Posted on 12/03/2003 4:53:26 PM PST by Pharmboy
Let me note once again that Pinker does not acknowledge that strong determinism leads to the absence of free will.
You know darn well your theory of evolution holds that the biggest and strongest male in the animal kingdom is the most likely to mate with the females
Only in some species. Certainly not in humans. And not between species.
Perhaps not "obvious", but QM (pretty much by definition) only alters time complexity of processes, not space complexity. Any process, it doesn't matter what we are talking about. And the consequences of qualitative changes in time complexity for any abstract process is well understood. I don't need to know what QM is or even how it works. We don't even have to be talking about QM per se.
If QM modified space complexity, then one could definitely make an interesting argument. But even in the most abstract theory, QM is not capable of having this property for a myriad of reasons. Therfore, its impact is reducible to a very simple and predictable case of having some (unknown) effect on time complexity.
As to computational theory, I don't know, although I don't think a turing machine will "get us there" (due to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, a la Penrose).
Penrose makes his argument for a case with very restrictive assumptions, and is not even applicable to most of the models actually used in standard theory. In this sense, Penrose has built a theoretical strawman for himself. And in fact, mathematicians have proven that the arguments he uses are invalid for the classes of model normally used by the core theory folks. Penrose's arguments ONLY apply to axiomatic models, but much practical theory uses purely non-axiomatic models. People who invoke Penrose have to understand that it is limited in applicability to axiomatic models, while most current models are non-axiomatic and have been for some time. In this sense, Penrose is a non-argument -- theoretical apples and oranges.
Suffice it to say that Penrose's argument is not applicable to the universal model I am assuming, as his premises are orthogonal to mine. And I would point out that most other mathematicians who work in core theory are assuming the same basic model parameters as I am. Penrose may have a point of some type, but it has no relation to the work that most other people are doing.
Oh please. In the sense you are using "aware" only humans could qualify, whether the issue is future or whatever.
All living creatures, even plants neurons, have tropisms, reflexes, adaptive learning mechanisms that make life essential bets about the future. That future might be milliseconds away or it might be months. The awareness is built in, even when it is not conscious.
If you limit your definition of "awareness of the future" to conscious involvement, you eliminate democrats, many of whom appear on the surface to be human beings.
To drop a quick logic bomb here, any process, pattern, or thing that can be measured or discerned (like emotions) is expressible ex machina by definition, and Solomonoff induction provides the mechanism by which any such model can be created. To put it another way, there is no measurable property of the human system that is not reducible to finite state machinery. Emotions in particular aren't all that inexplicable or mysterious anyway (at least to me).
On a somewhat related note, there are some good arguments (which I don't have time to make) that emotions are a biological necessity for higher animals from a very low-level function standpoint. In other words, emotions are very likely a functional adaptation in biology that precede higher level intelligence.
That's unfair. You posted a snippet of..., we let me be kind, and say it didn't connect very well with any physics I know. How much of such stuff do I have to read to decide this person is not going to fuse the quantum and classical world, whatever that actually means?
It is true, however, that I doubt that anyone is going to make fundamental progress in physics these days without some considerable training in physics. You can't relate quantum physics and relativity in the same way, say, you might relate Islam and the slave trade in the 15th century.
For as Wolfhart Pannenberg points out, quantum mechanics "does not abstract from time" -- that is to say, the category time per se is not relevant for it.
You better explain this a little. Soem of the most fundamental principles of quantum mechanics - e.g. the Heisenberg principle, the Schrödinger equation - explicitly include first derivatives with respect to time.
Animal behavior, Pannenberg notes, is pointed torward the future of the organism, but in a manner that is not necessarily self-aware. Human consciousness is self-aware; and human life is consciously directed toward a future, supported by the free actions (free will) of human beings. Animals have to settle for basic drives, instincts -- the information set specifying the individual organism -- which basically direct them toward their future in time and that of their species without the necessity of self-aware consciousness.
First of all, not all human behavior which contributes to the future of the species is self-aware. In recent history, there have been tribes unaware of the connection between copulation and reproduction. Even in our own society, people mostly do da wild thing because it gives them pleasure, not for the sake of the future of the species.
But second, and more importantly, attributing a 'goal' to animal behavior in this very crude sense does not exclude computer viruses, cellular automata or chain letters. In what fundamental sense is the tendency of a chain letter to propagate different from the tendency of an amoeba to propagate? Why does the amoeba have a 'goal' in any sense the chain letter does not?
To repeat what Panneberg wrote, "But there is still another aspect of [a living organism's] living beyond itself: by turning its environment into the place and means of its life, the organism relates itself at the same time to its own future and, more precisely, to a future of its own transformation.
Computer viruses do exactly this. They transform the rest of the system - by modifying system files, Outlook, etc., to allow their own reproduction, sometimes to hide themselves, or for malicious reasons. For that matter, chain letters alter human behavior in order to assure their own reproduction.
..and js1138 replied Only in some species. Certainly not in humans. And not between species.
What has that got to do with rape? You think when female pack animals mate with the alpha male, he rapes them?
Penrose has convinced me that current theory is at least incomplete and that there is need for a "new physics", if you will.
There is nothing in physics or any of the rest of the sciences that begins to explain the whole human being. Consciousness is an ever-present, universal characteristic, not an epiphenomenon.
Have you read, or has anyone here read, The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin. It's science and rigorous, not bunk, but it will make Materialist scientists uncomfortable.
No problem. Already done.
On a somewhat related note, there are some good arguments (which I don't have time to make) that emotions are a biological necessity for higher animals from a very low-level function standpoint. In other words, emotions are very likely a functional adaptation in biology that precede higher level intelligence.
My inclination is to say "well and good" as far as it goes. I believe that there is a meaningful intangible realm, the evidence for which is found in physics, and that to the extent this is true, mathematics will, I think, experience some difficulty describing it. Free Will is an apparent and abundant reality and that may as well prove problematic. But the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, and you/we should explore whatever avenues seem open to us. For myself, I don't believe that real scientific progress will be made until the reality of the realm of the mind is acknowledged as wholly intangible and we act accordingly.
unless...........
...the modern man had been DRINKING a lot!
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