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I have not been aware of these researchers. For most of my life I have been a "materialist". I note that the word "causality" is never mentioned in this essay, which is interesting.

I believe in strict causality, at least in the macro world, at least in realms accessible to human perception.

The tension between strict causality and free will is well known.

When someone claims to have free will, he or she is saying [my translation] "My outputs are not functions of my inputs." Very well, the question fairly leaps out: What are they functions of?

Heisenberg uncertainty does not rescue free will: a random robot is still a robot.

So I believe(d) in "strong AI", in other words that we could eventually construct an intelligent machine. If the world is reducible to physics, strong AI sort of follows.

Now:

Of late I have been reading widely in Buddhism (no worries; a 52-year-old Jew is not going to convert to Buddhism) and also on the nature of Time. Having convinced myself (on grounds other than his) that Julian Barbour is correct and that the passage of time is an illusion (a phenomenon, a perception...not 'really' real), and mixed up with all the Buddhism I've absorbed...I have come around to the ideas expressed here that "structural science has arrived at the frontier of a deep reality, which is outside of space and time (Drãgãnescu, 1979, 1985), and has opened the doors of a realm of reality in which phenomenological processes become predominant."

Not to say I understand all of this, but it "integrates" much of my reading into a semi-coherent whole.

I am still deeply confused (who is not?) about the nature of time. And why does causality appear regnant at our level?

I was trained as a scientist and engineer; these conclusions represent a difficult and painful journey.

Buddhism (among many other things) tells us to cease our constant conceptualizing; the world cannot be understood via concepts. But my JOB is to do little more than fancy conceptualizing....the outcome of which (among other things) is Neil Armstrong's bootprints on the Moon, rather undeniable.

So conceptualizing works (in a limited regime). But does it lead us anywhere that is not ultimately sterile?

Very strange.

And, BTW, it is fascinating that modern theories of the origin of the Universe can be boiled down (oversimplified) to "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"...

--Boris, bemused

On the nature of time:
We experience the universe as a past (nothing is instantaneously real to us as it takes 'time' to register once a phenomenon has occurred); could it be that time has three variable expressions, much as dimension space does ... linear, planar, volumetric ... such that time has past (linear), present (planar), and future (volumetric)? Is our consciousness residing in (planar) present, while our spacetime mechanism registers (linear) past?

I note that the word "causality" is never mentioned in this essay, which is interesting.

boris, causality is "implied," once one starts talking about a "Fundamental Consciousness." IMHO at least.

We run to Buddhism when we've "given up" on getting answers from Reason. Perhaps ultimate answers cannot be gotten from Reason. But the moment we say that, the entire course of Western science, and maybe Western civilization itself, is DEAD.

My own view is that man is perfectly capable of exploring the truth of our universe by Reason -- and experience: His Creator equipped him that way. The amazing thing to me is these three thinkers, coming out of a regime of Soviet "thought repression" that some of their peers had to die for (cf Ervin Bauer) are the ones pointing the way.... That must mean something, in the great scale of things. JMHO FWIW.

Thanks so much for writing!

Heavy reading. I wonder what it'd be like to be around one of these people when they're drunk.

When someone claims to have free will, he or she is saying [my translation] "My outputs are not functions of my inputs."

Not really. It's that your outputs are functions of your inputs, and something else. No one would deny out behavior is influenced by external inputs. You are making a ridiculous strawman with that statement.

Of late I have been reading widely in Buddhism (no worries; a 52-year-old Jew is not going to convert to Buddhism)

Seems you're unfamiliar with the increasingly popular phenomenon of the "Jew-Bu." :)

Buddhism (among many other things) tells us to cease our constant conceptualizing; the world cannot be understood via concepts. But my JOB is to do little more than fancy conceptualizing. .....So conceptualizing works (in a limited regime). But does it lead us anywhere that is not ultimately sterile?

Your question is answered thoroughly and brilliantly by Harry L. Weinberg in his (1950s) book Levels of Knowing and Existence in the chapter entitled "Religion." Suzuki is dealt with extensively, and Weinberg reveals the pros and cons of both Buddhist non-conceptualization and western thought processes and proposes an alternative. I have a copy somewhere around here, so perhaps I'll dig up an exerpt for you later tonight that deals with the topic in question.

The nature of consciousness, one of my favorite subjects. Consciousness is a link between my computer interests, my religious interests, and my scientific interests. I began my life as an agnostic scientist and as I explored the fringes of science I found science broke down. The places where science breaks down, is where the Bible reveals information that cannot be obtained by science.

A delightful book on consciousness is Douglas Hofstaedler's Godel, Escher, and Bach. He explores tangled hierarchies and recursive effects such as the Mandelbrot set. He also explains Godel's theorem that shows any logical set of rules, such as first order predicate logic, cannot reveal all truth. Just as the infinite set of rational numbers does not comprise all the points on a number line, so the rational deductions of science cannot arrive at all truth.

For further amusement, visit comp.ai.philosophy, a news group I have visited since 1993, when I first got on the Internet. From there, I learned of "epiphenomena", strong AI, weak AI, and the scorn heaped upon dualism. The trouble is, dualism best fits the facts we have. Roger Penrose has advocated some quantum effects in the brain causing the non-algorithmic behavior we see. He is also scorned.

Suffice it to say, I have concluded only a non-material element can explain the phenomomena of the human mind, specifically a spiritual element. That would be your further input that generates the free will we know and love--our ability to chose between alternatives. I was quite frustrated in my efforts to write a program or to imagine a program, that would be able to choose without input from any outside source--that effort lead me to better understand my own consciousness.

You were right Boris, to go back to Genesis for answers. In terms of the human mind, Genesis 1:26 is key: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." If one considers God as the ultimate Input to the Universe, than making man like God is to make him also an input--a source of creative originality, not seen from inputs to his life.

"My outputs are not functions of my inputs." Very well, the question fairly leaps out: What are they functions of?

The soul.

Aquinas and Freedom of the Will

The idea of outputs not a function of inputs as being free will can be analyzed from two viewpoints at a minimum. One, the classical, linear, viewpoint would say that outputs should follow inputs based on a set state of organization or, if you will, an internal program for living that is, more or less, fixed for the purposes of survival, success, self development, achievement, etc.. I believe you and I may fall into this or a similar category. Then you have at another extreme, a romantic type. One can't assume anything as the stimulus of the minute has influence weighted as highly as the objective of the day. Their internal program, I think, is open for many more inputs, whether important to our values or not. It causes actions without regard for any of the values and reasons I mentioned above. I know, I, like my father-in-law, and business partner, married one.