The Atheism of the Gaps

First Things ^ | Stephen M. Barr

[What about Bob?]

It is quite clear indeed. Ingest a too much mercury and you go nuts. Get too much nitrogen in your blood and you get "rapture of the deep," bane of scuba divers. Or try alcohol, PCP, crack cocaine, a stroke, or a tumor. Your mind is in your brain. It's physical and chemical in its underpinnings.

Penrose knows this.

Nobody is denying that your mind is supervenient on your brain. Is it totally supervenient though? Still, the question remains- is your brain supervenient on your mind? If so, to what degree? That is the nature of true free will. A physical explaination would require that mind, a manifestation of brain according to the materialist, can in turn manipulate brain in a non-deterministic fashion that is not subservient to the laws of physics, to produce free choice of action and thought. This is of course circular and nonsensical, but I don't deny that perhaps there is some as yet to be discovered law of physics that would allow for it (of course with a "new law" all we would do is account for the illusion of free will; we would be no closer to genuine free will).

As for your assertion about what "Penrose knows", I hardly see how you can say such a thing, since the very heart of the matter is still hotly contested among the most brilliant thinkers in the world. The mind is still quite the mystery, and any materialist worth is soul- er.. shirt- would freely admit that free will is an impossibility if there is nothing but law and matter.

[What about Bob?]

A non-local quantum mechanical mind interacting with the large (and therefore classically describable) body sounds dismayingly like a soul.

That was an excellent summary of the gist of this post. Thanks for cutting through it so effectively.

An interesting side note: Assuming that "mind" and "free will" are the manifestation of a quantum mechanical mind, we have still done nothing more than explained what we call free will. We still would not have free will; we would have an account of the illusion that we have free will, for we would still be slaves to partical fuctuations, chaotic behavior in the fabric of reality. This I think is where the rubber meets the road, and where the notion of an incorporeal soul becomes higly plausible if not likely.

[Nebullis]

Penrose carries some fear about intelligent machines into a call for a new science, a science not computationally based, and thereby opens the door to the introduction of a way in which we may actually make intelligent machines. The clamor for a new paradigm is a loud one in the AI community; not much profound has been accomplished in the last 10 years.

On the other side, it is a prediction of materialism that human beings can have no free will. The behavior of purely physical systems as it has ever been described by science involves only two possibilities: the regularity of deterministic laws or the randomness of stochastic laws. There is no room for the tertium quid that is free will. But this prediction of materialism is falsified by the data of our own experience: we actually exercise free will, and thereby know it to be other than either determined or random.

First, it is not a prediction of materialism that human beings can have no free will. (Where does Barr get this stuff?) The behavior of physical systems is either deterministic or random, and free will does not fit either?

But what is free will? The ability to rationally choose between alternatives? And why should we expect this to be described by physical laws governing the atom? Pressure is not described by the behavior of molecules in a gas. It is the emergent property of a collection of molecules. Free will, or the ability to rationally choose between alternatives, is a much higher level emergent function. But the dog has it. And the fuitfly does. And the nematode?

[Nebullis]

Sorry to disillusion you, but the class of computations possible for a neural network with finitely many neuron each of which has finitely many states is describable by a formal system. Goedel's result applies. The only thing you get by going to neural networks is run-time efficiencies.

Think of the patterns produced by cellular automatons. And imagine the infinite states possible with genetic algorithms. Neural nets have evolved.

[AndrewC]

Perhaps you ought to find a Creationist then, since I'm not one.

As I wrote on another thread, you do not exist.

[Nebullis]

Incidentally, I don't think that we'll be producing the human mind in AI. I suspect that wouldn't be very useful. Or scary. The hope is that we can improve, so this already requires something novel. Perhaps the novelty that Penrose is looking for (not God).

Machines, as computational powerhouses, already far surpass the human brain. The limitations of the mind may well be augmented by machines. Maybe even machines which can distill the complexity of biology and cosmology into 3 or 4 dimensions for us.

[AndrewC]

And imagine the infinite states possible with genetic algorithms.

Please explain how this is possible?

[What about Bob?]

Free will, or the ability to rationally choose between alternatives, is a much higher level emergent function. But the dog has it. And the fuitfly does. And the nematode?

Okay, fine then. It is a "higer level emergent function". I assume by this then that you still would agree that it is totally and complete supervenient on the physical brain, right? If this is the case, how is it "free" ? We might call it that, but regardless of how high of an emergent function it is, it is still totally supervenient on law and matter according to you. If I'm wrong, please feel free to elaborate.

[What about Bob?]

As I wrote on another thread, you do not exist.

Boo!

[What about Bob?]

Please explain how this is possible?

I don't think he understands what it means for something to be infinite. A very very very large number is still finite.

[What about Bob?]

Machines, as computational powerhouses, already far surpass the human brain.

I'm sorry, mind explaining this one? I'm a computer scientist with a basic background in biology. I'd be fascinated to hear what you have to say.

[gjenkins]

"My behavior is theoretically deterministic, yes."

Deterministic but intractable, no?

[gjenkins]

Silicon computers can do logical operations far faster than the 'cirquitry' of the brain. It is true computationaly, but it says nothing of the algorithms running in either and what their capabilities are.

[VadeRetro]

Yes.

[gjenkins]

Intractablity is my battle cry argument for free will lately. It seems to me, reality gives us the laws which are deterministic. We avoid the combination of them which lead to death.

[VadeRetro]

You are studiously ignoring the bulk of my reply 18 and all of steve-b's reply 35. We have noted that Penrose's disproof by contradiction as described by Barr is an artifact of the premises. Penrose openly makes the machine equivalent and not equivalent to a human, then pounces on the "not equivalent" part of his premise for the conclusion. As steve-b eloquently put it: "Duh."

Perhaps you ought to find a Creationist then, since I'm not one.

I await the usual cagey dodges in place of a coherent statement of whence you think biological diversity arose.

[Nebullis]

Please explain how this is possible?

It's already possible computationally.

In the context of neural networks, it incorporates adaptive learning.

[Nebullis]

I don't think he [or she] understands what it means for something to be infinite.

Perhaps you are confused by the difference between an infinite algorithm and an algorithm for infinity. Our finite brains can conceive of infinity. I suppose you suggest this ability does not reside in our brain but is a function of a non-physical entity?

[What about Bob?]

Contradictory premeses lead to a contradictory result. Well, duh.

Either you get Barr's point, and don't realize it, or you are confusing something else. Would you care to elaborate on your statement?

[Nebullis]

Machines, as computational powerhouses, already far surpass the human brain.

I'm sorry, mind explaining this one? I'm a computer scientist with a basic background in biology. I'd be fascinated to hear what you have to say.

This one is rather obvious, even to the uneducated. But, try composing a sequence of MRI images from a series of resonance frequences. In a matter of minutes, of course.