so it 
is not your opinion at all.

>
> > 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. 
>

What about those who aren't?

Craig

>
>   John K Clark
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-15 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> I didn't say that. I said "When five billion of them jump to attention at
> once, it  is **often** because of something that the person is experiencing
> intentionally,". Biochemistry, among other things, can cause billions of
> neurons to react, but also intentional thought can do that with no external
> force.
>
>> You need to find
>> some experimental evidence for this, and astound the scientific world.
>
>
> Straw man cabaret continues..

You claim that I don't understand you and perhaps I don't. I'm not
deliberately constructing straw man arguments.

The scientific conception of neurons is that *nothing* in them happens
without a physical reason, ever. When a person decides to do
something, this corresponds to certain changes in his brain, and these
changes all follow absolutely rigidly from the physical laws
describing electrochemical reactions. This applies to every molecule
in the brains in those fMRI pictures you have referenced. You may not
be able to predict exactly what the brain will do but you can't
predict much simpler systems such as where a billiard ball will end up
after bouncing off several cushions either, and that does not lead you
to doubt that it is mechanistic.

In the standard scientific view, spontaneously excitable cells are
just a special subtype of excitable cells and still follow absolutely
rigidly the physical laws describing electrochemical reactions. Google
"excitable cells" and you can read about it. If I understand your
view, you think that "spontaneous" means there is neuronal activity
not explained by these rigid physical laws. That must be evident in
some experiment or observation; for otherwise the brain would follow
the rigid physical laws in a machine-like way, which you do not
believe is the case.

Can you explain if I have this wrong where exactly I have it wrong?

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-14 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> 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

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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 
> > 
> 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

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-14 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Bruno Marchal  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

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-14 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Craig Weinberg  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 b

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 
> > 
> 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

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-14 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Craig Weinberg  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

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 >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

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-14 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 Craig Weinberg  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.
>

Can

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   
> > > 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/ 
>
>
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-14 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 14 Mar 2013, at 05:37, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg  
 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/



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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-14 Thread Bruno Marchal



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/



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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Thursday, March 14, 2013 1:12:37 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 3/13/2013 10:09 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>  
> The last one is especially cool. As you can see, the brain's behavior 
> reflects massive, simultaneous, spontaneously formed patterns that have 
> nothing whatsoever to do with physical laws. The same physical laws are in 
> place whether the subject has meditated or not,
>
>
> But the same external influences are not.  The physical laws just connect 
> one state of the world to another - not the state of one brain to a later 
> state of that brain; all influences must be considered.
>

All influences, apparently, except for the blindingly obvious influence of 
the subject themselves voluntarily influencing their own brain. What 
external influences are you claiming account for the differences seen in 
the video?

Craig 


> Brent
>  

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Thursday, March 14, 2013 12:37:21 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> Who are you to say that natural phenomena are superfluous? 
> > 
> > 
> > Who are you to say that they aren't? 
>
> The natural world is as it is. 

I agree, and as part of the natural world, I am evidence of intention and 
free will as physical facts of the natural world.

> It's not my place to say the the Great 
> Red Spot of Jupiter is superfluous, that the electron is superfluous, 
> or that intelligent apes are superfluous. 
>

My point was not to claim that consciousness is actually superfluous in the 
real world but to point out the absurdity of your worldview, the logic of 
which insists that consciousness must be superfluous since it adds nothing 
to the functions which you claim the universe can only consist of. Of 
course my view is always that consciousness is the indispensable  ground of 
existence itself, so I am not suggesting by any means that consciousness 
could ever be actually superfluous in this universe.

Craig

>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis


On 3/13/2013 10:09 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
The last one is especially cool. As you can see, the brain's behavior reflects massive, 
simultaneous, spontaneously formed patterns that have nothing whatsoever to do with 
physical laws. The same physical laws are in place whether the subject has meditated or not,


But the same external influences are not.  The physical laws just connect one state of the 
world to another - not the state of one brain to a later state of that brain; all 
influences must be considered.


Brent

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Thursday, March 14, 2013 12:13:47 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:53 AM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> I may not be able to predict what your brain will do 30 days from now, 
> >> but that does not necessarily mean your brain is not deterministic. 
> >> 
> >> And it certainly doesn't mean your brain is neither deterministic nor 
> >> probabilistic. 
> > 
> > 
> > But I *can* predict what my brain will do 30 days from now if I decide 
> to do 
> > something in 30 days. That means that what is determining my brain's 
> > behavior (in addition to whatever physiological realities are in play) 
> is my 
> > personal will. 
>
> And what is determining your personal will is your brain, which 
> follows the laws of physics. 
>

What law of physics makes my will decide to get my house painted in exactly 
30 days? Does electromagnetism have some 30 day cycle that is predicted by 
gravity for me and nobody else?
 

>
> >> There is a chain of causation between you reading these words and you 
> >> throwing the ball. Where exactly do you think is the break in this 
> >> causal chain? 
> > 
> > 
> > There is no break at all. Did you not see the part about top-down, 
> > bottom-up, center-out, and periphery-in causal influences all being 
> > dynamically interactive? When I make a decision about throwing the ball, 
> the 
> > public symptoms of that decision can be seen as billions of simultaneous 
> and 
> > near-simulataneous events, retro-causal events, premonitory events. 
>
> If the atoms bouncing around in your brain follow a causal chain then 
> so does your brain.


You act as if there were one single chain reaction from neuron to neuron. 
That is not a viable model.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2H6UdQVEFY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhCF-zlk0jY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJLdNRebeWE

The last one is especially cool. As you can see, the brain's behavior 
reflects massive, simultaneous, spontaneously formed patterns that have 
nothing whatsoever to do with physical laws. The same physical laws are in 
place whether the subject has meditated or not, so there is no basis for 
your claim of flat biochemical momentum somehow being responsible for 
orchestrating mental changes.

If you believe that your free will somehow acts to 
> cause atoms to move or electrical fields to change 


Not really a belief, it is an observable fact. As you can see in the third 
video, the subject uses free will to meditate and change the behavior of 
electric fields in their brain.
 

> in a not 
> determined, not probabilistic way then that would be obvious in 
> experiments as a break in the causal chain. There's no way to escape 
> this. 
>

There's nothing to escape. Your causal chain is a fantasy. Watch the 
videos. We control (some) of our brain activity. How can you argue against 
that obvious fact based on your 19th century expectations of atomic 
physics? We already know that QM reveals uncertainty and entanglement 
beneath all atomic interactions. We are that uncertainty, and we will see 
that if we do physics experiments on living brains.
 

>
> >> No, I think you believe the brain does things "by itself" and you 
> >> don't understand how an experiment could be set up to demonstrate 
> >> this. 
> > 
> > 
> > When did I ever say that the brain does things by itself? Why do you 
> keep 
> > pointing at this straw man? 
>
> You frequently say that the brain does things due to free will, while 
> I say the brain only does things due to its components blindly 
> following the laws of physics, like a pinball machine (your example). 
>

Do the videos make the brain look like a pinball machine?  What would it 
have to look like for you to be able to entertain the idea that you are 
100% wrong?


> >> Do you know how the transmembrane potential is set? It is due to the 
> >> difference between the sum of positive and negative ions on either 
> >> side of the membrane. Do you know how the ion concentrations are set? 
> >> Ions diffuse across the membrane following their concentration 
> >> gradients, diffuse more quickly through specific ion channels, and are 
> >> transported against concentration gradients via energy-dependent 
> >> transmembrane proteins. 
> > 
> > 
> > Let's say that you are looking at a live video of someone's neurons as 
> they 
> > decide to throw a basketball four inches in the air or three feet in the 
> > air. What happens? What does it matter? The result is the same. Whether 
> it 
> > is at the level of the entire brain, a particular neural pathway, a 
> group of 
> > neurons, membranes, ion channel, molecule... it doesn't matter at all 
> > because they all are changed according to what the person decides. The 
> > person's decision could be pushed from the neural level also, but we 
> would 
> > need to do that intentionally because transmembrane potentials don't 
> know 
> > what a basketball is. Also, your entire model needs a complete revision 
> > si

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> Who are you to say that natural phenomena are superfluous?
>
>
> Who are you to say that they aren't?

The natural world is as it is. It's not my place to say the the Great
Red Spot of Jupiter is superfluous, that the electron is superfluous,
or that intelligent apes are superfluous.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:53 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> I may not be able to predict what your brain will do 30 days from now,
>> but that does not necessarily mean your brain is not deterministic.
>>
>> And it certainly doesn't mean your brain is neither deterministic nor
>> probabilistic.
>
>
> But I *can* predict what my brain will do 30 days from now if I decide to do
> something in 30 days. That means that what is determining my brain's
> behavior (in addition to whatever physiological realities are in play) is my
> personal will.

And what is determining your personal will is your brain, which
follows the laws of physics.

>> There is a chain of causation between you reading these words and you
>> throwing the ball. Where exactly do you think is the break in this
>> causal chain?
>
>
> There is no break at all. Did you not see the part about top-down,
> bottom-up, center-out, and periphery-in causal influences all being
> dynamically interactive? When I make a decision about throwing the ball, the
> public symptoms of that decision can be seen as billions of simultaneous and
> near-simulataneous events, retro-causal events, premonitory events.

If the atoms bouncing around in your brain follow a causal chain then
so does your brain. If you believe that your free will somehow acts to
cause atoms to move or electrical fields to change in a not
determined, not probabilistic way then that would be obvious in
experiments as a break in the causal chain. There's no way to escape
this.

>> No, I think you believe the brain does things "by itself" and you
>> don't understand how an experiment could be set up to demonstrate
>> this.
>
>
> When did I ever say that the brain does things by itself? Why do you keep
> pointing at this straw man?

You frequently say that the brain does things due to free will, while
I say the brain only does things due to its components blindly
following the laws of physics, like a pinball machine (your example).

>> Do you know how the transmembrane potential is set? It is due to the
>> difference between the sum of positive and negative ions on either
>> side of the membrane. Do you know how the ion concentrations are set?
>> Ions diffuse across the membrane following their concentration
>> gradients, diffuse more quickly through specific ion channels, and are
>> transported against concentration gradients via energy-dependent
>> transmembrane proteins.
>
>
> Let's say that you are looking at a live video of someone's neurons as they
> decide to throw a basketball four inches in the air or three feet in the
> air. What happens? What does it matter? The result is the same. Whether it
> is at the level of the entire brain, a particular neural pathway, a group of
> neurons, membranes, ion channel, molecule... it doesn't matter at all
> because they all are changed according to what the person decides. The
> person's decision could be pushed from the neural level also, but we would
> need to do that intentionally because transmembrane potentials don't know
> what a basketball is. Also, your entire model needs a complete revision
> since human glial cells have been discovered to increase the performance of
> mouse brains. All of our assumptions about coded electric signals as
> fundamental factors of consciousness could now easily be wrong.

Does a ball roll down the hill because of the pull of gravity or does
gravity pull on the ball because it rolls down the hill? This is the
problem with your insistence on saying that the neurons change because
of your decision, rather than that your decision occurs because your
neurons change.

>> You would be surprised if the balls in a
>> pinball machine just started levitating or something all by
>> themselves, and yet that is what you claim happens in the brain. Where
>> does it happen, and why has it never been observed?
>
>
> It is observed any time a person exercises their voluntary will and we look
> at what the brain does. Look at Libet even. We don't see sudden responses
> coming out of any inevitable physiology of ions, we see semantic responses
> to sensory events. What is your claim, that the test just happens to
> correspond to a moment when the ion balance was drifting toward an action
> potential anyways? What is your theory of how membranes react to non-local
> changes?

The semantic changes and sensory events supervene on the biochemical
changes. You still seem to believe that this isn't the case and an ion
channel might open by itself, in the absence of the normal stimulus,
because you decide to do something.

>> If the general does not behave mechanistically then the army as a
>> whole doesn't either.
>
>
> Why? Where is that dictum from?

>From you: "The general makes a decision personally, and the army
follows mechanically." I only disagree with you when you are wrong or
incoherent.

>> The only way the general could behave
>> non-mechanistically is if some part of him does not; for if every part
>> behaved mechanisticall

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 10:51:20 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> > So you have experiences which you can't deny, and which you can't 
> explain as 
> > being necessary or sensible for a computer to have in any way. Why would 
> you 
> > decide to infer that computers have superfluous phenomena attached to 
> their 
> > computations and that your own experiences are somehow connected with 
> those? 
>
> Who are you to say that natural phenomena are superfluous? 
>

Who are you to say that they aren't?

Craig
 

>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> So you have experiences which you can't deny, and which you can't explain as
> being necessary or sensible for a computer to have in any way. Why would you
> decide to infer that computers have superfluous phenomena attached to their
> computations and that your own experiences are somehow connected with those?

Who are you to say that natural phenomena are superfluous?

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 8:59:04 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 3/13/2013 4:47 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>  
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 7:38:24 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>  On 3/13/2013 3:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>  
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
>>>
>>> On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 
>>> >   The computer as a whole is 
>>> > >not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only 
>>> looks 
>>> > >like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from 
>>> our 
>>> > >personal experience to relate to personally. 
>>>
>>> At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not 
>>> really being a 
>>> computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. 
>>>
>>
>> No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a 
>> person, saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then 
>> every part of the person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was 
>> correcting him saying that in fact a person is an animal through and 
>> through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels because of 
>> perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human, 
>>
>>
>> So you say.
>>
>>  but we can be fooled. 
>>
>>
>> How do you're not already fooled; that what you take to be humans beings 
>> really are computers - including yourself?
>>  
>
> Because experience by definition cannot be simulated. You may be 
> experiencing something other than what you think you are experiencing, but 
> the fact that you experience is not something that you can doubt. How would 
> you know that your doubt were real?
>  
>
> But you don't experience "not being a computer" or "being a computer".  
> You experience images, sounds, taste,... The rest is inference.
>

So you have experiences which you can't deny, and which you can't explain 
as being necessary or sensible for a computer to have in any way. Why would 
you decide to infer that computers have superfluous phenomena attached to 
their computations and that your own experiences are somehow connected with 
those? 

The key is understanding that there are different levels of pattern 
recognition, and that lower levels of copying and pasting or matching and 
sequencing have never added up to higher levels of empathy or imagination. 
Our AI research has been based on simulating high level responsiveness 
using low level computation, but it doesn't really work. The results are 
never any better than we would expect from a machine imitating some narrow 
aspect of intelligence.
 

>
>   
>  
>>  
>>  A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy.
>>
>> Please avoid putting words in my mouth - 
>>
>>
>> The above was a direct quote extracted from your email.
>>  
>
> It was taken out of context so that it appeared to mean the opposite of 
> what I was trying to say.
>  
>
> My apologies.
>

Thanks. No problem, it was an awkward phrasing anyhow. I was surprised that 
I had said it until I pieced it together.
 

>   
>  
>>  
>>
>>  my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not 
>> likely to ever be conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid 
>> out above, but not the Y axis.
>>  
>>  
>>>
>>> > It's not a matter of how it 
>>> > >could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that 
>>> it 
>>> > >isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. 
>>>
>>> No you don't, or at least I don't.  I experience many things but I don't 
>>> experience being 
>>> determined or not-determined. 
>>>
>>
>> If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being 
>> determined. 
>>
>>
>> And what if I don't get food because I want to be slimmer.  Is that *not* 
>> determined?
>>  
>
> It depends on whether you want to be slimmer more because it is something 
> that you decided for yourself or more because of social conditioning, peer 
> pressure, etc. There are different degrees to which our behavior is 
> influenced externally.
>  
>  
>>  
>>  If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts 
>> rather than the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you 
>> experience being not-determined. 
>>  
>>
>> Are you claiming "my own thoughts" are distinct from the neurochemistry 
>> of my brain?
>>  
>
> Is the plot of a TV show distinct from the pixels on your TV screen?
>  
>
> The latter are causally related to the first.
>

I would say the situation is similar. There are a lot of possible ways that 
experiences can be expressed neurologically and there are a lot of possible 
experiences in consciousness which can express a given neurological event. 
There is a lot of overlap and underlap I would guess. You could have many 
different TV shows with the same plot and many different plots dubbed into 
the dialogue of the same silent movie.  I used to assume that there was a 
one to one correspondenc

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On 3/13/2013 4:47 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 7:38:24 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 3/13/2013 3:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>   The computer as a whole is
> >not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only 
looks
> >like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from 
our
> >personal experience to relate to personally.

At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not 
really
being a
computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal.

No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a 
person,
saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then every part 
of the
person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was correcting him 
saying
that in fact a person is an animal through and through, and it only looks 
like a
machine on the lowest levels because of perceptual relativism. A machine 
cannot
ever be human,

So you say.

but we can be fooled.

How do you're not already fooled; that what you take to be humans beings 
really are
computers - including yourself?

Because experience by definition cannot be simulated. You may be experiencing something 
other than what you think you are experiencing, but the fact that you experience is not 
something that you can doubt. How would you know that your doubt were real?

But you don't experience "not being a computer" or "being a computer".  You experience 
images, sounds, taste,... The rest is inference.

A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy.

Please avoid putting words in my mouth -

The above was a direct quote extracted from your email.

It was taken out of context so that it appeared to mean the opposite of what I was 
trying to say.

My apologies.

my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not likely 
to ever
be conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid out above, but 
not the Y
axis.

> It's not a matter of how it
> >could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that 
it
> >isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment.

No you don't, or at least I don't.  I experience many things but I don't
experience being
determined or not-determined.

If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being 
determined.

And what if I don't get food because I want to be slimmer.  Is that *not* 
determined?

It depends on whether you want to be slimmer more because it is something that you 
decided for yourself or more because of social conditioning, peer pressure, etc. There 
are different degrees to which our behavior is influenced externally.

If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts 
rather than
the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you experience being
not-determined.

Are you claiming "my own thoughts" are distinct from the neurochemistry of 
my brain?

Is the plot of a TV show distinct from the pixels on your TV screen?

The latter are causally related to the first.

Brent

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 7:53:23 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> If you can't demonstrate that one carbon atom is intelligent or 
> conscious 
> >> does that mean that trillions of them together can't be either? 
> > 
> > 
> > If your model of physics doesn't include intelligence then it can't 
> > interpret any behaviors as intelligent or conscious. Determinism is not 
> even 
> > physics, it is an ideology based on the behaviors of objects. The 
> problem 
> > with it is that rather than making the obvious discovery that no amount 
> of 
> > pure objects equals a subject, it tries to insert some cloud of endless 
> > possibilities in between one object and many objects which obscures the 
> > obvious. If trillions of something make a subject, then you have to 
> explain 
> > why that should be the case - what deterministic purpose does the 
> subject 
> > serve, how does it come to be even a possibility if it serves no 
> purpose, 
> > etc. 
>
> The theory is that lots of atoms put together in a specific way lead 
> to intelligence, just as lots of atoms put together in a specific way 
> lead to gas giant planets.


How is that different in principle from the theory that particular 
incantations lead to the appearance of demons?
 

> The potential for the gas giant planet was 
> in the atoms and the potential for intelligence was also in the atoms. 
>

The gas giant planet makes sense given our experience of seeing many small 
objects from a distance as a cloud or haze. A planet is just a collection 
of atoms at different densities. Why would that equate to an expectation 
for intelligence in atoms (or empathy, imagination, sense of humor, or any 
other magical powers)?

Craig
 

>
>
> -- 
> Stathis Papaioannou 
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> If you can't demonstrate that one carbon atom is intelligent or conscious
>> does that mean that trillions of them together can't be either?
>
>
> If your model of physics doesn't include intelligence then it can't
> interpret any behaviors as intelligent or conscious. Determinism is not even
> physics, it is an ideology based on the behaviors of objects. The problem
> with it is that rather than making the obvious discovery that no amount of
> pure objects equals a subject, it tries to insert some cloud of endless
> possibilities in between one object and many objects which obscures the
> obvious. If trillions of something make a subject, then you have to explain
> why that should be the case - what deterministic purpose does the subject
> serve, how does it come to be even a possibility if it serves no purpose,
> etc.

The theory is that lots of atoms put together in a specific way lead
to intelligence, just as lots of atoms put together in a specific way
lead to gas giant planets. The potential for the gas giant planet was
in the atoms and the potential for intelligence was also in the atoms.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 7:38:24 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 3/13/2013 3:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>  
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
>>
>> On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 
>> >   The computer as a whole is 
>> > >not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only 
>> looks 
>> > >like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our 
>> > >personal experience to relate to personally. 
>>
>> At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not 
>> really being a 
>> computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. 
>>
>
> No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a 
> person, saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then 
> every part of the person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was 
> correcting him saying that in fact a person is an animal through and 
> through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels because of 
> perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human, 
>
>
> So you say.
>
>  but we can be fooled. 
>
>
> How do you're not already fooled; that what you take to be humans beings 
> really are computers - including yourself?
>

Because experience by definition cannot be simulated. You may be 
experiencing something other than what you think you are experiencing, but 
the fact that you experience is not something that you can doubt. How would 
you know that your doubt were real?
 

>
>  A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy.
>
> Please avoid putting words in my mouth - 
>
>
> The above was a direct quote extracted from your email.
>

It was taken out of context so that it appeared to mean the opposite of 
what I was trying to say.
 

>
>
>  my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not 
> likely to ever be conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid 
> out above, but not the Y axis.
>  
>  
>>
>> > It's not a matter of how it 
>> > >could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that 
>> it 
>> > >isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. 
>>
>> No you don't, or at least I don't.  I experience many things but I don't 
>> experience being 
>> determined or not-determined. 
>>
>
> If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being 
> determined. 
>
>
> And what if I don't get food because I want to be slimmer.  Is that *not* 
> determined?
>

It depends on whether you want to be slimmer more because it is something 
that you decided for yourself or more because of social conditioning, peer 
pressure, etc. There are different degrees to which our behavior is 
influenced externally.
 

>
>  If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts 
> rather than the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you 
> experience being not-determined. 
>  
>
> Are you claiming "my own thoughts" are distinct from the neurochemistry of 
> my brain?
>

Is the plot of a TV show distinct from the pixels on your TV screen?

Craig
 

>
> Brent
> The first principle of science is don't fool yourself - and you
> are the easiest person to fool.
>   --- Richard Feynman
>
>  

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On 3/13/2013 3:32 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>   The computer as a whole is
> >not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only 
looks
> >like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our
> >personal experience to relate to personally.

At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not 
really being a
computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal.

No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a person, saying 
that if any part of the person acts like a machine then every part of the person ant the 
person as a whole must be a machine. I was correcting him saying that in fact a person 
is an animal through and through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels 
because of perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human,

So you say.

but we can be fooled.

How do you're not already fooled; that what you take to be humans beings really are 
computers - including yourself?

A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy.

Please avoid putting words in my mouth -

The above was a direct quote extracted from your email.

my position is that computers executed on inorganic material are not likely to ever be 
conscious. They can progress on the X axis that I laid out above, but not the Y axis.

> It's not a matter of how it
> >could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it
> >isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment.

No you don't, or at least I don't.  I experience many things but I don't 
experience
being
determined or not-determined.

If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being 
determined.

And what if I don't get food because I want to be slimmer.  Is that *not* 
determined?

If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own thoughts rather than the 
content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then you experience being not-determined.

Are you claiming "my own thoughts" are distinct from the neurochemistry of my 
brain?

Brent
The first principle of science is don't fool yourself - and you
are the easiest person to fool.
  --- Richard Feynman

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:00:27 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
>
> On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 
> >   The computer as a whole is 
> > >not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only 
> looks 
> > >like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our 
> > >personal experience to relate to personally. 
>
> At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not 
> really being a 
> computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal. 
>

No, you misunderstand. Stathis used computer as a metaphor here for a 
person, saying that if any part of the person acts like a machine then 
every part of the person ant the person as a whole must be a machine. I was 
correcting him saying that in fact a person is an animal through and 
through, and it only looks like a machine on the lowest levels because of 
perceptual relativism. A machine cannot ever be human, but we can be 
fooled. A human can act like a machine for a while but it isn't healthy.

Please avoid putting words in my mouth - my position is that computers 
executed on inorganic material are not likely to ever be conscious. They 
can progress on the X axis that I laid out above, but not the Y axis.

>
> > It's not a matter of how it 
> > >could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it 
> > >isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment. 
>
> No you don't, or at least I don't.  I experience many things but I don't 
> experience being 
> determined or not-determined. 
>

If you get food when you are hungry, then you experience yourself being 
determined. If you debate online and decide what you say based on your own 
thoughts rather than the content of neurochemical sites in your brain, then 
you experience being not-determined. 

Craig

>
> Brent 
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis


On 3/13/2013 3:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

  The computer as a whole is
>not a computer at all, it is an animal, a being. In reality, it only looks
>like a computer on the lower levels because it is too distant from our
>personal experience to relate to personally.


At last Craig admits that a computer can be conscious - but only by not really being a 
computer at some magic level where it becomes an animal.



It's not a matter of how it
>could possibly happen, it is a matter of how could anyone think that it
>isn't happening. You experience it yourself directly in every moment.


No you don't, or at least I don't.  I experience many things but I don't experience being 
determined or not-determined.


Brent

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:36:36 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> 
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> >> There is no reason to think that a deterministic universe universe had 
>>> to have a beginning, or a non-deterministic one either for that matter.
>>>
>>
>> > Then determinism, having no prior cause, violates determinism. 
>>
>
> No, every state in the universe would have a cause determined by a 
> previous state of the universe, the fact there are a infinite number of 
> such states is irrelevant.
>

You are not including determinism itself as a state in the universe.

Craig
 

>
>   John K Clark
>  
>
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 12:32:34 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013  Craig Weinberg >wrote:
>
> >> the phrase "dragons exist" or "God exists" is not gibberish just wrong, 
>>> and "free will" is not even wrong.  I'm saying that  if "free will" doesn't 
>>> exist and “free will” doesn't not exist then that’s just another way of 
>>> saying that "free will" is gibberish.
>>>
>>
>> > I'm not saying that free will doesn't exist though,
>>
>  
> I know, you’re not talking about something that does not exist, you’re 
> talking about something that is not deterministic and not not 
> deterministic. In other words you’re talking gibberish.  
>

It's mind boggling to me that you have no capacity to tolerate the obvious 
non-Aristotelian qualities of nature. The color white is not red, but since 
white cannot be made without using red wavelengths, then it can't be said 
that it is not not red either. Warm water can be said not to be hot but 
also not to be not hot either, in that it includes hot water mixed with 
cold. Where are you getting this fantasy expectation that everything fits 
into one box or the opposite box?

>  
>
>> > Why do you put free will in a different category from dragons or God
>>
>  
> Because both dragons and God are well defined concepts, just concepts that 
> don’t happen to have the attribute of existence. In contrast “free will” is 
> not only incoherently defined it is every bit as self contradictory as the 
> largest prime number is.
>

Free will doesn't need to be defined because it is inescapable and obvious. 
Color doesn't need to be defined either, or hunger, or itching.

>
> >> When the computer reaches its goal we know because when it reaches the 
>>> billionth digit of PI the machine will stop.
>>>
>>
>> > The machines stops because the programmer has programmed it to stop,
>>
>  
> Yes. So what?  Just exactly like you the program is the way it is for a 
> reason OR it is the way it is for no reason.
>

The reason that the machine stops has nothing to do with the goals of the 
machine. Your view has no way to accommodate the reality that meaning can 
be projected onto actions by the audience. To give a machine a full range 
of human emotions in your world is to simply use emoticons. A smiley face 
can't just be ASCII text, it must be a smile because how things look to you 
is how they must actually be.

>  
>
>> > not because the machine had a goal which was satisfied. There is a huge 
>> difference.
>>
>  
> If there is a huge difference it’s a bit odd that you are unable to 
> rationally describe even a tiny difference without just decreeing without 
> evidence or argument that certain things do or do not have subjective 
> states; and after all logically  investigating those states is the entire 
> point of the debate so your faith based assertions are not helpful. 
>

Do you believe that this>  ;-)   has an emotion? Does the computer have an 
emotion about it? Do the bits in RAM or pixels on the screen have a feeling 
about what ;-) means? Why not? 

> > I can catch a mouse in a trap and the mouse will stop moving.
>>
>
> True, and the mouse trap will stop moving too.
>

You could make one that resets itself. What's the difference?

>
> > That doesn't mean that the mouse has achieved some kind of personal 
>> mouse goal.
>>
>
> Also true, not every living thing successfully reaches its goal and not 
> everything even has a goal but the mouse trap certainly did, it was built 
> to move very fast and then stop if it was touched, and that is exactly what 
> happened.   
>

It could have been a child's finger broken in the trap instead. The trap 
would have broken it with exactly the same indifference. The mouse trap has 
no goal. 

>
> >> And the motion of your thumb on the joystick of the computer game you 
>>> were playing were sent into motion by the computer which will stop when it 
>>> reaches its goal, the end of the game.
>>>
>>
>> > I respond to the game voluntarily,
>>
>  
> So you responded the way you did for a reason, namely because you wanted 
> to. The computer game responds the way it does for a reason too.
>

'Because I wanted to' is the opposite of 'because it is programmed to'. The 
former intentionally creates and initiates a sequence of actions, the 
latter executes and acts as a consequence of unintentional following.

>
>> > the game responds to me unconsciously
>>
>  
> As I said the entire point of this conversation is to investigate what is 
> conscious and what is not, so for you to decree without evidence or 
> argument that this this and this is conscious but that that and that is not 
> just doesn’t get us very far.
>

Consciousness itself cannot be accessed by third person evidence. That 
doesn't mean that we have no access to valid intuition and judgment beyond 
the evidence of objects. That gets us as far as we need to get. There might 
be a way to conduct some useful experiments to prove whether or not peopl

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-13 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

>
> >> There is no reason to think that a deterministic universe universe had
>> to have a beginning, or a non-deterministic one either for that matter.
>>
>
> > Then determinism, having no prior cause, violates determinism.
>

No, every state in the universe would have a cause determined by a previous
state of the universe, the fact there are a infinite number of such states
is irrelevant.

  John K Clark

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 6:51:56 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:18 AM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> But physics does describe how high you will decide to throw the ball, 
> >> since physics describes the movement of the ball and the movement of 
> >> the matter in your body. If you don't accept this then you believe 
> >> that your body will behave CONTRARY TO PHYSICS. 
> > 
> > 
> > If you claim that you can use physics to decide exactly how high I will 
> > decide to throw the ball, then how exactly would you do it? How far in 
> > advance of my throwing the ball do you claim that you can know what I 
> > decide? Since I can decide right now approximately how far I will throw 
> it 
> > 30 days from now, you would have to be able to predict my decision 
> before 
> > this conversation. This is not contrary to physics, but your expectation 
> is 
> > CONTRARY TO REALITY. There is no physical sign in my brain of how hard I 
> > will try to throw the ball. I could change it at the last minute also. 
>
> I may not be able to predict what your brain will do 30 days from now, 
> but that does not necessarily mean your brain is not deterministic.  
>
And it certainly doesn't mean your brain is neither deterministic nor 
> probabilistic. 
>

But I *can* predict what my brain will do 30 days from now if I decide to 
do something in 30 days. That means that what is determining my brain's 
behavior (in addition to whatever physiological realities are in play) is 
my personal will.
 

>
> > What you have not considered is that your assumptions about the universe 
> > could be based on jumping to the wrong conclusions about matter and 
> > consciousness. The physical system which is actually determining how 
> high I 
> > will throw the basketball is not what you would see under a microscope 
> with 
> > your body - billions of cells interacting in a microbiotic environment, 
> or 
> > smaller still, quadrillions of molecules interacting in a nanoscale 
> > environment... the basketball doesn't exist there. What is physically 
> > determining the force on the ball is the part of me that knows about 
> > basketballs and throwing, and control of my body's actions in a world 
> not of 
> > biochemistry but of people and real objects. These are the differences 
> that 
> > matter - this is what the universe is made of; perceptual relativism. 
> Top 
> > down, bottom up, center out, periphery in... all contribute, all make 
> their 
> > own sense and motives. Your view is a toy model of bottom up behaviorism 
> > that has nothing to do with reality at all. Because of the plasticity of 
> > sense, the universe ensures that there will always be enough evidence 
> for 
> > you to feel justified in pursuing and believing your view, just as it 
> will 
> > ensure every view reflects enough of the whole truth that it can seem 
> true 
> > enough. You think that the universe is a machine, but it is you who 
> wants 
> > the universe to be a machine. 
>
> There is a chain of causation between you reading these words and you 
> throwing the ball. Where exactly do you think is the break in this 
> causal chain? 
>

There is no break at all. Did you not see the part about top-down, 
bottom-up, center-out, and periphery-in causal influences all being 
dynamically interactive? When I make a decision about throwing the ball, 
the public symptoms of that decision can be seen as billions of 
simultaneous and near-simulataneous events, retro-causal events, 
premonitory events.
 

>
> >> That is what contrary 
> >> to physics means! It would be easy to show that something funny was 
> >> going on in a laboratory. 
> > 
> > 
> > I don't think that it is possible for you to understand what I am 
> talking 
> > about. I understand what you mean completely though. 
>
> No, I think you believe the brain does things "by itself" and you 
> don't understand how an experiment could be set up to demonstrate 
> this. 
>

When did I ever say that the brain does things by itself? Why do you keep 
pointing at this straw man?
 

>
> >> You could take a neuron and measure the 
> >> transmembrane potential which will indicate according to our knowledge 
> >> of physics that the neuron will not fire, but then observe that - 
> >> CONTRARY TO PHYSICS - the neuron does fire. 
> > 
> > 
> > The whole point is that the transmembrane potential can and does change 
> at 
> > any time. That's how neurons fire normally. You act as if everything 
> that 
> > happens in the brain is a pinball machine where each neuron can only 
> fire if 
> > another one tells it to fire. That is not at all how it is. Every neuron 
> is 
> > an independent living organism which contributes directly to the 
> chemical 
> > and electric environment of the brain... then there's the glial cells. 
> How 
> > do you explain how they improve mouse brain performance without any 
> > electrical signalling? 
>
> Do you know how the transmembrane potenti

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:56:00 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/03/2013, at 12:30 AM, Craig Weinberg > 
> wrote: 
>
> > No, it doesn't make sense to me that there would be a highly valued 
> qualia of free will (and highly charged qualia of responsibility) if our 
> participation did not actually contribute causally in determining the 
> universe. A free spectator in a deterministic machine can feel no 
> responsibility or presence. 
>
> That many believe something or that something seems true at a gut level 
> does not make it true. 
>

Sure, but if you understand why the belief has to be true ontologically, 
then it does strongly suggest that it could be true. If you can explain why 
a free spectator in a deterministic machine would feel presence or 
responsibility toward that machine, even though there is no possibility 
that they can change the machine in any way, then I would be interested in 
hearing about that.

>
> > I was watching a CGI cartoon this morning and was noticing that the 
> sterility of the medium must be fought every step of the way by the 
> animators to inject some warmth and character. The digital medium is not 
> neutral, it is anesthetically biased. Because computation is devoid both of 
> the gravity of realism and the vitality of animation, the CGI animator must 
> compensate with low level visual distractions at all times - plugging the 
> holes in the audience's experience with lots of clever details. 
>
> A non-CGI movie on a medium such as DVD is digitally encoded so is 
> potentially generable by computer. Indeed, it is generable by a program 
> enumerating all possible movies.

Potentially but not necessarily actually. Copying a photograph pixel by 
pixel is not the same as generating an image. This is at the heart of the 
issue - the recognition of the different levels of quality of consciousness:

Y1. detection: input/output - amplitude/intensity, frequency, 
presence/participation.
Y2. sensation: color/tone, attraction/repulsion, association potential
Y3. perception: image, experienced gestalt.
Y4: feeling: episodic awareness, fluid continuum of perceptions.
Y5: awareness: worldly embeddedness, narrative continuity, parallel 
experiences of others.
Y6. consciousness: awareness of self as other, abstract thought and 
language.
Y7: intuition: awareness of synchronicity, symbolic depths, super-personal 
archetypes
Y8: fusion: identification with the eternal, loss of body identity, 
Satori/enlightenment/Nirvana

Information processing is on the opposite axis. Where Y0 is Sense, X0 is 
the opposite - Logic. Logic replaces sense with a structure that can be 
referred to instead of relying on a subject's sensations and feelings. 
Logic is about controlling functions and needs no feelings at all (ask Mr. 
Spock's Dad).

X1. information: low level discernment only - digital universal. Binary 
code. Bits.
X-1. switching: a device used to register and store a discrete, testable 
state of a physical object.
X2.  Meta-data. Grouping of bits into bytes, Kb, Mb, Gb... Copy and paste. 
Sequential analysis.
X-2. Meta-switches. Grouping of devices by division of labor. Routing and 
nesting of functions.
X3. Programs. Logical groupings of functions which are composed 
independently of hardware but executed as data.
X-3. Machines. Devices which compute, route, switch, execute programs 
(silently, invisibly, without experience)
X4. Meta-programs. Self-extending programs which use logic to edit 
themselves. Turing Machines.
X-4. Universal Machines. Devices driven by Meta-programs to modify their 
own hardware (or meta-software in Comp).

That's just a rough run-down of course, my point is only to show that the 
considerations of information are completely perpendicular to those of 
sense. We use logic, we use computation, and computation and logic use us - 
but - we are not computation or logic, we are genuine sensory-motor 
experience which is anchored permanently into the on-and-only, 
authentically and concretely real narrative of eternity.

Craig

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 10:45:10 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
>
>
> On 13/03/2013, at 4:53 AM, Craig Weinberg > 
> wrote: 
>
> > We're talking about the basic principle of determinism though. We should 
> use a basic example of it. What special ingredient does complexity add 
> which changes the nature of determinism? One stone rolling or a trillion 
> digital stones rolling and colliding and sticking together and breaking 
> apart - what difference does it make to the ontology of determinism? 
>
> If you can't demonstrate that one carbon atom is intelligent or conscious 
> does that mean that trillions of them together can't be either?

If your model of physics doesn't include intelligence then it can't 
interpret any behaviors as intelligent or conscious. Determinism is not 
even physics, it is an ideology based on the behaviors of objects. The 
problem with it is that rather than making the obvious discovery that no 
amount of pure objects equals a subject, it tries to insert some cloud of 
endless possibilities in between one object and many objects which obscures 
the obvious. If trillions of something make a subject, then you have to 
explain why that should be the case - what deterministic purpose does the 
subject serve, how does it come to be even a possibility if it serves no 
purpose, etc. 

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:18 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

>> But physics does describe how high you will decide to throw the ball,
>> since physics describes the movement of the ball and the movement of
>> the matter in your body. If you don't accept this then you believe
>> that your body will behave CONTRARY TO PHYSICS.
>
>
> If you claim that you can use physics to decide exactly how high I will
> decide to throw the ball, then how exactly would you do it? How far in
> advance of my throwing the ball do you claim that you can know what I
> decide? Since I can decide right now approximately how far I will throw it
> 30 days from now, you would have to be able to predict my decision before
> this conversation. This is not contrary to physics, but your expectation is
> CONTRARY TO REALITY. There is no physical sign in my brain of how hard I
> will try to throw the ball. I could change it at the last minute also.

I may not be able to predict what your brain will do 30 days from now,
but that does not necessarily mean your brain is not deterministic.
And it certainly doesn't mean your brain is neither deterministic nor
probabilistic.

> What you have not considered is that your assumptions about the universe
> could be based on jumping to the wrong conclusions about matter and
> consciousness. The physical system which is actually determining how high I
> will throw the basketball is not what you would see under a microscope with
> your body - billions of cells interacting in a microbiotic environment, or
> smaller still, quadrillions of molecules interacting in a nanoscale
> environment... the basketball doesn't exist there. What is physically
> determining the force on the ball is the part of me that knows about
> basketballs and throwing, and control of my body's actions in a world not of
> biochemistry but of people and real objects. These are the differences that
> matter - this is what the universe is made of; perceptual relativism. Top
> down, bottom up, center out, periphery in... all contribute, all make their
> own sense and motives. Your view is a toy model of bottom up behaviorism
> that has nothing to do with reality at all. Because of the plasticity of
> sense, the universe ensures that there will always be enough evidence for
> you to feel justified in pursuing and believing your view, just as it will
> ensure every view reflects enough of the whole truth that it can seem true
> enough. You think that the universe is a machine, but it is you who wants
> the universe to be a machine.

There is a chain of causation between you reading these words and you
throwing the ball. Where exactly do you think is the break in this
causal chain?

>> That is what contrary
>> to physics means! It would be easy to show that something funny was
>> going on in a laboratory.
>
>
> I don't think that it is possible for you to understand what I am talking
> about. I understand what you mean completely though.

No, I think you believe the brain does things "by itself" and you
don't understand how an experiment could be set up to demonstrate
this.

>> You could take a neuron and measure the
>> transmembrane potential which will indicate according to our knowledge
>> of physics that the neuron will not fire, but then observe that -
>> CONTRARY TO PHYSICS - the neuron does fire.
>
>
> The whole point is that the transmembrane potential can and does change at
> any time. That's how neurons fire normally. You act as if everything that
> happens in the brain is a pinball machine where each neuron can only fire if
> another one tells it to fire. That is not at all how it is. Every neuron is
> an independent living organism which contributes directly to the chemical
> and electric environment of the brain... then there's the glial cells. How
> do you explain how they improve mouse brain performance without any
> electrical signalling?

Do you know how the transmembrane potential is set? It is due to the
difference between the sum of positive and negative ions on either
side of the membrane. Do you know how the ion concentrations are set?
Ions diffuse across the membrane following their concentration
gradients, diffuse more quickly through specific ion channels, and are
transported against concentration gradients via energy-dependent
transmembrane proteins. You would be surprised if the balls in a
pinball machine just started levitating or something all by
themselves, and yet that is what you claim happens in the brain. Where
does it happen, and why has it never been observed?

>> And
>> insofar as physics is mechanistic - deterministic or probabilistic -
>> the behaviour of the body will be mechanistic.
>
>
> That is your theory. I predict that it will be increasingly difficult for
> you to hold on to it in the face of a non-stop cascade of information which
> casts doubt on determinism, mechanism, and probabilistic assumptions. The
> future belongs to sense, perceptual relativism, and intentional interaction.

It isn't my

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-12 Thread Stathis Papaioannou



On 12/03/2013, at 12:30 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> No, it doesn't make sense to me that there would be a highly valued qualia of 
> free will (and highly charged qualia of responsibility) if our participation 
> did not actually contribute causally in determining the universe. A free 
> spectator in a deterministic machine can feel no responsibility or presence.

That many believe something or that something seems true at a gut level does 
not make it true.

> I was watching a CGI cartoon this morning and was noticing that the sterility 
> of the medium must be fought every step of the way by the animators to inject 
> some warmth and character. The digital medium is not neutral, it is 
> anesthetically biased. Because computation is devoid both of the gravity of 
> realism and the vitality of animation, the CGI animator must compensate with 
> low level visual distractions at all times - plugging the holes in the 
> audience's experience with lots of clever details.

A non-CGI movie on a medium such as DVD is digitally encoded so is potentially 
generable by computer. Indeed, it is generable by a program enumerating all 
possible movies.

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-12 Thread Stathis Papaioannou



On 13/03/2013, at 4:53 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> We're talking about the basic principle of determinism though. We should use 
> a basic example of it. What special ingredient does complexity add which 
> changes the nature of determinism? One stone rolling or a trillion digital 
> stones rolling and colliding and sticking together and breaking apart - what 
> difference does it make to the ontology of determinism?

If you can't demonstrate that one carbon atom is intelligent or conscious does 
that mean that trillions of them together can't be either?

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 1:41:05 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 Craig Weinberg >wrote:
>
> > a deterministic universe always begins with a miracle that is never 
>> allowed to happen again.
>>
>
> There is no reason to think that a deterministic universe universe had to 
> have a beginning, or a non-deterministic one either for that matter.
>

Then determinism, having no prior cause, violates determinism. How can it 
violate its own law and how can we be sure that it is the only thing that 
can ever violate it?

Craig
 

>
>   John K Clark 
>
>  
>

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 12:53:24 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 12 Mar 2013, at 14:45, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 9:20:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 11 Mar 2013, at 18:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>
>> What does it mean to contribute causally to a deterministic process 
>> though? What contribution does the stone make to its rolling down hill?
>>
>>
>> I have no evidence that a stone support a will relatively to its 
>> environment. I was not talking about stones, but about computers.
>>
>
> Computers are fuzzy though, because we can always point to an open ended 
> future of possibility. Stones are a better example to work with because of 
> the absurd simplicity. Any understanding about determinism should be 
> clearer there. A computer is informed by human will, so it is really a bad 
> example of determinism.
>
>
>
> What is that for a kind of reasoning?
>  
>

> "I will show you that computer cannot be conscious, but as computer are 
> complex man made machine, I will show you this for my fridge instead". Come 
> on Craig. 
>

We're talking about the basic principle of determinism though. We should 
use a basic example of it. What special ingredient does complexity add 
which changes the nature of determinism? One stone rolling or a trillion 
digital stones rolling and colliding and sticking together and breaking 
apart - what difference does it make to the ontology of determinism?

>
>
>
>
>  
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> A free spectator in a deterministic machine can feel no responsibility 
>>> or presence.
>>>
>>>
>>> Not only a machine (the person supervening on a machine) can feel 
>>> responsibility, but that person can be responsible.
>>>
>>
>> Why should there be any such feeling even possible in the universe as 
>> 'responsibility' under determinism? Who feels responsible for the rolling 
>> stone?
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I was watching a CGI cartoon this morning and was noticing that the 
>>> sterility of the medium must be fought every step of the way by the 
>>> animators to inject some warmth and character. The digital medium is not 
>>> neutral, it is anesthetically biased. Because computation is devoid both of 
>>> the gravity of realism 
>>>
>>>
>>> You betray a naive conception of computations. 
>>>
>>> I would say that my analysis is more rooted in aesthetic and 
>> experiential qualities rather than conceptual evaluations of computation. I 
>> look at what all CGI has in common, and how that differs from what other 
>> forms of animation, or film, or reality have in common.
>>
>>
>> You can rely only on 3p behavior. Once a machine is allowed to look 
>> inward, his behavior can become very complex, and involve non communicable 
>> truth. Nobody says that all computations support consciousness, but that 
>> some might.
>>
>
> How do you know the machine looks inward at all? 
>
>
> A machine can invoke herself and represent herself in different possible 
> situation.
>

How do you know that it represents herself to herself rather than to the 
programmer?

> That self-reference is made possible by a theorem in computer science 
> (Kleene's second recursion theorem). I have explained and will re-explain 
> on FOAR. It is sump up by the Dx = "xx" trick. If DA gives "AA", DD gives 
> "DD".
>

"These words do not refer to themselves." 

You are taking symbols literally, which is your privilege as a conscious 
person. Computers don't have that capacity. They can take symbols only in 
the way that we intend them to be taken. I don't think that I have even 
heard you acknowledge that there is a such thing as the Use-mention 
distinction or map-territory relation. Do you see that a computer need not 
be able to hear music itself in order for you to hear music as a result of 
what a computer does? If so, then why assume that Dx = "xx" is anything 
other than an empty formalism? A simple monkey-see, monkey-do substitution.

>
>
>
>
>
> If I watch a movie, it might look like characters are being introspective, 
> but that has nothing to do with the video screen or DVD player.
>
>
> It is a branch of math, and we reason from what we know. Character in a 
> movie have no self-referential abilities at all, 
>

Sure they do. They can tell you all about themselves. You can arrange many 
different movie clips which correspond to a number of buttons that you can 
push which have certain questions written next to them that the character 
will answer. A museum kiosk could have just such a video information system 
with canned responses about the character reading them. The Bugs Bunny 
museum can have Bugs Bunny recordings that kids can watch where he answers 
the questions that have been scripted.

> and there is no computation involved in the movie projection (or a trivial 
> one). In the frame of the content of the movie, the character have 
> self-referential abilities, in the sense that we can locally attribute them 
> such,

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-12 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> Free will is not an illusion. It is real.
>

Unless declared a integer.

  John K Clark

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-12 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> a deterministic universe always begins with a miracle that is never
> allowed to happen again.
>

There is no reason to think that a deterministic universe universe had to
have a beginning, or a non-deterministic one either for that matter.

  John K Clark

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

2013-03-12 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 4:08 PM,  wrote:

> Question- I also thought determinism  mean't that you could predict where
> and when, a particle could move.
>

No, determinism and predictability are two different things. In
adeterministic system its
future state depends entirely on its past state, but that doesn't
necessarily mean its predictable. We can make good predictions about the
movements of the planets because a small uncertainty in our knowledge about
the position and velocity that the planets have right now causes only a
small uncertainty about where they will be in the future, but most things
are not like that; you would have to know the present state of a chaotic
system in INFINITE detail to make long range predictions because even the
tiniest error will very rapidly grow and become huge.

> But that Werner Heisenberg, said that you could determine, on, but never
> the other.
>

Heisenberg said you can find the position of a particle as precisely as you
like, but the more you know about the particle's position the less you know
about the particle's velocity and vice versa. But even if we forget about
Heisenberg we still couldn't make long term predictions because of chaos.

  John K Clark

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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On 12 Mar 2013, at 14:45, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 9:20:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 11 Mar 2013, at 18:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:


What does it mean to contribute causally to a deterministic process  
though? What contribution does the stone make to its rolling down  
hill?


I have no evidence that a stone support a will relatively to its  
environment. I was not talking about stones, but about computers.


Computers are fuzzy though, because we can always point to an open  
ended future of possibility. Stones are a better example to work  
with because of the absurd simplicity. Any understanding about  
determinism should be clearer there. A computer is informed by human  
will, so it is really a bad example of determinism.



What is that for a kind of reasoning?

"I will show you that computer cannot be conscious, but as computer  
are complex man made machine, I will show you this for my fridge  
instead". Come on Craig.

















A free spectator in a deterministic machine can feel no  
responsibility or presence.


Not only a machine (the person supervening on a machine) can feel  
responsibility, but that person can be responsible.


Why should there be any such feeling even possible in the universe  
as 'responsibility' under determinism? Who feels responsible for  
the rolling stone?





I was watching a CGI cartoon this morning and was noticing that  
the sterility of the medium must be fought every step of the way  
by the animators to inject some warmth and character. The digital  
medium is not neutral, it is anesthetically biased. Because  
computation is devoid both of the gravity of realism


You betray a naive conception of computations.

I would say that my analysis is more rooted in aesthetic and  
experiential qualities rather than conceptual evaluations of  
computation. I look at what all CGI has in common, and how that  
differs from what other forms of animation, or film, or reality  
have in common.


You can rely only on 3p behavior. Once a machine is allowed to look  
inward, his behavior can become very complex, and involve non  
communicable truth. Nobody says that all computations support  
consciousness, but that some might.


How do you know the machine looks inward at all?


A machine can invoke herself and represent herself in different  
possible situation. That self-reference is made possible by a theorem  
in computer science (Kleene's second recursion theorem). I have  
explained and will re-explain on FOAR. It is sump up by the Dx = "xx"  
trick. If DA gives "AA", DD gives "DD".






If I watch a movie, it might look like characters are being  
introspective, but that has nothing to do with the video screen or  
DVD player.


It is a branch of math, and we reason from what we know. Character in  
a movie have no self-referential abilities at all, and there is no  
computation involved in the movie projection (or a trivial one). In  
the frame of the content of the movie, the character have self- 
referential abilities, in the sense that we can locally attribute them  
such, for appreciating the plot, but we tend to believe they have not  
(if not we would find all horror drama being inhuman and forbid them).
















and the vitality of animation, the CGI animator must compensate  
with low level visual distractions at all times - plugging the  
holes in the audience's experience with lots of clever details.


I am not talking about today's machine, but about what is Turing  
emulable in principle.


Emulation is a theory or an assumption. I don't think that it holds  
up. Emulation is always limited to observations of observations,  
not realities.


You might be right. The point is that you might be false, also.

OK.


That was my point. But then why do you assert that comp is false.




Another possibility is that how true or false it seems depends on  
the intentions and awareness of the person asking.


This escapes the conclusion. The consciousness of someone with a  
digital brain will not depend on what other can think and ask, even  
if, obviously, the quality life of the person having that  
consciousness, will depend on other's attitude.


"... and the dentist told me: "---I will no more use anesthetics  
because I came to the conclusion that all that pain is only in your  
head". " Well, no thanks.















What is not Turing emulable in your theory.

The only thing that is Turing emulable is public positions in  
space. Nothing private is emulable.



But here you are provably false. Self-referential machines have  
private life, in the sense that they too can refer to sense and  
uncommunicable true knowledge.


How do you know that though?


But that is exactly what I explain in the papers, and here in the posts.



How can you demonstrate that the movie, even an interactive movie,  
has some kind of private life when you can see how easy it is for us  
to fall into the pathetic fallacy?


T

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On 12 Mar 2013, at 00:01, meekerdb wrote:


On 3/11/2013 6:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 10 Mar 2013, at 22:51, meekerdb wrote:


On 3/10/2013 1:08 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:
Question- I also thought determinism  mean't that you could  
predict where and when, a particle could move. But that Werner  
Heisenberg, said that you could determine, on, but never the  
other. Would you say that the universe is predictable and  
Heisenberg might be wrong?


Thanks.

Mitch


Determinism doesn't mean that you can predict everything.   
Determinism means the future is completely determined by the  
past.  But in order to use that for prediction you have to know  
the past as well as the time evolution operator. This is  
impossible for a couple of reasons.  First, you can only know  
about the past that is within your past light cone.  There are  
things happening on the Sun that you can't know about for another  
eight minutes.  If those are things that can influence what you're  
trying to predict then you're out of luck.  Second, deterministic  
systems are not necessarily stable, so infinitesimal errors in  
your knowledge of the present state or in the evolution operator  
can result in large errors in  prediction.  So even if Heisenberg  
was wrong (and there's lots of evidence he wasn't and none that  
was) the universe still wouldn't be predictable.




 the universe still wouldn't be predictable, by the observers  
inside.


What outside is there?


Heaven, Gods, or ... large categories, model of big set theories. With  
comp those things might only be machines/numbers' epistemological  
tools. but some numbers believe in their absolute existence. Anyway,  
it is handy to point on such Gods' eye view or on the point of view of  
nowhere, to make a point. No need to make those things basically  
ontological, as they do exist on the epistemological plane. from  
inside arithmetic, numbers can dream on far bigger things, and even  
have to invoke them to figure out the inside structure (like we can  
need the complex plane to study the prime number distribution).


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis



On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 9:20:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 11 Mar 2013, at 18:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, March 11, 2013 1:27:57 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 11 Mar 2013, at 14:30, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Monday, March 11, 2013 8:43:03 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10 Mar 2013, at 15:14, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, March 10, 2013 4:33:43 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 10 Mar 2013, at 01:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Saturday, March 9, 2013 7:26:25 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 3/9/2013 4:06 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>  
>
>
> On Saturday, March 9, 2013 6:30:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: 
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Craig Weinberg  
>> wrote: 
>>
>> >> They are not powerless to stop them since if someone yells, "Hey, 
>> stop!" 
>> >> they may stop. This is the case even though the process is still 
>> >> deterministic or probabilistic. 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > In a deterministic universe, a person who is determined to steal a 
>> car will 
>> > steal it regardless of whether someone yells at them. If someone 
>> yelling at 
>> > the thief creates an opportunity for the them to exercise free will 
>> over 
>> > their own actions, then it is not a deterministic universe. You can 
>> yell at 
>> > a stone rolling down a hill as much as you want and there will be 
>> no change 
>> > in where the stone rolls. 
>>
>> In a deterministic universe it is determined whether the thief will 
>> stop if someone yells at him. However, neither the person yelling nor 
>> the thief knows for sure whether he will stop or not. 
>
>
> What difference would it make to them if neither the person yelling 
> nor the thief can control whether or not they are yelling or stealing? 
>
>
> It will make exactly whatever difference is determined (or random).
>

 You're not getting my point. If you say that the boat doesn't exist, 
 why would it matter if it has a hole in it or not?
  

>
>  I don't know whether or not a puddle in the gutter will dry out or 
> not overnight, but why would that generate some sort of interest to me?
>  
>
>> Furthermore, it 
>> is not possible to know for sure if the thief will stop or not even 
>> with a perfect model of his brain, due to the nature of classical 
>> chaotic systems. 
>>
>
> It doesn't matter because in a deterministic universe it would be 
> impossible to care whether the thief would stop or not.
>  
>
> Unless it was determined that you would care, in which case it would 
> impossible not to care.  That's what deterministic means, things are 
> *determined*.
>

 Why would there be a such thing as "care" in a deterministic universe? 
 I don't think it is defensible that it could. If *all things are 
 determined* then there can be no "care".


 Everything is determined does not entail that *you* can determine 
 everything.

>>>
>>> But it does entail that we cannot determine anything. That's my point, 
>>> is that care can only arise out of the possibility of determining something 
>>> ourselves, just as the idea of a game can only arise out of the possibility 
>>> of participation. Without that possibility of direct participation, the 
>>> whole ontological basis of "care" is nullified as "clouds" would be 
>>> nullified in the absence of the possibility of atmosphere.
>>>
>>>
>>> OK, but then you agree that the "universe" can be entirely 
>>> deterministic, and determined (perhaps only in God eyes), and yet we have 
>>> still free will, due to the fact that "we" cannot determine everything. 
>>> this will be in general the case when we are confronted with machine as 
>>> complex, or more complex than ourselves. 
>>>
>>
>> No, it doesn't make sense to me that there would be a highly valued 
>> qualia of free will (and highly charged qualia of responsibility) if our 
>> participation did not actually contribute causally in determining the 
>> universe. 
>>
>>
>> But our participation do actually contribute, causally indeed, in 
>> determining the universe. It is real genuine high level causation, capable 
>> of reflecting our values and our deepest beliefs. 
>>
>
> What does it mean to contribute causally to a deterministic process 
> though? What contribution does the stone make to its rolling down hill?
>
>
> I have no evidence that a stone support a will relatively to its 
> environment. I was not talking about stones, but about computers.
>

Computers are fuzzy though, because we can always point to an open ended 
future of possibility. Stones are a better example to work with because of 
the absurd simplicity. Any understanding about determinism should be 
clearer t

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On 11 Mar 2013, at 18:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Monday, March 11, 2013 1:27:57 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 11 Mar 2013, at 14:30, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Monday, March 11, 2013 8:43:03 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Mar 2013, at 15:14, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Sunday, March 10, 2013 4:33:43 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Mar 2013, at 01:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, March 9, 2013 7:26:25 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 3/9/2013 4:06 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, March 9, 2013 6:30:53 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote:
On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Craig Weinberg  
 wrote:

>> They are not powerless to stop them since if someone yells,  
"Hey, stop!"
>> they may stop. This is the case even though the process is  
still

>> deterministic or probabilistic.
>
>
> In a deterministic universe, a person who is determined to  
steal a car will
> steal it regardless of whether someone yells at them. If  
someone yelling at
> the thief creates an opportunity for the them to exercise free  
will over
> their own actions, then it is not a deterministic universe.  
You can yell at
> a stone rolling down a hill as much as you want and there will  
be no change

> in where the stone rolls.

In a deterministic universe it is determined whether the thief  
will
stop if someone yells at him. However, neither the person  
yelling nor

the thief knows for sure whether he will stop or not.

What difference would it make to them if neither the person  
yelling nor the thief can control whether or not they are  
yelling or stealing?

It will make exactly whatever difference is determined (or random).

You're not getting my point. If you say that the boat doesn't  
exist, why would it matter if it has a hole in it or not?

I don't know whether or not a puddle in the gutter will dry out  
or not overnight, but why would that generate some sort of  
interest to me?

Furthermore, it
is not possible to know for sure if the thief will stop or not  
even

with a perfect model of his brain, due to the nature of classical
chaotic systems.

It doesn't matter because in a deterministic universe it would  
be impossible to care whether the thief would stop or not.

Unless it was determined that you would care, in which case it  
would impossible not to care.  That's what deterministic means,  
things are *determined*.

Why would there be a such thing as "care" in a deterministic  
universe? I don't think it is defensible that it could. If *all  
things are determined* then there can be no "care".

Everything is determined does not entail that *you* can determine  
everything.

But it does entail that we cannot determine anything. That's my  
point, is that care can only arise out of the possibility of  
determining something ourselves, just as the idea of a game can  
only arise out of the possibility of participation. Without that  
possibility of direct participation, the whole ontological basis  
of "care" is nullified as "clouds" would be nullified in the  
absence of the possibility of atmosphere.

OK, but then you agree that the "universe" can be entirely  
deterministic, and determined (perhaps only in God eyes), and yet  
we have still free will, due to the fact that "we" cannot determine  
everything. this will be in general the case when we are confronted  
with machine as complex, or more complex than ourselves.

No, it doesn't make sense to me that there would be a highly valued  
qualia of free will (and highly charged qualia of responsibility)  
if our participation did not actually contribute causally in  
determining the universe.

But our participation do actually contribute, causally indeed, in  
determining the universe. It is real genuine high level causation,  
capable of reflecting our values and our deepest beliefs.

What does it mean to contribute causally to a deterministic process  
though? What contribution does the stone make to its rolling down  
hill?

I have no evidence that a stone support a will relatively to its  
environment. I was not talking about stones, but about computers.

A free spectator in a deterministic machine can feel no  
responsibility or presence.

Not only a machine (the person supervening on a machine) can feel  
responsibility, but that person can be responsible.

Why should there be any such feeling even possible in the universe  
as 'responsibility' under determinism? Who feels responsible for the  
rolling stone?

I was watching a CGI cartoon this morning and was noticing that the  
sterility of the medium must be fought every step of the way by the  
animators to inject some warmth and character. The digital medium  
is not neutral, it is anesthetically biased. Because computation is  
devoid both of the gravity of realism

You betray a naive conception of computations.

I would say that my analysis is more rooted in aesthetic and  
experiential qualities rather than conceptual evaluations of  
computa

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis

On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 6:56:58 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 10:50 PM, Craig Weinberg 
> > 
> wrote: 
>
> >> And it would be easy to show that physics was incomplete by 
> >> demonstrating biological systems operate contrary to physics. 
> > 
> > 
> > If I pickup a basketball and throw it up in the air, that result is not 
> > contrary to physics, but neither is it expected by physics. Physics is 
> > incomplete to describe how high I will decide to throw the ball. 
>
> But physics does describe how high you will decide to throw the ball, 
> since physics describes the movement of the ball and the movement of 
> the matter in your body. If you don't accept this then you believe 
> that your body will behave CONTRARY TO PHYSICS. 

If you claim that you can use physics to decide exactly how high I will 
decide to throw the ball, then how exactly would you do it? How far in 
advance of my throwing the ball do you claim that you can know what I 
decide? Since I can decide right now approximately how far I will throw it 
30 days from now, you would have to be able to predict my decision before 
this conversation. This is not contrary to physics, but your expectation is 
CONTRARY TO REALITY. There is no physical sign in my brain of how hard I 
will try to throw the ball. I could change it at the last minute also.

What you have not considered is that your assumptions about the universe 
could be based on jumping to the wrong conclusions about matter and 
consciousness. The physical system which is actually determining how high I 
will throw the basketball is not what you would see under a microscope with 
your body - billions of cells interacting in a microbiotic environment, or 
smaller still, quadrillions of molecules interacting in a nanoscale 
environment... the basketball doesn't exist there. What is physically 
determining the force on the ball is the part of me that knows about 
basketballs and throwing, and control of my body's actions in a world not 
of biochemistry but of people and real objects. These are the differences 
that matter - this is what the universe is made of; perceptual relativism. 
Top down, bottom up, center out, periphery in... all contribute, all make 
their own sense and motives. Your view is a toy model of bottom up 
behaviorism that has nothing to do with reality at all. Because of the 
plasticity of sense, the universe ensures that there will always be enough 
evidence for you to feel justified in pursuing and believing your view, 
just as it will ensure every view reflects enough of the whole truth that 
it can seem true enough. You think that the universe is a machine, but it 
is you who wants the universe to be a machine.

> That is what contrary 
> to physics means! It would be easy to show that something funny was 
> going on in a laboratory. 

I don't think that it is possible for you to understand what I am talking 
about. I understand what you mean completely though.

> You could take a neuron and measure the 
> transmembrane potential which will indicate according to our knowledge 
> of physics that the neuron will not fire, but then observe that - 
> CONTRARY TO PHYSICS - the neuron does fire. 

The whole point is that the transmembrane potential can and does change at 
any time. That's how neurons fire normally. You act as if everything that 
happens in the brain is a pinball machine where each neuron can only fire 
if another one tells it to fire. That is not at all how it is. Every neuron 
is an independent living organism which contributes directly to the 
chemical and electric environment of the brain... then there's the glial 
cells. How do you explain how they improve mouse brain performance without 
any electrical signalling?

> If this never happens, if 
> each and every interaction in your body is IN ACCORDANCE WITH PHYSICS, 
> then the body as a whole will behave IN ACCORDANCE WITH PHYSICS. 

Except for voluntary action. I decide how high to throw the basketball - me 
- for my reasons. Physics does not know or care what those are.

> And 
> insofar as physics is mechanistic - deterministic or probabilistic - 
> the behaviour of the body will be mechanistic. 
>

That is your theory. I predict that it will be increasingly difficult for 
you to hold on to it in the face of a non-stop cascade of information which 
casts doubt on determinism, mechanism, and probabilistic assumptions. The 
future belongs to sense, perceptual relativism, and intentional interaction.

>
> >> But according to the public view biological systems follow mechanistic 
> >> rules. That means that everything you do is consistent with these 
> >> mechanistic rules. 
> > 
> > 
> > The extent to which they seem to be following mechanistic rules is 
> > proportional to the distance from our native scale of description. If 
> you 
> > look at cells, it's somewhat less mechanistic than if you look at 
> molecules. 
> > If you look at the brain as a whol

Re: Dartmouth neuroscientist finds free will has neural basis