Posted on 02/15/2003 4:18:25 PM PST by PatrickHenry
How can logic admit the acceptance of illogical conclusions? To my admittedly inadequate mind, logic appears to be a closed and unfree system. The problem with logic is that it operates on tokens, which are only approximations of reality. Reality is complex, chaotic, indeterminant (turtles all the way down).
Very little of our minute to minute behavior is governed by logic (in the formal sense). So what are we doing, if it isn't logic? Answer that and you would be on your way towards artificial intelligence.
Now here's the fun part: After finding something that feels harmonious, logic come in to judge and edit the "solution". In particularly difficult situations, where every solution has strong negatives, logic has a clarifying power that can override "if it feels good, do it".
Me: In my view, free will encompasses the ability to hope, comprehend, plan, dream, love, hate, coordinate, control, organize, direct, communicate, sacrifice – to be sentient, self-aware. Without language, IMHO it would be difficult to know if a lower life form is capable of these things.
You: Being blunt, does this mean that a person without language can be defined as not having any of these?
Of course not, my point was that “without language, it would be difficult to know.”
You: Or that a computer program that writes love poems with a Mad-lib algorithm does?
IMHO, all that shows is that that the designer of the program had free will. The program is only carrying out the instructions originally provided to it.
You: I think we judge the sentience of a being by the complexity of its behavior, and I see nearly all of these things in cats and dogs. Again, I'm going to assert that the key test of free will is how an individual copes with the future.
As you wish, js1138. I choose not to use your criteria because I believe the bar should be higher.
You: The central point of determinism is that things move because they are moved; everything has a prior cause. Contrast this with a key observation of intelligent beings -- that they move or behave in anticipation of events. Combine this with the observed fact that the future is not predictable, and you have an operational definition of free will. The specific mechanism doesn't matter. The intelligent being could be embodied in a computer program, provided it is sufficiently complex.
Strong determinism says that language determines thought and therefore they are the same. Weak determinism says that thought is only influenced by language.
In another view, strong determinism says that all things are predetermined, i.e. nobody can be “guilty” because it is in their genes to do whatever they did. Strong determinism is completely opposite of free will, since the future is already known.
Therefore, the big question IMHO is whether physical laws are evidence of strong determinism. Indeed, can you have both strong determinism and non-computability? The uncertainty principle would indicate that you can. Free will demands it.
So to have free will, there must be non-computable physical laws - which once again brings us back to Godel's incompleteness theorem and Roger Penrose and the debunking of artificial intelligence being able to compute the mind. Strong AI proponents are very much against the conclusions drawn by Penrose. I do not find that surprising, since he is saying they can never achieve their life goal.
IMHO, Penrose argues for free will, i.e. that an essentially non-algorithmic element is necessary so the future would not be computable from the present even though it might be determined by it.
You mention that it is an “observed fact” that the future is not predictable. What is your evidence?
One of the interesting points of Abraham’s model of slope time is that our mind sees time as an instant drop off from uncertainty (future) to certainty (past) whereas the evidence is that the drop off is not sudden but sloped, i.e. more like a wave in the ocean or a steam roller down a highway – the actual process of going from future to past occurs over time.
The point of all this conjecture is that we must not exclude that which we cannot instinctively observe. For instance, most people see the world in 3 dimensions – unaware of the motion and ramification of space/time. Likewise, from Abraham's model, there can be certainity of future and uncertainty of past within the slope.
I suggest that it is our immersion in Materialistic cause-and-effect cultural thinking for well over a century that explains why we don't understand. It is a mindset, a prejudice, that is a work. Our incapacity to understand state vector collapse says nothing about reality, which speaks for itself. Certain brave souls, Penrose and Walker among them, are working on it.
Absolutely! It is the materialist prejudice that creates the quandary, i.e. materialism tends to strong determinism and strong AI and is therefore the polar opposite free will and theology. Free will is self-evident as you say.
The work of Penrose, Walker et al clarifies the inability of physics and biophysics to explain consciousness!
That is very, very interesting and thought provoking! I have always looked at the implications of resonance on cosmology, biology, etc. - but had not considered it as a factor of the mind. Very interesting indeed. I'm off to contemplate the idea. Thank you!
There is no evidence that the future can be predicted, although people try all the time, and there are plenty of mathematical models indicating it is a hopeless goal, even without quantum uncertainty. Consider the classical three-body problem in astronomy.
One of the interesting points of Abraham’s model of slope time is that our mind sees time as an instant drop off from uncertainty (future) to certainty (past) whereas the evidence is that the drop off is not sudden but sloped, i.e. more like a wave in the ocean or a steam roller down a highway – the actual process of going from future to past occurs over time.
This sounds good to me and corresponds to my subjective sense of the future. My mind certainly doesn't see any instant drop off. In fact that is the point I have been trying to make. We do anticipate the future. The extent to which any entity anticipates the future is the extent to which it has free will.
I do not agree with the bleak prospects for artificial intelligence, although I am pessimistic about it being achieved within the next thirty years. Perhaps some of the double-secret skunkworks projects alluded to on these threads hold the key, but I don't know any details and can't judge.
I think I speculated on the gargantuan thread that the universe as a whole participates in free will -- just another way of saying that there really are new things under the sun, things made possible by the rules of existence, but not required. As entities within the universe, we also participate in free will. Our thoughts and behaviors are made possible by the rules but not required. From a purely theoretical point of view, this can happen because we are engineered to anticipate the future (an impossibly complex task). I don't expect to ever see this mystery completely solved.
LOLOL! Thank you for the chuckle!
On the part about the predicting of the future, I was looking for a statement of degrees. We all predict the sun will come up tomorrow, some predict the weather, some predict the presence of a Higgs boson and then test for it – etc.
I am curious about how one defines the elements of uncertainty and chance. Randomness is either elusive or illusive – I’m not sure.
My mind certainly doesn't see any instant drop off. In fact that is the point I have been trying to make. We do anticipate the future.
I agree! And I do understand your use of the mechanism to define free will, it’s just that I’m looking for something more but using the same phrase to describe it. It is not a problem as long as we understand each other.
Perhaps some of the double-secret skunkworks projects alluded to on these threads hold the key, but I don't know any details and can't judge.
The secret projects on strong AI may give a fair simulation of consciousness, but I do not believe it can ever achieve free will under my definition. Yours, yes.
I think I speculated on the gargantuan thread that the universe as a whole participates in free will -- just another way of saying that there really are new things under the sun, things made possible by the rules of existence, but not required. As entities within the universe, we also participate in free will. Our thoughts and behaviors are made possible by the rules but not required. From a purely theoretical point of view, this can happen because we are engineered to anticipate the future (an impossibly complex task). I don't expect to ever see this mystery completely solved.
Thank you so much for sharing your view on this. Actually, your thinking is but a heart beat away from the view of a universal consciousness, Buddhism, etc.
The upshot, I would suggest, is that we consider ourselves rational beings. That's because we forget that Great Library in the Sky, wherein is catalogued all those things a guy does to win and keep a woman. I introduce this hypothetical guy, this rational being, to that library, occupying a full city block, comparable to Powell's Book Store in Portland, OR, and wait patiently on the curb, smoking my cigarette, while he has a quick look. Meanwhile he is all the while wondering "How can a library be 10 stories tall?". When he comes out wide-eyed I say "Now, tell me about the Universe, Mr. Rational."
Living things turn this on its head.
Yes, they do.
But [the future] is not entirely unpredictable ... If you think about your personal life and what it means to have free will, I believe you will say you have the ability to make choices. But what does this mean? For me it means analyzing the current situation in terms of things that are possible to do and the anticipated consequences.
I'm suggesting that more than rational analysis goes into the process. Many "life decisions" (if you will) are based upon anything but perfect information. I have discovered, though, that there is a still, small voice within that sometimes says to me "It would probably be better if you did not do this." When I was younger, sometimes I would and sometimes I wouldn't. If I ignored this small voice (a "gut feeling" really), I would often or always regret having taken the warned against action. I don't understand it, to say the least, but I'm clear that it has nothing to do with rationality.
... [T]he list of anticipated consequences is also infinite and unknowable. When you feel yourself engaging in free will you are feeling yourself solving an unsolvable problem, predicting the future.
It's possible that you may instead be creating the future.
Of course you are, but you don't have anything approaching perfect knowledge of what you are creating. It is the attempt to know that constitutes free will.
As per other posts, some of them mine, I agree that rationality is at best, and editing function rather than a generative function of the mind. I like the resonance metaphore. I wish I knew how to express it better, but it seems to me that the unconscious processes that roil around while we consider a difficult problem are seeking a stable point of resonance. Sometimes talking about a problem, if only to ourselves, allows something to gel. Other times, sleeping on a problem helps. Only occasionally are deep problems solved by writing down all the possibilities and subjecting them to a logical analysis. (Oddly enough, that's the process that Darwin used in deciding to get married. People are full of contradictions.)
Several posters have admitted believing that much of our mental activity is unconscious. Doesn't that pose problems with a traditional view of free will? If you are not aware of a significant mental process, how can it be free? Any takers?
Sure. But my focus is (and will be for some time, I fear) that consciousness is a fundamental phenomenon in its own right, independent of anything material. That aside, "unconsciousness" is a mental or verbal construct and very imprecise. There are multitudiouns degrees and modes of awareness. We dream. Those dreams often color our daily consciouness. Sometimes we remember those dreams and sometimes they convey messages to us. At that point, has the unconsciousness become consciousness? I suggest that it has. There is no clear demarcation.
I would not know how to address whether or not this process is "free". It seems quite chaotic to me and yet it does have influence. There is such a thing as legitimate numinous experience. And sometimes we "just know", and to a certainty, with no idea as to the origin of that knowledge.
So far as I'm concerned, you're both pretty much "nailing it". "Resonance", I feel, is very much on target but the Materialists won't like it.
Since js1138 brought up resonance and thought, I've been off reading things right and left. There is a surprising amount of information on the subject, but it has been challenging to weed out the metaphysical.
js1138, I know you don't like references, but I have found a number of articles where are rather interesting and supportive of your views.
A Harmonic Resonance theory is presented as an alternative to the conventional paradigm of neurocomputation known as the Neuron Doctrine, whereby the neuron is conceived as a kind of feature detector whose response is determined by its synaptic input through a spatial receptive field, and visual processing is described as a feed-forward progression through hierarchical layers of visual representation. This concept is shown to be inadequate to account for the holistic global aspects of perception identified by Gestalt theory, including such properties as emergence, reification, and invariance in recognition. Harmonic resonance is shown to exhibit these same properties not as specialized circuits to account for those properties individually, but as natural properties of the resonance itself. I propose therefore that harmonic resonance is the long-sought and elusive computational mechanism behind Gestalt theory.
And from the Buddhist corner: Consciousness Resonance
The evidence that human consciousness and intention can affect physical systems in a subtle way is persuasive, though still not convincing to everyone who looks into the matter. For many scientists it is good enough to warrant thoughts about "how it works" and efforts to connect the research findings to standard scientific models, especially in physics. Some of the connections are formal, and others metaphoric, but all seek to improve our ability to explain and predict.
I'm not very nice.
Based upon your authoriy, I presume. In any event, not according to Walker, a physicist of some accomplishment.
No, any decent book on solid state physics will do. If you do a search on the web using the string 'coherence lifetime temperature', you'll get a bunch of references. You'll probably need a course in q.m. and maybe thermodynamics to make sense of it, but I can't help that.
In any event, not according to Walker, a physicist of some accomplishment.
It's a pop physics book. It wasn't, as far as I can tell, reviewed much in the serious scientific press. But I did find one review by a real physicist.
http://www.poco.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/ehw.pdf
Excerpt:
Walker attempts to tie together quantum theory and neuroscience by arguing that quantum tunnelling has a vital role in synaptic transmission. This depends upon very specific and technical assumptions about the mechanism involved, for which he refers to Walker (1977). In that paper, he claims that his theory 'predicts specific results for future experimental work. Its utility will be measured by the validity of these predictions.' It is disturbing, therefore, that his book gives no more recent references to work in this area, despite the fact that synaptic structure and function are among the most studied topics in neuroscience. A magnificent survey of the entire field which has just appeared (Cowan, S¨udhof, and Stevens 2001), certainly leaves no space for his hypotheses.
Quintessential fringe science, in other words. Some very fine minds have gone off on similar tangents. London thought DNA replication could be explained by superconductivity. Linus Pauling (perhaps the greatest chemist of the 20th century) spent years promoting ideas on Vitamin C that were nonsense.
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