Experiments on Free will
JinSoo Kim
I believe that the determinism is right.
I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support determinism.
Could you recommend me good books or websites which show such experiments?
Thanks in advance...
yvan pierre
I would recommend you to read an Introduction To Quantum Mechanics.
Then you will "understand" the Heisenberg inequalities : the more you
can localise an electron the less you may know his velocity and
reverse. So, the reality of the electron is... not deterministic.
And that is currently experimented in ordinary electron microscopy
through electron diffraction patterns.
Cheers
Yvan
Daniel T.
> I believe that the determinism is right.
> I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support determinism.
> Could you recommend me good books or websites which show such experiments?
There are many experiments that conclusively prove that the universe is
indeterminate. One simple one is the two slit experiment.
<http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger/>
This fact, however, answers nothing about the question of free will.
JPL Verhey
"Daniel T." <postm...@eathlink.net> wrote in message
news:postmaster-5C471...@news6.west.earthlink.net...
> glo...@nitgen.com (JinSoo Kim) wrote:
>
> > I believe that the determinism is right.
> > I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support
determinism.
> > Could you recommend me good books or websites which show such
experiments?
>
> There are many experiments that conclusively prove that the universe is
> indeterminate.
David Bohm, late quantum physicist and philosopher (appointed by Albert
Einstein as his "heir", the two met on occasions) to develop new ideas to
reconsile classical physics with QM, as well as to develop an ontological
interpretation of QM) does not agree with you, where he writes in "The
Undivided Universe", Routledge 1993, p3:
"However, there is no reason to suppose that physical theory is steadily
approaching some final truth. It is always open (as has indeed generally
been the case) that new theories will have a qualitatively different content
within which the older theories may seem to fit together, perhaps in some
approximate way. Since there is no final theory, it cannot be said that the
universe is either ultimatley deterministic or uiltimately indeterministic.
Therefor we cannot from physical theories alone draw any conclusions, for
exemple, about the ultimate limits of human freedom."
ken
news:2a7264.040413...@posting.google.com...
Hi JinSoo,
My position has not, yet, been accepted by
others, so keep that in mind.
In a deterministic physical reality, choice still
remains infinite, so no experiment can ever
demonstrate 'determinism' with respect to
Free Will.
Survival needs - eating, drinking, sheltering,
etc., and, with respect to species, procrea-
tion, etc. - exist, but choice, within what's
left to life after survival is taken care of, re-
mains infinite.
That it is so often the case that 'free will'
seems to be dictated-to, is 'just' something
that happens in the absence-of-understand-
ing with respect to how and why nervous
systems process information.
Cheers, ken [k. p. collins]
Fred Mailhot
> glo...@nitgen.com (JinSoo Kim) wrote:
>
>> I believe that the determinism is right.
>> I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support determinism.
>> Could you recommend me good books or websites which show such experiments?
>
> There are many experiments that conclusively prove that the universe is
> indeterminate. One simple one is the two slit experiment.
>
> <http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger/>
The Everett interpretation, the best one available in terms of *science*,
says otherwise...physics is deterministic and local...
http://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm
Anyone with even a passing interest should read this page, it's a lucid and
approachable exposition of Everett's position...
> This fact, however, answers nothing about the question of free will.
This is mentioned a bit on the above-mentioned page, as well...
Cheers,
Fred.
ken
news:4afcbd03.04041...@posting.google.com...
> glo...@nitgen.com (JinSoo Kim) wrote in message
news:<2a7264.040413...@posting.google.com>...
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I believe that the determinism is right.
> > I want to find the scientific experiment
> > examples which support determinism.
> > Could you recommend me good books
> > or websites which show such experiments?
> >
> > Thanks in advance...
>
> tion To Quantum Mechanics. Then you will
> "understand" the Heisenberg inequalities : the
> more you can localise an electron the less
> you may know his velocity and reverse. So,
> the reality of the electron is... not deterministic.
> And that is currently experimented in ordinary
> electron microscopy through electron diffraction
> patterns.
What you say would only be True if 'electrons'
had physically-real existent as "particles".
They do not.
What have been considered to constitute "elec-
trons" are just continuous energy-thresholding
dynamics.
Experiments that are held to "substantiate" the
"existence of electrons" observe physical reality
only incompletely.
There's long been sufficient evidence to eliminate
a lot of this incompleteness, but folks have clung
to the old, long-'familiar', view of 'electrons being
little discrete entities', and ignored the evidence
that discloses the energy-thresholding dynamics.
k. p. collins
andy-k
Try to get hold of a copy of this journal (buy it or order it through your
library):
http://www.imprint.co.uk/books/volitional_brain.html
1Z
>
> I believe that the determinism is right.
I believe that believing the evidence is right
> I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support determinism.
> Could you recommend me good books or websites which show such experiments?
Here are references to the experiments which disprove it...
http://www.drchinese.com/David/EPR_Bell_Aspect.htm
>
> Thanks in advance...
ken
news:postmaster-5C471...@news6.west.earthlink.net...
>
> > I believe that the determinism is right.
> > I want to find the scientific experiment
> > examples which support determinism.
> > Could you recommend me good books
> > or websites which show such experiments?
>
> There are many experiments that conclusively
> prove that the universe is indeterminate.
This's Proven to be False.
Google "Tapered Harmony".
> One simple one is the two slit experiment.
> <http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger/>
Wow! Great site!
But there's nothing "weird" going on in 2-slit
experiments.
What have been referred to as "atoms" are
'just' Spherical Standing Waves [SSWs] of
energy 'trapped' in compression<->expansion
harmonic motion with a 'surrounding' Universal
Energy Supply [UES].
"SSW<->UES harmonics"
Interpretations of experiments, including the
2-slit, in which there's the =illusion= of there
'being' a wave/particle 'duality', just don't
carry the dynamics of the SSW<->UES
harmonics through the interprative process.
When there're, supposedly, 'single electrons'
being 'shot' at the detector, what's actually
being 'shot' are waves of energy having 'elec-
tron' energy-thresholding frequency.
And, since the target [detector] is comprised
of SSW<->UES harmonics, all undergoing
compression<->expansion fiercely, the 'elec-
tron' energy-thresholding frequency will only
interact with the 'atoms' of the detector when
an SSW<->UES harmonic is 'maximally'-com-
pressed - which "hits" happen relatively-rare-
ly. Hence the slow build-up of the interference
pattern.
It's all waves.
Folks just couldn't interpret the data correctly
because they didn't know about the SSW<->
UES harmonics.
> This fact, however, answers nothing about
> the question of free will.
Yes, it does :-]
Physical reality is Determinate.
Free Will is Unbounded.
No 'weirdness'.
No 'magic', either.
Just infinitely-divisible energy-flow, in which
infinitely-divisible energy-thresholding occurs.
All the so-called "randomness" that 'qm sees'
is an Illusion that 'derives' in 'qm's not seeing
the SSW<->UES harmonics.
Cheers, Daniel, and Thank You, for intro-
ducing me to that site.
K. P. Collins
Neil W Rickert
>I believe that the determinism is right.
Did you decide to believe this of your own free will? Or were you
compelled to have this belief?
>I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support determinism.
There are none.
Neil W Rickert
>> I believe that the determinism is right.
>> I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support determinism.
>> Could you recommend me good books or websites which show such experiments?
>There are many experiments that conclusively prove that the universe is
>indeterminate. One simple one is the two slit experiment.
Actually, there aren't such experiments. It is always possible that
there is some hidden variable that controls everything.
ken
news:fd762132.04041...@posting.google.com...
> glo...@nitgen.com (JinSoo Kim) wrote in message
news:<2a7264.040413...@posting.google.com>...
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I believe that the determinism is right.
>
> I believe that believing the evidence is right
>
> > I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support
determinism.
> > Could you recommend me good books or websites which show such
experiments?
>
> Here are references to the experiments which disprove it...
False.
K. P. Collins
ken
news:c5jpkf$v26$3...@usenet.cso.niu.edu...
There are experiments.
Nothing's "hidden".
Physical reality is Determinate.
I've discussed it, sufficiently, in this thread,
and in "Tapered Harmony" [Google[tm],
if you care to know.
k. p. collins
Ron Peterson
> indeterminate. One simple one is the two slit experiment.
> <http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger/>
That is only a computer model. Is there an actual experiment that
shows that result? And, how do you conclude if the experiment works
that the universe is indeterminate?
--
Ron
Pat Harrington
If you believe in the space-time continuum, then you must accept
that all space and time can be viewed as one whole. Within this whole
is all that we call our past, our present and our future. It is ALL
already there. Free will is an illusion because, unlike the past, we
can't see the future. So we believe we can change it. But it is like
a film on a reel. The reel contains the entire movie and all the
characters will do what they were intended to do. The next frame is
there and will play when it is time for it to play. This is the way
the continuum works. Welcome to the film; we hope you enjoy the
show!!
Cheers,
Pat
David B. Held
news:7517a083.04041...@posting.google.com...
> [...]
> Free will is an illusion because, unlike the past, we can't see the
> future. So we believe we can change it. But it is like a film on a
> reel. The reel contains the entire movie and all the characters will
> do what they were intended to do. The next frame is there and
> will play when it is time for it to play. This is the way the continuum
> works. Welcome to the film; we hope you enjoy the show!!
That's not the definition of free will. Free will means that a
decision is not determined by past events. So, given complete
information about spacetime before the decision D, an agent
has free will if D cannot be predicted, and does not have free
will if D can. Let me give an extremely simple example. Consider
a universe with only two points, and one particle. The particle
can be at point A or point B. The particle can be said to have
"free will" if, given a complete history of the universe up to
event D, you can predict whether the particle will end up at
point A or point B at D. If you cannot make such a prediction,
then the "fate" of the particle is *non-deterministic*. Note that
this essentially means "random", since a failure to produce an
algorithm which computes the particle's existence implies
that the particle is non-computable.
In our universe, things are a little trickier. If there are hidden
variables at work, it could be that 1) the universe is indeed
deterministic and 2) we have "effective free will". That's because
uncertainty will prevent us from *in principle* predicting the
outcome of any agent which exhibits quantum effects, even
if that agent acts deterministically w.r.t. the laws of physics.
If hidden variables don't exist, then any agent that exhibits
quantum effects at the macroscopic level will effectively
have free will. Something along those lines is Penrose's
argument against strong AI.
Dave
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.656 / Virus Database: 421 - Release Date: 4/9/2004
Daniel T.
> "Daniel T." <postm...@eathlink.net> wrote in message
> news:<postmaster-5C471...@news6.west.earthlink.net>...
> > There are many experiments that conclusively prove that the universe is
> > indeterminate. One simple one is the two slit experiment.
>
> > <http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger/>
>
> That is only a computer model. Is there an actual experiment that
> shows that result?
Yes, there have been actual experiments using electrons and crystals.
The behavior of some electronics (such as tunnel diodes) can only be
explained if one accepts that the positions of the fundamental particles
of the universe are indeterminate.
Not only have there been experiments, but we take advantage of the facts
of an indeterminate universe every day...
> And, how do you conclude if the experiment works
> that the universe is indeterminate?
Because it cannot be determined, even in principle, which slit a
particular electron goes through. The electrons behave as if they went
through both slits.
A tunnel diode is a good example. It limits the number of electrons that
pass through it by creating a barrier that electrons *cannot* pass
through. However, this barrier is so thin that electrons that are next
to the barrier can still end up on the other side, simply because an
electron doesn't exist in a single specific place, but a general region
(the best you can say is that the electron is "somewhere around here")
IE its position is indeterminate. If the barrier is thin enough and the
electron is close enough, then part of that region lies on the other
side of the barrier, and an electron that was previously wholly on one
side of the barrier can have a possibility of being on the other side.
All without passing through the barrier...
yvan pierre
I agree that the concept of single electron is very hypothetical,
however, a Guy at the CERN pretended that a single electron has been
"detected", understand has been the sole cause for something .
But that was not the point. If you speak of determinism you imply the
arrow of time which is in most case defined in a strong Newtonnian
environment. Worse : you need a causal logic in language structure.
The project of casting a new logic to meet subatomic facts does not
seem to have been successful.
So, we first need to define what we understand by determinism ans that
without circularity in the concepts.
Cheers
Yvan
neo88
Free will is the abilatily to CHOSE. The abilaity to decide for
yourself what is morally right or wrong. This can all be defined
mathimatically using QM models, I believe that everything can be
explained by physicaql laws simple or complex, no matter the
situation.
May the Source be with you.
neo88
Rich Lowe
Although there are no scientific experiments to test determinism or
free will, you can come to a solid theoretical conclusion.
The conciousness is not some quantum free-will "substance" that rebels
against nature, it too is simply "energy" either in the form of
free-energy, or in the form of matter (brain), either way it doesn't
really matter. It therefor behaves according to nature to the most
quantum of levels. Concioussness never ACTS, nor does anything else
in the universe, it simply REACTS to the forces and conditions present
at the time, which are retrospectively there because of their reaction
to other forces, etc. etc. etc. The law of cause and effect CAN be
proven and has been in everyday life, consciousness is no exception.
Understandably our 'awareness' of our reactions make us feel as if
what we are doing is by choice, but in fact those choices are
reactions themselves.
Many people say, well I was going to do this, or I could do this, but
to prove free will I am going to do this instead. When in actuality,
one of the primary causes which caused them to react and make that
decision was someone else's statement saying that free will does not
exist.
Now, to ease your mind a bit, this really doesn't matter to everyday
life, it is just a scientific observation, because luckly in every
decision you make, you agree with nature on every time, at least at
the time of the decision :) Perhaps that is a false sense of worth,
but there's not much we can do about it, except learn more.
Sincerely,
Rich
Lester Zick
<dh...@codelogicconsulting.com> in sci.philosophy.meta wrote:
>"Pat Harrington" <PatrickDH...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:7517a083.04041...@posting.google.com...
>> [...]
>> Free will is an illusion because, unlike the past, we can't see the
>> future. So we believe we can change it. But it is like a film on a
>> reel. The reel contains the entire movie and all the characters will
>> do what they were intended to do. The next frame is there and
>> will play when it is time for it to play. This is the way the continuum
>> works. Welcome to the film; we hope you enjoy the show!!
>
>That's not the definition of free will. Free will means that a
>decision is not determined by past events.
[. . .]
You know, if you don't mind my saying so, this is really just the
conventional interpretation of free will, that of indeterminacy of
will and of will's not being determined by past events. I think this
is incorrect and that there are senses in which the will could be free
in mechanical terms despite being fully determinate. In other words we
have will in common with all other sentient organisms and that will is
determinate in nature. However conscious beings are also said to
possess some freedom of that will and the issue with respect to free
will is what that freedom of will means and how it arises.
Regards - Lester
Lester Zick
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>I completely agree with Pat.
>
>Although there are no scientific experiments to test determinism or
>free will, you can come to a solid theoretical conclusion.
>
>The conciousness is not some quantum free-will "substance" that rebels
>against nature, it too is simply "energy" either in the form of
>free-energy, or in the form of matter (brain), either way it doesn't
>really matter. It therefor behaves according to nature to the most
>quantum of levels. Concioussness never ACTS, nor does anything else
>in the universe, it simply REACTS to the forces and conditions present
>at the time, which are retrospectively there because of their reaction
>to other forces, etc. etc. etc. The law of cause and effect CAN be
>proven and has been in everyday life, consciousness is no exception.
>Understandably our 'awareness' of our reactions make us feel as if
>what we are doing is by choice, but in fact those choices are
>reactions themselves.
>
It is not clear why the foregoing represents a solid theoretical
conclusion. You have many ambiguous terms like energy, free energy,
act, react, etc. that make the conclusion problematic at best.
Regards - Lester
1Z
> "1Z" <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:fd762132.04041...@posting.google.com...
> > glo...@nitgen.com (JinSoo Kim) wrote in message
> > > I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support
> > Here are references to the experiments which disprove it...
>
> False.
Care to expand ?
1Z
1Z
> "Daniel T." <postm...@eathlink.net> writes:
> >There are many experiments that conclusively prove that the universe is
> >indeterminate. One simple one is the two slit experiment.
>
> Actually, there aren't such experiments. It is always possible that
> there is some hidden variable that controls everything.
Local hidden variabls are disproved by the Aspect experiment.
Neil W Rickert
Not particularly relevant.
ken
"Rich Lowe" <xo...@laww.biz> wrote in message
news:16920108.04041...@posting.google.com...
It's more than you say, because, given 1. an
infinity of constraint, there's still an 2. infinity
with respect to which one is Free to Choose.
Folks, typically, allow 1 to dictate that they
will not see 2 - as is =most-often= the case
in Usenet discussions.
But that has =nothing= to do with anything
that's innate within physical reality, nor in
nervous systems, and everything to do with
the way that folks don't comprehend how
and why nervous systems process informa-
tion, via 'blindly'-automated TD E/I-minimi-
zation.
Which comprehension is right-up-there with
the Strongest Tests of Individual Free Will.
Most of Humanity still exists in the brain-as-
a-mystery-in-a-'box' frame of reference -
like what folks'd be in relationship to some
other-wlorldy device left on Earth by 'alien'
explorers.
The poke it, prod it, shake it, run their fing-
ers across its surface, looking for switches,
or buttons, or an opening-mechanism, and,
when they finally realize that they don't under-
stand it, 'decide' that "it's art", when it's act-
ally an 'expeditionary energy-supply' that,
when activated, taps into the universal en-
ergy-flow, making available useable energy
as long as there's useable energy left in the
Universe.
'the' Human brain is =exactly= analogous to
this - like in patty's "dance" and in AoK, Ap1.
But 'everybody's been poking it, prodding it,
'shaking' it, running their fingers across its sur-
face, looking for 'switches', or 'buttons', or an
'opening'-mechanism, etc., when it's the stuff
'everyone' thinks is "art" that constitutes the
"operating instructions" to this energy-engine
whose information-processing capabilities
literally 'contain' all of the energy that's in phys-
ical reality.
Cheers, Rich,
k. p. collins
ken
news:407ea16b...@netnews.att.net...
I agree
The first Reification of the physical mechanism
in which Volition is actualized was given in AoK,
Ap7.
Free will does not Derive in the '"mechanism"
through which it is actualized within Humans,
however.
It Derives in the one-way flow of energy, from
order to disorder that is what's =described=
by 2nd Thermo [WDB2T].
The "mechanism" is necessary for the actualliza-
tion of Free Will, however, and so is an under-
standing of how the "mechanism" works.
K. P. Collins
JGCasey
"Pat Harrington" <PatrickDH...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7517a083.04041...@posting.google.com...
And why am "I" at this particular frame we call "now"?
There is no "Now" in physics only lots of "nows" but
this one is special, "I" am experiencing it.
JC
ken
news:fd762132.04041...@posting.google.com...
> "ken" <kpaulc@[remove]earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:<IKefc.10069$A_4....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
> > "1Z" <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:fd762132.04041...@posting.google.com...
> > > glo...@nitgen.com (JinSoo Kim) wrote in message
>
>
> > > > I want to find the scientific experiment examples which support
>
>
> > > Here are references to the experiments which disprove it...
> >
> > False.
>
>
> Care to expand ?
I've discussed all of the experimental results upon
which 'qm' was founded, and contemporaneous
experiment, EPR, Bell [here in c.ai.p], all accelerator
experiments, including RHIC, cosmology, and all the
fundamentals of all hard sciences.
And I've posted a rough, but sufficient, Proof of
Tapered Harmony [technical name, "Energy-Thres-
holding Theory"] online. For that, try searching on
"water 'oscillons'" or "water rhombuses".
Whatever's left of what I've discussed, online,
should be searchable using "Tapered Harmony".
k. p. collins
ShrikeBack
However, if relativity holds a perfectly accurate description of
the nature of time, then cause and effect are as illusory as the
free will. The most accurate word to use to describe the way things
happen in such a universe is "fate". Fatalism and determinism are
not equivalent. In fact, every event point in space-time may as
well be self-caused.
ken
False.
K. P. Collins
Eray Ozkural exa
As I'd said before, the only thing they got somewhat right in the
Matrix movies was that freedom meant control. If you're not in
control, you're not free. The same definition counts for both mental
and physical freedom. Forgo physical freedom, yet your mind can be
free. But if your poor mind is full of sensory input from commercial
advertisements, how free can your mind be? (At this point I remember
the nice passage about the effect of advertisements on human society
in Ken's book AoK)
Reflecting once more, is computational variety (above a threshold)
sufficient for free will?
Regards,
--
Eray Ozkural
Lester Zick
exa) in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
If by computational variety, Eray, you mean turing computation and by
free will you mean sentient being, I'd have to ask first whether
computational variety is sufficient for any kind of will much less the
free variety?
Regards - Lester
Lester Zick
Where my posts are concerned, stand on what you've already posted.
Regards - Lester
ken
"ken" <kpaulc@[remove]earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:aydfc.9914$A_4....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> [...]
I RETRACT the following:
> When there're, supposedly, 'single electrons'
> being 'shot' at the detector, what's actually
> being 'shot' are waves of energy having 'elec-
> tron' energy-thresholding frequency.
> [...]
It's close, but not Exact.
The same stuff is Reified, Exactly, in long-former
posts of mine ["Tapered Harmony"].
[I wanted to retract this as soon as I reread
what I'd posted, but 'forgot' to do so [it's
been some Frenetic 'times' in recent 'days',
here in c.ai.p & b.n] until my interaction with
Eray called-me-to-task with respect to Honoring
Truth.
So, Thank You, Eray.]
K. P. Collins
Keynes
Indeterminism may or may not exist, but it can't save free will.
A random event that Causes an outcome is causal, and furthermore
is not under the control of the chooser. Randomness or cause,
the will is still not 'free'.
Don't we all want our decisions to be as logical and to the point
as possible? The closer we approach the real truth, the greater
we are constrained to the actual target. A virtual bull's eye
would be absolutely determined by the facts. Or would we
rather be free to flail about aimlessly, habitually missing the point?
The illusion of ree will is that we are compelled by our nature to
do what we like the best or hate the least. Our likes and dislikes
are determined by nature and nurture, and not ever chosen by
ourselves. Any selection between points of view has a reason,
namely a cause.
We are forced to choose as we like. If we were free of that,
we could choose what we don't like, but we can't because
we certainly will never choose to love what we hate and to
hate what we love.
Choice itself is problematic. If we really made choices, we'd
have to choose to make a choice, and choose to do that ad infinitum.
Choice is spontaneous re-action, not deliberate nor volitional,
and it is determined by our unchosen criteria.
Determinism implies predictability, but only in the shortest and
starkest connection that our feeble minds can unravel. In fact,
causation is an unbroken chain from the beginning of time,
making All causes necessary, and None of them sufficient.
Failure of prediction is human weakness, not a refutation
of cause and effect.
Anyone who disputes causation is free to sign the petition
to repeal the law of gravity at www.Nutcases-R-Us.com
if they want to join the Cause and have an Effect.
(This message brought to you by cause and effect of it's own free will.)
Keynes
wrote:
LZ says previously --
"It is not clear why the foregoing represents a solid theoretical
conclusion. You have many ambiguous terms like energy, free energy,
act, react, etc. that make the conclusion problematic at best."
(It's good to see that you don't favor the ambiguity of well defined terms,
like 'the', 'of', and 'and' but prefer your own vague and undefined notions that
not even you can speak of. )
LZ says again here --
"However conscious beings are also said to possess some freedom
of that will and the issue with respect to free will is what that
freedom of will means and how it arises."
(As ever, you are the very model of precision and clarity.)
Pat Harrington
OK, let me put it another way. An old friend of mine once said
it like this, "Free will is predetermined but predeterminism is
forever free to do as it will." What this means is that, if you
accept that you have free will, you must accept that you had no choice
in the matter of having free will. Therefore you know, beyond any
doubt, that predeterminism exists. And if predeterminism exists, you
have no free will and you can then make the proper assumption that
your sense of free will is illusory. so this force that predetermined
not only what we do but also lent us this sense of free will is the
one thing that seems to be able to act on it's own. So there is one
will that moves all. This is also reasonable, as the space-time
continuum is one. This continuum seems to be made of energy, so it is
reasonable to deduce that energy itself is the prime mover and is the
single agent acting in the system. It is from this point of view that
sages past have said things like "The Lord our God, the Lord is one"
and "It is God that works through me" and "Not my will but Thy will be
done" etc. I'm sure there are ample Buddhist phrases that also
demonstrate this concept.
The fact that we have no real will of our own does not mean our
lives have no meaning for we still must do the things we do. We are
the players and the play must go on. In fact, Shakespeare himself
couldn't have said it better if you view the "king" as this one God of
energy--"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the
King." The realisation that what we do is really what God does
through us, i.e., our will is really God's, is to understand the Hindu
concept of "Atman is Brahman". The self is God. That does not mean
that we as individuals are God in toto but that our will is not our
will but that of the prime agent. It is this realisation that
absolves us of all sin and shows us that we can do no wrong. This is
a dangerous thought for many people who would then say, "what then
keeps me from murdering anyone or raping anyone I like or taking
anything I want?" Nothing really. If we do that we do that. But the
fact that we THINK we have free will prevents most of us from making
these kinds of choices--that and the realisation that we could be
brutally stopped in our tracks as well!!
So the belief in free will acts as a first line buffer against
activities that are antisocial. If people believe they have free will
then society can impose rules on actions and impose barriers anad
repercussions. These are our laws, morals, ethics and dogma that
guide us through using this illusory concept of free will. This thing
that predetermines all of this is incredibly awesome to me because of
how free it is and how guided we are by it. As I read recently "in
the groups", "I do not live my life, rather, I am being lived."
Cheers,
Pat
Curt Welch
turned into a book and is changing the meaning of life for me. In this
post, you will find both the solution to the free will paradox, and the
road to world peace. ken should like that. That's why he's here and he's
the one that saw the world peace angle before me. ken might find his peace
in life yet.
Plese try to look past my gramar and spelling problems and see the message.
It's an important one to see. I had fun writing it, I hope you have fun
reading it.
PatrickDH...@hotmail.com (Pat Harrington) wrote:
> As I read recently "in
> the groups", "I do not live my life, rather, I am being lived."
Ok, I feel the need to get a grasp on the contradiction of free will and
maybe some more writing here will help.
I agree with everything you wrote. Nice post. My current beliefs makes me
very strongly aware that we do not have the free will we seem to. However,
we have the paradox that if we let ourself believe we don't have free will,
bad things happen. So we need to act like we belive we do have free will
in order to survive. "truth" seems to have always been the ultimate
survival tool (thus the growth of science). Yet this truth about free will
seems very anti-survival. This is what I call the contradiction of free
will. Something is very wrong here with my belief system. Either truth
isn't what it's cracked up to be, or we don't have the full truth here yet.
Of the two otions, my far stronger belief currently falls on "truth is
good". So lets hack away at the the other side and assume we don't have
the full truth here. What are we missing?
But before we go there, a quick comment. Maybe "good is good", and truth
just isn't important. But I'll not explore that hedonistic view right now.
I do happen to know good alone is not in fact good. The correct balance of
good and bad is the ultimate good.
> "what then
> keeps me from murdering anyone or raping anyone I like or taking
> anything I want?" Nothing really.
That's not the full truth. Things are very much stoping us. At least in
my current understanding of everything.
Indirectly, the true force further back in the chain stoping us is the
processes of evolution. And it's easy to see it at work in the real world
when you do "bad things", and die because of it. Believing you have no
free will can be a "bad thing" in this regard IF that belief makes you
ignore all your morals and go off in pursuit of pleasure with no regard to
the consequence of that path of behavior.
But that alone doesn't stop us. If that is all which was stoping us, we
would still have free reign to rape an pillage as long as we could get away
with it. We are going to die anyway, might as well have fun before it
happens.
More directly however, what actually stops us is fear and pain. And we are
now talking about brain hardware and not the universal laws of nature which
include evolution which ultimately controlls us all.
So now I dive into my brain theory to explain this....
Evolution gave us our special type of brain hardware to allow our behavior
to change over the span of our lifetime to meet the demands of a changing
environment much quicker than the evolutionary processes could do the same
bey redesigning our instinctive behavior though DNA mutations. But if
evolution is not hard wiring our behavior, what is the brain hardware doing
that allows it to create behavior in response to the changing environment
which is better than what could be done with instictive behavior programing
by evolution?
My answer is that in addition to the brain hardware, it gave us emotion
hardware to guide us (thanks Marvin M.). The primary emotion hardware is
the part of the brain which defines what will cause us pain, and what will
cause us pleasure. It is hardware which controls the learning machine by
defining what events will cause reinforment of behavior in our larning
machine and what events will cause punishment of behavior in our learning
machine.
This hardware is easy to understand. Evolution gave us a heat sensor for
example with associated circuity which will detect with our skin temprature
gets too hot. When this happens, the learning hardware is told to punish
the behaviors which allowed this to happen. Evolution gave us hunger
sensors, and damage sensors, and sex sensors, and wired all these things up
to the learning hardware. The design of this reward/pleasure sensor system
combined with the behavior learning hardware it's linked to has been time
tested though the normal processes of evolution and shown to be better for
survival than other options, like pure instinctive behavior.
And it's easy to understand why this could be much better. If the food our
instinctive behavior allowed us to gather and eat vanished one summer
because of a complex change of environmental events, our learning hardware
might quickly allow us to learn a new food gathering technique and allow us
to survive instead of allowing us to die from starvation and forcing
evolution to evolve a new type of food gathering organism over the next 10,
000 years.
So, what we do, the sum of all our behavior, is actually created by our
learning brain under the direction of this reinforcement hardware which
defines which conditions cause a reward and which conditions cause us
punishment. This is all the larning hardware needs to be able to do it's
job of molding behavior over time to the shape which maximizes reward, and
minimizes punishment. It does what it does just like a computer.
Oh, I'm feeling it now, the answer to the free will paradox is almost here!
I will continue to go slowly however as to not loose too many people.
The learning brain at works creates all our behavior, and from the very
complex structure of behavior it is able to grow, comes our language. And
in that langauge we find words like "morals", and "good", and "bad". Where
does that come from? From the motivation hardware of course. "good" is
whatever the motivation hardware tells the learning brain what is "good"
(we sense it as pleasure). And "bad" (we sense as pain) is whatever the
motivation hardware tells the learning brain is a punishment. Our "morals"
are a high level set of belives which have grown at the top of this complex
structure of behavior. We use our "morals - which is langauge we have
recoreded in our mind", to guide our conscious actions. At least that is
how our language tells us to talk about this.
Now the problem for many people with this point of view is that this means
the true nature of good and bad, and right and wrong, and God vs the Devil,
is not in fact an attribute of our environment. Good and bad (to the
learning brain) is not a universal truth. The answer to what is good and
what is bad can be found in each of us, in those chunks of the brain which
Evolution gave us, which define what conditions are considered good, and
what are bad.
So, the larning brain, which is creating all our behavior (i.e. modifying
the hardware which determines how we react to the world), is in effect
"taking orders" from the motivation hardware. This is why drugs do what
they do to us. They break the motivation hardware so it is no longer doing
what evolution designed it to do. It makes us "feel" good in ways we were
never meant to "feel" good about.
So, our learning brain learns about good and bad from our motivation
hardware. The motivation hardware however was built by evolution for the
purpose of allowing us to maximize are chance of survive. So the real
defintion of good and bad which ultimately guides us is simple survival.
Survival is good, not surviving is bad. We can hide from this reality for
short periods of time by reaching into our brain hardware and tweaking the
function of the motivation hardware with drugs. But if we mess with the
function of that hardware, which has kept our species alive for millions of
years, we will die faster than you can blink an eye. Touch that hardware
and you die. It's as stupid (in our nromal survial sense of good and bad)
as a robot with no permanent memory turning it's own power switch off.
It's suicide with pleasure.
It's this hardware structure of our brain which makes it so hard to
understand right from wrong. If it feels good, it seems right. And of
course that's 100% true from the viewpoint of our learning brain. This is
what gives rise to hedonistic behavior and beliefs. Our behavior learning
hardware, by design, is programed to create hedonistic behavior (the
persuite of pleasure), not survivial behavior (the persuit of existence).
It's the two componets working together, the behavor adjusting hardware,
working with the motivation hardware, which gives rise to our natural
survival behavior. How close our hedonistic behavior is to being good
survial behavior is a measure of the quality of the motivation hardware.
Evolution makes sure the two never drift very far apart. This is why a dog
will nearly chew itself to death under the correct "itching" conditions.
Because it feels good to them. Their motivation hardware probably isn't as
good as it could be, and evolution, given time, will fix that, if it needs
to.
Ok, but if our brain hardware makes us natrually hedonistic, why isn't
there more raping and pillaging, and eating ourselvs to death (oh, we do
have that problem don't we) in the world than there is? The answer is
culture. Langage has allowed us to create a culture. And that culture is
evolving under the real hand of evolution. Cultures that don't surive, die
out. They don't just "feel bad about what what they did", they die.
We are first created from the evolution tested specification of the
construnction of our body from DNA. We grow for months in the womb, and we
pop out with this mostly unfinished brain. We are an empty shell in so
many ways at brith. And then culture takes over, and continues the
building of our brain, by injecting evolutionary tested behaviors into our
brain. For the first few years, this is done only through phsycail
interaction with the child, but in that time, we eneject the evolutionary
tested behavior of a nature language into them as well. Then we use the
language to continue the process of brain building though the enjecting of
behavior though language. We create large and complex educations for the
sole purpose of brainwashing our kids with evolution tested "real survial"
behavors.
This is what prevents us following the hedonistic guidence of our brain
hardware and dieing early. It is the culture that Language allowed us to
build.
Kids are natrually hedonsitic because they have not had a full dose of
survial behavior injected into them yet. They just want to play and have
fun. But over time, our culture, and our experience (interaction with the
aspects of our environment that culture didn't create), we get all the fun
beaten out of us. We become senseable and boring adults how seem to have
forgotten how to play.
Which brings us to morals. What are they? They are language behaviors
taught to us by our culture, and/or, by ourself. It tends to be a long
list of "x is good", "y is bad". But they get far more complex as well
("do unto others..." for example). And we say that our "morals" are woven
through all our behavior, which in a sense they are. Our entire set of
behaviors, (all our beliefs combined stored in the larning brain as our
complete set of learned behaviors (+ instincts)).
Many times in life, our set of behaviors alone don't have answers about
what to do. Should we help the wounded man die in piece, or take his money
and run? We use what we think of as our "conscious mind" to help us find
answers to all the morally tough questions of life. We think about our
morals in order to find the best answer. Our morals help guide our
conscious thoughts which in turn guide our decisons in live.
But did you catch what I just did there? I jumped from a discusson of brain
hardware (subconscious behavior - no free will), up into our "conscious
thought process" - where free will rules - where WE use our morals, to
guide our actions, under the control of our own will. This is what I saw
coming way up above. This is where the free will contradiction gets
exposed for what it really is.
But not yet - as said in that wonderful line from the move Gladiator.
In the above understanding of what the subconscious mind is, we see no free
will. But, if we add the concept of "we have no free will" to our basic
beliefs, to our morals, it seems it will lead our conscious mind down the
certain path of self distrution.
But somewhere, in our heart, we know this is a "bad" thing to do. So, we
use are concious mind to force the follwing belief into our morals: "we
really do have free will"! Or at least we should live our life that way
even though we know this is a "false" belief. Dispiate the confusion this
seems to create, we just "know" it is the "right" think to do.
But this creates a very unnatural fracture in our belief system. It's a
contradiction, which makes us just feel "unseay". And "uneasy" causes
fear. And fear is "bad". So we are left with "we have no free will in our
subcocious", which seems "good", and "we have free will in our concious",
which is also good, but we have this fracture, which is bad, because both
in our hearts, and in our conscious undertanding of formal logic systems,
we know a contradiction means we have a fundimential error in our belive
sytem somewhere.
And I know where it is. This is what I uncovered in my big Ah Ha moment
last Sunday in the OH MY GOD post.
Our language, which comes to use through our culture, is not only a tool
for passing culture, it to, is part of our fundimental set of behaviors,
and it too is a part of our entire belief system which includes everything
we know about everything, including our morals. And, any fundimential
error in our language, will lead to contradictions in our belief system,
just like a fundimental belive of the "world is flat" will be exosed for
the contradictions it creates once we are exposed to enough information to
see the contradiction. Travling all the way around the world and getting
back to where you started would be such an "exposure" to the "truth" that
would create the contradiction that leads, in the end, to the exposure that
the belief in the world being flat was an error in the belief system passed
to us.
However, if we never traveled around the world, or never looked closely at
the paths of the stars and sun and planets, the belief that the "world is
flat" is harmless. We can pretend that is the way the world is and not
have any problems in our life. But, when you look closely, in the right
places (the planets), you see clear evidence that a flat world does not
make things "simple", and that a round world, even though it seems to go
against thoudands of years of evolutionary evidnece to the contrary, is the
truth.
But doesn't that mean we will fall off if we were to try and walk on the
bottom of the earth? No. That "understanding" of how gravity works
(allways pulls us straight down), was based on our false belief that the
world was flat. When we figure out the world was not flat, we had to
change a huge collection of other beliefs which were based on the false
belief. Gravity doesn't suck down, it sucks towards the center of the
earth. And gravity is not alone in this. Remeber how we said the sun was
held up by our sun god pulling it across the sky every day behind his
chariot? Well, that's wrong to. We though we needed that to explain why
the sun didn't fall on us and burn us up. But as it turns out, the gravity
that holds us down, is the same force at work which holds the sun up. It's
not actually hold it up, because we aren't at the center of the universe,
we are just spinning around the sun. The gravity that keeps us from
floating off the ground is actually what keeps the sun from flying away
from us. That's too much for me. YOu are crazy, I'm going to the church
and have them burn you. You are causing me too much pain!
These are the natural reactions our hedonistic brains have to a paridgme
shift of this magnatude. It's too much change too fast, because when you
have to change one of your fundimential beliefs, which has been in society
for many thousands of years, you not only have to change that belief, but
you end up having to change everything derived from that as well. And that
whole belief system, up until the paradigme shift started, has been proven
to be "absolute truths" for thousands of years. Everyone knows, all of
them are fundimential truths. So you are not asking me to just change one,
but hundreds of well known facts. Stop it, you are scaring the shit out of
me! If all these things are wrong, how can I trust anything I know! And
that well grounded fear is why huge paradigm shifts don't happen overnight.
They can take time to spread, like any good "DNA mutation" through our
culture.
Like the advise I just heard on a TV show tonight helping people to avoid
fraud at the hand of a good con artist using magic, "Extraordinary claims
require extraordinary proof".
But, with all that groundwork laid, here's my extraordinary claim.
The mind doesn't exist as something separate from the body.
Wait, we waited all this time for just that!
This seems small, and sort of, ok, no big deal, if you say so, kinda of
thing. But it's like telling someone the world is not flat. They might at
first accept that (because to be honest, they never really cared one way or
the other in the first place), but then comes - "But wait, there's More!".
They start to look woried. This is a fundimential belief built into our
langauge, and everything you think you know, which you learned as "langauge
behavior" from your culture is going to change because of this paridgm
shift.
This fundimential belief, supported all through our langauge, is non other
than the belief in the unreal. Our langauge supports the notion that
things which are not real, not physical, can, and do, exist. I'm affraid
to pick up a dictionary and count the number of words we use that are based
on this false belief. There are probably 10s of thousands of them. And
they all exist in our mind, in our culture, as fundimential truths.
If you thought the getting the culture to accept that the world was round
was, hard, wait to you what this does.
It's the death of the belief in the soul.
It's the death of the belief in all Gods.
It's the death of the belief in knowledge.
It's the death of the belief in concepts.
It's the death of the belief in the consciocus mind.
It's the death of the belief in software.
It's the death of the belief in philosopy.
Are you getting scared yet? I told you it was an extraordinary claim. You
can't say I didn't warn you.
But before you run off to the church and send someone over to burn me, let
me calm you down and show show who this is all actually a good thing.
Everthing above actually does still exist in the new world order. But,
because of this fundimential error in our langauge, which _is_ our belief
system, we ended up giving everything in the world two names, instead of
one.
We gave it one name, for it's physical form, and another name for it's
mirror image in the world of the unreal. The mind (aka soul) and the brain
merge. God, and Energy, becomes one. Knowledge, becomes behavior.
Software and hardware become one. Philosopy, and Behaviorism, becomes cog
sci.
These exmaples aren't perfect, because they are not perfect mirror images
of each other. We created two language systems because of this
fundimential error in our understanding, one to describe the phsyical word,
and one to describe the world created by our mind - the palce where
everything unreal, lives. As our understanding of the brain grows, we are
now seeing how these two worlds are actually connected. Before we
understood what the brain was, we thought there were to separare worlds
here. The first was everything that was real and earthly (the domain of
science), and the second was spirtual (the domain of the Gods).
When we allow this paradigm shift to happen, the absolutly huge fracture in
our understranding of reality, in our belef system, in our languge, closes.
Life is stable again. Life is good again. Life is better than it has been
for thousands of years. Whey? because the growing divide we were creating
was creating a lot of fundimential contradictions in our belife system.
And the more we looked at the, the more contradictions were were faced
with. And the more they are, the more our entire world was dividied.
Before science, we had answers for everything. We just made them up in our
head. But life was good, life was simple, becasue we knew the answer to
everything. And evolution tested them for us, so we didn't half to. Our
religion was the keeper of all answers to everything. And we knew we must
follow the belief of our religios leaders or else face death at the hand of
God. And this was actually very true. Beacuse our religon had been tested
by the real hand of God, Evolution, and proven to be valid for preventing
pain, and death. And if you mess with the system that keeps you alife, you
will die.
But then those damn "free thinkers" started to mess with the system that
was keeping everyone alive. Life has been a complete disater ever sense.
It's going on still today in the Gulf. Their religon is being tested by
the hand of god aginst our science.
But this divide had created a huge moral contradiction since it started.
Which is really good? Science, or religon? Which is it?
Year after year, the "scientist" kept tearing down the old belief systems
brick by brick, and in doing so, they just kept making the divide between
the two fractions larger, and larger. How many people have died fighting
this change? How much war did this search of "truth" create in it's path?
But here we are. Standing at the end of the road. After diging, and
diging, and digging, we finally got to the bottom. The answer was hidden
in the undersanding of what the brain was all this time. The answer to
world piece was in our head all this time. (Not our mind notice, but our
head - because they are one and the same now).
But what happened to the free will question? You never actually answered
that and then you ran off on this unfounded path to world piece. I shale
finish that up now.
The answer is that we don't have free will. Sorry, but that's life. The
only reason we thought it made sense to talk about the idea of free will is
because we thought "we" existed in our mind, which was not our body. So it
was the will of our mind, to control the body, that gave us the total bogus
concept of "free will". mind and body are the same in the new world order
now. What should we talk about now, the will of the body to control the
body? See how stupid that sounds.
Do you see what the "will" was in the first place? It was something we
used to say the mind had which "it" used to make the body do things. We
made the notion of that type of "will" up because we had to in order to
explain the connection between our "consious mind" and the obvious magical
control it had over our body, but not the body of other people.
Yeah, I understand how hard this is to grasp. I can't really get it yet.
It's still soaking in.
But, here's the easy moral answer to the free will question. When we
followed our hearts, we were doing the right thing. (ok god, heart == soul
== another word usage we have to fix). And it's not a contradiction in the
universe, it's just an age old problem with our language we have to work
through.
Oh damn. This little langauge problem killed millons of people. That's
enough to make you sick.
The problem with the free will contradiction is that our moral belive
system is written in this "broken" langauge in our head. So to insert the
correct moral belief, in this broken language, we have to say "we have free
will". So we do that for now until we get this langauge all sorted out
becuse that is the correct moral belive.
Look at what it tells us. It tells us that we do have control over our
life, and that we are responsible for what happens to us, and that we
should always work hard to do the right thing.
Now lets translate that under the new world order based on the understand
of the brain I layed out above. But like me point out something small but
inportant. The "mind" in the old way of thinking is not technically our
brain in the new world order. It's part of the brain. It's the part of our
brain that defines how we react to the environment. It's the "software"
(old world term), of our behavior programing. Our mind, creates our
behavior. And look at that, you get both the notion that our brain is
doing this on it's own, combined with the notion that we are our brain,
which means, we are doing this.
So I translate..
"We have control over our life", becomes, "our behavior controls our life".
"We are resoposible for what happens to us" becomes, "our behavior
determines what happens to us". "we should work hard to do the right thing"
becomes, "our brain hardware (us) is doing the best it can to create the
behaviors to allow us to maximize our pleaure, for the pupose of maximizing
our chance to keep living".
Basically this all adds up to the fact that we never had free will in the
first place. When we decide to do something, it wasn't "us" (the old world
us not part of the body type of us) making the decision, it was the "us" we
are wone with the body, making the decision.
Ok, it's hard for me as well. It will take time to get the true meaning of
all this. We have been "thinking" in this old broken langauge for so long,
we don't know how to think any other way, not to mention talk or write.
But in closing, let me point out some other problems this broken lanauge
has created:
1. Data (the robot from STTNG), has no emotions. This is because we didn't
see the real connection between man (the soul), and the machine. We say
machines don't have no soul. What do we say now that we are a machine? We
have to finish our work on AI to fully answer that, but basically, the
answer is, "not all machines have souls, but intelligent machines do". You
can't have a machine as intellignt as data, without a soul, and without
emotion. The emotions are that motivation box I talked about and you just
can not build working AI hardware without it. It's like trying to build an
engine without a fuel source.
2. It is thought that the spirtial world and the world of machines, and
science, are two differnent things. One deals with the physical world, the
other with the mind, and the emotions. The solution to AI and "fixing" the
langauge, makes it all the same. The job of getting tese two "in line" is
going to take time. But it means a lot of things, like "geeks are people
to", and that the pursit of a perfect blanced set of behaviors to produce
the perfect blance of reward and pushisment is the true meaning of life.
3. Art and engineering are not the same thing. Well, they are. It's all
the act of "creation".
After we fix the language, I think the entire society is going to change as
well. I can't even guess where this is going to lead us at this point.
We all have a lot of work to to do. People aren't going to belive what
they read when they see messages like this one. And I really need to get
some sleep.
--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
cu...@kcwc.com Webmaster for http://NewsReader.Com/
Pat Harrington
Spot on, mate!! I couldn't agree more. The thing is that this
lack of free will doesn't really change our lives dramatically, as we
still do what we do. What I think is funny is that it bothers some
people. but then that's their natural reaction.
Cheers,
Pat
Pat Harrington
Yes, this is true, but not anymore. There are many frames/nows,
but if you take a slice, it's still fair to call it now if it was done
in a current timeframe (not that it could be done at any other time).
You know what I meant, anyway.
Pat Harrington
I have no problem using the word fate for determinism. As Rich
said, after the first action, all the rest is reaction. Every time we
make a choice, we set a certain fate to the exclusion of all others.
Fair play! So we have one cause and the rest are effects; I can live
with that and agree completely.
With respect to every event point causing itself, that would mean
that every event point was completely isolated from all the others,
unless they all caused themselves at once, in a beginning, and THEN
reacted to one another. I would find that possible but less plausible
that one object, energy, causing interelation to itself.
Cheers,
Pat
Eray Ozkural exa
A most meticulous analysis, Lester. Variety may be sufficient for
freedom, but will requires generative capacity of another kind:
formulating and following abstract goals. (The goal does not always
result in immediately observable behavior, it may be a thought
discipline for what it's worth...)
Still, that is not a satisfactory reduction of will to mechanics, for
the notion of goal is too vague. We need a more operational
replacement, and I think you might bring forth a foundational
subjective element at this point. (such as the different +/-
operations?)
In my metaphysical framework, I tend to focus more on construction,
and architecture. Some of the possibilities I see are
1) Will requires word, that is a persistent symbolic representation of
goal with meaning derived from context.
2) Will requires a "deliberative" thought layer, basically Minsky's
A-B brains, in which A perceives and manipulates the outside world,
and B perceives A's function and programs it computation.
In both descriptions, the commonality is the programmatic nature of
will. A small determined programmer, who cares about means and ends,
considering the physical limits of computation, may be the key to
will. Perhaps it is the usually uninspiring mathematical subject of
"control" that deals with will most clearly.
Regards,
--
Eray Ozkural
Daniel T.
> "Pat Harrington" <PatrickDH...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > [...]
> > Free will is an illusion because, unlike the past, we can't see the
> > future. So we believe we can change it. But it is like a film on a
> > reel. The reel contains the entire movie and all the characters will
> > do what they were intended to do. The next frame is there and
> > will play when it is time for it to play. This is the way the continuum
> > works. Welcome to the film; we hope you enjoy the show!!
>
> That's not the definition of free will. Free will means that a
> decision is not determined by past events. So, given complete
> information about spacetime before the decision D, an agent
> has free will if D cannot be predicted, and does not have free
> will if D can. Let me give an extremely simple example. Consider
> a universe with only two points, and one particle. The particle
> can be at point A or point B. The particle can be said to have
> "free will" if, given a complete history of the universe up to
> event D, you can predict whether the particle will end up at
> point A or point B at D. If you cannot make such a prediction,
> then the "fate" of the particle is *non-deterministic*. Note that
> this essentially means "random", since a failure to produce an
> algorithm which computes the particle's existence implies
> that the particle is non-computable.
Why do you equate indeterminism with "free will". Is random happenstance
really free will? Does a die have "free will" simply because the face up
side is indeterminate?
> In our universe, things are a little trickier. If there are hidden
> variables at work, it could be that 1) the universe is indeed
> deterministic and 2) we have "effective free will". That's because
> uncertainty will prevent us from *in principle* predicting the
> outcome of any agent which exhibits quantum effects, even
> if that agent acts deterministically w.r.t. the laws of physics.
> If hidden variables don't exist, then any agent that exhibits
> quantum effects at the macroscopic level will effectively
> have free will. Something along those lines is Penrose's
> argument against strong AI.
Penrose seems to think that there is some special kind of physics going
on in our head that simply cannot be duplicated anywhere in the
universe. He takes the anthropic universe one step further...
Daniel T.
> This hardware is easy to understand. Evolution gave us a heat sensor for
> example with associated circuity which will detect with our skin temprature
> gets too hot. When this happens, the learning hardware is told to punish
> the behaviors which allowed this to happen. Evolution gave us hunger
> sensors, and damage sensors, and sex sensors, and wired all these things up
> to the learning hardware. The design of this reward/pleasure sensor system
> combined with the behavior learning hardware it's linked to has been time
> tested though the normal processes of evolution and shown to be better for
> survival than other options, like pure instinctive behavior.
Becareful you don't start putting humans on some special plain of
reference. pure instinctive behavior has proved itself over the entire
course of life on earth. There are many species that opperate on
instinct (including all plants) that have been around far longer than we
humans.
Try not to think that just because humans do it, it is automatically
better than any other possibility...
"I used to think that the brain was the most amazing part of the human
body, but then I realized what was telling me that." --Emo Phillips
1Z
Very relevant. Locality is just as much part of classical realism as
determinism. So classical realism is dead. All you are left with
is Bohm-style holistic determinism with all its attendant problems.
Lester Zick
And as ever you represent your problematic speculations as solid
theoretical conclusions. You are the very model of a modern major
general.
Regards - Lester
Lester Zick
exa) in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
Hi Eray -
Something troubling here is the idea that if will is not numbers - as
anachronistic Pythagoreans might think - can will represent the
computation of numbers as modern computationalists might think?
Regards - Lester
Neil W Rickert
>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote in message news:<c5mjff$2g3$1...@usenet.cso.niu.edu>...
>> peter...@yahoo.com (1Z) writes:
>> >Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote in message news:<c5jpkf$v26$3...@usenet.cso.niu.edu>...
>> >> "Daniel T." <postm...@eathlink.net> writes:
>> >> >There are many experiments that conclusively prove that the universe is
>> >> >indeterminate. One simple one is the two slit experiment.
>> >> Actually, there aren't such experiments. It is always possible that
>> >> there is some hidden variable that controls everything.
>> >Local hidden variabls are disproved by the Aspect experiment.
>> Not particularly relevant.
>Very relevant. Locality is just as much part of classical realism as
>determinism. So classical realism is dead. All you are left with
>is Bohm-style holistic determinism with all its attendant problems.
Still not relevant. The question was whether there are experiments
that conclusively prove indeterminism. There aren't.
Pat Harrington
I did mention morality and other such in that message, so you
know I agree with what you have below.
> More directly however, what actually stops us is fear and pain. And we are
> now talking about brain hardware and not the universal laws of nature which
> include evolution which ultimately controlls us all.
>
> So now I dive into my brain theory to explain this....
>
> Evolution gave us our special type of brain hardware to allow our behavior
> to change over the span of our lifetime to meet the demands of a changing
> environment much quicker than the evolutionary processes could do the same
> bey redesigning our instinctive behavior though DNA mutations. But if
> evolution is not hard wiring our behavior, what is the brain hardware doing
> that allows it to create behavior in response to the changing environment
> which is better than what could be done with instictive behavior programing
> by evolution?
>
> My answer is that in addition to the brain hardware, it gave us emotion
> hardware to guide us (thanks Marvin M.). The primary emotion hardware is
> the part of the brain which defines what will cause us pain, and what will
> cause us pleasure. It is hardware which controls the learning machine by
> defining what events will cause reinforment of behavior in our larning
> machine and what events will cause punishment of behavior in our learning
> machine.
>
You might find it interesting to look into the "histone codes"
that are responsible for activating and/or deactivating certain genes
and gene sequences given environmental input. It is this histone code
of acetylation and methylisation of the histone molecules that DNA is
wrapped around that can, in the blink of an eye, turn on or off
certain genes. This sounds like the answer to how the
morals/ethics/culture and behavioural actions/reactions change our
wiring. You see, I had this flash concept several years ago and have
been looking into how it all works. We are learning and, as you say,
there are dangerous thoughts involved, but that's life, isn't it?
Either we can handle it or we can't.
But what about masochists who derive pleasure from pain? And
tickling in which we take extreme pleasure and then, all of a sudden,
we want it to stop, as it's become too much...it's now painful. There
are these pain/pleasure boundaries that are sometimes very thin.
Ahhh, the masochistic dog?
In my way of thinking there are three main types of intelligence
in our world: chemical intelligence like plants, where all information
passed is through chemicals; electrical like our AI computers and your
Data example above; and electro-chemical like animal life, where there
is a combination of the other two methods employed synergistically
together. The electrical side can handle the true, hardcore "core
beliefs" and the chemical can step on the core beliefs and either
modify them temporarily or permanently depending on the situation. So
the emotions are more likely handled by chemicals and/or chemical
influenced hard-wiring. Most Native American Indians of the various
Algonquin tribes hold a belief in the manitou, a spirit that permeates
everthing including tables chairs and computers. Of course, there is
also Guiche Manitou, the Great Spirit that guides and permeates all.
So Algonquins would feel it unavoidable for Data to have a soul, he
certainly would have a very powerful manitou.
> 2. It is thought that the spirtial world and the world of machines, and
> science, are two differnent things. One deals with the physical world, the
> other with the mind, and the emotions. The solution to AI and "fixing" the
> langauge, makes it all the same. The job of getting tese two "in line" is
> going to take time. But it means a lot of things, like "geeks are people
> to", and that the pursit of a perfect blanced set of behaviors to produce
> the perfect blance of reward and pushisment is the true meaning of life.
>
I thought that, in the above, you were leaning towards
"consciousness" as being the "new world mind". It is growth of
consciousness by experience that energy itself, being the only "thing"
that exists, craves. It is the only type of growth that it can
experience over time given the constraints of spacetime on energy.
Well, that's not strictly true, there is one other type of growth,
that of entropy. But growth of entropy is dissipative to energy and
is, probably, viewed by energy to be, if anything is, evil. However,
growth of consciousness is extropic. It brings "stuff" from your
"world of the unreal" into the real. I would describe you "world of
the unreal" as the "plane of the abstract" and say that our mind
bridges between this abstract plane and 4D spacetime. It is the
interface of "that which is the mind" that links the physical 4D
thinker to his thought, which is based in the abstract plane.
Relative intelligence allows one to cast a larger net into the
abstract plane in order to gather what's there. The mind is a "field
effect" that acts as an interface between these two realms. I say
this based on very tenous "evidence" of scenarios where people are
thinking about something similar and "have the same thought". They
were both "casting" in the same area and both grasped th concept. I
have also encountered situations where my wife and I had very similar
thought without trying to think of similar things. It's that "being
on the same wavelength" effect. There's also the effect of having
that feeling of being watched and then turning around to see someone
looking at you. All of these situations, to me, point towards what
could best be described as a "mental field" that exists around us that
is our mind. Sometimes it "interferes" or overlaps with the field of
another sentient. In the past, these sorts of experiences were viewed
as somewhat supernatural. But I cannot except the supernatural. If
it happens, it's natural. We just might not know the mechanism.
Anyway, the general concept I'm getting at is that this mental field
of the mind acts as an interface between 4D spacetime and the abstract
plane linking the thinker to his thoughts.
> 3. Art and engineering are not the same thing. Well, they are. It's all
> the act of "creation".
>
Agreed.
> After we fix the language, I think the entire society is going to change as
> well. I can't even guess where this is going to lead us at this point.
>
> We all have a lot of work to to do. People aren't going to belive what
> they read when they see messages like this one. And I really need to get
> some sleep.
I don't find it hard to grasp but it does shake the foundations
of many. I would say they built their houses in the wrong place.
Sometimes the firmer ground is that which is more ethereal. But
that's another plane altogether. ;-)
Cheers,
Pat
Ted Warring
The same people that object to the idea of a deterministic universe
are usually equally offended by the suggestion that their behavior is
random, so there really is no appeasing their negative emotional
reaction.
I have never understood why most everyone will agree that there are
reasons for their behavior, yet some get so offended at the idea that
there are reasons for their reasons.
At our level of existence (not being omniscient) it is impossible for
us to pre-determine the outcome of all aspects of our environment, so
the experience of being human is not really subjectively different
than making free choices. So why worry?
I suspect that some people just can't live without the belief of a
magic homonculous in their head.
Regards,
Ted Warring
Keynes <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote in message news:<q0tt70t462eclti44...@4ax.com>...
Immortalist
"Ted Warring" <Ted.W...@Artificialingenuity.com> wrote in message
news:268723da.04041...@posting.google.com...
> Well said.
>
> The same people that object to the idea of a deterministic universe
> are usually equally offended by the suggestion that their behavior is
> random, so there really is no appeasing their negative emotional
> reaction.
>
> I have never understood why most everyone will agree that there are
> reasons for their behavior, yet some get so offended at the idea that
> there are reasons for their reasons.
>
> At our level of existence (not being omniscient) it is impossible for
> us to pre-determine the outcome of all aspects of our environment, so
> the experience of being human is not really subjectively different
> than making free choices. So why worry?
>
Kant would claim that you have just contradicted yourself for it is as you
say beyond your possible experience to claim we can know if we control
events or not or somewhat, along with what you left out, the contradictory
part, about our possible knowledge of the regress of causes. So the
posibility to control events AND the regrees problem = the third Antinomy,
let us begin loc;
TRANSCENDENTAL reason attempts to reconcile conflicting assertions. There
are four of these antinomies, or conflicts...
THIRD ANTINOMY. Thesis. The causality of natural law is insufficient for the
explanation of all the phenomena of the universe. For this end another kind
of causality must be assumed, whose attribute is freedom. Proof. All
so-called natural causes are effects of preceding causes, forming a
regressive series of indefinite extent, with no first beginning. So we never
arrive at an adequate cause of any phenomenon. Yet natural law has for its
central demand that nothing shall happen without such a cause.
Antithesis. All events in the universe occur under the exclusive operation
of natural laws, and there is no such thing as freedom. Proof. The idea of a
free cause is an absurdity. For it contradicts the very law of causation
itself, which demands that every event shall be in orderly sequence with
some preceding event. Now, free causation is such an event, being the active
beginning of a series of phenomena. Yet the action of the supposed free
cause must be imagined as independent of all connexion with any previous
event. It is without law or reason, and would be the blind realization of
confusion and lawlessness. Therefore transcendental freedom is a violation
of the law of causation, and is in conflict with all experience. We must of
necessity acquiesce in the explanation of all phenomena by the operation of
natural law, and thus transcendental freedom must be pronounced a fallacy.
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Outline_of_Great_Books_Volume_I/transcende_bid.html
Kant faces a similar problem in his attempted resolution of the
contradiction of the third antinomy (that either "there are in the world
causes through freedom" or "that there is no freedom but all is nature.")
(Prolegomena, 80) Kant holds that these statements are not really
contradictory, and are only viewed as such due to a misunderstanding of what
each statement is asserting. Kant resolves the contradiction by stating that
"if natural necessity is referred merely to appearances and freedom to
things in themselves, no contradiction arises if we at the same time admit
both kinds of causality, however difficult or impossible it ma y be to make
the latter kind conceivable." (Prolegomena, 84) But Kant is once again
making an unjustified claim about the nature of things-in-themselves, for if
freedom did exist only in the realm of things-in-themselves, we would not at
all be aware of it., and if we are aware of freedom, then in must be present
in the world of experience.
http://www.olist.com/essays/text/hsieh/kant_turn.html
(ii) In the third antinomy the thesis and antithesis could both be true but
about different sorts of things.
Thus it could be true that everything in the space-time world happens
according to natural causality, without our having to deny that a different
kind of causality might be effective in a noumenal or non-natural order
which connects with, but is distinct from, that world. [Walsh, p.200]
http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/philosophy/Personnel/susan/Antinomies.html
The four metaphysical disputes that Kant presents in the 'Antinomy of Pure
Reason' are often read as straightforward conflicts between reason and
sensibility; but Kant characterizes them as disputes engendered by pure
reason itself, so a more complex reading is required. In fact, both sides in
each dispute - what Kant calls the 'thesis' and 'antithesis' - reflect
different forms of reason's demand for something unconditioned, and what
conflicts with the limits of sensibility is the assumption that these
demands give rise to a genuine dispute at all. Kant again uses the contrast
between 'mathematical' and 'dynamical' to divide the four disputes into two
groups, and resolves the disputes in two different ways.
In the first antinomy the dispute is between the thesis that the world has a
beginning in time and a limit in space and the antithesis that it is
infinite in temporal duration and spatial extension (A 426-7/B 454-5). In
the second antinomy, the dispute is between the thesis that substances in
the world are ultimately composed of simple parts and the antithesis that
nothing simple is ever to be found in the world, thus that everything is
infinitely divisible (A 434-5/B 462-3). In each case, thesis and antithesis
reflect reason's search for the unconditioned, but in two different forms:
in the thesis, reason postulates an ultimate termination of a series, and in
the antithesis, an unconditional extension of the series. In these
'mathematical antinomies', however, Kant argues that neither side is true,
because reason is attempting to apply its demand for something unconditioned
to space and time, which are always indefinite in extent because they are
finite yet always extendible products of our own cognitive activity (A
504-5/B 532-3 ).
In the two 'dynamical antinomies' Kant's solution is different. In the third
antinomy, the thesis is that 'causality in accordance with laws of nature'
is not the only kind of causality, but there must also be a 'causality of
freedom' underlying the whole series of natural causes and effects, while
the antithesis is that everything in nature takes place in accord with
deterministic laws alone (A 444-5/B 462-3). In the fourth antinomy, the
thesis is that there must be a necessary being as the cause of the whole
sequence of contingent beings, either as its first member or underlying it,
while the antithesis is that no such being exists inside or outside the
world (A 452-3/B 480-1). Again, the theses result from reason's desire for
closure and the antitheses result from reason's desire for infinite
extension. But now the theses do not necessarily refer solely to
spatio-temporal entities, so the claims that there must be a non-natural
causality of freedom and a necessary being can apply to things in themselves
while the claims that there are only contingent existents linked by laws of
nature apply to appearances. In this case both thesis and antithesis may be
true (A 531/B 559 ). This result is crucial to Kant, because it means that
although theoretical reason cannot prove that either freedom or God exist,
neither can it disprove them, and room is left for the existence of freedom
and God to gain credibility in some other way.
guyer
http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DB047SECT8
He derives a second indirect argument for the same
teaching by the important distinction he draws be-
tween the mathematical (first and second) and the
dynamical (third and fourth) antinomies (p. 557). The
former concern conditions homogeneous with the con-
ditioned, i.e., spatiotemporal conditions which would
be finite (if the theses were true) or infinite (if the
antitheses were true). The dynamical antinomies con-
cern conditions heterogeneous with the conditioned,
i.e., something supersensible (free causes or necessary
beings) as the condition for what is perceived-
asserting them (in the theses) or denying them (in the
antitheses). The first two theses and antitheses are all
false, but the theses and antitheses of the dynamical
antinomies may all be true (p. 560). The theses may
be true of the supersensible world of noumena (though
we do not know that they are true), while the antitheses
are known to be true of the phenomenal world (from
argument in the Analytic of the Critique). He claims
to have shown that there is no reason in logic against
Theses 3 and 4, and if there is good reason to believe
them to be true, no theoretical argument can forbid
their being affirmed ("primacy of practical reason").
This resolution of the third and fourth conflicts thus
leads to Kant's "denying [theoretical, metaphysical]
knowledge in order to make room for [moral or
rational] faith" (p. xxx) which requires acceptance,
without apodictic proof, of the theses. Kant accord-
ingly refers to the antinomy as "the most fortunate
perplexity into which human reason could ever fall,"
for without it the case for the antitheses, which pro-
duce a metaphysical dogmatism "always at war with
morality," would be too strong.
While the outcome of the doctrine of the antinomy
is the destruction of the dogmatic metaphysics of both
the rationalistic and naturalistic schools, in the context
of Kant's own philosophy the antinomy also has an
important constructive function. The opposing propo-
sitions, denied their metaphysical pretensions, become
regulative principles or maxims for the conduct of
inquiry. The totality of conditions is not given
(gegeben) but the search for the totality of conditions
(the unconditioned) is assigned (aufgegeben) us as a task
which must be performed without end. Thus, for ex-
ample, the second antinomy might well be summarized
in Whitehead's aphorism, "Seek simplicity, but distrust
it"; and the third in the opposing programs of the
ethical and the anthropological enterprises, one seeing
man as free (thesis) and the other seeing him as product
and part of nature under deterministic natural laws
(antithesis).
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-15
http://eonix.8m.com/kant.htm
http://www.friesian.com/antinom.htm
ShrikeBack
Fate is not determinism.
> As Rich
> said, after the first action, all the rest is reaction.
In the relativistic view of time, the present is illusory. Action,
reaction have no meaning, backwards is equivalent to forwards. Time
is merely a line or a circle. In fact, if there were a First Cause,
that would falsify the view of time as a continuum. If time is finite
and a continuum, it must still be unbounded, for a bound is a
discontinuity. Time must be a circle, if it is finite. This means
that every event eventually is its own predecessor, if you trace back
far enough.
> Every time we
> make a choice, we set a certain fate to the exclusion of all others.
> Fair play! So we have one cause and the rest are effects; I can live
> with that and agree completely.
No. In fact, a First Cause falsifies determinism, for it implies
that not all events are necessarily caused. If one event can be
uncaused, causes are not required for events. The only way
determinism can be true is if the past is infinite.
> With respect to every event point causing itself, that would mean
> that every event point was completely isolated from all the others,
> unless they all caused themselves at once, in a beginning, and THEN
> reacted to one another.
No. If time is a continuum, it had to be created all at once, in a
sense, since it all already exists. In fact, "at once" has no meaning.
That thing we call the present and the passage of time as well are
features of observation.
> I would find that possible but less plausible
> that one object, energy, causing interelation to itself.
The whole idea of cause loses meaning in a universe where time is just
a line or a circle.
Fred Mailhot
[snip]
> Very relevant. Locality is just as much part of classical realism as
> determinism. So classical realism is dead. All you are left with
> is Bohm-style holistic determinism with all its attendant problems.
Once again, for those who missed/ignored it the first time around, the
relative-state (meta)theory of QM is the only scientifically viable one, and
it says that physics is local and deterministic:
http://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm
Fred.
Curt Welch
> cu...@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:
>
> > This hardware is easy to understand. Evolution gave us a heat sensor
> > for example with associated circuity which will detect with our skin
> > temprature gets too hot. When this happens, the learning hardware is
> > told to punish the behaviors which allowed this to happen. Evolution
> > gave us hunger sensors, and damage sensors, and sex sensors, and wired
> > all these things up to the learning hardware. The design of this
> > reward/pleasure sensor system combined with the behavior learning
> > hardware it's linked to has been time tested though the normal
> > processes of evolution and shown to be better for survival than other
> > options, like pure instinctive behavior.
>
> Becareful you don't start putting humans on some special plain of
> reference. pure instinctive behavior has proved itself over the entire
> course of life on earth. There are many species that opperate on
> instinct (including all plants) that have been around far longer than we
> humans.
Yeah, good point. Though I didn't go into it in that post, I've written
other posts in c.a.p that show my understanding of where humans fit into
the grand scheme of things and I think most people would think I had gone
overboard by not only removing all of humanity from human existence, but
all life from the universe as well. What I'm really trying to expose is
just the oppoist of elitism. We are all far more equal than is first
obvious, all the way from us, to the rocks we walk on.
This understanding of AI however does seem to create a boundry that can be
identified between the conscious and unconscious. That is, you need one of
these behavior learning machines to be conscious, without that, you are are
just an unconcous machine and have no feelings and no ability to feel
pleasure or pain. But I'm not really sure about that yet. It might just
be more of an implementation boundry (like the difference between a gas
powered car and an electric car). If it does give us a real boundry, with
real importance, it might help us better come to grip with the complex
moral problems of where to draw these lines between good and bad. Is
eating plants bad because like us, they are living things and deserve
better, and is killing a human ever ok? Between these ends of the extream
there's a lot of complexity we haven't been able to get a good grip on with
tools like science. We are forced to solve the problem purely by following
our heart. And that leads to great disagreement as to what's right and
what's wrong, which creates the tension wars come from.
Solving the AI problem bridges the gap between these worlds, and allows all
the "good" things from both the physcial world, and spirtial world, to
cross over and become one. Scientific method can be applied to verify (and
refute when needed) religious beliefs. We will be able to go in there and
remove the con artists from the real belivers - the people doing real good
for humanity. The doors will no longer be shut. And the same thing
happens in the opposit direction. The real importance of feeling and
caring moves from the domain of religion, into scientific research. We will
be able to put the humanity back in science, and still do good science. We
will be able to put the humanity back in all fields of human endevior, be
it business, or self defense, or intertainment. And we will have the tools
of science to help us show how to do it.
The separation of chruch and state will, once we get the two sides
equalized and in harmanoy, vanish. There will be no reasons to keep the
two apart, or to force people to choose which side they want to live on
(and in doing so, make them belive they should ingore the other side). We
have all been forced to live the life of a split personality for far too
long. Our two sides, constant in battle and disagreement with each other.
This will unite all of humanity back into one whole for the first time in
thousands of years once it catches on.
I had no idea that AI research would lead to this - that it was the missing
key we have all been searching for to solve the problems of humanity. I
just thought it was "fun" engineering work. :)
> Try not to think that just because humans do it, it is automatically
> better than any other possibility...
>
> "I used to think that the brain was the most amazing part of the human
> body, but then I realized what was telling me that." --Emo Phillips
Great quote. That's just all so true.
Pat Harrington
Kant never knew about the Big Bang or any other reasonable
beginning. If he had, he wouldn't wouldn't have been able to promote
that thesis. End of Third Antimony.
Pat Harrington
Kant never knew about the Big Bang or any reasonable beginning.
If he had, he would not have promoted such a thesis.
Curt Welch
> cu...@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote in message
> news:<20040416063138.172$09...@newsreader.com>...
> > So, the larning brain, which is creating all our behavior (i.e.
> > modifying the hardware which determines how we react to the world), is
> > in effect "taking orders" from the motivation hardware. This is why
> > drugs do what they do to us. They break the motivation hardware so it
> > is no longer doing what evolution designed it to do. It makes us
> > "feel" good in ways we were never meant to "feel" good about.
> >
>
> But what about masochists who derive pleasure from pain?
It's a defect (or limitation) in how our brain works. It's an addiction,
which is just opposit of a phobia. Both caused by the same class of
hardware limitations in the design of the machine.
To create good behavior, the learning brain does not have the luxury to
assume that there will always be in infinitly wise trainer there giving it
crackers and a slap on the hand. It has to assume it's working with a very
limited intelligence trainer. The time that tells you you shouldn't have
done "that" after the car accident. To do high quality learning, the brain
needs a system to predict the future. To predict that some long and
complex sequence of behavior is going to lead to more "good", or less
"bad". In the research of learning algorithms, this is refeered to as the
assignment of blame problem. This view is looking at the issue from the
reverse direction. When the brain is receiving tons of pain, because it's
in a car accident with broken bones, how does the brain hardware know which
of the 2000 previous behaviors was the cause of all this punishmen? There
is still a lot to learn about how the brain acutally does such a good job
at this very complex problem.
But, this is what fear and joy is all about, and phobias, and addictions.
The hardware learns from experience how good and how bad things are. And
when we get near (in time) to something bad, the brain hardware is able to
predict this, and starts to select behavior to keep us away. When we get
near (in time) to something that the hardware things will cause pleasure,
it picks the behavior to make sure we get it.
Now, the goal of the machine is maximize all future pleasure, and minimze
all future reward. That does not stop it from being able to push though a
little pain if it thinks the net result will be enough pleasure to justify
the pain.
Reward and punishment, and pain and pleasure are different ends of the same
scale. There's really only one thing here (what is the good name for it
when it's one thing?), instead of two. Beacuse of this, if there is a
sensory input to the brain that senses something bad (too hot for example),
then having that sensor activate, and state active, will create a
punihsment learning effect. When the signal goes away however, it will
create reward training effects. i.e., it feels so good when it stops. If
you combine the removal of pain, with some other pleasure stimuls, like
sex, you end up with a double dose of pleasure. You get the pleasure of
the removal of the pain combined with the pleasure of sex. You get a
pleasure high that you could never have received with sex alone.
However, if the learning hardware was better "tuned" the net effect of
adding pain, plus takeing away pain, plus sex, should produce the exact
same learning effect as just sex alone. The sum total of all future pain
and pleasue would total the same no matter which behavior path was
selected. And the short term pain what shows up first should have
prevented in behavior from being learned to go that way in the first place.
However, our brain is not perfect in it's implementation. Something in the
basic implementation of our brains can make it renforce this behavior. In
effect, the large pleasure in the end outweighs the smaller pain at the
beginning. I don't know what type of studies have been done on this, but I
suspect that this behavior is something that any of us would learn to
"like" if we were simply exposed to it enough because I suspect it's
something built into all of us.
Once you learn the behavior, I suspect it becomes self renforcing, and you
get to the point that pain makes you want to have more pain because the
brain in effect belives this is going to lead to great pleasure real soon
now.
There is no doubt tons of behavior research that has a lot of real numbers
and knowledge about these effects. At some point, we will know enough
about the inside of the brain to match it up, and explain, all the numbers.
And, when we get decent learning hardware built, we will have yet another
tool for understanding these effects. But enter humanity. If we do create
software that can do good learning, when does it transform from AI research
to cruel and unusul punishment of lab machines? Very odd trying to think
like that.
> > If you thought the getting the culture to accept that the world was
> > round was, hard, wait to you what this does.
> >
> > It's the death of the belief in the soul.
> >
> > It's the death of the belief in all Gods.
> >
> > It's the death of the belief in knowledge.
> >
> > It's the death of the belief in concepts.
> >
> > It's the death of the belief in the consciocus mind.
> >
> > It's the death of the belief in software.
> >
> > It's the death of the belief in philosopy.
I realized after posting I had missed something huge and obvious here.
That is, the bias created by my own personal perspective.
The two sides are merging, neither is going away. I've said that, but I
didn't fully grasp it until after my post. What this means is that the
body is going into the mind, as much as the mind is moving into the body.
It's just as valid to look at this from both sides. Since I happen to have
selected a life style and viewpoint which is is highly focused on the
material side, I looked at this as if the spirtial side was coming over to
join me. But it's just as valid to look at in the reverse direction, the
material side is packing it's bags, and moving into the spirtial world.
So it's just as valid to see this merge as one of reality, or the
environment, moving into the mind, as it is to think about it as the mind
moving into reality.
From my side, I can see how this is true, because if you understand that
"we" are our brain hrdware, you can look at what it has access to. It has
sensory input lines which act logically just like morse code, and effector
output lines, which are like telegraph signals going out. It's stuck in a
room where the only connection to the outside world are these banks of
telegraph lines. It can not touch the real world. The only idea of
existence this brain can have is what it learns by listing to the incoming
telegrpath signals, and by sending outgoing telegraphy signals. This is
the "universe" to our brain. It nothing but a world of signs/language.
And it's a world the brain has to reverse engineer on it's own, because
there is no one else "here" to teach it the meaning of the langauge. It
has to create understanding on it's own from this information. So the
world is not real, to the brain, it's all virtual.
But, it's equally valid to look at from both perspectives. It's as much
"real", as it is "virtual". Those of us that chose to call it "real", can
keep doing that for now. Those of us that called it spirtual, can keep
doing that for now. The imporatnce is that we will be able to merge are
two sides of the language into a common understand of meaning as we gain
more understaning of the brain, which links the two worlds.
> > 1. Data (the robot from STTNG), has no emotions. This is because we
> > didn't see the real connection between man (the soul), and the machine.
> > We say machines don't have no soul. What do we say now that we are a
> > machine? We have to finish our work on AI to fully answer that, but
> > basically, the answer is, "not all machines have souls, but intelligent
> > machines do". You can't have a machine as intellignt as data, without
> > a soul, and without emotion. The emotions are that motivation box I
> > talked about and you just can not build working AI hardware without it.
> > It's like trying to build an engine without a fuel source.
>
>
> In my way of thinking there are three main types of intelligence
> in our world: chemical intelligence like plants, where all information
> passed is through chemicals; electrical like our AI computers and your
> Data example above; and electro-chemical like animal life, where there
> is a combination of the other two methods employed synergistically
> together.
Well, I have not pushed the meaning of intelligence to cover that span. I
have pushed the term evolution of complexity, to cover not only that type
of "intelligence", but everything in the universe. Evolution is not
something which _only_ created life. That's a very false understand of
evolution. Evolution is the very nature of the universe which gives rise
to all structure. A rock roling down a hill side is undergoing the same
forces of evolution which created us. In addition, evolutionary forces to
not stop with us. The huge split in our understanding of reality which we
created by including the false belief of two types of existence (maternal
and spirtial), also caused us to separate nature, from man-made effects.
That, like so much else, created by our false primitive, is just totaly
wrong. It's all nature. It's all the result of the normal evolutionary
forces which come from the flow of energy (the real God here this creates
everything).
Everything in the universe is being molded, by the forces of Evolution (the
work of God). If you want to justify your langauge use of "plants being a
form of intelligence" then you really have to extend the use of
"intelligenct" to all the work of God I think. A pile of rocks is a form
of intelligence for example.
In the evoution of complexity, there are many technology revolutions which
creates a progression, but not a continuum, from a pile of rocks (unable to
clone it's pattern on it's own), to a wave in the water (able to reproduce
but not without deathy of parent), to asexual life (able to clone, but not
cross breed), to bisexual reproduction (able to clone and corss breed).
The types of "intelligence" you make reference to are really better
described (it seems to me) as just different technologies of life, or
"evolved complexity".
It's the learning brain which is yet another important technological
feature created in this progression of complexity by evolution that
actually creates intelligence. It's an evolution simulator for behavior.
It's the same type of technological step as going from hard-coded machines
(mechanical adding machine), to programable machines, (computers). It's a
fundimential technolgogy change.
But not only did evolution create a programable life form, it gave it a
"programmer" to go along with it. It's a very stupid programmer for sure
(the motivation hardware), but it can be looked at like that. It's really
acting more like a boss than a programmer (who is the boss of the machine
he programs).
It's because we are a form of life which is self programing in effect, we
are a very different class of lifeform. We program ourself understand the
direction of our boss (motivation hardware), which works for the big guy,
God.
Everything lower than us without learning brains was programmed directly by
God. God has created, and modified, all the functions of the lower
lifeforms. But God got tired of the work, and made the learnijg brain
animals fundimentially different. He allowed us to program ourself. And
this I think is where we should separte the intelligent from the non
ingelligent life forms. I.e., this is where we should allow the span of
the word "intellignet" to reach.
Now, however, I suspect that when we study lower life forms, we will find
many technologies that are also in effect, self programming technologies.
They might be minor chemical systems at work, but once we understand them,
they will be as much "self programing" as we are, just based on a different
type of technology (like you said, chemical vs electical). And then we
won't be able to draw such a clear line.
Hum, yes, I'm already seeing the problem. I think I see how you got to
your thinking. What "self programming" means is simply we adapt to our
environment in some way after we are created. And a plant which grows
towards the sunshine sure has self programing features in it as well. And
a rock pile which chanegs shape when you step on it is adapting to the
needs of it's environment.
Ok, I see your point about trying to use the word "intelligence" to talk
about that stuff. Over time we just have to igure out what words to use
where as a culture.
> The electrical side can handle the true, hardcore "core
> beliefs" and the chemical can step on the core beliefs and either
> modify them temporarily or permanently depending on the situation.
Well, that may be how we work, but that's just an implementation issue that
is not a fundimetial concept in the understanding of the universe. We need
to keep diging and understand everything there is about how our implention
of intelligence works, but we will learn to build other types of "life"
very different from our self very soon (not talking DNA life, but machine
life).
> So
> the emotions are more likely handled by chemicals and/or chemical
> influenced hard-wiring.
Yeah, I've always suspected that was the way it worked in our brain.
Because the emotions have to effect large sections at the same time, and
since there is no indication of "control wires" running to all neurons, the
best guess would the use of chemical paths to do that. But in a transistor
machine, it might work better with control wires and using electic siganls
for emotinos as well. It's all just engineering implementation issues once
you understand the underlying nature of the technology.
> Most Native American Indians of the various
> Algonquin tribes hold a belief in the manitou, a spirit that permeates
> everthing including tables chairs and computers. Of course, there is
> also Guiche Manitou, the Great Spirit that guides and permeates all.
> So Algonquins would feel it unavoidable for Data to have a soul, he
> certainly would have a very powerful manitou.
You can bet that as we study the true relationhops off all the spirtial
worlds to our scientic/phscial world we will find that they got a lot more
right than they were ever given credit for by science. It's going to be a
big "I told you so" from the spiritual side, which really came first and
explained everythig to us first.
> > 2. It is thought that the spirtial world and the world of machines, and
> > science, are two differnent things. One deals with the physical world,
> > the other with the mind, and the emotions. The solution to AI and
> > "fixing" the langauge, makes it all the same. The job of getting tese
> > two "in line" is going to take time. But it means a lot of things,
> > like "geeks are people to", and that the pursit of a perfect blanced
> > set of behaviors to produce the perfect blance of reward and pushisment
> > is the true meaning of life.
> >
>
> I thought that, in the above, you were leaning towards
> "consciousness" as being the "new world mind". It is growth of
> consciousness by experience that energy itself, being the only "thing"
> that exists, craves. It is the only type of growth that it can
> experience over time given the constraints of spacetime on energy.
> Well, that's not strictly true, there is one other type of growth,
> that of entropy.
entropy is just the flow of energy. Energy, as far as I think we know,
doens't grow. It flows. And the flow of Energy is what creates the
evolution of structure in the universe. The flow of energy is God really,
not Energy itself. And all the strucure in the universe is the work of
God.
However, Energy doesn't really seem to exist anyway, so there's another
problem area. Energy is more a property of the state of matter. Is this
because we (or I) don't udnerstand matter and that Enerty really is the
only thing that exists? This "new world" I think will really give science
a bost because science becomes a basic concept in the true meaning of life
and part of the the true pursuit of happeness (through all forms of
improving understanding).
> But growth of entropy is dissipative to energy and
> is, probably, viewed by energy to be, if anything is, evil.
No, no no. Entropy is NOT is not disorder or chaos. Thats a folk
perception of entropy from the 1890s that just won't die. It is not any
type of evil. It's just a measure of the amount of change when energy
moves. If anything, it is a measure of the work of God.
A great site for getting a modern perspective on entropy is:
http://www.secondlaw.com/
> However,
> growth of consciousness is extropic. It brings "stuff" from your
> "world of the unreal" into the real. I would describe you "world of
> the unreal" as the "plane of the abstract" and say that our mind
> bridges between this abstract plane and 4D spacetime. It is the
> interface of "that which is the mind" that links the physical 4D
> thinker to his thought, which is based in the abstract plane.
> Relative intelligence allows one to cast a larger net into the
> abstract plane in order to gather what's there. The mind is a "field
> effect" that acts as an interface between these two realms. I say
> this based on very tenous "evidence" of scenarios where people are
> thinking about something similar and "have the same thought". They
> were both "casting" in the same area and both grasped th concept. I
> have also encountered situations where my wife and I had very similar
> thought without trying to think of similar things. It's that "being
> on the same wavelength" effect. There's also the effect of having
> that feeling of being watched and then turning around to see someone
> looking at you. All of these situations, to me, point towards what
> could best be described as a "mental field" that exists around us that
> is our mind. Sometimes it "interferes" or overlaps with the field of
> another sentient.
You live in a different plane of existence that I do (a simple engineer).
I hardly understand a thing you wrote above.
But what I do know is that all my langauge and understanding of machines,
and your langauge and understanding of consciousness and "life in the mind"
are going to merge into one langauge, and one understanding, of everything.
It's no longer goint to be two parallel tracks of work and thought and
understanding. We are going to fix that 10,000 year old rift of belief
that we "needed" to parallel paths for some reason.
In trying to figure out the word extropic meant (not in the dictionary),
google led me to his page:
http://home.comcast.net/~reillyjones/history.html
A History of Extropic Thought:
Parallel Conceptual Development of Technicism and Humanism
This is exactly what I am taking about. Those two parallel conceptual
paths of understaing are going to become one. Once we get this AI stuff
more "real", it's gone to open the flood gates, and the two worlds are
going to cross pollinate and become one. The effect of the paradigm shift
will quickly touch everyone on the earth once it gets rolling. But, to get
it rolling, these extraordinary claims will need extraordinary proof, and
that doesn't exist yet. But it's building.
> I don't find it hard to grasp but it does shake the foundations
> of many. I would say they built their houses in the wrong place.
Very much so. :)
> Sometimes the firmer ground is that which is more ethereal. But
> that's another plane altogether. ;-)
> Cheers,
> Pat
--
Immortalist
Then you are claiming that nothing caused the big bang, or that there is no
chance that like in string theory and multiple universes, that universes pop
in and out of existence and are aligned like in a large loaf of bread of
slices each of which are universes? Now that is a strange new theory and if
it turns out to be as verifiable as the big bang then you statement is to be
considered as you consider Kant's who's statement shall then be accepted as
acceptable?
Parallel Universes
The extra dimension of space required to unify string theory suggests that
we may be trapped on just one tiny slice of a higher-dimensional universe.
running time 5:03
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/media2/3014_r_04.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
Immortalist
"Pat Harrington" <PatrickDH...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7517a083.04041...@posting.google.com...
Then you are claiming that nothing caused the big bang, or that there is no
chance that like in string theory and multiple universes, that universes pop
in and out of existence and are aligned like in a large loaf of bread of
slices each of which are universes? Now that is a strange new theory and if
it turns out to be as verifiable as the big bang then you statement is to be
considered as you consider Kant's who's statement shall then be accepted as
acceptable?
Parallel Universes
The extra dimension of space required to unify string theory suggests that
we may be trapped on just one tiny slice of a higher-dimensional universe.
running time 5:03
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/media2/3014_r_04.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
Therefore if something comes of this string theory -ten years- from now,
then you also like your claim about Kant can't say anything about reasonable
beginnings? But you seem to be acting like all the date is in and there is
nothing more to learn about the universe and reasonable beginnings.
But even then, Kant would be right that these would all be assumptions
anyway.
Ted Warring
> say beyond your possible experience to claim we can know if we control
> events or not or somewhat, along with what you left out, the contradictory
> part, about our possible knowledge of the regress of causes. So the
> posibility to control events AND the regrees problem = the third Antinomy,
> let us begin loc;
>
Philosophers usually confuse me. They use the impossibility of
absolute knowledge as a kind of nihilistic "proof" that the opposing
opinion is invalid because it is unprovable, and then they go on to
offer their own beliefs as if the same didn't apply in their favored
case. I have also noticed a "wear them down with volume and OLD
references" tactic. It all boils down to a belief system in the end.
I am ok with choosing to believe in causality. At least it is
something I can observe in some degree consistently, whereas a magic
homonculous is a bit more difficult to observe.
So I will not recant (or is that re-Kant?).
Regards,
Ted Warring
Ted Warring
> say beyond your possible experience to claim we can know if we control
> events or not or somewhat, along with what you left out, the contradictory
> part, about our possible knowledge of the regress of causes. So the
> posibility to control events AND the regrees problem = the third Antinomy,
> let us begin loc;
>
Philosophers usually confuse me. They use the impossibility of
David Longley
> But what about masochists who derive pleasure from pain? And
>tickling in which we take extreme pleasure and then, all of a sudden,
>we want it to stop, as it's become too much...it's now painful. There
>are these pain/pleasure boundaries that are sometimes very thin.
It would be interesting to give them naloxone and see if they would
still continue to "self-injure". There are opiates in all the primary
sensory nuclei.
One way of talking about this would be to posit that the reduction of
extreme levels of stimulation, or the converse, ie failure of learned
defensive/protective behaviours ("surprising" levels of stimulation or
nociception) to be a sine qua non for what we sometimes refer to as
reinforcement. That's a rather condensed version of something I've
elaborated elsewhere in the context of some ideas about "neophobia" and
the inhibition of endogenous opioid peptides.
Whilst I'm no great fan of hedonistic theories of reinforcement or
reward, I think Kant considered pleasure to be a secondary effect to
pain.
For what it's worth, I think "pleasure" and "pain" are just some of the
fragments of behaviour that we learn (about).
--
David Longley
Pat Harrington
Yes and no. I have thought about it and chose my wording
carefully. All of this depends on the geometry, the shape of the
continuum. I believe it to be what I could best describe as a
goedelian hyperfold. I believe there to be at least two dimensions to
time. Only one is ever really experienced though. The
inflation/expansion of the Big Bang, in which I am a believer, expands
out like a balloon with all the matter/energy on the surface of the
balloon. When it expands to a certain point, both spatial and
temporal, whose next point appears to be in the center empty area of
the balloon. All the energy gets squished through the point and
"appears" as though "all of the energy that ever was" appeared at one
point and at one time, thus effectively beginning a nother Big Bang
sequence that will never interfere with the previous shell universe.
The answer to how there can be an effective first cause, which is all
that is really required, lies in geometry. So you can have strings,
which I accept, and a Big Bang and relativity. The Y axis of time
allows for all the other bubbles that could experience inflationary
periods throughout a macrocosmic foamy goedelian hyperfolded
spacetime continuum.
> > Every time we
> > make a choice, we set a certain fate to the exclusion of all others.
> > Fair play! So we have one cause and the rest are effects; I can live
> > with that and agree completely.
>
> No. In fact, a First Cause falsifies determinism, for it implies
> that not all events are necessarily caused. If one event can be
> uncaused, causes are not required for events. The only way
> determinism can be true is if the past is infinite.
>
It's the "effective" first cause that matters.
> > With respect to every event point causing itself, that would mean
> > that every event point was completely isolated from all the others,
> > unless they all caused themselves at once, in a beginning, and THEN
> > reacted to one another.
>
> No. If time is a continuum, it had to be created all at once, in a
> sense, since it all already exists. In fact, "at once" has no meaning.
> That thing we call the present and the passage of time as well are
> features of observation.
>
Note I said "a beginning" not "the beginning".
> > I would find that possible but less plausible
> > that one object, energy, causing interelation to itself.
>
> The whole idea of cause loses meaning in a universe where time is just
> a line or a circle.
Not at all. A cause is a reason. Time flows in the space
between events. Time may wrap but there's a point that acts like a
start/finish line in a race on a continuous track. Once you cross the
0,0 point, you begin again.
David Longley
> But what about masochists who derive pleasure from pain? And
>tickling in which we take extreme pleasure and then, all of a sudden,
>we want it to stop, as it's become too much...it's now painful. There
>are these pain/pleasure boundaries that are sometimes very thin.
It would be interesting to give them naloxone and see if they would
still continue to "self-injure". There are endogenous opioid peptides in
all the primary sensory nuclei.
One way of talking about this would be to posit the reduction of extreme
levels of stimulation as switching them on (or conversely, the failure
of learned defensive/protective behaviours ie "surprising" levels of
stimulation or nociception switching them *off*) as the sine qua non for
what we sometimes refer to as reinforcement. That's a rather too
condensed version of something I've elaborated elsewhere in the context
of some ideas about "neophobia" and the inhibition of endogenous opioid
peptides and then their disinhibition and the acquisition of new
fragments of behaviour ("habit formation" ;-).
Whilst I'm no great fan of hedonistic theories of reinforcement or
reward (I tend to prefer the operant approach), I think Kant considered
pleasure to be a secondary effect to pain - but that was just an opinion
of course.
1Z
You have the straw of non-local, holistic determinism to cling to, but that
is not the kind of determinism that philosophical determinists wish to assert.
1Z
If you think 'determinism' means 'There is more than one thing that
can happen, and it all does happen'. Which philosophical determinists
never do.
Curt Welch
> Whilst I'm no great fan of hedonistic theories of reinforcement or
> reward (I tend to prefer the operant approach), I think Kant considered
> pleasure to be a secondary effect to pain - but that was just an opinion
> of course.
In all my theorizing, I've come to conlusion that the idealized
intelligence algorithm has is one measure of "goodness". pain/pleasure are
just two ends of the same scale. So from that perspective pleasure can't
be a secondary effect of pain (other than the obvious one I already talked
about that the reduction in pain acts like pleasure). But I could easilly
believe that a real world implementation of intelligence (our brain) could
use somehing more complex such as one chemical to make the machine do the
reward modifications, and a second chemical to make the machine do the
punish modifications. And normally, it would not have both chemicals in
the system at the same time. But under some conditions, the brain can
actually be conditioned to release some of both under conditions of pain
that would normally only have one.
Curt Welch
> For what it's worth, I think "pleasure" and "pain" are just some of the
> fragments of behaviour that we learn (about).
I think reward and punish are the core control system of the brain, and
that all our behaviors are learned because of it, but that our behavior of
talking about pain and pleasure and "knowing" they exist, are all just
learnred behaviours about ourself - and like a lot of self-knowledge in our
culture, it's seldom very accurate.
David, in the past I think you were one of the people that corrected me on
the pain/pleasure vs reward/punish words. I used pain and pleasure all the
time when you said I was actually talking about "reward" and "punish".
That's fine of course because I was failing to communicate if I wasn't
using the correct words.
But in my new light of understand, I see they are really the same thing, so
you can use either words and still be "right". This is once agin the
mind/body split in the langauge that we never should have created in the
first place. punish/reward is what the behaviorists use to talk about from
the physcial world size, and pain/pleasure are what we use to talk about it
from the "mind" side of the universe. But that split between the two
worlds doesn't actually exist, we just think it does in our minds
description of reality. When we fix our thinking, and our use of the
langauge, they become one and the same.
David B. Held
news:esmMkODe...@longley.demon.co.uk...
> [...]
> For what it's worth, I think "pleasure" and "pain" are just some of
> the fragments of behaviour that we learn (about).
So when you stick your hand on a hot stove, you have to "learn"
to feel the pain? I'm sorry, but I've never met a person that had
to be conditioned to feel pain. If you could cite any examples
from the literature, I'd appreciate it.
Dave
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Glen M. Sizemore
to feel the pain? I'm sorry, but I've never met a person that had
to be conditioned to feel pain. If you could cite any examples
from the literature, I'd appreciate it.
GS: You can't understand this because you don't closely examine the
conditions under which the term pain is used. Sometimes we say that a person
or animal is "in pain" or "feels pain" etc. when we observe reflexes such as
the one you describe. In addition, we also use the language of pain in the
context of observing escape and avoidance. But none of these is the same as
what happens when we learn to describe ourselves as "in pain." Such
descriptions are certainly not reflexive, and they are not escape or
avoidance responses. Instead, they are "reports" about our own behavior -
they are "reports about our response to certain stimuli." More precisely,
they are verbal responses that appear to be under discriminative control of
our own pain responses. Now, you have a problem. There are two
possibilities: 1.) we are aware of the aspects of the world that we will
eventually come to talk about all along, or 2.) we become aware of aspects
of the world when our verbal behavior is brought under their discriminative
control. See your problem? The only way to establish "reporting responses"
is to arrange the sorts of contingencies that produce discriminative
control. To put it such that even you might understand it - people have to
be taught to make "reporting responses" and the way they are taught is by
"feedback" (i.e., reinforcement) from one's community. But #2 holds that it
is precisely such "feedback" that gives rise to "awareness."
"But....but...."you sputter impotently, "the person must be aware of the
pain in order to pull their hand back!" And the answer is "Yes, this ONE
MEANING OF 'AWARE.'" But it is not ALL MEANINGS and that is precisely the
problem with colloquial terms. There is another meaning of "aware" that has
to do with the sorts of phenomena I just described, and surely it is this
one that you want to get at. Or rather, you are assuming that the sort of
awareness I am describing is always there and, in fact, responsible for the
reflexive behavior that you pointed to. Right? I assert that the two "kinds
of awareness" are different The first involves responding to stimuli, and
the second refers to responding to one's own behavior as stimuli. And I
assert that we are not aware of our own behavior until contingencies are
arranged that bring our verbal responses under their discriminative control.
You can disagree all you like with the terminology I use, but it can be
easily operationalized, so to speak. Let's take a nonhuman example, just to
make sure you understand (we can always hope):
Does a rat feel the effects of cocaine when you inject it into them? It
certainly alters the behavior of the animal in many complex ways, but does
it feel the effects? That isn't a rhetorical question. If you answer "yes"
here, as you are welcome to do, it should be clear that this is simply an
assumption on your part. Don't claim that anything "shows this" because it
is simply true by definition. But let's say that you don't assert a priori
that the rat feels the drug just on the basis that its behavior is altered.
Let's say that you want proof - you want the rat to tell you when it has
been injected with cocaine. How would you do this? Well, you would have to
arrange it so that making one response, say pressing the left lever, is
reinforced when cocaine has been injected, and pressing the right lever is
reinforced when saline is injected. Soon the rat comes to press the "cocaine
lever" when cocaine is injected (and other similar stimulants) and to press
the "saline lever" when saline (or very small doses of cocaine) are
injected. But has the rat "learned to use what it already felt" to get food,
or did the rat "become aware of the effects of cocaine" because of the
training?
"David B. Held" <dh...@codelogicconsulting.com> wrote in message
news:c5s56i$6a0$1...@news.astound.net...
Allan C Cybulskie
Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
> Does a rat feel the effects of cocaine when you inject it into them? It
> certainly alters the behavior of the animal in many complex ways, but does
> it feel the effects? That isn't a rhetorical question. If you answer "yes"
> here, as you are welcome to do, it should be clear that this is simply an
> assumption on your part. Don't claim that anything "shows this" because it
> is simply true by definition. But let's say that you don't assert a priori
> that the rat feels the drug just on the basis that its behavior is altered.
> Let's say that you want proof - you want the rat to tell you when it has
> been injected with cocaine. How would you do this? Well, you would have to
> arrange it so that making one response, say pressing the left lever, is
> reinforced when cocaine has been injected, and pressing the right lever is
> reinforced when saline is injected. Soon the rat comes to press the "cocaine
> lever" when cocaine is injected (and other similar stimulants) and to press
> the "saline lever" when saline (or very small doses of cocaine) are
> injected. But has the rat "learned to use what it already felt" to get food,
> or did the rat "become aware of the effects of cocaine" because of the
> training?
Well, let's say this. I say "Yes, it does feel the effects". Why?
Because I assume that its physiological state is similar enough to mine
that it should be impacted similarly to me in that state, and that the
behaviour it shows reflects an impact. Can I say with 100% certainty
that it feels the effects of cocaine? No, I can't, because that's an
internal matter to the rat. And even your test doesn't really show that
it feels the experience either. But the answer to your last question is
clearly the first one. The rat does not become aware that cocaine has
an effect on it because you train it to press a lever when it feels it.
Let's apply this to pain. I ascribe pain to someone when they place
their hand on a hot burner REGARDLESS of their behaviour in accordance
with that. Let's say that someone places their hand on a burner, leaves
it there for 5 seconds, and then calmly removes it. I'll ask "Didn't
that hurt?" because I assume that it did, in fact, hurt. But they don't
act like I do when I do the same action. So it isn't behaviour, but
circumstance and empathy that lead me to ascribe pain to someone. Yes,
I have to have a common language (or verbal behaviour) to communicate
pain to others and talk about it, there seems to be no reason to assume
that until I can communicate pain, I do not experience it.
JGCasey
"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:3xkgc.34410$2Z6.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
The problem of determining if someone is conscious is of real
importance in surgery. There have been cases where the patient
is given the paralysis drug that removes any overt displays of
behaviour but not enough anaesthetic to remove all the pain.
Indeed in my country there was a case of a woman receiving
a caesarean and the equipment had delivered no anaesthsia
at all!!
John Casey
David B. Held
news:5d6550011234ab4c...@news.teranews.com...
> [...]
> GS: You can't understand this because you don't closely examine
> the conditions under which the term pain is used.
Actually, I think it highlights an important observation. Sizemore
talks about behaviorism as if it is a neatly stitched up explanation
of all biological phenomena. To him, the paradigm of "fragments
of behavior" must therefore be applied comprehensively. That,
along with the foundational premise that all behavior is learned
leads to problems describing reflexive actions. We won't even
go into genetically innate behaviors.
> Now, you have a problem.
Is it?
> There are two possibilities: 1.) we are aware of the aspects of
> the world that we will eventually come to talk about all along, or
> 2.) we become aware of aspects of the world when our verbal
> behavior is brought under their discriminative control.
This sounds very Whorfian to me.
> See your problem?
I think I see why think there is a problem, but I don't see an actual
problem, no.
> The only way to establish "reporting responses" is to arrange
> the sorts of contingencies that produce discriminative control.
Right. The only way to learn how to say "I hurt" is to hurt.
> To put it such that even you might understand it - people have to
> be taught to make "reporting responses" and the way they are
> taught is by "feedback" (i.e., reinforcement) from one's community.
> But #2 holds that it is precisely such "feedback" that gives rise
> to "awareness."
Right. And think #2 is whacked out. The idea that you can only
be aware of something after you learn to verbalize it is ridiculous.
I am aware of all kinds of internal states that I am utterly at a loss
to verbalize. If you are not similarly sensitive, then I wonder if you
are actually human. Try telling a doctor which part hurts when you
are ill, and then try to convince him that you aren't actually aware
of an ailment because you haven't been reinforced by your
community to verbalize it.
> [...]
> Or rather, you are assuming that the sort of awareness I am
> describing is always there and, in fact, responsible for the
> reflexive behavior that you pointed to. Right? I assert that the
> two "kinds of awareness" are different
Even granting the notion that there are "multiple kinds of
awareness", I would like to point out that Longley made no such
distinction in saying how pain or pleasure is a learned
"behavioral fragment". Basically, I'm saying that you're doing
mental gymnastics (there's that blasphemous intensional
language again!) to salvage an idiom with questionable
explanatory power.
> The first involves responding to stimuli, and the second refers
> to responding to one's own behavior as stimuli.
I'm not seeing this as a clear distinction. In the first case, you
must mean only stimuli that are externally caused. But I don't
see why those are magically different than stimuli that are the
result of your own behavior. I mean, in the end, your body
detects them through the same sensory mechanisms, right?
So to say that the brain discriminates those would be to say
that the brain is inferring something about the cause of the
stimuli, which sounds awfully intensional to me. I might have
to report you to the Behavioral Inquisition for this one.
> And I assert that we are not aware of our own behavior until
> contingencies are arranged that bring our verbal responses
> under their discriminative control.
So you're saying that I am not aware of my own "pain behavior"
until I learn how to say: "Ouch! I hit my knee"?? Or, I can't have
a stomach ache until I learn to say: "I have a stomach ache now,
but I did not have one an hour ago." Glen, this is some very
incredible stuff you're trying to feed me. If you are honestly trying
to say that I am not aware of internal states unless and until I
learn to verbalize those states, I have to say: "Hogwash!" If
you say: "What do you detect your internal state to be?" I will
say: "Well, it's basically impossible to explain to you." That
means my verbal response is not at all discriminated by all the
nuances I am *feeling*. But that does *not* mean I am *not
feeling them*. It just means that since we *don't have a shared
experience of my internal state*, there is no *way* to verbalize
it in its entirety.
> You can disagree all you like with the terminology I use,
I don't care about the terminology. Let's just talk about the
concepts at stake.
> but it can be easily operationalized, so to speak. Let's take a
> nonhuman example, just to make sure you understand (we can
> always hope):
...that through a change of language I can understand nonsense?
Keep dreaming...
> Does a rat feel the effects of cocaine when you inject it into them?
> It certainly alters the behavior of the animal in many complex ways,
> but does it feel the effects?
Aren't you kinda forced to not talk about this? Aren't you breaking
some rule or something?
> That isn't a rhetorical question. If you answer "yes" here, as you
> are welcome to do, it should be clear that this is simply an
> assumption on your part.
Yes, but I think I can make a pretty good argument for it.
> Don't claim that anything "shows this" because it is simply true by
> definition. But let's say that you don't assert a priori that the rat
> feels the drug just on the basis that its behavior is altered.
I argue that you could, in theory, show that the rat "feels" the drug
*without even observing its behavior*.
> Let's say that you want proof - you want the rat to tell you when it
> has been injected with cocaine.
Here's the problem. You are so conditioned by behaviorism that
alternative possibilities simply elude you. If I want proof, I will map
out the rat's brain, neuron by neuron. When I find a neural cluster
that only gets activated when certain biochemical changes occur
in the rat's physiology, I will argue that the activation of that cluster
corresponds to the rat "feeling the effects of cocaine". Whether
the rat can later "bring the behavioral response under
discriminatory control" or not is not much relevant to me. The rat
doesn't need to learn how to "feel" the cocaine any more than it
needs to learn how to use its retinas or activate it's muscular
system. It either has those sensory/motor capabilities or it doesn't.
> [...]
> But has the rat "learned to use what it already felt" to get food,
> or did the rat "become aware of the effects of cocaine" because
> of the training?
What the rat learned is a reward system that you imposed on it.
To say that you "taught the rat how to feel the effects of cocaine"
is absurdly non-behavioral on the face of it. Doesn't that seem
odd to you?
ken
> > [...]
> [...]
> One way of talking about this would
> be to posit that the reduction of
> extreme levels of stimulation,
> [...]
Do you keep a straight-face while doing
this sort of thing?
ROFL.
k. p. collins
ken
> > [...]
> [...]
> One way of talking about this would be
> to posit the reduction of extreme levels
> of stimulation as switching them on
> [...]
Do you do this sort of thing with a straight-
face?
ROFL.
k. p. collins
Immortalist
"Ted Warring" <Ted.W...@Artificialingenuity.com> wrote in message
news:268723da.04041...@posting.google.com...
Kant merely claimed that to propose determinism or not determinism was to go
beyond what is possible for our concepts to provide. Like if I ask you what
is around the corner out of your sight. Simple logic really. In that
"anitinomy he tried to discover a contradiction between the idea of
determinism and the infinite regress argument. These are common arguments in
philosophy and shouldn't have to be explained.
As for this idea that the homonculus is magic, wrong, its been relatively
proven repeatedly for the last 30 years:
Stimulation_anywhere_on_the_cerebral_cortex could bring responses of one
kind or another, but he found that only by stimulating the temporal lobes
(the lower parts of the brain on each side) could he elicit meaningful,
integrated responses such as memory, including sound, movement, and color.
These memories were much more distinct than usual memory, and were often
about things unremembered under ordinary circumstances. Yet if Penfield
stimulated the same area again, the exact same memory popped up -- a certain
song, the view from a childhood window -- each time. It seemed he had found
a physical basis for memory, an "engram."
He also developed a map of the brain, often portrayed as a cartoon called
the motor homunculus (miniature human being). This cartoon character has
features drawn according to how much brain space they take up. Therefore,
lips and fingers with their high number of nerve endings are larger than
arms and legs.
The famous map he developed is no magic freind:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=homunculus&spell=1
---------------------------------
Here is the same text in context:
In the 1950s, Penfield was trying to treat patients with intractable
epilepsy. Before an epileptic seizure, he knew, patients experience an
"aura," a warning that the seizure is about to occur. Penfield thought if he
could provoke this aura with a mild electric current on the brain, then he
would have located the source of the seizure activity and could remove or
destroy that bit of tissue. While patients were fully conscious, though
anaesthetized, he opened their skulls and tried to ((-pinpoint-)) with
needle point electrodes, the source of their epilepsy.
His technique was often successful, but his experimental surgery led him to
an even more dramatic discovery.
((Stimulation_anywhere_on_the_cerebral_cortex)) could bring responses of one
kind or another, but he found that only by stimulating the temporal lobes
(the lower parts of the brain on each side) could he elicit meaningful,
integrated responses such as memory, including sound, movement, and color.
These memories were much more distinct than usual memory, and were often
about things unremembered under ordinary circumstances. Yet if Penfield
stimulated the same area again, the exact same memory popped up -- a certain
song, the view from a childhood window -- each time. It seemed he had found
a physical basis for memory, an "engram."
He also developed a map of the brain, often portrayed as a cartoon called
the motor homunculus (miniature human being). This cartoon character has
features drawn according to how much brain space they take up. Therefore,
lips and fingers with their high number of nerve endings are larger than
arms and legs.
For a "FULL" description of the poking around with the electrode, written by
William Calvin, click:
Conversations with Neil's Brain
http://www.williamcalvin.com/bk7/bk7.htm
penfield
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhpenf.html
> Regards,
>
> Ted Warring
Immortalist
"Ted Warring" <Ted.W...@Artificialingenuity.com> wrote in message
news:268723da.04041...@posting.google.com...
What would you need to know to show that determinism is necessary? Would you
have to know all of the future?
> Regards,
>
> Ted Warring
ken
news:c5s56i$6a0$1...@news.astound.net...
> news:esmMkODe...@longley.demon.co.uk...
> > [...]
> > For what it's worth, I think "pleasure"
> > and "pain" are just some of the fragments
> > of behaviour that we learn (about).
>
> So when you stick your hand on a hot
> stove, you have to "learn" to feel the
> pain? I'm sorry, but I've never met a
> person that had to be conditioned to
> feel pain. If you could cite any examples
> from the literature, I'd appreciate it.
Hi David [Held],
Longley is 'just' playing 'word-games'.
Cheers, David [Held],
ken [k. p. collins]
Glen M. Sizemore
> Does a rat feel the effects of cocaine when you inject it into them? It
> certainly alters the behavior of the animal in many complex ways, but does
> it feel the effects? That isn't a rhetorical question. If you answer "yes"
> here, as you are welcome to do, it should be clear that this is simply an
> assumption on your part. Don't claim that anything "shows this" because it
> is simply true by definition. But let's say that you don't assert a priori
> that the rat feels the drug just on the basis that its behavior is
altered.
> Let's say that you want proof - you want the rat to tell you when it has
> been injected with cocaine. How would you do this? Well, you would have to
> arrange it so that making one response, say pressing the left lever, is
> reinforced when cocaine has been injected, and pressing the right lever is
> reinforced when saline is injected. Soon the rat comes to press the
"cocaine
> lever" when cocaine is injected (and other similar stimulants) and to
press
> the "saline lever" when saline (or very small doses of cocaine) are
> injected. But has the rat "learned to use what it already felt" to get
food,
> or did the rat "become aware of the effects of cocaine" because of the
> training?
Cybulski: Well, let's say this. I say "Yes, it does feel the effects". Why?
Because I assume that its physiological state is similar enough to mine
that it should be impacted similarly to me in that state, and that the
behaviour it shows reflects an impact.
GS: But this misses the point. The point is that in order for you to "feel
the effects of cocaine," you would have to have first learned to "be aware"
of the behavior that is altered by cocaine. That, at least, is the argument,
and the similarity in physiology doesn't go to that issue. Indeed, though,
it is the similarities in physiology (and, thus, behavior) that allow us to
train the rat to be aware of the behavioral changes produced by cocaine. So,
your comment really says nothing about whether a specific history is
necessary or not. But it really is a conceptual issue, and that was the
bottom line. One has to learn to "report what one 'already' feels," but the
very method by which the report is trained is what behaviorists say is
responsible for the "feeling" in this restricted sense.
Cybulski: Can I say with 100% certainty
that it feels the effects of cocaine? No, I can't, because that's an
internal matter to the rat. And even your test doesn't really show that
it feels the experience either.
GS: Sorry, you are wrong. There is nothing else to control behavior, and it
is quite well controlled. And, it is not necessarily an "internal matter."
Humans can discriminate when rats have been injected with cocaine, and the
rat could be responding to some of the same things that humans observing
them do, albeit from a different perspective.
Cybulski: But the answer to your last question is
clearly the first one. The rat does not become aware that cocaine has
an effect on it because you train it to press a lever when it feels it.
Let's apply this to pain. I ascribe pain to someone when they place
their hand on a hot burner REGARDLESS of their behaviour in accordance
with that. Let's say that someone places their hand on a burner, leaves
it there for 5 seconds, and then calmly removes it. I'll ask "Didn't
that hurt?" because I assume that it did, in fact, hurt. But they don't
act like I do when I do the same action. So it isn't behaviour, but
circumstance and empathy that lead me to ascribe pain to someone.
GS: This is utter nonsense. I would think that if you saw someone place
their hand on a burner and calmly sit there, you would, in fact, conclude
that it doesn't hurt.
Cybulski: Yes,
I have to have a common language (or verbal behaviour) to communicate
pain to others and talk about it, there seems to be no reason to assume
that until I can communicate pain, I do not experience it.
GS: Of course there is a reason, and that reason comes from an examination
of the behavior that we call "communicating pain." It is plausible to say
that such "reporting responses" are operant responses under discriminative
control of the our own responses to painful stimuli. And that, then, brings
us to the Lashley-Wade hypothesis. There is, in fact, no reason to believe
that one is capable of observing their own pain responses unless they are
trained to do so, for it is only after such training that they do.
ken
news:5d6550011234ab4c...@news.teranews.com...
> news:c5s56i$6a0$1...@news.astound.net...
>
> to feel the pain? I'm sorry, but I've never met a person that had
> to be conditioned to feel pain. If you could cite any examples
> from the literature, I'd appreciate it.
>
> GS: You can't understand this because you don't closely examine the
> conditions under which the term pain is used. Sometimes we say that a
person
> or animal is "in pain" or "feels pain" etc. when we observe reflexes such
as
> the one you describe. In addition, we also use the language of pain in the
> context of observing escape and avoidance. But none of these is the same
as
> what happens when we learn to describe ourselves as "in pain."
B.S.
It's TD E/I-minimization =throughout=. Period.
> Such descriptions are certainly not reflexive,
When one does not understand that its 'just'
TD E/I-minimization =throughout=, it is.
"Ouch!"
"Ow!"
"Ooomph!"
"Grunt!"
"Grimace!" [AoK, Ap3, "facial expressions"]
"Limp!" [AoK, "Short Paper"]
"Bodily-tenderness!" [AoK, "Short Paper"]
"Auto-weakening compensation!" [AoK, "Short Paper"]
Etc., ad infinitum, at all levels of cognition.
> and they are not escape or
> avoidance responses. Instead, they are "reports" about our own behavior -
No, they are direct reflections of globally-
integrated TD E/I.
> they are "reports about our response to certain stimuli." More precisely,
> they are verbal responses that appear to be under discriminative control
of
> our own pain responses.
B. S.
> Now, you have a problem. There are two
> possibilities: 1.) we are aware of the aspects of the world that we will
> eventually come to talk about all along, or 2.) we become aware of aspects
> of the world when our verbal behavior is brought under their
discriminative
> control. See your problem? The only way to establish "reporting responses"
> is to arrange the sorts of contingencies that produce discriminative
> control.
B. S.
TD E/I-minimization takes care of =all=
of this.
> To put it such that even you might understand it - people have to
> be taught to make "reporting responses"
B. S. See the "responses" above, which
all occur as a function of TD E/I.
> and the way they are taught is by
> "feedback" (i.e., reinforcement) from one's community.
B. S.
> But #2 holds that it
> is precisely such "feedback" that gives rise to "awareness."
B. S.
Awareness occurs as a function of
'blindly'-automated TD E/I-minimiz-
ation as it's been discussed in AoK,
all along.
What you're talking about is that, absent
noxious stimulation, discussions of "pain"
are arbitrary.
But, absent direct correlation to =any=
physically-reality, =all= discussion is
arbitrary.
If one 'discounts' physical reality, then
one can, 'merrily', say =anything=, and
one's saying whatever it is that one has
said is =Inconsequential=.
You and Longley heap-up such B.S. so-
routinely be-cause neither you, nor he,
ever bother to correlate anything you say
rigorously with respect to physical reality.
Otherwise you wouldn't've said the in-
defensible things you said, above.
Sizemore & Longley: "Physical reality?
Who cares about physical reality?" :-]
> "But....but...."you sputter impotently, "the person must be aware of the
> pain in order to pull their hand back!" And the answer is "Yes, this ONE
> MEANING OF 'AWARE.'" But it is not ALL MEANINGS and that is precisely the
> problem with colloquial terms.
=ALL= meanings - 100% - are 100%-TD E/I-
minimization.
You are 'just' taking your 'familiar' 'meanings'
and trying to 'impose' them, Dictatorially, up-
on everyone else.
And, in so doing, all you are 'accomplishing'
is the Great-Wasting of everyone else's en-
ergy.
So, all you are is an energy-thief - thieving
in the name of =nothing= other than that
with which you are 'familiar' - that which
correlates with TD E/I-minimization with-
in your =own= nervous system - and call-
ing =that= stuff "truth", when all it is is that
which has come to be correlated with TD
E/I-minimization within your =own= ner-
vous system.
Are you becoming "aware" of you and
Longley's Error, yet?
> There is another meaning of "aware" that has
> to do with the sorts of phenomena I just described, and surely it is this
> one that you want to get at. Or rather, you are assuming that the sort of
> awareness I am describing is always there and, in fact, responsible for
the
> reflexive behavior that you pointed to. Right? I assert that the two
"kinds
> of awareness" are different The first involves responding to stimuli, and
> the second refers to responding to one's own behavior as stimuli.
=Both= are =just= TD E/I-minimization.
> And I
> assert that we are not aware of our own behavior until contingencies are
> arranged that bring our verbal responses under their discriminative
control.
B. S.
There is no such 'necessity' of ~"arranged
contingency".
There is only "nervous system" and "physical
reality".
Physical reality 'just' is.
Only Jackasses "arrange", and nervous systems
are quite capable of recognizing, and ignoring
Jackasses.
That is, there's no connection between the "con-
tingencies" that Jackasses "arrange" and that up-
on which nervous systems will converge.
Such convergence is all =just= TD E/I-minimiz-
ation.
> You can disagree all you like with the terminology I use, but it can be
> easily operationalized, so to speak. Let's take a nonhuman example, just
to
> make sure you understand (we can always hope):
>
> Does a rat feel the effects of cocaine when you inject it into them? It
> certainly alters the behavior of the animal in many complex ways, but does
> it feel the effects?
To the degree that the cocain skews
TD E/I-minimization, =YES=.
Or do you think that the rat's going
back to the treadle to get another
squirt of cocain is the result of 'chance'?
The skewing of TD E/I-minimization is
topologically-mapped within the rat's
nervous system, and =that= is how
the rat 'knows' how to move in order
for it to obtain another suuirt of cocain.
It's all =just= TD E/I-minimization.
And, when the cocain is introduced,
the skewing of TD E/I-minimization
is physically-mapped within the rat's
nervous system.
> That isn't a rhetorical question. If you answer "yes"
> here, as you are welcome to do, it should be clear that this is simply an
> assumption on your part.
B. S.
The TD E/I-minimization-mapping is
physically-real.
No "assumption".
> Don't claim that anything "shows this" because it
> is simply true by definition.
Ho, ho, ho.
That's all you ever do, Sizemore - be-
cause you 'deny' the physical realities
of nervous systems - because you just
never learned them - which leaves all
"nervous system" stuff inducing relative
TD E/I(up) within your =own= nervous
system - which results in your 'moving
away from' learning "nervous system"
stuff - and about TD E/I-minimization.
> But let's say that you don't assert a priori
> that the rat feels the drug just on the basis that its behavior is
altered.
> Let's say that you want proof - you want the rat to tell you when it has
> been injected with cocaine. How would you do this? Well, you would have to
> arrange it so that making one response, say pressing the left lever, is
> reinforced when cocaine has been injected, and pressing the right lever is
> reinforced when saline is injected. Soon the rat comes to press the
"cocaine
> lever" when cocaine is injected (and other similar stimulants) and to
press
> the "saline lever" when saline (or very small doses of cocaine) are
> injected. But has the rat "learned to use what it already felt" to get
food,
> or did the rat "become aware of the effects of cocaine" because of the
> training?
Such "jumping-through-the-lever-press-hoops"
isn't necessary.
=Anything= that alters TD E/I-minimization
alters behavior.
And the alterations of behavior are as 'lang-
uage'.
Regardless of "arrangement".
It's all =just= TD E/I-minimization.
K. P. Collins
David Longley
<kpaulc@[remove].invalid> writes
I don't expect you to be able to rationally follow why I say these
things Ken, (it's hard enough for me to, especially in ordinary
language). Nor do I expect you to be able to make rational connections
to what was said in bionet.neuroscience not long ago. But one thing you
can be certain of Ken, the researchers at NIMR knew a thing or two about
the brain - not enough about behaviour alas, but lots about the brain
and we didn't pinch what we were doing from you - honest!.
For the benefit of others here who may be puzzled by what I'm tacitly
referring to (although as usual, Glen Sizemore has done an excellent job
of outlining how people who work in these fields actually work and why
they work the way that they do) here is an abstract of some of the
context which was published as a summary, basically for
non-psychologists back in 1981 in the Brit J. Pharmcol. What we are
discussing here is how to talk about these issues, and how to improve
our grasp of how it all may actually work. Some might find it useful to
look back to the extract from Quine's "Mind and Verbal Dispositions"
which was posted in c.a.p recently, and some of the other material in
"Brain, Behaviour and Extensionalism") - although as I have said before,
*any* of Glen's expositions of how those working in the Experimental
Analysis of Behavior work on these matters *empirically* might actually
be more useful for those really prepared to LEARN rather than just
*argue*.
Anyway, this has been posted before, several times. It will no doubt
confuse many who read it, but it's a summary of a couple of years of
experiments beginning in 1979. Some of the background work which started
with lever pressing for IntraCranial Self Stimulation of the arcuate
nucleus of the hypothalamus (a technology which my two supervisors above
were quite skilled with more widely), other work included
Intracerebroventricular infusion of Naloxone - (3rd ventricle), and
others still comprised naloxone/neophobia tests in conjunction with
lesions of ascending monoamine pathways - none of which was as
interesting). The endogenous opiates had only recently been discovered,
and some of the people in other divisions (Peptide Chemistry) as well as
our own Neurophysiology/Neurpharmacology) had played a part in the story
(e.g. Smyth in PC, and, in N/N perhaps less obviously, even Feldberg).
Forget about the details of what it may or not all mean, look at the
methods used - focus on the *behaviour* ie independently of the
endogenous opiates etc, think about what happens even in the untreated
animals (the treated groups just bring that out into bolder relief
perhaps!) For the record, I think the title should really be "Naloxone
Retards The Decline or Habituation of Neophobia" and that it went to
press with the title that it did (Bill thought it was catchy and punchy)
is a bit of a regret - as is the first part of the last sentence of it
as in my view, what they have to learn that it *is* food and these
things they learn are in a sense, "apparatus cues". It is hard to get
make these points clearly to "foreigners" even when they are
pharmacologists ... but if you grasp what the dilemma is that I am
talking about, you may be able to appreciate what I said elsewhere about
talk of "approach and withdrawal" and many of the other concepts of
learning theory are deeply problematic. The reason for that is that even
there, intensional terms are endemic.
J.F.W Deakin and *D C Longley (* Introduced by T J Crow)
National Institute for Medical Research, The Ridgeway, Mill Hill, London
NALOXONE ENHANCES NEOPHOBIA
Several studies report that naloxone, an opiate receptor
antagonist, reduces deprivation induced eating and drinking.
However, in the present study, naloxone (5mg/kg,i.p.) did not
reduce food intake of rats maintained on a 22 h deprivation - 2 h
feeding schedule. In contrast, naloxone (5 mg/kg,i.p.)
progressively reduced water intake in deprived animals to 46% of
saline treated controls. No effects of naloxone (1, 5 mg/kg) on
established bar pressing for food or water were observed with
either continuous or fixed ratio schedules of reinforcement.
However, naloxone (5mg/kg) accelerated extinction of responding
when food and water were no longer available.
Animals treated with naloxone (5mg/kg) during training of the
bar-pressing ate only 26% of the pellets delivered whereas
controls ate all pellets delivered. Since the animals had not
previously experienced the pellets or the operant apparatus, the
possibilities arose that naloxone effects were due to enhanced
neophobic effects of the novel food pellets or novel apparatus
cues, or were due to conditioned taste aversion. Therefore, food
novelty, apparatus novelty and timing of injections were
independently varied in different groups of 8-10 rats treated
with saline or naloxone. Rats were maintained at 85% body weight
with 12g lab chow per day. On experimental days 46 small pellets
(Cambden instruments) were placed on a small petri dish in the
home cage of some groups or released from a pellet dispenser in
an operant box for other groups. The dependent variable was the
number of pellets eaten over 15 minutes.
Naloxone (1,5 mg/kg i.p.) injected 5 or 20 min before test almost
completely suppressed pellet eating if the animals had not been
previously exposed to the pellets (p<0.01 't' test vs saline
groups). This occurred independently of whether tests were
carried out in the home cage or novel operant box. Naloxone
induced suppression of pellet eating was almost completely
abolished in either environment if animals had been exposed to
the pellets for the five preceding days in the same or different
environment. Naloxone (5mg/kg, i.p.) administered immediately
after pellet eating tests failed to suppress subsequent pellet
eating.
Thus, naloxone suppressed pellet eating if the pellets were novel
and if naloxone was administered before eating tests. The results
suggest naloxone enhances neophobic effects of novel foods and
that suppression of novel pellet eating is not due to enhanced
effects of novelty of apparatus cues or to conditioned taste
aversion.
Brit. J. Pharmacol April 1981, Bradford, UK.
(note, BPharmSoc rules insist on alphabetical authorship. * indicates
presenter).
--
David Longley
Glen M. Sizemore
> GS: You can't understand this because you don't closely examine
> the conditions under which the term pain is used.
DH: Actually, I think it highlights an important observation. Sizemore
talks about behaviorism as if it is a neatly stitched up explanation
of all biological phenomena.
GS: "All biological phenomena...?" Hardly.
DH: To him, the paradigm of "fragments
of behavior" must therefore be applied comprehensively. That,
along with the foundational premise that all behavior is learned
leads to problems describing reflexive actions. We won't even
go into genetically innate behaviors.
GS: Are you insane? When did I say that all behavior was learned?
Behaviorism has no problem with "reflexive behaviors," nor with
"...genetically innate behaviors." Incidentally, unconditioned reflexive
behavior is "...genetically innate behavior."
> Now, you have a problem.
DH: Is it?
GS: Yes, but how would anyone know that given that you have snipped what
preceded "Now you have a problem," and it was that that provided context.
> There are two possibilities: 1.) we are aware of the aspects of
> the world that we will eventually come to talk about all along, or
> 2.) we become aware of aspects of the world when our verbal
> behavior is brought under their discriminative control.
DH: This sounds very Whorfian to me.
GS: There are similarities.
> See your problem?
DH: I think I see why think there is a problem, but I don't see an actual
problem, no.
GS: Unfortunately, you give no indication that you have, in fact,
understood. I don't care whether you agree or not. The question is "Do you
see why I claim there is a problem. Again, you have given no indication that
you do.
> The only way to establish "reporting responses" is to arrange
> the sorts of contingencies that produce discriminative control.
DH: Right. The only way to learn how to say "I hurt" is to hurt.
GS: That is one of the conditions. But you have missed the important point -
which is presented below:
> To put it such that even you might understand it - people have to
> be taught to make "reporting responses" and the way they are
> taught is by "feedback" (i.e., reinforcement) from one's community.
> But #2 holds that it is precisely such "feedback" that gives rise
> to "awareness."
DH: Right. And think #2 is whacked out.
GS: Good argument.
DH: The idea that you can only
be aware of something after you learn to verbalize it is ridiculous.
I am aware of all kinds of internal states that I am utterly at a loss
to verbalize.
GS: Really? Tell me about them. I think you are lying. Certainly you can
describe when they are present, their intensity, their "rise time" etc. If
you are "...utterly at a loss," then I would say that you aren't feeling
anything.
DH: If you are not similarly sensitive, then I wonder if you
are actually human. Try telling a doctor which part hurts when you
are ill, and then try to convince him that you aren't actually aware
of an ailment because you haven't been reinforced by your
community to verbalize it.
GS: I thought you were talking about stuff that "couldn't be verbalized." I
can tell my doctor "which part hurts" and I hold that it is because my
verbal community has trained me to describe my own behavior, including that
portion that we call "pain."
Incidentally, why do you suppose that we describe pain in terms that
describe the sort of thing that produces such pain, "sharp," "dull,"
"burning," "stabbing," etc., or in terms of temporal or spatial properties
(i.e., "shooting," "throbbing")?
> [...]
> Or rather, you are assuming that the sort of awareness I am
> describing is always there and, in fact, responsible for the
> reflexive behavior that you pointed to. Right? I assert that the> two
"kinds of awareness" are different
DH: Even granting the notion that there are "multiple kinds of
awareness",
GS: It is not something you get to "grant." It is clear from usage that
"awareness" is used in different circumstances.
DH: I would like to point out that Longley made no such
distinction in saying how pain or pleasure is a learned
"behavioral fragment". Basically, I'm saying that you're doing
mental gymnastics (there's that blasphemous intensional
language again!) to salvage an idiom with questionable
explanatory power.
GS: No, I am sticking to observed facts. The behavior said to show awareness
in the restricted sense only exists after it is trained. You can say that
the person or animal "was always aware" but there is zero evidence of this.
> The first involves responding to stimuli, and the second refers
> to responding to one's own behavior as stimuli.
DH: I'm not seeing this as a clear distinction. In the first case, you
must mean only stimuli that are externally caused.
GS: No, events inside of us can produce responses, or serve to "motivate"
escape.
DH: But I don't
see why those are magically different than stimuli that are the
result of your own behavior.
GS: They aren't.
DH: I mean, in the end, your body
detects them through the same sensory mechanisms, right?
GS: Well, they are "detected" via some sensory mechanisms. Obviously, the
sensory nerves that subserve proprioception and interoception "detect"
events inside the body.
DH: So to say that the brain discriminates those would be to say
that the brain is inferring something about the cause of the
stimuli, which sounds awfully intensional to me. I might have
to report you to the Behavioral Inquisition for this one.
GS: 1.) I never say "the brain discriminates." 2.) I never said "...the
brain is inferring something about the cause of the stimuli." This doesn't
even make sense to me.
There is nothing mysterious about what I am saying. We may bring an animal's
behavior under discriminative control of "things in the world," and part of
that world includes what an animal does. The processes by which we come
under discriminative control of objects or our own behavior are the same.
But the stimuli in the latter case consists of our own behavior, and this is
the key to "self-awareness."
> And I assert that we are not aware of our own behavior until
> contingencies are arranged that bring our verbal responses
> under their discriminative control.
DH: So you're saying that I am not aware of my own "pain behavior"
until I learn how to say: "Ouch! I hit my knee"??
GS: Yes. Why do you seek clarification of this at this point? As I said,
about six times now, in order to say "I am in pain," one must be exposed to
contingencies. You say that the contingencies merely allow the person to
talk about what they are already aware of, and I say that the contingencies
are what "makes us aware." The evidence is consistent with both
interpretations, but until now, I'm sure that you have not thought about the
second.
DH: Or, I can't have
a stomach ache until I learn to say: "I have a stomach ache now,
but I did not have one an hour ago." Glen, this is some very
incredible stuff you're trying to feed me. If you are honestly trying
to say that I am not aware of internal states unless and until I
learn to verbalize those states, I have to say: "Hogwash!" If
you say: "What do you detect your internal state to be?" I will
say: "Well, it's basically impossible to explain to you."
GS: But I thought you can tell your doctor about your pains? The rest of
what you say is simply more of your asserting that I am wrong. That's ok but
it is not an argument.
DH: That
means my verbal response is not at all discriminated by all the
nuances I am *feeling*. But that does *not* mean I am *not
feeling them*. It just means that since we *don't have a shared
experience of my internal state*, there is no *way* to verbalize
it in its entirety.
GS: Even mentalists would say that what we are aware of IS what we can
verbalize. This is why they make distinctions between "implicit" and
"explicit" memory, and why they say that split-brain people are "not aware
of what their left hand is doing."
> You can disagree all you like with the terminology I use,
DH: I don't care about the terminology. Let's just talk about the
concepts at stake.
GS: I have been.
> but it can be easily operationalized, so to speak. Let's take a
> nonhuman example, just to make sure you understand (we can
> always hope):
DH: ...that through a change of language I can understand nonsense?
Keep dreaming...
GS: This is mostly the sort of shit that I have come to expect from you.
> Does a rat feel the effects of cocaine when you inject it into them?
> It certainly alters the behavior of the animal in many complex ways,
> but does it feel the effects?
DH: Aren't you kinda forced to not talk about this? Aren't you breaking
some rule or something?
GS: No. That simply reflects your lack of understanding the behaviorist
position.
> That isn't a rhetorical question. If you answer "yes" here, as you
> are welcome to do, it should be clear that this is simply an
> assumption on your part.
DH: Yes, but I think I can make a pretty good argument for it.
GS: But not by pointing to experiment. Because the experiment is consistent
with both views.
> Don't claim that anything "shows this" because it is simply true by
> definition. But let's say that you don't assert a priori that the rat
> feels the drug just on the basis that its behavior is altered.
DH: I argue that you could, in theory, show that the rat "feels" the drug
*without even observing its behavior*.
GS: Then do so.
> Let's say that you want proof - you want the rat to tell you when it
> has been injected with cocaine.
DH: Here's the problem. You are so conditioned by behaviorism
thatalternative possibilities simply elude you.
GS: I am the one that clarified the two competing positions.
DH: If I want proof, I will map
out the rat's brain, neuron by neuron. When I find a neural cluster
that only gets activated when certain biochemical changes occur
in the rat's physiology, I will argue that the activation of that cluster
corresponds to the rat "feeling the effects of cocaine".
GS: So....any physiological change wrought by the injection of cocaine is
"feeling the effects of cocaine?"
DH: Whether
the rat can later "bring the behavioral response under
discriminatory control" or not is not much relevant to me.
GS: The rat doesn't "bring the behavioral response under discriminatory
control," or at least I did not say that. The contingencies bring the
behavior under discriminative control of the stimuli. And I am aware that
you consider it irrelevant.
DH: The rat
doesn't need to learn how to "feel" the cocaine any more than it
needs to learn how to use its retinas or activate it's muscular
system. It either has those sensory/motor capabilities or it doesn't.
GS: So....are you saying that we do not learn to see? Or that we do not
learn to make a variety of movements? As to "capabilities," any time you
train an animal to do something, you can turn around and say that "it had
the capability." And I am arguing that animals have the capability of
discriminating, and thus being "aware of," its own behavior, but it does not
do so in the absence of the contingencies.
> [...]
> But has the rat "learned to use what it already felt" to get food,
> or did the rat "become aware of the effects of cocaine" because
> of the training?
DH: What the rat learned is a reward system that you imposed on it.
To say that you "taught the rat how to feel the effects of cocaine"
is absurdly non-behavioral on the face of it. Doesn't that seem
odd to you?
GS: No.
"David B. Held" <dh...@codelogicconsulting.com> wrote in message
news:c5sokl$c3j$1...@news.astound.net...
Pat Harrington
> "David Longley" <Da...@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:esmMkODe...@longley.demon.co.uk...
> > [...]
> > For what it's worth, I think "pleasure" and "pain" are just some of
> > the fragments of behaviour that we learn (about).
>
> So when you stick your hand on a hot stove, you have to "learn"
> to feel the pain? I'm sorry, but I've never met a person that had
> to be conditioned to feel pain. If you could cite any examples
> from the literature, I'd appreciate it.
>
> Dave
It's not the pain that you learn but the association of it with
touching something you've just discovered was hot. I don't think you
can honestly say you were born with a full knowledge of ovens and
stoves. You were probably taught by your parents that touching or
going near ovens and stoves was dangerous. You didn't need to learn
about the pain itself, but associating actual pain with those things
that could be a source of it, yes, of course you had to learn.
Lester Zick
<gmsiz...@yahoo.com> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
[. . .]
>Cybulski: Yes,
>I have to have a common language (or verbal behaviour) to communicate
>pain to others and talk about it, there seems to be no reason to assume
>that until I can communicate pain, I do not experience it.
>
>GS: Of course there is a reason, and that reason comes from an examination
>of the behavior that we call "communicating pain." It is plausible to say
>that such "reporting responses" are operant responses under discriminative
>control of the our own responses to painful stimuli. And that, then, brings
>us to the Lashley-Wade hypothesis. There is, in fact, no reason to believe
>that one is capable of observing their own pain responses unless they are
>trained to do so, for it is only after such training that they do.
>
Highly implausible, Glen. The experimental determination of pain
responses assumes the experience of pain. Whether pain responses can
be trained presumes the experience of pain the responses to which are
subject to training. Responses are subject to training. You're just
not defining the experience of pain and claiming as a result that
absent training there is no experience of pain.
Regards - Lester
dan michaels
interview with Quine sometime around 1978 - a somewhat "activist" form
of behaviorism, it would seem, compared to the usual idea that all
responsibility inheres to the environment:
WVQ: ... Clearly we have free will. The supposed problem comes of a
confusion, indeed a confusing turn of phrase. Freedom of the will
means 'we' are free to 'do' as we will; not that our will is free to
will as it will, which would be nonsense. We 'are' free to do as we
will, unless someone holds us back, or unless we will something beyond
our strength or talent .... Our actions count as free in so far as
*OUR WILL IS A CAUSE OF THEM* .... If we thought wills could not be
caused, we would not try to train our children, ... we would not try
to sell things, or to deter criminals ..."
[WVQ emphasis noted as '.' ... my emphasis again noted as *.*. I
especially like where he uses the word "cause"].
I guess we could summarize this idea as .... we are shaped by our
[cultural] environment, and we, in our turn, shape it ourselves.
And by this, I mean the same "we" as is used 3 times in the last
sentence by WVQ - [whosoever that we might be ;-)].
AlphaOmega2004
>
> GS: I thought you were talking about stuff that "couldn't be verbalized."
I
> can tell my doctor "which part hurts" and I hold that it is because my
> verbal community has trained me to describe my own behavior, including
that
> portion that we call "pain."
Pretty ridiculous. People with no community or history with humans can
point and verbalize (in a semi-linquistic form) to their painful bodypart.
>
> Incidentally, why do you suppose that we describe pain in terms that
> describe the sort of thing that produces such pain, "sharp," "dull,"
> "burning," "stabbing," etc., or in terms of temporal or spatial properties
> (i.e., "shooting," "throbbing")?
Pointin to and exclaiming pain is different than describing such using those
words.
dan michaels
> cu...@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:
>
> > This hardware is easy to understand. Evolution gave us a heat sensor for
> > example with associated circuity which will detect with our skin temprature
> > gets too hot. When this happens, the learning hardware is told to punish
> > the behaviors which allowed this to happen. Evolution gave us hunger
> > sensors, and damage sensors, and sex sensors, and wired all these things up
> > to the learning hardware. The design of this reward/pleasure sensor system
> > combined with the behavior learning hardware it's linked to has been time
> > tested though the normal processes of evolution and shown to be better for
> > survival than other options, like pure instinctive behavior.
>
> Becareful you don't start putting humans on some special plain of
> reference. pure instinctive behavior has proved itself over the entire
> course of life on earth. There are many species that opperate on
> instinct (including all plants) that have been around far longer than we
> humans.
>
> Try not to think that just because humans do it, it is automatically
> better than any other possibility...
>
> "I used to think that the brain was the most amazing part of the human
> body, but then I realized what was telling me that." --Emo Phillips
Stephen Gould makes a strong "anti-anthropomorphic" case in his book
Full House. He maintains that bacteria are possibly the most
successive life-forms, as they've been here since the beginning, and
they're still triving today. It wasn't really "progress", it was blind
chance and random walk, that made humans.
Immortalist
"dan michaels" <d...@oricomtech.com> wrote in message
news:4b4b6093.0404...@posting.google.com...
Mill used to say something along the lines that the steering of the self by
will makes the system end up somewhere else where we decide and our progress
is checked by "stored memory" accessed in the future and slight course
details adjusted appropriately. Therefore if this is what Mill believed then
free will is "extended in and accross time?"
"Mill's argument is basically that we have free will, but that we will
almost always choose to act the same way if faced with the same
circumstances. The reason for this according to Mill is because of who we
are, what our characters are, what beliefs, desires, and motivations we
have. These factors influence our actions, and because we don't usually
change the core of our person, we are fairly regular in our actions, unless
we purposefully choose to act against our normal characters."
http://www.elliotcross.com/essays/essay4.html
.....................
As science advances and explanations of behavior become less fanciful, the
Specter of Creeping Exculpation, as Dennett calls it, will loom larger.
Without a clearer moral philosophy, any cause of behavior could be taken to
undermine free will and hence moral responsibility. Science is guaranteed to
appear to eat away at the will, regardless of what it finds, because j the
scientific mode of explanation cannot accommodate the mysterious notion of
uncaused causation that underlies the will. If scientists wanted to show
that people had free will, what would they look for? Some random neural
event that the rest of the brain amplifies into a signal triggering
behavior? But a random event does not fit the concept of free will any more
than a lawful one does, and could not serve as the long-sought locus of
moral responsibility. We would not find someone guilty if his finger pulled
the trigger when it was mechanically connected to a roulette wheel why
should it be any different if the roulette wheel is inside his skull? The me
problem arises for another unpredictable cause that has been sugted as the
source of free will, chaos theory, in which, according to the cliche', a
butterfly's flutter can set off a cascade of events culminating in a
hurricane. A fluttering in the brain that causes a hurricane of behavior, if
it were ever found, would still be a cause of behavior and would not fit the
concept of uncaused free will that underlies moral responsibility.
Either we dispense with all morality as an unscientific superstition, or we
find a way to reconcile causation (genetic or otherwise) with responsibility
and free will. I doubt that our puzzlement will ever be completely assuaged,
but we can surely reconcile them in part. Like many philosophers, I believe
that science and ethics are two self-contained systems played out among the
same entities in the world, just as poker and bridge are different games
played with the same fifty-two-card deck. The science game treats people as
material objects, and its rules are the physical processes that cause
behavior through natural selection and neurophysiology. The ethics game
treats people as equivalent, sentient, rational, free-willed agents, and its
rules are the calculus that assigns moral value to behavior through the
behavior's inherent nature or its consequences.
Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics game
playable. Euclidean geometry requires idealizations like infinite straight
lines and perfect circles, and its deductions are sound and useful even
though the world does not really have infinite straight lines or perfect
circles. The world is close enough to the idealization that the theorems can
usefully be applied. Similarly, ethical theory requires idealizations like
tree, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused, and
its conclusions can be sound and useful even though the world, as seen by
science, does not really have uncaused events. As long as there is n°
outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, the world is close
enough to the idealization of free will that moral theory can meaningfully
be applied to it.
Science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning. Only by rec-gnizing
them as separate can we have them both. If discrimination is wrong only if
group averages are the same, if war and rape and greed are wrong only if
people are never inclined toward them, if people are responsible for their
actions only if the actions are mysterious, then either scientists must be
prepared to fudge their data or all of us must be Pared to give up our
values. Scientific arguments would turn into the National Lampoon cover
showing a puppy with a gun at its head and the caption "Buy This Magazine or
We'll Shoot the Dog."
The knife that separates causal explanations of behavior from moral
responsibility for behavior cuts both ways. In the latest twist in the
human-nature morality play, a chromosomal marker for homosexuality in some
men, the so-called gay gene, was identified by the geneticist Dean Hamer. To
the bemusement of Science for the People, this time it is the genetic
explanation that is politically correct. Supposedly it refutes right-wingers
like Dan Quayle, who had said that homosexuality "is more of a choice than a
biological situation. It is a wrong choice." The gay gene has been used to
argue that homosexuality is not a choice for which gay people can be held
responsible but an involuntary orientation they just can't help. But the
reasoning is dangerous. The gay gene could just as easily be said to
influence some people to choose homosexuality. And like all good science,
Hamer's result might be falsified someday, and then where would we be?
Conceding that bigotry against gay people is OK after all? The argument
against persecuting gay people must be made not in terms of the gay gene or
the gay brain but in terms of people's right to engage in private consensual
acts without discrimination or harassment.
The cloistering of scientific and moral reasoning in separate arenas also
lies behind my recurring metaphor of the mind as a machine, of people as
robots. Does this not dehumanize and objectify people and lead us to treat
them as inanimate objects? As one humanistic scholar lucidly put it in an
Internet posting, does it not render human experience invalid, reifying a
model of relating based on an I-It relationship, and delegitimating all
other forms of discourse with fundamentally destructive consequences to
society? Only if one is so literal-minded that one cannot shift among
different stances in conceptualizing people for different purposes. A human
being is simultaneously a machine and a sentient free agent, depending on
the purpose of the discussion, just as he is also a taxpayer, an insurance
salesman, a dental patient, and two hundre pounds of ballast on a commuter
airplane, depending on the purpose o the discussion. The mechanistic stance
allows us to understand what makes us tick and how we fit into the physical
universe. When those dis cussions wind down for the day, we go back to
talking about each otne as free and dignified human beings.
Steven Pinker - HOW THE MIND WORKS page 54-6
http://makeashorterlink.com/?M10722072
The Implication for Free Will and Hayek's Response
http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/hayekee.html
......................
Anticipations and habits (predictions and reflexes) are probably intimately
linked.
A habit could be considered - to cut a long story short - as;
the basal ganglia's prediction
of what the frontal lobes would
have done if they had pondered
the situation "consciously"
(that is at a global attentive level).
Habits, hierarchy theory, determinism and the problem of human freewill -
John McCrone
http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/webtwo_features_freewill2.htm
patty
> GS: Yes. Why do you seek clarification of this at this point? As I said,
> about six times now, in order to say "I am in pain," one must be exposed to
> contingencies. You say that the contingencies merely allow the person to
> talk about what they are already aware of, and I say that the contingencies
> are what "makes us aware." The evidence is consistent with both
> interpretations, but until now, I'm sure that you have not thought about the
> second.
>
P: We can hypnotize a patient not to be bothered by pain. What is
happening in that case? Does it have any bearing to what you and DH
are discussing?
patty
Immortalist
Interesting idea but we are still here aren't we and we are the relatives of
our anscestors the very bacteria you mention? Kevin Kelly claims its more
like a "slowly inflating sphere" where all organisms have really been here
sinc the beginning.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch21-a.html
.......................
...all progress seen in life and society is a human-induced illusion. The
prevalent notion of a "ladder of progress" or a "great chain of being" in
biology doesn't hold up under the facts of geological history.
Start with the first instance of life as the initial point. In a visual
metaphor, imagine all descendants of that first life forming a slowly
inflating sphere. The radius is time. Each creature alive at a given time
becomes a spot on the surface of the sphere at that time.
At the 4-billion-year mark (today's date), the globe of life on Earth shows
some 30 million species cramming its circumference. One dot, for example,
represents humans; another dot on far side of the sphere, the bacterium E.
coli. All points on the sphere are equidistant from the first life;
therefore none is superior to the other. All creatures on the globe at any
one time are equally evolved, having engaged in evolution for an equal
amount of time. To put it bluntly, humans are no more evolved than most
bacteria.
Gazing at this spherical graph, it is hard to imagine how one spot, the
humans, could somehow be the apex of the entire globe. Perhaps any of the
other 30 million coevolved spots-say, the flamingo, or poison oak-are the
whole point of evolution. As life explores new niches, the whole globe
expands, increasing the number of coevolved positions.
The globe graph of life quietly undermines the recurring image of
progressive evolution: that of life beginning as a blob and climbing the
ladder of success to the pinnacle of humanness. That image leaves out a
billion other ladders that should be in the picture, including the
all-too-common story of life as a blob climbing a ladder-going-nowhere to
the pinnacle of a slightly different blob. In nature, there is no pinnacle,
just a billion-spotted sphere. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you
make it.
Hanging out and staying the same works too. There are many more cases of
species who spent their evolutionary time treading water than who spent it
transforming radically. The rewards are identical, however. Both Homo
sapiens and E. coli are elite cosurvivors. And neither particularly has an
advantage over the other in surviving the next million years. (Actually,
some pessimists give E. coli 100-to-1 odds on outliving humans, even though
E. coli can currently live only in our guts.)....
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch21-a.html
Lester Zick
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>Just thought I would pass this along ... again from Bryan Magee's
>interview with Quine sometime around 1978 - a somewhat "activist" form
>of behaviorism, it would seem, compared to the usual idea that all
>responsibility inheres to the environment:
>
>WVQ: ... Clearly we have free will. The supposed problem comes of a
>confusion, indeed a confusing turn of phrase. Freedom of the will
>means 'we' are free to 'do' as we will; not that our will is free to
>will as it will, which would be nonsense.
The problem with this explanation for free will is that it doesn't
explain how free will differs from will. All sentient organisms are
said to possess will. None of them are said to possess the free will,
as distinct from will alone, that characterizes conscious beings who
seem to have invented the term to explain some aspect of conscious
behavior they are not really very clear about.
> We 'are' free to do as we
>will, unless someone holds us back, or unless we will something beyond
>our strength or talent .... Our actions count as free in so far as
>*OUR WILL IS A CAUSE OF THEM* .... If we thought wills could not be
>caused, we would not try to train our children, ... we would not try
>to sell things, or to deter criminals ..."
>
>[WVQ emphasis noted as '.' ... my emphasis again noted as *.*. I
>especially like where he uses the word "cause"].
>
>I guess we could summarize this idea as .... we are shaped by our
>[cultural] environment, and we, in our turn, shape it ourselves.
>
>And by this, I mean the same "we" as is used 3 times in the last
>sentence by WVQ - [whosoever that we might be ;-)].
Regards - Lester
Lester Zick
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
Which doesn't really explain the progressive rate of evolution unless
the argument is that the progressivity is an evolutionary artifact as
well in which case you're back to an anthropocentric argument that
puts homo sapiens on a special plane apart from instinctive behavior
and explains why humans are at the top of the food chain.
Regards - Lester
Curt Welch
> Gazing at this spherical graph, it is hard to imagine how one spot, the
> humans, could somehow be the apex of the entire globe. Perhaps any of the
> other 30 million coevolved spots-say, the flamingo, or poison oak-are the
> whole point of evolution. As life explores new niches, the whole globe
> expands, increasing the number of coevolved positions.
That's such a perfect way to look at it! I had never grasped that idea
before now.
So we are equally evolved because we have all managed to compete and survie
the same number of fights for existence, but some took the low road (the
most simple structure possible) and some the high road (the most complex
structure). So we are at the end of the complexity scale, but we are not
any better at surviving than anything else still living on the planet. We
just make it hard when it doesn't have to be. :)
Lester Zick
It's truly astounding how glibly people cross back and forth between
the terms will and free will, defining the former then behaving as if
the latter has been defined. A rather remarkable demonstration of the
application of free will to behavior in conscious beings possessing
free will in addition to will, but not very edifying either socially
scientifically.
Regards - Lester
Keynes
Not so. Increasing complexity tested against living conditions
has led inevitably to more adaptive complexity. Evolution
builds success on success. I agree that bacteria are most successful.
(Aerobic ones anyway. The anaerobes have been much diminished.)
But the progression of increasing complexity seems to be built into
the system or we wouldn't be here.
Keynes
The negation of free will does not defeat morality.
There is an instinctive morality built into us by evolution.
Unfortunately we can balance these moral shoulds with
cognitive wants, wind up doing 'wrong', and suffering
guilt or worse for it. Guilt is personal punishment of the
self after the fact which cannot alter the past, but it can
affect the future. It has evolutionary social value. .
In addition to our instincts we have our social morality.
It's immoral for a cannibal not to eat people. But if you
do an ethnographic survey, you'll find basic agreement
world wide on the instinctive rules of morality.
To say that we are without free will doesn't mean we are
unchangable in our morality. We can learn from instruction
and experience (causes) to do better than before.
Even without free will, a person will build on his experience
to form a successful social strategy. If that strategy is anti-
social, then society will deal with him summarily.
Should criminals be punished? Those who champion free
will think that without it, no one can be held responsible
for anything. This may be mildly rational, but humans are
by no means rational to begin with. If a person transgresses,
that person will be dealt with because of the instinct of rage,
and the innate sense of justice built into us. Both of those have
been successful social evolutionary strategies. But with doomsday
weapons we may have reached our survival limits.
Imagine the difficulty of beating your adversery to death with
only hands and feet. Quite a problematic and exhausting task.
(Unless you've trained in the non-instinctive martial arts.)
But with a stone or a sharp stick it gets easier. With a gun you
can kill lots of people without much thought or trouble.
With modern ordinance, you don't even need to look at them.
Too easy for our own good. And then we wonder why
any survivors are offended. Geez. We din't do nuthin wrong.
So why are the bastards hitting us back?
The human problem is that we are too heavliy cognitive and
able to overcome our instinctive sense of justice. (This sense
of fair play has been demonstrated even in monkeys.) Thus
a babboon will chase away others to get the food, but he
will stop when he is full. Humans can't get full because they
try to fill the future by hoarding in the present. We can't be
satisfied, so we quarrel and kill one another. If you look
closely you'll find most war and murder is about abstract ideas
of wealth, power, or religious or economic theory. Societies
are mobilized for war by 'ideals'. Patriotism, salvation, etc.
Whichever army you choose they fight for the good against
the evil.
Animals will fight rivals for dominance, but not to the death.
They have instinctive surrender positions that are respected by
aggressors. Many animals recognize property as well as propriety.
A smaller animal most often succeeds in defending it's territory
against a larger one, because the interloper knows that he is
doing 'wrong'.
Humans have those same moral principles but we can easily
overcome them. That's how smart we are. We respect no
limits and give no quarter. We are not beasts. They're smarter.
David B. Held
> [...]
> GS: Are you insane? When did I say that all behavior was learned?
I'm sure you and/or Longley have said things to this effect several
times. If it was only Longly that implied that and not you, I apologize.
I haven't been exposed to enough contingencies to discriminate
between the two of you.
> [...]
> DH: This sounds very Whorfian to me.
>
> GS: There are similarities.
So animals can't "think" because they can't "talk"? And you
complain about intensionalism!!!
> [...]
> GS: Unfortunately, you give no indication that you have, in fact,
> understood.
That's because you're saying things that don't make sense. It is
not my responsibility to make sense of nonsense. It is your
responsibility to communicate your ideas clearly.
> I don't care whether you agree or not. The question is "Do you
> see why I claim there is a problem. Again, you have given no
> indication that you do.
You think there's a problem because if an organism can't report
a sensation, there is no way to deduce that it is experiencing it.
There are so many things wrong with that, I don't see how you
expect me to take it seriously.
> [...]
> DH: The idea that you can only be aware of something after you
> learn to verbalize it is ridiculous. I am aware of all kinds of internal
> states that I am utterly at a loss to verbalize.
>
> GS: Really? Tell me about them.
Uhh...you must not have scored well on the Reading Comprehension
portion of the SAT, huh? "I am utterly at a loss to verbalize..." "Tell
me about them" Hello?!?
> I think you are lying.
Of course you do. But then, can you *deduce that from my behavior*,
or are you really using intensional language to describe something
you think is happening in an unobservable portion of my person?
Tut, tut...intensional language all over the board. Aren't you
ashamed of yourself??? To a strict behaviorist, the notion of "lying"
is nonsensical. It cannot be discriminated from truth-telling behavior
without inferring something about mental states.
> Certainly you can describe when they are present, their intensity,
> their "rise time" etc.
No. They are always present, but some internal events I am only
aware of if I focus my attention on them, and others make themselves
salient through some other mechanism which I obviously can't
describe in detail. I cannot describe their intensity. Nor would it
make sense for a behaviorist to accept any such description, since
it would be little different than an introspective report! If you accept
my report of what I deem my internal physiological state to be, why
wouldn't you accept a report on my internal mental state?
There is no objective scale on which to base intensity, and thus
no objective way to measure "rise time", if that even makes sense
for many of the internal phenomena that I am only vaguely aware
of. Furthermore, there is no reason for you to believe that these
reports correspond to any internal sensation, since there is no
way for you to detect this internal state directly. That's like
watching a rat press a lever and saying: "He feels in his gut that
food will come out, which explains why he's pressing the lever."
> If you are "...utterly at a loss," then I would say that you aren't
> feeling anything.
Of course you would say that, but you would be wrong. It simply
means that language is a *social contract based on shared
experience*. We can agree that the word "tree" refers to a tall
woody object with branches and possibly leaves, because we
can both sense/perceive it. We can't agree on a word for the
feeling I get in some indistinct portion of my torso, because you
can't sense/perceive that event. Furthermore, I do not have the
observational resolution to describe with any accuracy many of
the internal events which occur. Thus, I am at a loss to describe
them. You know they occur *because they occur in you as well*.
But the fact that you did not offer possible explanations of my
internal sensations just points out that you see the absurdity in
the attempt.
> [...]
> GS: I thought you were talking about stuff that "couldn't be
> verbalized." I can tell my doctor "which part hurts" and I hold that
> it is because my verbal community has trained me to describe
> my own behavior, including that portion that we call "pain."
Can you *always* tell your doctor "which part hurts", or are you
left resorting to phrases like: "I hurt all over; I have a body ache;
I'm feeling fatigued", even though the actual symptoms and
sensations might not imply that *every part of your person is
malfunctioning*? If it were so straightforward to report internal
physiological states, then doctors would never misdiagnose
hypochondria, because the actual symptoms would be as obvious
as a cut or external contusion.
> Incidentally, why do you suppose that we describe pain in terms
> that describe the sort of thing that produces such pain, "sharp,"
> "dull," "burning," "stabbing," etc., or in terms of temporal or
> spatial properties (i.e., "shooting," "throbbing")?
For exactly the reason that it is *not* a shared experience, and
so we cannot reasonably invent words that convey any particular
sensation. Thus, we must resort to words that are not technically
accurate, but give enough of a shared experience that the general
sensation can be communicated. I argue that if it were possible
to directly experience someone else's internal body state, we
would have a specialized language for such a thing (just like we
have specialized medical terms for externally observable
malfunctions: inflammation, laceration, etc.).
> [...]
> DH: Even granting the notion that there are "multiple kinds of
> awareness",
>
> GS: It is not something you get to "grant." It is clear from usage
> that "awareness" is used in different circumstances.
That's not at all clear to me. When I say that something or
someone is "aware" of a sensation, I mean that that sensation
is available to their consciousness. I don't see any usages of
"awareness" that require a special distinction.
> [...]
> You can say that the person or animal "was always aware" but
> there is zero evidence of this.
I'm not convinced that is the case. But I am convinced that there
is zero evidence against it. The position you are led into is that
babies are not aware of *anything*, because they do no perform
any discriminated behaviors to report their internal body states.
Sure, they cry, but that hardly discriminates any useful sets of
internal states. In fact, the notion that an organism could not be
aware of a state until it learns to report it externally is so silly
that it could only be the result of being forced into that position
by a working paradigm.
Let's go back to examples, because that's where you clear away
the rhetoric and get to the nuts and bolts of things. Suppose we
have a simple creature (not a *real* creature, just a *hypothetical*
one; do you understand the notion of a "thought experiment"? Oh,
that's right..."thoughts" are dirty "intensional objects", pardon me).
This creature performs what you might call stereotypical behaviors.
It forages, sleeps, evades predators, etc. Now, let's say that the
creature can detect when it has ingested a toxin (that is to say, it
possesses nociceptors which relay the presence of harmful
substances in the creature's digestive system). Furthermore,
let us say that it has no reactive behavioral response that could
eliminate the toxin from the creature's body. However, let us say
that the detection of toxins causes the creature to enter a quiescent
state, presumably so that it does not expend needless energy while
it's metabolism works to neutralize the toxin.
Observationally, you can't tell if the creature just ate something it
didn't like, or if it just got tired and wants to take a nap. I am
claiming this a priori, because I invented the creature. So there
is no discriminated behavior by which to observe the signalling
of these nociceptors. However, it is clear that to infer the lack
of behavioral response implies a lack of awareness is simply
wrong. Insofar as modifying its behavior constitutes the presence
of "awareness" (and I'm not necessarily saying it does in the
general case), by definition, this internal sensation is *made aware*
to the creature. But the behaviorist will *never be able to infer this
creature's ability to make this internal observation*, because it
is not unambiguously observable from external behavior.
Now, you could say that this is just an imaginary creature, and
that real creatures are not like that. But then, are you sure you
want to take that route?
> [...]
> GS: No, events inside of us can produce responses, or serve to
> "motivate" escape.
But you can't talk about those events explicitly because they are not
externally observable. That limits you severely.
> [...]
> The processes by which we come under discriminative control
> of objects or our own behavior are the same. But the stimuli in the
> latter case consists of our own behavior, and this is the key to
> "self-awareness."
So you claim, but that's just because you are forced to this
conclusion by your position. It is just as possible that self-
awareness could arise with no resulting discriminative behavior,
but that is not something you could talk about, because the result
would be pure mental states, which are not directly observable
(even though they may be in the future). For example, consider
a severely handicapped quadriplegic. The vast majority of
discriminative behaviors performed by most human beings
simply are not possible for this person. If the person was that
way from birth, then there possibly never were discriminated
behaviors that could report many common internal states.
Your position forces you to conclude that this person simply
lacks a good deal of self-awareness. My position allows that
that person may or may not have the same level of self-
awareness that a normally functioning person experiences.
We don't have the technology to settle this distinction yet, but
I find your position to be rather risky, and I wouldn't want to be in
your camp when the evidence rolls in.
> [...]
> You say that the contingencies merely allow the person to talk
> about what they are already aware of, and I say that the
> contingencies are what "makes us aware." The evidence is
> consistent with both interpretations, but until now, I'm sure that
> you have not thought about the second.
I disagree. I think I am aware of things for which I have no
externally identifiable discriminated behavior. That is, I detect
the presence of events for which there is no way for me to
produce *any* behavior *even verbal behavior* that uniquely
identifies that condition (because the same vague terms and
descriptions could be used to refer to numerous qualtitatively
different states, and thus are not discriminated by the verbal
behavior).
Now let's consider the case of a boy that has a kidney stone.
The boy doesn't need to call it a kidney stone to be aware that
something is wrong. An interview might reveal symptoms that
strongly suggest that a kidney stone is the culprit, but to say that
the boy is not *aware* of having a kidney stone until he learns to
verbalize: "I have a kidney stone" is absurd on the face of it.
The verbalization merely teaches the boy how to *identify* the
internal condition in the future. What it allows is for *other
organisms* to become aware of the condition. That is the only
service that discriminated behavior provides for sensation.
But it doesn't even make sense that an organism would need to
communicate an internal state (which is essentially what
discriminated behavior amounts to) in order to experience it and
be aware of it.
> [...]
> GS: Even mentalists would say that what we are aware of IS what
> we can verbalize.
And the ones that say we can verbalize all sensations of which we
are aware I will happily call kooks. But then, it depends on what
standard of verbalization you wish to apply. Anyone can say: "I feel",
but is that a discriminated response? I take a "discriminated
response" to be a behavior that more or less unambiguously
identifies a particular stimulus. So the verbalization: "There's a
dull pain in my abdomen" is *not* a discriminated response,
because that could refer to a ridiculously large set of perceptions.
If you say; "My liver hurts", that would be much closer to a
discriminated response, although we all know the likelihood of
it being an accurate one. It would be like saying that the quiescent
state in my toy creature is a "discriminated response to food
poisoning". It is not, because you can't discriminate the food
poisoning stimulus from the lack of energy stimulus based on that
behavior.
> This is why they make distinctions between "implicit" and
> "explicit" memory, and why they say that split-brain people are
> "not aware of what their left hand is doing."
I don't buy that at all. Nor, do I think, neurology practitioners.
Rather, it makes more sense to say that awareness is not
necessarily a simply localized process, and that the part of the
brain controlling the left hand simply does not have access to
the verbalization systems. The fact that their left hand *can
perform in response to a complex command* tells me that the
part of their brain controlling their left hand is, in fact, *aware*
of what is going on, even if the only discriminated behavior to
indicate such is the movement itself. Or are you going to say
that copying a drawing is merely reflexive behavior that does
not require awareness? I haven't met any sleep-drawers, but
I suppose it isn't impossible a priori.
As far as implicit vs. explicit memory, I don't see what that has
to do with awareness as the result of discriminated behavior
at all. I think a much more plausible explanation of awareness
is that it is an internal representation of self in its current state,
with relation to whatever external stimuli and behaviors are
currently being detected/executed. While not being impressively
explanatory, it is certainly consistent with the known observations
about awareness and requires no discriminated behavior to
define it.
> [...]
> GS: No. That simply reflects your lack of understanding the
> behaviorist position.
Maybe that's because you guys don't do a very good job of pinning
it down. Whenever I come up with a test to understand the
boundaries of behaviorism, they get moved around to include more
and more stuff. That's why I have to conclude that behaviorism isn't
so much different than what anyone else is doing. You're just
using a much more limiting language and pretending to be more
scientific whilst still using intensional language couched in
behavioral terms.
> [...]
> DH: I argue that you could, in theory, show that the rat "feels" the
> drug *without even observing its behavior*.
>
> GS: Then do so.
I can't show that earth's inertial frame is relativistically dragged
about by its rotation, but I could show from general relativity that it is
so. The fact that it requires a $1 billion probe to prove it
demonstrates that many demonstrations are theoretically possible
while not being practically plausible.
> [...]
> DH: Here's the problem. You are so conditioned by behaviorism
> that alternative possibilities simply elude you.
>
> GS: I am the one that clarified the two competing positions.
No, you created a false dichotomy and then declared that it
exhausts the possibilities. I introduced a third possibility which
you cannot even conceptualize because of your paradigm.
> DH: If I want proof, I will map out the rat's brain, neuron by neuron.
> When I find a neural cluster that only gets activated when certain
> biochemical changes occur in the rat's physiology, I will argue
> that the activation of that cluster corresponds to the rat "feeling
> the effects of cocaine".
>
> GS: So....any physiological change wrought by the injection of
> cocaine is "feeling the effects of cocaine?"
No. Only a neurophysical response that more or less uniquely
identifies the effects of cocaine could be called "feeling the effects
of cocaine". A neural response that includes effects only partly
caused by cocaine but ambiguous in other respects would count
as "partially feeling the effects of cocaine". However, it is not at
all clear to me that teaching the rat to associate cocaine with a
discriminated behavior makes the rat aware of this condition.
The rat could be responding to any of the portions of the cocaine-
induced stimulus without actually "knowing" what cocaine "feels
like". And some of those stimuli could be only caused by cocaine
in the rat's normal environment, but caused by stimuli that are not
cocaine in other environments (perhaps a disease state, or
something like that). So it *looks* like a discriminatory behavior,
but you really don't know if it *is*, because you can't exhaustively
delineate its discriminating stimuli.
In fact, that calls into question the entire concept of using
discriminating behavior to infer awareness. Since sensation
doesn't occur with simple monolithic sensory organs, you really
don't know *what* an organism is "discriminating" when you train
it to perform a particular behavior. Here's a good example that
perhaps even you know about.
The army knew that a certain type of pigeon was very good at
identifying various types of objects under behavioral training.
So it wanted to see if pigeons could be trained to identify pictures
of tanks hidden in camouflage. For the life of them, they could
not do it. Sometimes the pigeons would respond to color, other
times they would respond to light intensity, yet other times they
would respond to various lines or shapes in the scene. But no
pigeon could be trained to reliably identify a camouflaged tank.
A pigeon could be trained on any given set of pictures to correctly
identify the tank pics, but it could *not* properly generalize to
new pictures it had not seen. The lesson is that the pigeon, in fact,
had not discriminated "tank stimuli", despite what the initial training
might have suggested. In the same way, I am not convinced that
your rat experiment would imply that the rat can now discriminate
"cocaine stimuli". It might be "narcotic stimuli", "cardiac stimuli",
or a whole host of other stimuli that to the rat produce the same
end result of a tasty morsel. And that highlights the problems
inherent in trying to reverse-engineer something. You are really
quite limited about what you can infer, because you don't know
exactly what problems the system is designed to solve. So you
don't know if any given output is typical or atypical.
> [...]
> GS: So....are you saying that we do not learn to see?
> [...]
More or less. I would say that much of vision is innate, though we
certainly learn to discriminate some visual stimuli with more
precision than others. It's true that the retina to V1 mapping has
to be laid out experimentally, or "learned", but I have no reason
to believe that this occurs through any behavioral model. In
fact, I wouldn't even call that "learning", because that implies that
the mapping is intentionally plastic for the purpose of later adapting
it. But there's no reason to believe that the mapping changes once
you've passed a certain developmental stage. Rather, I would
call that "configuration".