Determinism - Tricks of the Trade

[Craig Weinberg]

The objection that the terms ‘consciousness’ or ‘free will’ are used in too many different ways to be understandable is one of the most common arguments that I run into. I agree that it is a superficially valid objection, but on deeper consideration, it should be clear that it is a specious and ideologically driven detour.

The term free will is not as precise as a more scientific term might be (I tend to use motive, efferent participation, or private intention), but it isn’t nearly the problem that it is made to be in a debate. Any eight year old knows well enough what free will refers to. Nobody on Earth can fail to understand the difference between doing something by accident and intentionally, or between enslavement and freedom. The claim that these concepts are somehow esoteric doesn’t wash, unless you already have an expectation of a kind of verbal-logical supremacy in which nothing is allowed to exist until we can agree on a precise set of terms which give it existence. I think that this expectation is not a neutral or innocuous position, but actually contaminates the debate over free will, stacking the deck unintentionally in favor of the determinism.

It’s subtle, but ontologically, it is a bit like letting a burglar talk you into opening up the door to the house for them since breaking a window would only make a mess for you to clean up. Because the argument for hard determinism begins with an assumption that impartiality and objectivity are inherently desirable in all things, it asks that you put your king in check from the start. The argument doubles down on this leverage with the implication that subjective intuition is notoriously naive and flawed, so that not putting your king in check from the start is framed as a weak position. This is the James Randi kind of double-bind. If you don’t submit to his rules, then you are already guilty of fraud, and part of his rules are that you have no say in what his rules will be.

This is the sleight of hand which is also used by Daniel Dennett as well. What poses as a fair consideration of hard determinism is actually a stealth maneuver to create determinism – to demand that the subject submit to the forced disbelief system and become complicit in undermining their own authority. The irony is that it is only through a personal/social, political attack on subjectivity that the false perspective of objectivity can be introduced. It is accepted only by presentation pf an argument of personal insignificance so that the subject is shamed and bullied into imagining itself an object. Without knowing it, one person’s will has been voluntarily overpowered and confounded by another person’s free will into accepting that this state of affairs is not really happening. In presenting free will and consciousness as a kind of stage magic, the materialist magician performs a meta-magic trick on the audience.

Some questions for determinist thinkers:

• Can we effectively doubt that we have free will?
  Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very capacity for intentional reasoning upon which the doubt itself is based?
• How would an illusion of doubt be justified, either randomly or deterministically? What function would an illusion of doubt serve, even in the most blue-sky hypothetical way?
• Why wouldn’t determinism itself be just as much of an illusion as free will or doubt under determinism?

Another common derailment is to conflate the position of recognizing the phenomenon of subjectivity as authentic with religious faith, naive realism, or soft-headed sentimentality. This also is ironic, as it is an attack on the ego of the subject, not on the legitimacy of the issue. There is no reason to presume any theistic belief is implied just because determinism can be challenged at its root rather than on technicalities. To challenge determinism at its root requires (appropriately) the freedom to question the applicability of reductive reasoning to reason itself. The whole question of free will is to what extent it is an irreducible phenomenon which arises at the level of the individual. This question is already rendered unspeakable as soon as the free will advocate agrees to the framing of the debate in terms which require that they play the role of cross-examined witness to the prosecutor of determinism.

As soon as the subject is misdirected to focus their attention on the processes of the sub-personal level, a level where the individual by definition does not exist, the debate is no longer about the experience of volition and intention, but of physiology. The ‘witness’ is then invited to give a false confession, making the same mistake that the prosecutor makes in calling the outcome of the debate before it even begins. The foregone conclusion that physiological processes define psychological experiences entirely is used to justify itself, and the deterministic ego threatens to steal from another the very power to exercise control upon which the theft relies.

It is important to keep in mind that the nature of free will is such that it is available to us without pretense of explanation. Unless paralysis interrupts the effectiveness of our will (paralysis being a condition which proves only that physiology is necessary, but not sufficient), the faculty of voluntary action is self evident. If we want to open our eyes, no set of instructions is necessary, nor will any amount of explanation help us open them if we can’t figure out how. Often the deterministic end couches free will in terms of the power to make ‘choices’, which injects another bit of unsupported bias into the debate.

We use free will to make choices, but choices imply a pre-existing set of conditions from which we choose. This makes it much easier to make the leap of faith toward the presumption that free will can be successfully reduced to a computing algorithm. Computers can ‘choose’, in the sense that they compute which branch on the logic tree must be followed. What computation does not do, which free will does, is to lead, and to lead from felt experience rather than logic. Leading means creativity and intuition, not merely selecting from strategic simulations.

The game theory approach to free will truncates morality and responsibility, reducing not only personhood to mechanism, but also the door entirely on meaningful, game changing approaches altogether. Free will allows us not only to elect a single decision from a set of fixed alternatives, but also to generate new alternatives which go beyond behaviorism. Our values stem from the quality of our experience, not just the short term advantages which our actions might deliver. The choice is up to us, not because the human body can’t function in its environment without an illusion of a decision maker, but because it isn’t just about choice, and the body’s survival alone is not enough to justify the quality of a human experience. Choice is not where free will begins, any more than opening your eyes begins with an understanding of eyelids. Experience begins with feeling, not knowing.

[meekerdb]

On 8/16/2013 11:01 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Nobody on Earth can fail to understand the difference between doing something by accident and intentionally,

Really?� Intentionally usually means with conscious forethought.� But the Grey Walter and Libet experiments make it doubtful that consciousness of intention precedes the decision.

Remember when nobody on Earth could doubt that the Sun traveled across the dome of the sky and the Earth was flat.

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

On Friday, August 16, 2013 2:45:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 8/16/2013 11:01 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Nobody on Earth can fail to understand the difference between doing something by accident and intentionally,

Really?� Intentionally usually means with conscious forethought.� But the Grey Walter and Libet experiments make it doubtful that consciousness of intention precedes the decision.

Cognition is not necessary to discern the intentional from the unintentional. A salmon who swims upstream does so with more intent than a dead salmon floats downstream. Intention is more primitive than thought as thought itself is driven by the intention to influence your environment.

The experiments that you mention do not make intention doubtful at all, they only suggest that intention exists at the sub-personal level as well. Breaking down events on the scale of an individual person to micro-events on which no individual exists is the first mistake. Because intention has everything to do with time and causality, we cannot assume that our naive experience of time holds true outside of our own perceptual frame.

The presumption that intention is a complex computational sequence building up to a personal feeling of taking action voluntarily unnecessarily biases the bottom-up view. I think that what is actually going on is that time itself is a relativistic measure which extends from more fundamental sensory qualities of significance, rhythm, and memory. This means that personal time happens on a personally scaled inertial frame - just as c is a velocity which is infinite within any given inertial frame, our experience of exercising our will is roughly instantaneous. The exercise of will relates to our context, so seeking faster, sub-personal inertial frames for insight is like trying to measure the plot of a movie by analyzing the patterns of pixels on the screen. It does not illuminate the physics of will, it obscures it.

Remember when nobody on Earth could doubt that the Sun traveled across the dome of the sky and the Earth was flat.

The perception that the Earth is flat is more important that the knowledge that the Earth is round. The sophisticated view is useful for some purposes, but the native view is indispensable. With free will it is not enough to know that the world is round, we must know why it seems flat, and why the flat seeming and round seeming are both true in their own context.

Thanks,
Craig

Brent

[John Mikes]

Brent, your 'quip' comes close, but...

It is a fundamental view of the world as we see it (the MODEL of it we know about). We can detect the affecting of many factors we know about, which is a portion only. We THINK the rest is up to us. It isn't - however we are not slaves of deterministic effects. There are conter-effects to choose from and stronger/weaker argumentative decisions to pnder. So we HAVE som (free? relatively so) choices within given situations where we have effects to ponder. Even the counterproductive decision is such a result. 

When the Sun traveled the Dome of the Sky - that was congruent with the model of that time. Today we are not much smarter just think so. We have other (mis)beliefs we hold true. We call it conventional science (maybe QM? -  anyway The Physical World (ask Bruno). 

Consciousness is different: it is a hoax some high hatted scientists/pholosophers invented to make themselves smart. No basis, every author uses the term for a content that fits her/his theoretical stance. 

Me, too. 

Mine is: a response to relations we get to know about. Nothing more. Not human/elephant/dolphin, not universe, not awareness, not nothing, just RESPONSE.  

By anything on anything. You may even include the figments of the Physical World into the inventory. 

We spend too much time on items of our fictions we indeed do not know much about. We even get Nobel prizes for them. (Not me). 

Then comes a religious indoctrination and steals the list. 

John  Mikes

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 2:45 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 8/16/2013 11:01 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Nobody on Earth can fail to understand the difference between doing something by accident and intentionally,

Really?  Intentionally usually means with conscious forethought.  But the Grey Walter and Libet experiments make it doubtful that consciousness of intention precedes the decision.

Remember when nobody on Earth could doubt that the Sun traveled across the dome of the sky and the Earth was flat.

Brent

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[meekerdb]

On 8/17/2013 2:01 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Consciousness is different: it is a hoax some high hatted scientists/pholosophers invented to make themselves smart. No basis, every author uses the term for a content that fits her/his theoretical stance. 

Me, too. 

Mine is: a response to relations we get to know about. Nothing more. Not human/elephant/dolphin, not universe, not awareness, not nothing, just RESPONSE. 

Just *any* response?  Doesn't the response have to be something we can identify as intelligent or purposeful?

By anything on anything. You may even include the figments of the Physical World into the inventory. 

So do you agree that if we build a machine, such as a Mars Rover, that exhibits intelligence in its response then we may conclude it is aware/conscious?

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

What if you wanted to build a Mars Rover that was completely unconscious, but still followed a sophisticated set of instructions. Would that be impossible? If the Mars Rover detects enough different kinds of compounds in the Martian atmosphere, is there no way of preventing it from developing a sense of smell?

 Craig

Brent

[meekerdb]

To exhibit intelligence the Rover would have to do more than "follow instructions", it would have to learn from experience, act and plan through simulation and prediction.  If it did exhibit intelligence like that, I'd grant it 'consciousness', whatever that means.  If it learns and acts based on chemical types I'd grant it has a sense of smell.  To say it's "conscious" is just a way of modeling how it learns and acts that we can relate to (what Dennett calls "the intentional stance").

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

On Saturday, August 17, 2013 11:14:22 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 8/17/2013 7:05 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, August 17, 2013 9:59:26 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 8/17/2013 2:01 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Consciousness is different: it is a hoax some high hatted scientists/pholosophers invented to make themselves smart. No basis, every author uses the term for a content that fits her/his theoretical stance. 

Me, too. 

Mine is: a response to relations we get to know about. Nothing more. Not human/elephant/dolphin, not universe, not awareness, not nothing, just RESPONSE. 

Just *any* response?  Doesn't the response have to be something we can identify as intelligent or purposeful?

By anything on anything. You may even include the figments of the Physical World into the inventory. 

So do you agree that if we build a machine, such as a Mars Rover, that exhibits intelligence in its response then we may conclude it is aware/conscious?

What if you wanted to build a Mars Rover that was completely unconscious, but still followed a sophisticated set of instructions. Would that be impossible? If the Mars Rover detects enough different kinds of compounds in the Martian atmosphere, is there no way of preventing it from developing a sense of smell?

To exhibit intelligence the Rover would have to do more than "follow instructions", it would have to learn from experience, act and plan through simulation and prediction.

Would you say that it is impossible to build a machine which learns and plans without it developing perception and qualia automatically? Could any set of instructions suppress this development? If qualia can appear anywhere that learning and planning behaviors can be inferred, does that mean that there are also be programs or processes which must be protected from qualitative contamination or leakage?

 

  If it did exhibit intelligence like that, I'd grant it 'consciousness', whatever that means.  

Why would you grant that it has a quality which you claim not to understand?

 

If it learns and acts based on chemical types I'd grant it has a sense of smell. 

Would the sense of smell be like our sense of smell automatically, or could its sense of smell be analogous to our sense of touch, or intuition, or sense of humor? Why have any of them? What does a sense of smell add to your understanding of how chemical detection works? If there were no such thing as smell, could anything even remotely resembling olfactory qualia be justified quantitatively?

Unless you can explain exactly why you grant a machine qualities that you claim not to understand and why you grant a superfluous aesthetic dimension to simple stochastic predictive logic, I will consider the perspective that you offer as lacking any serious scientific justification.
 

To say it's "conscious" is just a way of modeling how it learns and acts that we can relate to (what Dennett calls "the intentional stance").

If that were true, then nobody should mind if they spend the rest of their life under comatose-level anesthetic while we replace their brain with a device that models how it learns in the same way that you once did.

It's not true though. There is an important difference between feeling and doing, between being awake and having your body walk around. Can you really not see that? Can you really not see why a machine that acts like we expect a person to act doesn't have to mean that the machine's abilities automatically conjure feeling, seeing, smelling, etc out of thin air?

Craig

 

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 8/17/2013 8:59 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, August 17, 2013 11:14:22 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 8/17/2013 7:05 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, August 17, 2013 9:59:26 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 8/17/2013 2:01 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Consciousness is different: it is a hoax some high hatted scientists/pholosophers invented to make themselves smart. No basis, every author uses the term for a content that fits her/his theoretical stance. 

Me, too. 

Mine is: a response to relations we get to know about. Nothing more. Not human/elephant/dolphin, not universe, not awareness, not nothing, just RESPONSE. 

Just *any* response?  Doesn't the response have to be something we can identify as intelligent or purposeful?

By anything on anything. You may even include the figments of the Physical World into the inventory. 

So do you agree that if we build a machine, such as a Mars Rover, that exhibits intelligence in its response then we may conclude it is aware/conscious?

What if you wanted to build a Mars Rover that was completely unconscious, but still followed a sophisticated set of instructions. Would that be impossible? If the Mars Rover detects enough different kinds of compounds in the Martian atmosphere, is there no way of preventing it from developing a sense of smell?

To exhibit intelligence the Rover would have to do more than "follow instructions", it would have to learn from experience, act and plan through simulation and prediction.

Would you say that it is impossible to build a machine which learns and plans without it developing perception and qualia automatically? Could any set of instructions suppress this development? If qualia can appear anywhere that learning and planning behaviors can be inferred, does that mean that there are also be programs or processes which must be protected from qualitative contamination or leakage?

 

  If it did exhibit intelligence like that, I'd grant it 'consciousness', whatever that means.  

Why would you grant that it has a quality which you claim not to understand?

Because it helps me understand what it would do as it helps me understand what other people may do.  I didn't claim not to understand it, but I'm not sure your understanding is the same as mine.

 

If it learns and acts based on chemical types I'd grant it has a sense of smell. 

Would the sense of smell be like our sense of smell automatically, or could its sense of smell be analogous to our sense of touch, or intuition, or sense of humor?

No. As you would realize if you thought about it.

Why have any of them? What does a sense of smell add to your understanding of how chemical detection works?

Don't be so dense, Craig.

If there were no such thing as smell, could anything even remotely resembling olfactory qualia be justified quantitatively?

Unless you can explain exactly why you grant a machine qualities that you claim not to understand and why you grant a superfluous aesthetic dimension to simple stochastic predictive logic, I will consider the perspective that you offer as lacking any serious scientific justification.
 

To say it's "conscious" is just a way of modeling how it learns and acts that we can relate to (what Dennett calls "the intentional stance").

If that were true, then nobody should mind if they spend the rest of their life under comatose-level anesthetic while we replace their brain with a device that models how it learns in the same way that you once did.

I specifically wrote "and acts" above.

Brent

It's not true though. There is an important difference between feeling and doing, between being awake and having your body walk around. Can you really not see that? Can you really not see why a machine that acts like we expect a person to act doesn't have to mean that the machine's abilities automatically conjure feeling, seeing, smelling, etc out of thin air?

Craig

 

Brent

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[Craig Weinberg]

On Sunday, August 18, 2013 12:24:18 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 8/17/2013 8:59 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, August 17, 2013 11:14:22 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 8/17/2013 7:05 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Saturday, August 17, 2013 9:59:26 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 8/17/2013 2:01 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Consciousness is different: it is a hoax some high hatted scientists/pholosophers invented to make themselves smart. No basis, every author uses the term for a content that fits her/his theoretical stance. 

Me, too. 

Mine is: a response to relations we get to know about. Nothing more. Not human/elephant/dolphin, not universe, not awareness, not nothing, just RESPONSE. 

Just *any* response?  Doesn't the response have to be something we can identify as intelligent or purposeful?

By anything on anything. You may even include the figments of the Physical World into the inventory. 

So do you agree that if we build a machine, such as a Mars Rover, that exhibits intelligence in its response then we may conclude it is aware/conscious?

What if you wanted to build a Mars Rover that was completely unconscious, but still followed a sophisticated set of instructions. Would that be impossible? If the Mars Rover detects enough different kinds of compounds in the Martian atmosphere, is there no way of preventing it from developing a sense of smell?

To exhibit intelligence the Rover would have to do more than "follow instructions", it would have to learn from experience, act and plan through simulation and prediction.

Would you say that it is impossible to build a machine which learns and plans without it developing perception and qualia automatically? Could any set of instructions suppress this development? If qualia can appear anywhere that learning and planning behaviors can be inferred, does that mean that there are also be programs or processes which must be protected from qualitative contamination or leakage?

 

  If it did exhibit intelligence like that, I'd grant it 'consciousness', whatever that means.  

Why would you grant that it has a quality which you claim not to understand?

Because it helps me understand what it would do as it helps me understand what other people may do.  I didn't claim not to understand it, but I'm not sure your understanding is the same as mine.

But why does it help you understand anything? It sounds like you are saying that granting a system consciousness is a formality that you find superfluous, but then you are saying that this empty gesture helps you understand something.
 

 

If it learns and acts based on chemical types I'd grant it has a sense of smell. 

Would the sense of smell be like our sense of smell automatically, or could its sense of smell be analogous to our sense of touch, or intuition, or sense of humor?

No. As you would realize if you thought about it.

That was an either or question, so it can't have an answer of 'no'.
 

Why have any of them? What does a sense of smell add to your understanding of how chemical detection works?

Don't be so dense, Craig.

Don't be so evasive, Brent.  Being dense is how science works. It's about stripping away your assumptions. Your assumption is that somehow a sense of smell is an expected outcome of chemical detection, so I ask you to explain why you assume that. You are bluffing.

How about this. Could a TV show be closed captioned so thoroughly that a deaf person could read it and have the same experience as someone who listened to the show? Is a scroll of type that reads [grunting] enough of an understanding of the sound that it represents to say it is identical? Could there be a particular sound which would best and most unambiguously fit the description of [grunting], or could the description be extended to such a length and nuance that any sound could be described with 100% fidelity?

If there were no such thing as smell, could anything even remotely resembling olfactory qualia be justified quantitatively?

Unless you can explain exactly why you grant a machine qualities that you claim not to understand and why you grant a superfluous aesthetic dimension to simple stochastic predictive logic, I will consider the perspective that you offer as lacking any serious scientific justification.
 

To say it's "conscious" is just a way of modeling how it learns and acts that we can relate to (what Dennett calls "the intentional stance").

If that were true, then nobody should mind if they spend the rest of their life under comatose-level anesthetic while we replace their brain with a device that models how it learns in the same way that you once did.

I specifically wrote "and acts" above.

I specifically omitted 'acts' because it is too loaded with metaphorical connotations in this context. You are trying to smuggle intention into an algorithm which is unintentional. Either way though, it makes no difference. Should we be glad to enter a permanent coma to make room for a device which acts like us...even if it does a better job, objectively, of surviving and reproducing?

Did you even consider answering any of my questions?

Craig
 

[meekerdb]

On 8/17/2013 10:09 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Don't be so evasive, Brent.  Being dense is how science works. It's about stripping away your assumptions. Your assumption is that somehow a sense of smell is an expected outcome of chemical detection, so I ask you to explain why you assume that. You are bluffing.

And you're putting no thought into the problem. Otherwise you'd have realized that smell/chemical detection doesn't have the angular disribution and projective geometry of sight or the localization of touch and so you could have answered you own questions if you'd actually been interested in the answer.

Brent

[Alberto G. Corona]

I can nothing but laugh at at a Physicist pontificating about what
they call "free will" . It show how far the destruction of philosophy
by metaphisical-ideological-religious reductionism has gone since
Occam.

Calvin would be surprised about the twists that have suffered his
theory of predestination by ignorants of the history of ideas that
know nothing but the fashionable discussions of their concrete time.

2013/8/18, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>:

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[Craig Weinberg]

Synesthesia proves that data can be formatted in multiple ways, irrespective of assumed correlations. A computer proves this also. Your argument is essentially that we couldn't look at the data of an mp3 in any other way except listening to it with an ear. "You'd have realized that visual/alphanumeric detection doesn't have the harmonic oscillation and melodic structure to contain music theory".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

Try again?

Craig

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 17 August 2013 04:01, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

The objection that the terms ‘consciousness’ or ‘free will’ are used in too many different ways to be understandable is one of the most common arguments that I run into. I agree that it is a superficially valid objection, but on deeper consideration, it should be clear that it is a specious and ideologically driven detour.

The term free will is not as precise as a more scientific term might be (I tend to use motive, efferent participation, or private intention), but it isn’t nearly the problem that it is made to be in a debate. Any eight year old knows well enough what free will refers to. Nobody on Earth can fail to understand the difference between doing something by accident and intentionally, or between enslavement and freedom. The claim that these concepts are somehow esoteric doesn’t wash, unless you already have an expectation of a kind of verbal-logical supremacy in which nothing is allowed to exist until we can agree on a precise set of terms which give it existence. I think that this expectation is not a neutral or innocuous position, but actually contaminates the debate over free will, stacking the deck unintentionally in favor of the determinism.

It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random. I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism. I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type of brain mechanism.

It’s subtle, but ontologically, it is a bit like letting a burglar talk you into opening up the door to the house for them since breaking a window would only make a mess for you to clean up. Because the argument for hard determinism begins with an assumption that impartiality and objectivity are inherently desirable in all things, it asks that you put your king in check from the start. The argument doubles down on this leverage with the implication that subjective intuition is notoriously naive and flawed, so that not putting your king in check from the start is framed as a weak position. This is the James Randi kind of double-bind. If you don’t submit to his rules, then you are already guilty of fraud, and part of his rules are that you have no say in what his rules will be.

This is the sleight of hand which is also used by Daniel Dennett as well. What poses as a fair consideration of hard determinism is actually a stealth maneuver to create determinism – to demand that the subject submit to the forced disbelief system and become complicit in undermining their own authority. The irony is that it is only through a personal/social, political attack on subjectivity that the false perspective of objectivity can be introduced. It is accepted only by presentation pf an argument of personal insignificance so that the subject is shamed and bullied into imagining itself an object. Without knowing it, one person’s will has been voluntarily overpowered and confounded by another person’s free will into accepting that this state of affairs is not really happening. In presenting free will and consciousness as a kind of stage magic, the materialist magician performs a meta-magic trick on the audience.

Some questions for determinist thinkers:

• Can we effectively doubt that we have free will?
  

I can't effectively doubt that I decide to do something and do it. I can  effectively doubt that my actions are random, that they are determined, or that they are neither random nor determined

• Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very capacity for intentional reasoning upon which the doubt itself is based?

Yes: if I intend to do something, I can't doubt that I intend to do it, for otherwise I wouldn't intend to do it. 

• How would an illusion of doubt be justified, either randomly or deterministically? What function would an illusion of doubt serve, even in the most blue-sky hypothetical way?
• Why wouldn’t determinism itself be just as much of an illusion as free will or doubt under determinism?

Determinism and randomness can be doubted. There is no problem here. 

Another common derailment is to conflate the position of recognizing the phenomenon of subjectivity as authentic with religious faith, naive realism, or soft-headed sentimentality. This also is ironic, as it is an attack on the ego of the subject, not on the legitimacy of the issue. There is no reason to presume any theistic belief is implied just because determinism can be challenged at its root rather than on technicalities. To challenge determinism at its root requires (appropriately) the freedom to question the applicability of reductive reasoning to reason itself. The whole question of free will is to what extent it is an irreducible phenomenon which arises at the level of the individual. This question is already rendered unspeakable as soon as the free will advocate agrees to the framing of the debate in terms which require that they play the role of cross-examined witness to the prosecutor of determinism.

As soon as the subject is misdirected to focus their attention on the processes of the sub-personal level, a level where the individual by definition does not exist, the debate is no longer about the experience of volition and intention, but of physiology. The ‘witness’ is then invited to give a false confession, making the same mistake that the prosecutor makes in calling the outcome of the debate before it even begins. The foregone conclusion that physiological processes define psychological experiences entirely is used to justify itself, and the deterministic ego threatens to steal from another the very power to exercise control upon which the theft relies.

For psychology not to be reducible to physiology, something extra would be needed, such as non-physical soul. Absent this something extra, the reduction stands. That's my definition of reductionism. If your definition is different then, according to this different definition, it could be that reductionism is wrong in this case.

It is important to keep in mind that the nature of free will is such that it is available to us without pretense of explanation. Unless paralysis interrupts the effectiveness of our will (paralysis being a condition which proves only that physiology is necessary, but not sufficient), the faculty of voluntary action is self evident. If we want to open our eyes, no set of instructions is necessary, nor will any amount of explanation help us open them if we can’t figure out how. Often the deterministic end couches free will in terms of the power to make ‘choices’, which injects another bit of unsupported bias into the debate.

We use free will to make choices, but choices imply a pre-existing set of conditions from which we choose. This makes it much easier to make the leap of faith toward the presumption that free will can be successfully reduced to a computing algorithm. Computers can ‘choose’, in the sense that they compute which branch on the logic tree must be followed. What computation does not do, which free will does, is to lead, and to lead from felt experience rather than logic. Leading means creativity and intuition, not merely selecting from strategic simulations.

The logic is in the low level chemical processes. These *never* defy physics. Fantastically amplified complexity leads from these dumb processes to the creation of literature and smart phones.

The game theory approach to free will truncates morality and responsibility, reducing not only personhood to mechanism, but also the door entirely on meaningful, game changing approaches altogether. Free will allows us not only to elect a single decision from a set of fixed alternatives, but also to generate new alternatives which go beyond behaviorism. Our values stem from the quality of our experience, not just the short term advantages which our actions might deliver. The choice is up to us, not because the human body can’t function in its environment without an illusion of a decision maker, but because it isn’t just about choice, and the body’s survival alone is not enough to justify the quality of a human experience. Choice is not where free will begins, any more than opening your eyes begins with an understanding of eyelids. Experience begins with feeling, not knowing.

It's not an argument against mechanism to say that it will lead to moral degeneracy. If you are right, then we will all suffer when we see the truth; but that will not change the truth. 

--
Stathis Papaioannou

[Craig Weinberg]

On Monday, August 19, 2013 11:02:00 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

On 17 August 2013 04:01, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

The objection that the terms ‘consciousness’ or ‘free will’ are used in too many different ways to be understandable is one of the most common arguments that I run into. I agree that it is a superficially valid objection, but on deeper consideration, it should be clear that it is a specious and ideologically driven detour.

The term free will is not as precise as a more scientific term might be (I tend to use motive, efferent participation, or private intention), but it isn’t nearly the problem that it is made to be in a debate. Any eight year old knows well enough what free will refers to. Nobody on Earth can fail to understand the difference between doing something by accident and intentionally, or between enslavement and freedom. The claim that these concepts are somehow esoteric doesn’t wash, unless you already have an expectation of a kind of verbal-logical supremacy in which nothing is allowed to exist until we can agree on a precise set of terms which give it existence. I think that this expectation is not a neutral or innocuous position, but actually contaminates the debate over free will, stacking the deck unintentionally in favor of the determinism.

It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random.

Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional).
 

I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism.

Only if you have the possibility of something 'wanting' to do something in the first place. Wanting doesn't make sense deterministically or randomly. In the words of Yoda, 'there is no try, either do or do not'.
 

I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type of brain mechanism.

In the deterministic universe, you would be enslave no matter what, so what difference would it make whether your constraint is internally programmatic or externally modified?
 

It’s subtle, but ontologically, it is a bit like letting a burglar talk you into opening up the door to the house for them since breaking a window would only make a mess for you to clean up. Because the argument for hard determinism begins with an assumption that impartiality and objectivity are inherently desirable in all things, it asks that you put your king in check from the start. The argument doubles down on this leverage with the implication that subjective intuition is notoriously naive and flawed, so that not putting your king in check from the start is framed as a weak position. This is the James Randi kind of double-bind. If you don’t submit to his rules, then you are already guilty of fraud, and part of his rules are that you have no say in what his rules will be.

This is the sleight of hand which is also used by Daniel Dennett as well. What poses as a fair consideration of hard determinism is actually a stealth maneuver to create determinism – to demand that the subject submit to the forced disbelief system and become complicit in undermining their own authority. The irony is that it is only through a personal/social, political attack on subjectivity that the false perspective of objectivity can be introduced. It is accepted only by presentation pf an argument of personal insignificance so that the subject is shamed and bullied into imagining itself an object. Without knowing it, one person’s will has been voluntarily overpowered and confounded by another person’s free will into accepting that this state of affairs is not really happening. In presenting free will and consciousness as a kind of stage magic, the materialist magician performs a meta-magic trick on the audience.

Some questions for determinist thinkers:

• Can we effectively doubt that we have free will?
  

I can't effectively doubt that I decide to do something and do it. I can  effectively doubt that my actions are random, that they are determined, or that they are neither random nor determined

It sounds like you are agreeing with me?

• Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very capacity for intentional reasoning upon which the doubt itself is based?

Yes: if I intend to do something, I can't doubt that I intend to do it, for otherwise I wouldn't intend to do it. 

If you doubt anything though, it is because you intend to believe what is true and your sense is that some proposition is not true. To say "I doubt that there is a such thing as free will (intention)" is itself an intentional, free-will act. You are saying not just that there is a sense of doubt, but that you voluntarily invest your personal authority in that doubt.
 

• How would an illusion of doubt be justified, either randomly or deterministically? What function would an illusion of doubt serve, even in the most blue-sky hypothetical way?
• Why wouldn’t determinism itself be just as much of an illusion as free will or doubt under determinism?

Determinism and randomness can be doubted. There is no problem here. 

Only because we live in a universe which supports voluntary intentional doubt. They couldn't be doubted in a universe which was limited to determinism and randomness. That's my point. To doubt, you need to be able to determine personally. Free will is the power not just to predict but to dictate.
 

Another common derailment is to conflate the position of recognizing the phenomenon of subjectivity as authentic with religious faith, naive realism, or soft-headed sentimentality. This also is ironic, as it is an attack on the ego of the subject, not on the legitimacy of the issue. There is no reason to presume any theistic belief is implied just because determinism can be challenged at its root rather than on technicalities. To challenge determinism at its root requires (appropriately) the freedom to question the applicability of reductive reasoning to reason itself. The whole question of free will is to what extent it is an irreducible phenomenon which arises at the level of the individual. This question is already rendered unspeakable as soon as the free will advocate agrees to the framing of the debate in terms which require that they play the role of cross-examined witness to the prosecutor of determinism.

As soon as the subject is misdirected to focus their attention on the processes of the sub-personal level, a level where the individual by definition does not exist, the debate is no longer about the experience of volition and intention, but of physiology. The ‘witness’ is then invited to give a false confession, making the same mistake that the prosecutor makes in calling the outcome of the debate before it even begins. The foregone conclusion that physiological processes define psychological experiences entirely is used to justify itself, and the deterministic ego threatens to steal from another the very power to exercise control upon which the theft relies.

For psychology not to be reducible to physiology, something extra would be needed, such as non-physical soul.

Then the opposite would have to be true also. For select brain physiology not to be reducible to psychology, you would need some homunculus running translation traffic in infinite regress. Non-physical and soul are labels which are not useful to me. Physics is reducible to sense, and sense tends to polarize as public and private phenomena.
 

Absent this something extra, the reduction stands. That's my definition of reductionism. If your definition is different then, according to this different definition, it could be that reductionism is wrong in this case.

Physical reductionism is wrong because it arbitrarily starts with objects as real and subjects as somehow other than real. It's not really reductionism, it's just stealth dualism, where mind-soul is recategorized as an unspecified non-substance...an 'illusion' or 'emergent property'...which is just Santa Claus to me as far as awareness goes.
 

It is important to keep in mind that the nature of free will is such that it is available to us without pretense of explanation. Unless paralysis interrupts the effectiveness of our will (paralysis being a condition which proves only that physiology is necessary, but not sufficient), the faculty of voluntary action is self evident. If we want to open our eyes, no set of instructions is necessary, nor will any amount of explanation help us open them if we can’t figure out how. Often the deterministic end couches free will in terms of the power to make ‘choices’, which injects another bit of unsupported bias into the debate.

We use free will to make choices, but choices imply a pre-existing set of conditions from which we choose. This makes it much easier to make the leap of faith toward the presumption that free will can be successfully reduced to a computing algorithm. Computers can ‘choose’, in the sense that they compute which branch on the logic tree must be followed. What computation does not do, which free will does, is to lead, and to lead from felt experience rather than logic. Leading means creativity and intuition, not merely selecting from strategic simulations.

The logic is in the low level chemical processes. These *never* defy physics. Fantastically amplified complexity leads from these dumb processes to the creation of literature and smart phones.

Complexity can only complicate and enhance awareness that is already there. Low level processes never defy physics because they represent the outermost periphery of experience. High level processes *always* defy (public) physics. Feelings have no location, specific gravity, velocity, etc. They are proprietary and signifying.
 

The game theory approach to free will truncates morality and responsibility, reducing not only personhood to mechanism, but also the door entirely on meaningful, game changing approaches altogether. Free will allows us not only to elect a single decision from a set of fixed alternatives, but also to generate new alternatives which go beyond behaviorism. Our values stem from the quality of our experience, not just the short term advantages which our actions might deliver. The choice is up to us, not because the human body can’t function in its environment without an illusion of a decision maker, but because it isn’t just about choice, and the body’s survival alone is not enough to justify the quality of a human experience. Choice is not where free will begins, any more than opening your eyes begins with an understanding of eyelids. Experience begins with feeling, not knowing.

It's not an argument against mechanism to say that it will lead to moral degeneracy. If you are right, then we will all suffer when we see the truth; but that will not change the truth. 

That is an assumption of mechanism though. The knife can't tell you the morality of stabbing. If game theory is amoral, it is because it represents this kind of voluntary self-dilution, a regression to a pre-human sensibility. If we use that mechanistic logic to judge the decision to use mechanistic logic, we have as self-fulfilling fallacy...a fallacy that is hidden by its own nested circularity.

Craig
 

--
Stathis Papaioannou

[Chris de Morsella]

>> I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type of brain mechanism.

I would argue that people can be as much enslaved by chains within their minds, and that belief and habit have the potential to be as powerful a constraint as bonds of iron can ever be. Habit & belief, once established in a host brain are exceedingly difficult to root out; they remain and operate largely unexamined by the person affected by them, generating assumed truth, unquestioned assumptions and deciding actions and judgments that are generated from within the inner universe the marvelously and massively parallel, and also very noisy brains.

Habit & belief often reflect and enforce external enslavement; we become habituated into our various assorted lots in life, and after the habit takes root we are largely driven forward along the desired behavioral patterns by the well rooted habits inside of us.

And in some senses habitual behavior is a great thing; I love not having to think about everything that is constantly occurring and which demands a response from the brain. Habitual behavior to the rescue J

But the unexamined habit and belief can imprison a brain as or even more effectively than physical imprisonment can.

Apart from this one minor quibble, I agree with the thrust of your argument that we all intuitively grasp our own “free will” in a most visceral sense, and that while it cannot be defined precisely or pinned down or proved; that just because it is a little fuzzy and impossible to rigorously define does not mean it therefore does not exist or must remain outside of any serious discussion on such matters.

Even if free will does not exist -- in which case it matter not whether we believe in it or not – it appears that regardless of whether free will truly exists or not, our belief in free will is vital for our morality. When we believe we have free will that we, the inner self-aware agents in our brains are deciding our actions then we tend to behave in more moral ways; conversely when we are led to believe that free will does not exist and that we are chatty marionettes driven by a fundamental determinism or programs outside of our control then we behave in far less moral manners.

So, even if we inhabit a deterministic universe, that universe has found it necessary – in us (self-aware and at least semi-conscious beings)  -- to develop/evolve this elaborate inner charade, to produce an illusion of free will that is so perfect in us that few question its existence.

One could argue that the very fact that this very real sensation and experience of having free will and of being conscious has evolved to the exquisite degree that it has evolved in us is indicative of a deep centrality of importance to our being. Believing in free will, which seems very evolved in us – after all, human individuals, on average, very much tend to believe in their own free will  --believing in it, independent of whether it actually exists or not in the underlying physical reality matrix in which our virtual mental entities are most intimately immersed seems vital to our being… and on many levels from the moral, to the motivational and emotional.

Behaviorism misses the mark, sure behaviors can be induced, subjects controlled through conditioning, but that is merely generating superficial behavioral effects and demonstrating that behaviors can be imprinted on minds. It is not therefore a theory of the mind.

It’s akin to the torturers belief in the methodology of torture; while it is true that the one tortured will eventually become broken by torture and seek above all to please the torturer and will tell them whatever they want to hear… this in no ways actually implies that anything of value has been achieved. The information extracted by torture all too often proves to be of little value.

Not calling behaviorists torturers although I find their world view tortured J

The poetry of the mind is not so easily reducible, the esthetics of inner life cannot be so easily dissected and defined. That which is most beautiful and real in us… self-emerging within this truly vast dynamic electro-chemical inner-verse is the mind.

I suspect the mind is rather much more a subtle multi-faceted, multi-reflecting, dynamically inter-acting and co-evolving self-emergent entity, which quite self-evidently, transcends the crude attempts of reducing this symphony to an impoverished assemblage of deterministic behaviors and mental programs.

-Chris

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 21 August 2013 03:59, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident
>> and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still
>> acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random.
>
>
> Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random
> process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into
> this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional).

If you are saying that something cannot be emotionally meaningful if
it is random or determined you are wrong. Patients are anxious about
the result of a medical test even though they know the answer is
determined and gamblers are anxious about the outcome of their bet
even though they know it is random.

>> I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am
>> doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism.
>
>
> Only if you have the possibility of something 'wanting' to do something in
> the first place. Wanting doesn't make sense deterministically or randomly.
> In the words of Yoda, 'there is no try, either do or do not'.

You know that you have wants, and you conclude from this that your
brain cannot function deterministically or randomly. You make this
claim repeatedly and without justification.

>> I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order
>> to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type
>> of brain mechanism.
>
>
> In the deterministic universe, you would be enslave no matter what, so what
> difference would it make whether your constraint is internally programmatic
> or externally modified?

I don't think being a "slave" to brain processes is considered to be
real slavery by most people. You are free to differ in your
definition.

>>> Some questions for determinist thinkers:
>>>
>>> Can we effectively doubt that we have free will?
>>
>> I can't effectively doubt that I decide to do something and do it. I can
>> effectively doubt that my actions are random, that they are determined, or
>> that they are neither random nor determined
>
>
> It sounds like you are agreeing with me?

On this point, yes; but I'm using the common, legal or compatibilist
definition of free will, not yours.

>>> Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very capacity for
>>> intentional reasoning upon which the doubt itself is based?
>>
>> Yes: if I intend to do something, I can't doubt that I intend to do it,
>> for otherwise I wouldn't intend to do it.
>
>
> If you doubt anything though, it is because you intend to believe what is
> true and your sense is that some proposition is not true. To say "I doubt
> that there is a such thing as free will (intention)" is itself an
> intentional, free-will act. You are saying not just that there is a sense of
> doubt, but that you voluntarily invest your personal authority in that
> doubt.

I don't doubt free will in the common, legal or compatibilist sense. I
doubt it in your sense, since it is not even conceptually possible.

>>> How would an illusion of doubt be justified, either randomly or
>>> deterministically? What function would an illusion of doubt serve, even in
>>> the most blue-sky hypothetical way?
>>> Why wouldn’t determinism itself be just as much of an illusion as free
>>> will or doubt under determinism?
>>
>> Determinism and randomness can be doubted. There is no problem here.
>
>
> Only because we live in a universe which supports voluntary intentional
> doubt. They couldn't be doubted in a universe which was limited to
> determinism and randomness. That's my point. To doubt, you need to be able
> to determine personally. Free will is the power not just to predict but to
> dictate.

I can doubt something if it was determined at the beginning of the
universe that I would doubt it. Where is the logical problem with
that?

>> For psychology not to be reducible to physiology, something extra would be
>> needed, such as non-physical soul.
>
>
> Then the opposite would have to be true also. For select brain physiology
> not to be reducible to psychology, you would need some homunculus running
> translation traffic in infinite regress. Non-physical and soul are labels
> which are not useful to me. Physics is reducible to sense, and sense tends
> to polarize as public and private phenomena.

A house is reducible to bricks because if you put all the bricks in
place the house necessarily follows. Psychology is reducible to
physiology because if you put all the physiology in place the
psychology follows necessarily.

>> Absent this something extra, the reduction stands. That's my definition of
>> reductionism. If your definition is different then, according to this
>> different definition, it could be that reductionism is wrong in this case.
>
>
> Physical reductionism is wrong because it arbitrarily starts with objects as
> real and subjects as somehow other than real. It's not really reductionism,
> it's just stealth dualism, where mind-soul is recategorized as an
> unspecified non-substance...an 'illusion' or 'emergent property'...which is
> just Santa Claus to me as far as awareness goes.

A house is not "other than real" or "illusion", but a house is an
emergent phenomenon from the bricks. It is different from the bricks,
but ultimately it is just the bricks.

>> The logic is in the low level chemical processes. These *never* defy
>> physics. Fantastically amplified complexity leads from these dumb processes
>> to the creation of literature and smart phones.
>
>
> Complexity can only complicate and enhance awareness that is already there.
> Low level processes never defy physics because they represent the outermost
> periphery of experience. High level processes *always* defy (public)
> physics. Feelings have no location, specific gravity, velocity, etc. They
> are proprietary and signifying.

Awareness must already be there in the same sense as the house must in
some sense already be there in the bricks. But if the bricks are piled
together incorrectly there is no house, and if the brain chemicals are
piled up together incorrectly there is no mind.

>> It's not an argument against mechanism to say that it will lead to moral
>> degeneracy. If you are right, then we will all suffer when we see the truth;
>> but that will not change the truth.
>
>
> That is an assumption of mechanism though. The knife can't tell you the
> morality of stabbing. If game theory is amoral, it is because it represents
> this kind of voluntary self-dilution, a regression to a pre-human
> sensibility. If we use that mechanistic logic to judge the decision to use
> mechanistic logic, we have as self-fulfilling fallacy...a fallacy that is
> hidden by its own nested circularity.

Mechanistic logic leads to morality insofar as mechanistic logic
governs the functioning of the brain.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:33:06 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

On 21 August 2013 03:59, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident
>> and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still
>> acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random.
>
>
> Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random
> process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into
> this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional).

If you are saying that something cannot be emotionally meaningful if
it is random or determined you are wrong. Patients are anxious about
the result of a medical test even though they know the answer is
determined and gamblers are anxious about the outcome of their bet
even though they know it is random.

But that's only because of the impact that the random or determined condition has on our free participation. We have anxiety because a particular condition threatens to constrain our free will or cause unpleasant sensations. They are inextricably linked. A sensation can only be so unpleasant if we retain the power to escape it voluntarily. It is only when we we think that a situation will be unpleasant and that we will not be able to avoid it that anxiety is caused. We can't say whether we would have anxiety in a deterministic universe unless we knew for sure that we had been in a deterministic universe at at some point, but logically, it would not make sense for any such thing as anxiety to arise in a universe of involuntary spectators. What would be the justification of such an emotion? Anxiety makes sense if you have free will. If anything anxiety is caused by the ability to imagine the loss of the effectiveness of your free will.
 

>> I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am
>> doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism.
>
>
> Only if you have the possibility of something 'wanting' to do something in
> the first place. Wanting doesn't make sense deterministically or randomly.
> In the words of Yoda, 'there is no try, either do or do not'.

You know that you have wants, and you conclude from this that your
brain cannot function deterministically or randomly. You make this
claim repeatedly and without justification.

My brain has nothing to do with it. I am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball.

>> I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order
>> to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type
>> of brain mechanism.
>
>
> In the deterministic universe, you would be enslave no matter what, so what
> difference would it make whether your constraint is internally programmatic
> or externally modified?

I don't think being a "slave" to brain processes is considered to be
real slavery by most people. You are free to differ in your
definition.

Why not? What exactly is the difference whether your enslavement is internally based or externally based?
 

>>> Some questions for determinist thinkers:
>>>
>>> Can we effectively doubt that we have free will?
>>
>> I can't effectively doubt that I decide to do something and do it. I can
>> effectively doubt that my actions are random, that they are determined, or
>> that they are neither random nor determined
>
>
> It sounds like you are agreeing with me?

On this point, yes; but I'm using the common, legal or compatibilist
definition of free will, not yours.

Ok
 

>>> Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very capacity for
>>> intentional reasoning upon which the doubt itself is based?
>>
>> Yes: if I intend to do something, I can't doubt that I intend to do it,
>> for otherwise I wouldn't intend to do it.
>
>
> If you doubt anything though, it is because you intend to believe what is
> true and your sense is that some proposition is not true. To say "I doubt
> that there is a such thing as free will (intention)" is itself an
> intentional, free-will act. You are saying not just that there is a sense of
> doubt, but that you voluntarily invest your personal authority in that
> doubt.

I don't doubt free will in the common, legal or compatibilist sense. I
doubt it in your sense, since it is not even conceptually possible.

It doesn't have to be conceptually possible, it is more primitive than concept. We have no choice but to experience it directly, and can only deny that this is the case by demonstrating that we have the power to do that as an act of free will.
 

>>> How would an illusion of doubt be justified, either randomly or
>>> deterministically? What function would an illusion of doubt serve, even in
>>> the most blue-sky hypothetical way?
>>> Why wouldn’t determinism itself be just as much of an illusion as free
>>> will or doubt under determinism?
>>
>> Determinism and randomness can be doubted. There is no problem here.
>
>
> Only because we live in a universe which supports voluntary intentional
> doubt. They couldn't be doubted in a universe which was limited to
> determinism and randomness. That's my point. To doubt, you need to be able
> to determine personally. Free will is the power not just to predict but to
> dictate.

I can doubt something if it was determined at the beginning of the
universe that I would doubt it. Where is the logical problem with
that?

How would "doubt" exist? Does a falling rock doubt? Doubt, like anxiety, is derived only from the effectiveness of free will. We take our beliefs seriously only because there is a tangible, irreversible, public effect that our actions cause. Were that not the case, and we were impotent spectators to our own brain processes, we could hardly doubt or not doubt any proposition we came across - we would simply observe that the probability that the belief was beneficial to the organism was being calculated, without any feeling about it at all.
 

>> For psychology not to be reducible to physiology, something extra would be
>> needed, such as non-physical soul.
>
>
> Then the opposite would have to be true also. For select brain physiology
> not to be reducible to psychology, you would need some homunculus running
> translation traffic in infinite regress. Non-physical and soul are labels
> which are not useful to me. Physics is reducible to sense, and sense tends
> to polarize as public and private phenomena.

A house is reducible to bricks because if you put all the bricks in
place the house necessarily follows. Psychology is reducible to
physiology because if you put all the physiology in place the
psychology follows necessarily.

If a house falls apart, it can be repaired. It can't die or cease being a house without being completely destroyed. The statement that if you put all the physiology in place, the psychology follows necessarily is an assumption, but I think that it is not likely to be true. It's not that simple. Psychology drives physiology as well as the other way around, and ultimately, all matter can be considered the expression of universal psychology (pansensitivity).
 

>> Absent this something extra, the reduction stands. That's my definition of
>> reductionism. If your definition is different then, according to this
>> different definition, it could be that reductionism is wrong in this case.
>
>
> Physical reductionism is wrong because it arbitrarily starts with objects as
> real and subjects as somehow other than real. It's not really reductionism,
> it's just stealth dualism, where mind-soul is recategorized as an
> unspecified non-substance...an 'illusion' or 'emergent property'...which is
> just Santa Claus to me as far as awareness goes.

A house is not "other than real" or "illusion", but a house is an
emergent phenomenon from the bricks. It is different from the bricks,
but ultimately it is just the bricks.

Yes, it is just bricks without human interaction. Intentional human habitation makes it a house. Houseness does not emerge from the bricks, it is a signifying expectation projected onto a builder's actions which motivates fulfillment by way of masonry. The key is to realize that 'ultimately it is just' does not automatically equal the perspective of inanimate objects. A brick's view of the world is no more ultimate than our view. We are more qualified to define the universe than the brick is, but the brick-level definition is a more common definition. You are automatically amputating quality because you over-signify the relevance of quantity. Because there's a lot of stuff that seems inanimate, you think that emotion and subjectivity is a fluke - but objectivity is the same fluke, it's just repeated over and over in a form that is so distant from our own that it seems opposite.

>> The logic is in the low level chemical processes. These *never* defy
>> physics. Fantastically amplified complexity leads from these dumb processes
>> to the creation of literature and smart phones.
>
>
> Complexity can only complicate and enhance awareness that is already there.
> Low level processes never defy physics because they represent the outermost
> periphery of experience. High level processes *always* defy (public)
> physics. Feelings have no location, specific gravity, velocity, etc. They
> are proprietary and signifying.

Awareness must already be there in the same sense as the house must in
some sense already be there in the bricks.

You're confusing the human experience of a house with a hypothetical experience that you project in the absence of humans. It's a disoriented projection though - the atoms that make up the brick don't perceive any brick, nor does the ground or the atmosphere perceive a brick. A brick to whom?
 

But if the bricks are piled
together incorrectly there is no house, and if the brain chemicals are
piled up together incorrectly there is no mind.

You can use a sheet over a bush to make a house. Anything that you can crawl into can be a house. Again this projection of an objectively 'correct' configuration is an assumption. You are looking at New York City and saying that if it was not in the configuration it is now, it wouldn't work because it would be incorrect. You're generalizing from the particular rather than questioning the general.
 

>> It's not an argument against mechanism to say that it will lead to moral
>> degeneracy. If you are right, then we will all suffer when we see the truth;
>> but that will not change the truth.
>
>
> That is an assumption of mechanism though. The knife can't tell you the
> morality of stabbing. If game theory is amoral, it is because it represents
> this kind of voluntary self-dilution, a regression to a pre-human
> sensibility. If we use that mechanistic logic to judge the decision to use
> mechanistic logic, we have as self-fulfilling fallacy...a fallacy that is
> hidden by its own nested circularity.

Mechanistic logic leads to morality insofar as mechanistic logic
governs the functioning of the brain.

That's circular. You have already decided that the brain produces the mind, but that is not supported. Mechanistic logic governs the functioning of the routers and servers of the internet. Does that mean that architecture is producing the content of Facebook?

Craig
 

--
Stathis Papaioannou

[chris peck]

Hi Craig

am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball.

I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view.

But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events.

The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there.

All the best.

---

Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 19:13:57 -0700
From: whats...@gmail.com

To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade

[Chris de Morsella]

>> The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there.

 

Chris I follow what you are saying, but wouldn’t you also agree that it seems like a whole lot of energy and evolutionary lineage is invested in desire and the full panoply of the emotional spectra. Doesn’t it seem more probable that it has been very much selected for by evolutionary pressure. That it is not a mere hitchhiker along the ride on t crest of some inevitable collapsing wave in a deterministic universe playing out the preordained.

Conservation of energy seems to be a first principal of all evolved systems, the easier an organism can navigate the flows of its reality in the huge numbers game of evolutionary pressure the better its chances are of surviving and passing on its heredity. Nature favors the emergence of efficient design (not always resulting in efficient designs  though but that’s another story). It seems to me that the energy required in order to maintain our emotional and felt/experienced existence; to maintain this elaborate illusion of free will (it would be an illusion in a preordained world) is so great that unless it played an essential role in our lives and favored the individual’s hereditary success in whom it expressed then it would have been evolved out of us and would have never developed in the mammalian branch in the first place.

The emotional life of very many animals, including the human animal, is critical to their survival in fact.

Can something so critical be an accidental epiphenomena emerging out of the inefficiency of the program? Besides wouldn’t the program evolve to be as efficient as it could; doesn’t the conservation of energy apply to the deterministic universe itself or does it get to play by different rules?

By the way I enjoy how you argue your position, very cogent and well laid out; it’s just that I feel that proposing that the poetry and depth of the experience of feeling that all of us to one degree or another experience, could be an accidental co-phenomena; a kind of side show that is a distracting superficial phenomena of no bearing or consequence to the underlying preordained script is not supported by the evidence that nature places a lot of energy and attention on developing and evolving precisely those phenomena in a lot of life forms we can study.

Thanks for the interesting thread,

Chris

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 22 August 2013 13:20, chris peck <chris_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Craig
>
>
> am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong
> determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce
> desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any
> sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball.
>
>
> I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe
> wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from
> an adaptive point of view.

That's no more true for a determined universe than it is for a
non-determined universe.

> But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be
> epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the
> unraveling of pre-written events.
>
> The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along
> with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be
> implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those
> conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there.
>
> All the best.

If it were possible to have the same behaviour without consciousness
then consciousness would not have evolved - there would be no adaptive
value to it. That is one reason why I think consciousness must be a
necessary side-effect of intelligent behaviour, at least in organic
machines such as we are.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

[chris peck]

Hi Chris / Stathis

I probably shouldn't have used the word adaptive.

I think Craig is arguing :

1) whatever 'feels'/psychological states emerge from the universe must be compatible with its fundamental nature.

2) Anxiety implies that I really could avoid some feared event.

3) But que sera sera in a determined universe. what will be will be. I can't avoid my fate.

consequently, anxiety can not emerge within a determined universe because of 2 and 1.

Initially I took issue with 2) in the following way: I felt that uncertainty about a unavoidable fate would provide space for anxiety to emerge. But the more I thought about Craig's position the less tenable I thought this was. I think his position is very compelling (if I understand it). If nothing has ever avoided a fate how has the sense that this can be achieved emerged? What is it about the universe that allows for this delusion? What is it built out of?

Anyway the questions flooded in. So i thought what if 'anxiety' doesn't imply the ability to avoid a fate. Maybe its just an epiphenomenal 'feel' that floats above psychological uncertainty and isn't really susceptible to further analysis. That didn't seem to conflict with a determined universe readily.

Chris, as for whether any of this is plausible, probable etc. I'm afraid I wouldn't even begin to know how to assess that. And to be honest I'm not even sure whether Craig would accept my paraphrase of his argument.

All the best.

> From: stat...@gmail.com
> Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 15:01:35 +1000
> Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 22 August 2013 15:23, chris peck <chris_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Chris / Stathis
>
> I probably shouldn't have used the word adaptive.
>
> I think Craig is arguing :
>
> 1) whatever 'feels'/psychological states emerge from the universe must be
> compatible with its fundamental nature.
>
> 2) Anxiety implies that I really could avoid some feared event.
>
> 3) But que sera sera in a determined universe. what will be will be. I can't
> avoid my fate.
>
> consequently, anxiety can not emerge within a determined universe because of
> 2 and 1.
>
> Initially I took issue with 2) in the following way: I felt that uncertainty
> about a unavoidable fate would provide space for anxiety to emerge. But the
> more I thought about Craig's position the less tenable I thought this was. I
> think his position is very compelling (if I understand it). If nothing has
> ever avoided a fate how has the sense that this can be achieved emerged?
> What is it about the universe that allows for this delusion? What is it
> built out of?

It's not a delusion. The animals that are anxious about predators
avoid them and pass on their genes, while the ones that aren't anxious
don't avoid them, get eaten, and don't pass on their genes. How is
this more problematic in a deterministic world?

> Anyway the questions flooded in. So i thought what if 'anxiety' doesn't
> imply the ability to avoid a fate. Maybe its just an epiphenomenal 'feel'
> that floats above psychological uncertainty and isn't really susceptible to
> further analysis. That didn't seem to conflict with a determined universe
> readily.

But you *can* avoid your fate in a determined universe. If you were
not anxious, your fate would be different, so anxiety helps you avoid
it. This is so whether or not the counterfactual is realised in a
multiverse.

> Chris, as for whether any of this is plausible, probable etc. I'm afraid I
> wouldn't even begin to know how to assess that. And to be honest I'm not
> even sure whether Craig would accept my paraphrase of his argument.
>
> All the best.

--
Stathis Papaioannou

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 11:20:09 PM UTC-4, chris peck wrote:

Hi Craig

am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball.

I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view.

But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events.

The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there.

Can't that logic be used to justify anything though? "Why do we have telekinesis and and time travel-at-will?...Well, maybe its just an epiphenomenon that's left over from something else." It's unfalsifiable and no different from a religious faith, except in reverse. Instead of reaching for a supernatural explanation, determinism compulsively reaches for a sub-natural explanation. The compulsion is the same - taking comfort in the familiar. Instead of "God did it." it's just "Some unconscious mechanism did it.".

The whole point of determinism and physical closure is to avoid unjustifiable surprises. If we are going to allow that "desires" are conjured randomly in the midst of barren austerity for no conceivable purpose, then why bother to assert that there are any deterministic laws at all. Maybe they are epiphenomena coming along for the ride? Why not say that the laws of physics are a random conspiracy of brain chemicals, "zexires", which give the impression of validating each other because it makes us more tender and juicy for the hideous demons who raise us as cattle?

Thanks,
Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

"The emotional life of very many animals, including the human animal, is critical to their survival in fact."

Right, although only in fact, and not under the theory of strong determinism. In strong determinism the only thing that could matter to an animal's survival is its behavior. As long as they behave like animals, stay in family groups, have a social order, etc, no 'emotion' would impact that behavior in any way, especially if there were no free will. It's pretty easy to make something look like it has emotion - like this = :)

But, of course that's because our consciousness includes metaphor and empathy. We might look at animals touching each other or fighting each other and say that there is emotion there, and there is, but in a theoretical deterministic universe, why would there be anything but the touching and fighting, just as there are storms in the atmosphere or supernovas exploding. Animals collide and bond with each other. So what?

Thanks,
Craig

[chris peck]

>>Can't that logic be used to justify anything though?

no. For example:

>> "Why do we have telekinesis and and time travel-at-will?...Well, maybe its just an epiphenomenon that's left over from something else."

it can't be used to justify that.

We have no reason to believe in telekinesis Craig nor time travel at will. Anxiety on the other hand is common. Yes?

>> Instead of reaching for a supernatural explanation, determinism compulsively reaches for a sub-natural explanation.

I don't think so. Determinism is a view people are driven to based on what they know about the world. Its an end point, a conclusion. It doesn't 'compulsively reach' for anything.

>>The compulsion is the same - taking comfort in the familiar. Instead of "God did it." it's just "Some unconscious mechanism did it.".

Comfort in the familiar? You think theres comfort to be had in determinism? That it is familiar? I don't think people feel that way.

Whatever. when people make claims as bold as yours, that determinism is logically incompatible with the existance of anxiety; then I want to see whether they are serious or just  bigging up pet theories with claims they can't justify. You're evading the question and kicking up mud.

>> The whole point of determinism and physical closure is to avoid unjustifiable surprises.

Like I said, there isn't a point to determinism. It is a conclusion that is reached.

>> If we are going to allow that "desires" are conjured randomly in the midst of barren austerity for no conceivable purpose, then why bother to assert that there are any deterministic laws at all.

Who's conjuring what and whats barren and austere??? What are you talking about?

Look, It is because the world can be decribed by laws that are deterministic or probabilistic that we feel led to and caught between this pincer. Between randomness and fate. You put the cart way before the horse.

>> aybe they are epiphenomena coming along for the ride? Why not say that the laws of physics are a random conspiracy of brain chemicals, "zexires", which give the impression of validating each other because it makes us more tender and juicy for the hideous demons who raise us as cattle?

You're out with fairies tonight Craig. Good luck to you.

---

Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 03:34:59 -0700

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, August 22, 2013 7:43:27 AM UTC-4, chris peck wrote:

>>Can't that logic be used to justify anything though?

no. For example:

>> "Why do we have telekinesis and and time travel-at-will?...Well, maybe its just an epiphenomenon that's left over from something else."

it can't be used to justify that.

We have no reason to believe in telekinesis Craig nor time travel at will. Anxiety on the other hand is common. Yes?

We have no reason to believe in anxiety either. We are just taking our own word for it. Your disbelief in time travel and telekinesis could be an epiphenomenon that is just there to shield your brain from the demons. Well, that would actually give disbelief a functional purpose (even though it is a fanciful purpose), as opposed to "anxiety" which could have no plausible function or purpose in a deterministic universe. It's sort of like saying that in flatland, we might have evolved eyes on top of our heads, just because.
 

>> Instead of reaching for a supernatural explanation, determinism compulsively reaches for a sub-natural explanation.

I don't think so. Determinism is a view people are driven to based on what they know about the world. Its an end point, a conclusion. It doesn't 'compulsively reach' for anything.

That's just your compulsion talking. It originates from your brain, right? Heterosexual males think that they are driven to women based on what they know about them, but are they? How can you justify the philosophy of determinism as originating in a drive which is exempt from determinism. If your brain says you will believe in determinism, then you will, and your "knowledge" of the world will be recontextualized and perverted to make it seem clearly true. Somehow heterosexual women find men attractive, the *are* attractive to them. How can this be since hetero men perceive other hetero men as very sexually unappealing. Determinism-mechanism is a psychological gender. It *certainly could not be any other* under determinism.
 

>>The compulsion is the same - taking comfort in the familiar. Instead of "God did it." it's just "Some unconscious mechanism did it.".

Comfort in the familiar? You think theres comfort to be had in determinism? That it is familiar? I don't think people feel that way.

Haha. Seriously? You don't think determinism provides comfort? What could possibly be more comforting, except maybe if you put a friendly face on determinism and imagine that it is fond of you.
 

Whatever. when people make claims as bold as yours, that determinism is logically incompatible with the existance of anxiety; then I want to see whether they are serious or just  bigging up pet theories with claims they can't justify. You're evading the question and kicking up mud.

>> The whole point of determinism and physical closure is to avoid unjustifiable surprises.

Like I said, there isn't a point to determinism. It is a conclusion that is reached.

But the conclusion is void if you violate its premise at will. If you can just push whatever you don't want to acknowledge into the bin of 'it must have been a consequence of something', then it's religion.
 

>> If we are going to allow that "desires" are conjured randomly in the midst of barren austerity for no conceivable purpose, then why bother to assert that there are any deterministic laws at all.

Who's conjuring what and whats barren and austere??? What are you talking about?

A pile sand is barren and austere. It is deterministic. Why would some configuration of sand generate a desire? It wouldn't. So why would a universe which is essentially variations on the theme of sand, particles, be any different?
 

Look, It is because the world can be decribed by laws that are deterministic or probabilistic that we feel led to and caught between this pincer. Between randomness and fate. You put the cart way before the horse.

Does determinism seem like a horse to you, or a cart?
 

>> aybe they are epiphenomena coming along for the ride? Why not say that the laws of physics are a random conspiracy of brain chemicals, "zexires", which give the impression of validating each other because it makes us more tender and juicy for the hideous demons who raise us as cattle?

You're out with fairies tonight Craig. Good luck to you.

That's just your zexires talking, Chris. But doesn't matter what anyone says, if the universe is absolutely deterministic then it would be your brain chemistry and evolutionary agenda alone which could determine what you think (and what you think that you think).

Thanks,
Craig

[chris peck]

Hi Craig

>> If your brain says you will believe in determinism, then you will, and your "knowledge" of the world will be recontextualized and perverted to make it seem clearly true.

right, and if your brain says you will believe in free will, then you will, and your "knowledge" of the world will be re-contextualized and perverted to make it seem clearly true.

and if your brain says you will believe in xyz, then you will, and your "knowledge" of the world will be re-contextualized and perverted to make it seem clearly true.

I hope you don't depend on this separation between you and your brain too heavily because its about as determinist a picture as I've read. You don't believe you have any control either. In fact everything you believe and everything you are arguing here on this thread you also believe is nothing but re-contextualized and contorted fiction.

>> Haha. Seriously? You don't think determinism provides comfort?

No. What comfort does it provide? Enlighten me. Like I said, determinism is a conclusion people are led to by other ontological beliefs. Its something philosophically you try to avoid. Who wants to give up free will? Being free and independent and able to succeed at things one tries at is central to western ideology. The world comes crashing down if that is taken away. Whats comforting about a runaway train? Pull the other one, Craig.

>> A pile sand is barren and austere. It is deterministic. Why would some configuration of sand generate a desire? It wouldn't.

Wouldn't it? Why not? What else is there that I can touch and feel and know about that might generate a desire?

>> So why would a universe which is essentially variations on the theme of sand, particles, be any different?

If you think these things are just variations on a theme then I'm happy to allow that complicated configurations of sand could have desires.

>> Does determinism seem like a horse to you, or a cart?

Haven't I been very clear about that?

>> But doesn't matter what anyone says, if the universe is absolutely deterministic then it would be your brain chemistry and evolutionary agenda alone which could determine what you think (and what you think that you think).

Well, my brain chemistry would be able to be effected by other brain chemistries to the point where there might be strong and persuasive currents flowing this way and that in massive societies of brain chemistries. Presiding over it all would be firstly the 'evolutionary agenda' and then the laws of physics. But, yeah thats about right given determinism. And I don't see any logical contradictions in that view, Craig.

You can't just chuck it out because you would find it more comforting to think that you are able to choose what you think.

All the best

---

Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 05:33:59 -0700

[John Mikes]

Brent wrote:

Just *any* response?  Doesn't the response have to be something we can identify as intelligent or purposeful?

Depends on your definition of 'intelligent or purposeful' - Oh, and of RESPONSE of course. My def. of response includes your characterisation. 

*

Brent wrote:

 So do you agree that if we build a machine, such as a Mars Rover, that exhibits intelligence in its response then we may conclude it is aware/conscious?

Aware like a thermostat? conscious like the response of it? YES. 

We use loose meanings and draw even looser conclusions.  We are loosers. 

Bren t wrote:

To exhibit intelligence the Rover would have to do more than "follow instructions", it would have to learn from experience, act and plan through simulation and prediction.  If it did exhibit intelligence like that, I'd grant it 'consciousness', whatever that means.  If it learns and acts based on chemical types I'd grant it has a sense of smell.  To say it's "conscious" is just a way of modeling how it learns and acts that we can relate to (what Dennett calls "the intentional stance").

That's exactly what I called your 'right' to call consciousness whatever fits your purpose. I have no firm rules between "conscious" and its noun (-ness). Both may be related to the 'inventory' we know of.  

JM

--

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, August 22, 2013 10:00:20 AM UTC-4, chris peck wrote:

Hi Craig

>> If your brain says you will believe in determinism, then you will, and your "knowledge" of the world will be recontextualized and perverted to make it seem clearly true.

right, and if your brain says you will believe in free will, then you will, and your "knowledge" of the world will be re-contextualized and perverted to make it seem clearly true.

and if your brain says you will believe in xyz, then you will, and your "knowledge" of the world will be re-contextualized and perverted to make it seem clearly true.

I hope you don't depend on this separation between you and your brain too heavily because its about as determinist a picture as I've read. You don't believe you have any control either. In fact everything you believe and everything you are arguing here on this thread you also believe is nothing but re-contextualized and contorted fiction.

I'm using the logic of determinism to show that determinism can't explain the reality we actually live in. The universe in which we actually live is fundamentally aesthetic and participatory. The only thing that is deterministic are the conditions derived from the (nested) consequences of participation.

>> Haha. Seriously? You don't think determinism provides comfort?

No. What comfort does it provide? Enlighten me.

It is a comfort to know that you can understand how conditions are determined and use that knowledge to change conditions. It is a comfort to know that once you have done all that you can do, you need not beg the whim of a supernatural entity to help you. It's like the Serenity prayer. Determinism grants the possibility of learning what we can change and the freedom from trying to change what we can't. Determinism is Mom and Dad telling you what to do rather than leaving you with a series of strangers. It's also comforting in negative ways. It allows us not to care about others, and not to have to entertain unfamiliar ideas. Determinism can be used as fatalism - a comfort, and a crutch.
 

Like I said, determinism is a conclusion people are led to by other ontological beliefs. Its something philosophically you try to avoid.

Free will is a conclusion people are led to by other ontological beliefs too. Why do you claim that it is any different?

Who wants to give up free will?

Anyone who is afraid of being responsible for their actions wants to give up free will. Anyone who wants to feel that they humble and sophisticated, intelligent and informed. Anyone who is afraid of the strange qualities of subejctivity. Anyone who doesn't feel comfortable with questions that seem to have no answer. Anyone who is afraid of metaphysical and supernatural ideas. Anyone who fears being overwhelmed by the needs of others or their own lack of compassion.
 

Being free and independent and able to succeed at things one tries at is central to western ideology. The world comes crashing down if that is taken away. Whats comforting about a runaway train? Pull the other one, Craig.

 Determinism is only possible to believe in a hypocritical way. It is a view from outside the universe, where one can stroke their beard (using their free will) and ponder (using their free will), what place this universe of objects has for free will. Finding none, they do not stop using their own free will. They don't fall into a catatonic stupor and await deterministic forces to dispose of them. They go on, pursuing their self interest or passively avoiding such efforts in whatever way they want, but with the added excuse of determinism in their pocket to shore up either stance. It's just like religion, only it runs from the bottom up instead of the top down.

>> A pile sand is barren and austere. It is deterministic. Why would some configuration of sand generate a desire? It wouldn't.

Wouldn't it? Why not? What else is there that I can touch and feel and know about that might generate a desire?

Desire is not generated, desire generates. Sand is generated, but does not generate.
 

>> So why would a universe which is essentially variations on the theme of sand, particles, be any different?

If you think these things are just variations on a theme then I'm happy to allow that complicated configurations of sand could have desires.

I know, that's the problem. Once you cross into the pathetic fallacy, it's hard to come back. It tends to require a miracle or a disaster.
 

>> Does determinism seem like a horse to you, or a cart?

Haven't I been very clear about that?

If I push a cart down a hill and push a horse down the hill, which one will have a more deterministic path?
 

>> But doesn't matter what anyone says, if the universe is absolutely deterministic then it would be your brain chemistry and evolutionary agenda alone which could determine what you think (and what you think that you think).

Well, my brain chemistry would be able to be effected by other brain chemistries to the point where there might be strong and persuasive currents flowing this way and that in massive societies of brain chemistries.

That would still leave you utterly incapable of being persuaded by anything anyone said. Your brain chemistry would either change, or it would not. You would have nothing to do with it one way or another.
 

Presiding over it all would be firstly the 'evolutionary agenda' and then the laws of physics. But, yeah thats about right given determinism. And I don't see any logical contradictions in that view, Craig.

Of course you don't Chris, your brain is hiding them from you because it threatens your conditioning.
 

You can't just chuck it out because you would find it more comforting to think that you are able to choose what you think.

I find determinism and fatalism much more comforting, ironically. I am a big 'path of least resistance' person. My mottos have included "No effort, no disappointment" and "Never do anything". I am heavily biased toward the sloth and gluttony oriented sins. So, no, my understanding of free will is only comforting in that it makes sense. I would prefer to be freed of it as long as things would improve for me. Choosing what you think is not absolute, but it is not devoid of intention. Intention is as real as gravity, it just works in a very different way.

Thanks,

Craig

[chris peck]

Hi Craig

>>I'm using the logic of determinism to show that determinism can't explain the reality we actually live in.

I stand corrected.

Well there isn't really a logic of determinism. That's because it is an end point. Something a world view drives us towards. Its the consequence of being unable to fit a notion of free will into other aspects of our world view sensibly, compatibalism notwithstanding.

There are alleged consequences of determinism, the ramifications such a conclusion has for responsibility for example. But the idea that the 'brain' latches on to some ideology and then contorts the picture of the world  to accommodate it isn't one of them. Since there isn't really a separation between the brain and me, the picture of me busily modifying what I know to fit in with what I want to be true is compatible with free will as well as determinism.

You were on the mark in the last paragraph though.

Determinism isn't the consequence of physicalism either. By which I mean you can introduce all other kinds of stuff into your world view and still be inexorably forced to abandon free will. Whether you posit a God creating the world and humanity, or a Cartesian soul, or Kantian phenomena and noumena and dings an sichs, you'll still have problems accommodating free will. Its ironic the way you argue, because whilst the history of philosophy reveals people distorting their world view in weird ways in order to accommodate it, you argue they have been trying to abandon it.

In any case, what really scuppers the free will is not physicalism or sand pits or inert matter giving rise to life, but causation. It is untenable because we regard ourselves as embedded within a network of prior causes. And that attacks the notion of freedom in free will. We can will, but those wills are caused. And the causes which cause the willing are caused etc etc etc. And the chain of causes goes all the way back because there doesn't appear to be a non-arbitrary place to say, 'stop, thats me that is, me causing things freely'.

I doubt many people are going to seriously abandon causation. And so we have been led to determinism and its ramifications. As an end point.

All the best.

---

Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 13:48:21 -0700

[Craig Weinberg]

On Thursday, August 22, 2013 9:26:01 PM UTC-4, chris peck wrote:

Hi Craig

>>I'm using the logic of determinism to show that determinism can't explain the reality we actually live in.

I stand corrected.

Well there isn't really a logic of determinism. That's because it is an end point. Something a world view drives us towards.

If we are being driven toward determinism, by determinism, where are we being driven from? Why aren't we there yet? Seems like if we aren't there yet, there must be somewhere else to be, which would negate strong determinism, under which there can be no alternative options.

Its the consequence of being unable to fit a notion of free will into other aspects of our world view sensibly, compatibalism notwithstanding.

I have no problem fitting a notion of free will into my world view now. It took a long time for me to stumble on it, but now I think I understand what it is and why it makes sense in the big picture.

There are alleged consequences of determinism, the ramifications such a conclusion has for responsibility for example. But the idea that the 'brain' latches on to some ideology and then contorts the picture of the world  to accommodate it isn't one of them.

That's exactly what the brain does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
 

Since there isn't really a separation between the brain and me,

In a sense that's true, but in another sense,  do you know how to make acetylcholine? Does your birth name show up in an MRI? Do your dreams follow the laws of physics? Why not?
 

the picture of me busily modifying what I know to fit in with what I want to be true is compatible with free will as well as determinism.

It's not a matter of modifying anything, it's just that everything that doesn't fit your expectation of "determinism" is filtered out or tagged as being insignificant/difficult/uncomfortable to think about. It would work just like every single other mechanism of evolutionary psychology. This is straight up behavior modification. Your psychological complex of determinism nurtures you, makes you feel safe and smart and superior, so your psyche easily deflects threats to that asset.
 

You were on the mark in the last paragraph though.

Determinism isn't the consequence of physicalism either. By which I mean you can introduce all other kinds of stuff into your world view and still be inexorably forced to abandon free will. Whether you posit a God creating the world and humanity, or a Cartesian soul, or Kantian phenomena and noumena and dings an sichs, you'll still have problems accommodating free will. Its ironic the way you argue, because whilst the history of philosophy reveals people distorting their world view in weird ways in order to accommodate it, you argue they have been trying to abandon it.

The nature of consciousness is that it makes sense wherever you aim it. It's like ventriloquism. When intention tries to locate itself within the extended world, it can only find the effects which intention has has on it, not intention itself. When we look at neuroscience or evolutionary biology, we do not see life, we see animated cadavers, information, images, structures. We see measurements of measurements. That which is doing the measuring is already present in every waking moment, so it can't also be present as its own effect. I see that deterministic philosophy denies free will by beginning from laws of physics and working backwards, while religious philosophy often denies free will by beginning from the plans of God and working backward. All that you have to do to find free will is to begin from what we know and work forward. We know that we have free will, and we know that doubting that would require free will. Why complicate it? Indeed, how could you complicate it if determinism were true? At least religion has the story about God giving you free will rope so you can hang yourself with it.

In any case, what really scuppers the free will is not physicalism or sand pits or inert matter giving rise to life, but causation. It is untenable because we regard ourselves as embedded within a network of prior causes.

Causes which were also set into motion intentionally. I don't see the problem. If I run around enough, I will hyperventilate involuntarily. My breathing will be caused by sub-personal, sub-conscious intentions. If I choose to hyperventilate in my chair, I am voluntarily causing those very same organs to breathe. Why would my intention be any less of a cause than another part of my brain's intention? I can hook my brain up to a device that changes your brain activity by TMS, and I could theoretically use that connection to make you change my brain activity by TMS. If we can both cause changes to each other, why can't our own intentions cause changes to our own brain?
 

And that attacks the notion of freedom in free will. We can will, but those wills are caused.

They may be, but those causes may also be willed on the next level down (or up). It's arbitrary. You are choosing to draw the line at the next iteration of what seems unintentional vs what seems intentional. I see that it is clearly an aesthetic perspective. Ultimately intention and unintention is a matter of proximity.
 

And the causes which cause the willing are caused etc etc etc. And the chain of causes goes all the way back because there doesn't appear to be a non-arbitrary place to say, 'stop, thats me that is, me causing things freely'.

That's because you are only looking at the public side of the chain. You aren't seeing that neurons are actually bodies that are associated with sub-personal experiences, and molecules are associated with sub-cellular experiences. If we look at what someone's body does through a telescope, would we learn what their inner experience is? Would we suspect intention? Nope. Not if we weren't human. Everything our body does, or a cell's body, or a molecule's body does will appear to be caused only by other bodies, just as taking photos with black and white film would make every image completely closed with respect to color. The image makes perfect sense without it.
 

I doubt many people are going to seriously abandon causation. And so we have been led to determinism and its ramifications. As an end point.

It's a false dichotomy. There is another possibility. Start from sensory-motive phenomena and move forward to explain the rest of the universe from there. I think that it works.

Thanks,
Craig
 

[chris peck]

Hi Craig

"There are alleged consequences of determinism, the ramifications such a conclusion has for responsibility for example. But the idea that the 'brain' latches on to some ideology and then contorts the picture of the world  to accommodate it isn't one of them."

That's exactly what the brain does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

The point was that you have as much reason to suppose your brain is doing that with regards to your doctrine of free will as you have for any other idea. Its self defeating because it would be a little bit silly to suppose that you have escaped these biases whilst your ideological opponents have not.

"It's not a matter of modifying anything, it's just that everything that doesn't fit your expectation of "determinism" is filtered out or tagged as being insignificant/difficult/uncomfortable to think about. It would work just like every single other mechanism of evolutionary psychology.This is straight up behavior modification. "

Is it a matter of modifying things or not? Actually don't worry it doesn't matter...

"Your psychological complex of determinism nurtures you, makes you feel safe and smart and superior, so your psyche easily deflects threats to that asset. "

Again, this applies to anyone and any idea. This pet theory you have concocted makes you feel safe and smart and superior, so your psych deflects threats to that asset. You haven't stumbled upon an argument that rescues free will here, this side of your argument leads to skepticism, nihilism probably. You're pulling the rug out from under your own feet. And clearly your psyche is protecting you from the threat of following your own logic to its conclusion.  If you suppose that brain process contort reality in such a powerful way, then knowledge isn't possible. Why not just admit that and be done with philosophy? This is the problem of skepticism, like determinism, an end point we are led to by consideration of, in this case, psychology.

"All that you have to do to find free will is to begin from what we know and work forward. We know that we have free will, and we know that doubting that would require free will. Why complicate it?"

I think that is a good way of finding free will. Possibly the only way that will succeed. You have to assume it from the outset, then where ever you take your enquiry it will always seem to be there. Trouble is, given your arguments above I don't think you have any right to claim to know anything and if you are debating free will you can't just assume it.

"Causes which were also set into motion intentionally. I don't see the problem. "

I don't think anyone denies that there are intentions. Intentions are the 'will' part in 'free will'. Its the 'free' part in "free will" that gets drawn into question by noticing events are caused.

"They may be, but those causes may also be willed on the next level down (or up). "

Its not up or down; its before and after. Brain state 1 causes brain state 2 causes brain state 3... stretching all the way back to the point where you simply don't exist to have brain states. To the point where you are being formed. And back further still by the laws of biology and physics to the start of history.

All the best.

---

Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 19:29:12 -0700

[Craig Weinberg]

On Sunday, August 25, 2013 10:03:52 AM UTC-4, chris peck wrote:

Hi Craig

"There are alleged consequences of determinism, the ramifications such a conclusion has for responsibility for example. But the idea that the 'brain' latches on to some ideology and then contorts the picture of the world  to accommodate it isn't one of them."

That's exactly what the brain does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

The point was that you have as much reason to suppose your brain is doing that with regards to your doctrine of free will as you have for any other idea. Its self defeating because it would be a little bit silly to suppose that you have escaped these biases whilst your ideological opponents have not.

I don't suppose that I have escaped the biases, my view incorporates bias as an inevitable consequence of sense...i.e., the universe is a perceptual bias. Competing views not only do not factor in their own bias, but they fail to acknowledge the role of bias in all phenomena. In addition, my view posits that sense also transcends bias (eventually). New perspectives which make more sense can be discovered.

 

"It's not a matter of modifying anything, it's just that everything that doesn't fit your expectation of "determinism" is filtered out or tagged as being insignificant/difficult/uncomfortable to think about. It would work just like every single other mechanism of evolutionary psychology.This is straight up behavior modification. "

Is it a matter of modifying things or not? Actually don't worry it doesn't matter...

"Your psychological complex of determinism nurtures you, makes you feel safe and smart and superior, so your psyche easily deflects threats to that asset. "

Again, this applies to anyone and any idea.

Which is why it is doubly important for scientists to factor that in to their own ideas.

 

This pet theory you have concocted makes you feel safe and smart and superior, so your psych deflects threats to that asset.

I'm not denying that though, I am embracing it. Determinism can only apply a double standard where its own biases are reflections of cold hard truth, but all other ideas can easily be seen as artifacts of conditioning or evolution.
 

You haven't stumbled upon an argument that rescues free will here, this side of your argument leads to skepticism, nihilism probably. You're pulling the rug out from under your own feet.

The argument is that there is no rug under any of our feet. There is no nihilism in my argument. I argue only that if strong determinism were true, it would be inconceivable for any determined process to mistake itself for a magically non-determined process. That option doesn't exist. It would be like saying that an eight cylinder engine mistakes itself for something which is the specific opposite of engines.
 

And clearly your psyche is protecting you from the threat of following your own logic to its conclusion.  If you suppose that brain process contort reality in such a powerful way, then knowledge isn't possible.

It sounds like you think that my view equates awareness to brain processes. You are looking at a Straw Man of my position. I am saying that all of reality, including the brain, diverge from the same common sensory-motive capacity. That capacity is far more primitive than matter or information. It is not an exotic new principle, it is the ordinary capacity for being and doing, to discern and project will.
 

Why not just admit that and be done with philosophy? This is the problem of skepticism, like determinism, an end point we are led to by consideration of, in this case, psychology.

I'm not sure what you are saying I am skeptical of.
 

"All that you have to do to find free will is to begin from what we know and work forward. We know that we have free will, and we know that doubting that would require free will. Why complicate it?"


I think that is a good way of finding free will. Possibly the only way that will succeed. You have to assume it from the outset, then where ever you take your enquiry it will always seem to be there. Trouble is, given your arguments above I don't think you have any right to claim to know anything and if you are debating free will you can't just assume it.

We have no choice but to assume it. We do have a choice about whether or not we admit that we do or not. If we say that we can't "just assume it", we are saying that we have a choice about what we assume - which is already free will.
 

"Causes which were also set into motion intentionally. I don't see the problem. "

I don't think anyone denies that there are intentions. Intentions are the 'will' part in 'free will'. Its the 'free' part in "free will" that gets drawn into question by noticing events are caused.

The free part is a matter of perspective. It is an informal and relative measure of degrees of freedom. As a human being in general, my will has more degrees of freedom available - I have more freedom than members of other species by some measures. In other measures, I have less individual freedoms. The mistake that determinism makes is to assume zero freedom from the beginning rather than absolute freedom. Our experience as human beings makes more sense as a constraint on the Absolute, rather than a mechanical assembly which somehow acquires a delusion of its own non-mechanism. Ultimately the difference between a lot of freedom and very little freedom depends upon the sensory experience and private expectations of the participant. There is no objective difference between chance and choice, but chance can only make sense as generalized/decoherent choice. Choice, even an illusion of choice, cannot make sense as an accident of chance.
 

"They may be, but those causes may also be willed on the next level down (or up). "

Its not up or down; its before and after. Brain state 1 causes brain state 2 causes brain state 3... stretching all the way back to the point where you simply don't exist to have brain states. To the point where you are being formed. And back further still by the laws of biology and physics to the start of history.

Why do you say that brain state causality is sequential? This study estimates that 60% of the activity they studied in the brain is spontaneous. http://arstechnica.com/science/2007/10/human-behavior-linked-to-spontaneous-brain-activity/

Thanks,
Craig

[chris peck]

Hi Craig

>> The argument is that there is no rug under any of our feet. There is no nihilism in my argument.

We'll have to agree to disagree about that. As far as I can see your arguments lead to a deep skepticism at the very least, and whilst I hear you attempting to dig yourself out of your very own hole, I don't find you attempts at all convincing.

>> I argue only that if strong determinism were true, it would be inconceivable for any determined process to mistake itself for a magically non-determined process. That option doesn't exist. It would be like saying that an eight cylinder engine mistakes itself for something which is the specific opposite of engines.

>>a mechanical assembly which somehow acquires a delusion of its own non-mechanism.

This seems to be the crux of your argument for free will. But I don't really think that people have a delusion of free will. Its more that they have learned by wrote that there is this thing called 'free will' which they are supposed to want. They know that this thing they are told they have is supposed confer upon them responsibility for what they do etc. But if and when they look into the idea it begins to fall apart. The idea of agency is in conflict with the idea of freedom, you see. Real free will, rather than compatibalist compromises, severs actions from their agent because to live my life identically in all respects up to a particular point and then make a different decision than the one I in fact make, requires randomness. And randomness kills agency. It suffocates the notion of will. So it is not as if this determined process gives rise to a coherent concept of free agency and so the problem you keep mentioning doesn't actually arise.

>>  It is an informal and relative measure of degrees of freedom.

The existence of alternatives isn't enough to provide free will.

>> Why do you say that brain state causality is sequential? This study estimates that 60% of the activity they studied in the brain is spontaneous. http://arstechnica.com/science/2007/10/human-behavior-linked-to-spontaneous-brain-activity/

The study you're citing firstly claims the 60% of the variance they uncovered is explained by 'spontaneous' brain activity not 60% of all brain activity. More importantly, by spontaneous they just mean brain activity that has not been triggered by external stimuli:

"they argue for a greater acceptance of the view that our brain may have some intrinsic activity that's somewhat independent of sensory input. "

I'm afraid you're mistaken if you think the study counters the fact that brain states are caused by prior brain states. You have read what you wanted into the paper rather than what has actually been written. Its those biases at work.

All the best

---

Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2013 09:14:17 -0700

[Craig Weinberg]

On Monday, September 2, 2013 10:34:47 AM UTC-4, chris peck wrote:

Hi Craig

>> The argument is that there is no rug under any of our feet. There is no nihilism in my argument.

We'll have to agree to disagree about that. As far as I can see your arguments lead to a deep skepticism at the very least, and whilst I hear you attempting to dig yourself out of your very own hole, I don't find you attempts at all convincing.

I'm not sure what kind of skepticism you are referring to, nor am I aware of any hole that I am trying to dig out of. As far as I'm concerned, I have a framework which resolves the important questions of philosophy and cosmology, and solves them in a way which preserves autonomy as well as the possibility of support from super-personal awareness. I'm making that framework available to others if they are interested.
 

>> I argue only that if strong determinism were true, it would be inconceivable for any determined process to mistake itself for a magically non-determined process. That option doesn't exist. It would be like saying that an eight cylinder engine mistakes itself for something which is the specific opposite of engines.

>>a mechanical assembly which somehow acquires a delusion of its own non-mechanism.

This seems to be the crux of your argument for free will. But I don't really think that people have a delusion of free will. Its more that they have learned by wrote that there is this thing called 'free will' which they are supposed to want.

Why would there be a condition in which this delusion would be presented to be learned by rote? It doesn't make sense. You're saying that the machine doesn't have a delusion of being a non-machine, it just mechanically pretends to expect the delusion, but that assumes that we can just imagine anything that we want, which is not true. In flatland there can be no sphere. There can be no delusion of a sphere, no imagining of a sphere, no learning about a sphere, just as we can't imagine a four dimensional object without collapsing it to three dimensions. You have to forget that any such concept as free will could exist and then go back and see if it makes sense that a machine would be able to invent that concept. You have to trace back any local instance of learning by rote to a teacher. Free will is not just a concept, it is the sole method we have of participating directly in our own experience. We have no way to decide what we believe and what we pay attention to other than the exercise of our individual will, free to the extent that our sense of constraints provides.
 

They know that this thing they are told they have is supposed confer upon them responsibility for what they do etc.

I have run into this argument before. I find it bizarre. If we have no free will then being told that we are responsible for our actions could not have any effect. Without free will, what difference does it make what someone believes? For a belief to translate into an effect, we must have causally efficacious free will. If that were the case, there could be no beliefs, only instructions, and it could not matter whether the instructions came from inside of us or outside of us.

 

But if and when they look into the idea it begins to fall apart.

What controls 'if' they look into the idea (any idea), other than free will? What controls how they choose to evaluate their consideration?
 

The idea of agency is in conflict with the idea of freedom, you see. Real free will, rather than compatibalist compromises, severs actions from their agent because to live my life identically in all respects up to a particular point and then make a different decision than the one I in fact make, requires randomness. And randomness kills agency.

Randomness is a statistical concept. Intention is a fundamental feature of ontology. Intention kills randomness, and allows agency to project itself.
 

It suffocates the notion of will. So it is not as if this determined process gives rise to a coherent concept of free agency and so the problem you keep mentioning doesn't actually arise.

Where do you suppose that we get the concept of free agency from? Where did the first author of the first false expectation of free agency get that notion from? A different universe?
 

>>  It is an informal and relative measure of degrees of freedom.

The existence of alternatives isn't enough to provide free will.

But the capacity to intentionally create alternatives does.
 

>> Why do you say that brain state causality is sequential? This study estimates that 60% of the activity they studied in the brain is spontaneous. http://arstechnica.com/science/2007/10/human-behavior-linked-to-spontaneous-brain-activity/

The study you're citing firstly claims the 60% of the variance they uncovered is explained by 'spontaneous' brain activity not 60% of all brain activity. More importantly, by spontaneous they just mean brain activity that has not been triggered by external stimuli:

That's why I said "60% of the activity they studied in the brain". Not triggered by external stimuli means that there is a lot of room for us to stimulate our own brain directly and intentionally.

"they argue for a greater acceptance of the view that our brain may have some intrinsic activity that's somewhat independent of sensory input. "

I'm afraid you're mistaken if you think the study counters the fact that brain states are caused by prior brain states. You have read what you wanted into the paper rather than what has actually been written. Its those biases at work.

No, the study does not counter the presumption that brain states are caused by prior brain states, but it supports the fact that we may routinely create our own brain states. Let's say for a moment that we do have free will. That I can think of things to type and directly move my fingers and keyboard to type them. What might that look like in an fMRI? 'Spontaneous activity'. If there were no spontaneous activity, then that would tend to support your position, yet you claim that I am biased.

Thanks,
Craig

[meekerdb]

On 9/2/2013 7:34 AM, chris peck wrote:

The study you're citing firstly claims the 60% of the variance they uncovered is explained by 'spontaneous' brain activity not 60% of all brain activity. More importantly, by spontaneous they just mean brain activity that has not been triggered by external stimuli:

And how could they possibly know whether some brain event was triggered by a stored perception of you grandmother when you were five?� All they can say is it wasn't triggered by a *present* external stimuli.

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

Yes, that's true of course, but

1) 60% is a lot of stored perceptions triggering themselves for no reason.
2) The spontaneous activity is associated with behavioral changes. Kind of an odd thing for an archive of stored data to do independently of external stimuli.

We should ask, at what point do *present* stimuli go dormant, and of how long, before they spontaneously (non-spontaneously) resurface as something that looks exactly like free will would look? We should not expect that free will can be proved to any greater extent than this.

Again, if we were dealing with something which we knew for a fact had no intention or creativity, then sure, what the study shows is only that we don't know where 60% of the activity is coming from, so maybe it is just housekeeping or scheduled tasks running, or whatever. Since we do have a sense that there is a difference between behavior that is intentional, accidental, coerced, and subconsciously driven, and that those categories are distinct, it would be absurdly unscientific and biased to rule out this rather large footprint in the brain as belonging to our own shoe.

Thanks,
Craig

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 9/2/2013 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Monday, September 2, 2013 2:11:05 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 9/2/2013 7:34 AM, chris peck wrote:

The study you're citing firstly claims the 60% of the variance they uncovered is explained by 'spontaneous' brain activity not 60% of all brain activity. More importantly, by spontaneous they just mean brain activity that has not been triggered by external stimuli:

And how could they possibly know whether some brain event was triggered by a stored perception of you grandmother when you were five?� All they can say is it wasn't triggered by a *present* external stimuli.

Yes, that's true of course, but

1) 60% is a lot of stored perceptions triggering themselves for no reason.

First, by what standard is it known that 60% is too much?  Second, the stored perceptions are triggering themselves (although that's what you'd like to believe). They are triggered by the brain activities preceding them, which in turn were triggered by prior activities, which in turn...and so on back till you were five and saw your grandmother.  Third, suppose some of the activity was for no reason, i.e. quantum randomness.

2) The spontaneous activity is associated with behavioral changes. Kind of an odd thing for an archive of stored data to do independently of external stimuli.

First, you have no standard by which to judge it  "odd".  Second, there's no evidence it is independent of external stimuli - only of *present* external stimuli.

We should ask, at what point do *present* stimuli go dormant, and of how long, before they spontaneously (non-spontaneously) resurface as something that looks exactly like free will would look? We should not expect that free will can be proved to any greater extent than this.

This is just the compatibilist view.  It's called "free" will just because it's too hard to trace all the causal contributions to the will.

Again, if we were dealing with something which we knew for a fact had no intention or creativity,

How could you ever know that?  Only by being able to accurately predict all its actions.  Which would imply "free will" = "unpredictable will".

then sure, what the study shows is only that we don't know where 60% of the activity is coming from, so maybe it is just housekeeping or scheduled tasks running, or whatever. Since we do have a sense that there is a difference between behavior that is intentional, accidental, coerced, and subconsciously driven, and that those categories are distinct,

We also have a sense that the Earth is flat and Sun orbits around it.

Brent

it would be absurdly unscientific and biased to rule out this rather large footprint in the brain as belonging to our own shoe.

Thanks,
Craig

Brent

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[chris peck]

Hi Brent

I think the researchers would agree. Its definately present stimuli they have in mind.

All the best



--- Original Message ---

From: "meekerdb" <meek...@verizon.net>
Sent: 3 September 2013 4:11 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade

On 9/2/2013 7:34 AM, chris peck wrote:

The study you're citing firstly claims the 60% of the variance they uncovered is explained by 'spontaneous' brain activity not 60% of all brain activity. More importantly, by spontaneous they just mean brain activity that has not been triggered by external stimuli:

And how could they possibly know whether some brain event was triggered by a stored perception of you grandmother when you were five?  All they can say is it wasn't triggered by a *present* external stimuli.

Brent

[Dennis Ochei]

Hi Craig,

I've been following the pattern of thought you've be exhibiting this entire thread, trying to understand why you believe in such a strange way. In all cases it seems to stem from ignorance of the processes that bring about your behavior, compounded with the belief that we lose something of value if we discard the concept of free will.

First, I feel you are being willfully blind to the constraints your biology puts on your supposedly "free" will. Daily, I stop doing the things I love to do to pass fluids or the corpses of carbon based organisms through my mouth. Later, defecate or micturate, further activities that honestly, I would rather not do. At night, I sleep, though I would rather stay up through the night. Though I am not enslaved in doing these things, I am certainly not free in a metaphysical sense. This illusory free will you are bound to is an artifact that emerges in a system that is complex enough to reflect on what it does, yet cannot completely grasp the causes of that which it does do. A system like this can trace some of the factors that contribute to its actions, but not all of them, and those factors it cannot picture seem to have no definite value, and therefore it thinks there is no logical contradction in believing that it could have done y in the situation in which it actually did action x.

Furthermore, a system that can draw a large number of distinctions about the distribution of energy crossing its surface and respond in a large variety of ways, and yet does not understand how these distinctions are made, will, when asked how it determines an object is yellow, respond "i don't know, it just looks yellow."

No matter how complex a system is, it can never be complex enough to contain itself, and is therefore unable to perceive itself directly as a deterministic process. Only in the special cases, where the major causes of its action are made apparent, such as when someone holds a gun to its head, will it realize that it is acting in compulsion and not freedom. In other cases, when the desire to act comes about in a subtle fashion, the system might say to itself, I did x because I wanted to do x, and I could have wanted to do y. The system may be satisfied with such an explanation, without probing into a complete physical description of what constitutes wanting. Since the causal explanation is not easily available or comprehensible (it arose out of the particular and peculiar interaction of many subunits of the system in question), the system settles with the explanation that it acted freely and could have done otherwise. This is how an eight cylinder engine mistakes itself for something which is the specific opposite of engines.

You can deny that you are such a system, but I don't think you could deny these things are true of a complex deterministic system.

Lastly, it is trivial to build a deterministic system that desires in a prototypical form. All you need is a system that exhibits operant learning. 1) Wire some sensors to trigger effectors. 2) In the event that the effectors bring about certain event (they might bathe the sensors in a certain chemical), strengthen the ability of sensors that were active directly before the event (that activated the effectors) to trigger the effectors they are wired to. 3) In the event that the chemical bath is removed, weaken the strength of sensors that were active right before the removal of the chemical. The system will begin to "want" to do things that increase the concentration of the chemical and dislike doing things that lower it. If the concentration exhibits noisy behavior (is not solely a function of the effectors of the system in question), then the system will even develop novel, unpredictable behavior.

Desire and qualia pose no real problem for determinism.

[meekerdb]

On 9/2/2013 8:50 PM, Dennis Ochei wrote:

No matter how complex a system is, it can never be complex enough to contain itself, and is therefore unable to perceive itself directly as a deterministic process. Only in the special cases, where the major causes of its action are made apparent, such as when someone holds a gun to its head, will it realize that it is acting in compulsion and not freedom. In other cases, when the desire to act comes about in a subtle fashion, the system might say to itself, I did x because I wanted to do x, and I could have wanted to do y. The system may be satisfied with such an explanation, without probing into a complete physical description of what constitutes wanting. Since the causal explanation is not easily available or comprehensible (it arose out of the particular and peculiar interaction of many subunits of the system in question), the system settles with the explanation that it acted freely and could have done otherwise. This is how an eight cylinder engine mistakes itself for something which is the specific opposite of engines.

Good explanation.  Craig has failed to absorb the dictum of Schopenhauer: "Der Mensh Kann wohl tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will."

Brent

[Telmo Menezes]

Buddhists might disagree with Schopenhauer. At least in the sense that
they believe it possible to suppress desire. It is perhaps interesting
that the way they claim this to be possible is to observe the wanter.

Telmo.

[Dennis Ochei]

this is in line with schopenhauer's views. he was essentially a buddhist. you can want not to want, in which case you cannot will yourself to want to want. you can have and act upon the desire to change your desires, but that doesn't constitute "willing" what you want. instead, this constitutes just another form of acting in accordance to one's wants

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[Telmo Menezes]

On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Dennis Ochei <do.inf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> this is in line with schopenhauer's views. he was essentially a buddhist.
> you can want not to want, in which case you cannot will yourself to want to
> want. you can have and act upon the desire to change your desires, but that
> doesn't constitute "willing" what you want. instead, this constitutes just
> another form of acting in accordance to one's wants

Ok. I was thinking about Schopenhauer's sentence on my bike ride to
work and I cannot decide if it's a deep insight or a language trick.
My problem is with the meaning of "want" and the possibility that by
applying the verb to itself we might just be breaking language
somehow. Sorry for the rambling.

[meekerdb]

On 9/3/2013 3:54 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Dennis Ochei <do.inf...@gmail.com> wrote:

> this is in line with schopenhauer's views. he was essentially a buddhist.
> you can want not to want, in which case you cannot will yourself to want to
> want. you can have and act upon the desire to change your desires, but that
> doesn't constitute "willing" what you want. instead, this constitutes just
> another form of acting in accordance to one's wants

Ok. I was thinking about Schopenhauer's sentence on my bike ride to
work and I cannot decide if it's a deep insight or a language trick.
My problem is with the meaning of "want" and the possibility that by
applying the verb to itself we might just be breaking language
somehow. Sorry for the rambling.

I think it's the same insight that Hume expressed, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

On Monday, September 2, 2013 11:50:34 PM UTC-4, Dennis Ochei wrote:

Hi Craig,

I've been following the pattern of thought you've be exhibiting this entire thread, trying to understand why you believe in such a strange way.

I would not say that I believe. I have a set of hypotheses which I use to understand these particular issues. If you understand the hypotheses, then you should understand why there is nothing strange about their consequences.
 

In all cases it seems to stem from ignorance of the processes that bring about your behavior, compounded with the belief that we lose something of value if we discard the concept of free will.

What specifically do you claim that I am ignorant about? Why do you project a psychology of attachment to my position on free will? It sounds like you are ignorant of your own biases and attachments. Maybe you have a strange behavior that stems from your insecurity about having to revise your premature abandonment of the concept of free will?

First, I feel you are being willfully blind to the constraints your biology puts on your supposedly "free" will. Daily, I stop doing the things I love to do to pass fluids or the corpses of carbon based organisms through my mouth. Later, defecate or micturate, further activities that honestly, I would rather not do.

You are confusing free will with omnipotence. Free will does not mean absolute freedom from all constraints, it only means more freedom than determinism allows.
 

At night, I sleep, though I would rather stay up through the night. Though I am not enslaved in doing these things, I am certainly not free in a metaphysical sense.

The 'free' part of free will is not important at all. The will part is what interests me. Free is a relative term. If I am not in prison, my will has more degrees of freedom than it would if I were in prison (and in other ways I have less degrees of freedom by not being in prison). I don't understand what the hatred toward the idea of freedom is about. Freedom is absolute, neither is determinism. So what?
 

This illusory free will you are bound to is an artifact that emerges in a system that is complex enough to reflect on what it does, yet cannot completely grasp the causes of that which it does do.

Yet you believe this same system is capable of generating a belief about its own limitations which is crystal clear and immutably true. It's like magic. Whenever you want to doubt free will, you become omniscient, but whenever someone else doubts determinism, they become a poor, lost, feeble-minded child. It would be a stalemate perhaps, but how does determinism account for doubt? If you have a doubt, what, other than free will, can resolve it without halting or looping?
 

A system like this can trace some of the factors that contribute to its actions, but not all of them, and those factors it cannot picture seem to have no definite value, and therefore it thinks there is no logical contradction in believing that it could have done y in the situation in which it actually did action x.

If you assume choices rather than creativity, then you have already biased the framing of the question toward determinism. Free will is not limited to doing x not y. Free will creates new alphabets. Of course human psychology does not present a complete picture of itself, but that fact does not mean that determinism has to be the answer wherever our personal subjectivity proves to be incomplete. My personal actions are constrained by sub-personal and super-personal agendas, however that does not mean that they are impersonal or automatic, nor does it mean that I cannot influence those agendas intentionally.
 
If you want to understand more about my position, feel free... http://multisenserealism.com/the-competition/departing-from-the-consensus/randomness-determinism-and-the-big-bang/

Furthermore, a system that can draw a large number of distinctions about the distribution of energy crossing its surface and respond in a large variety of ways, and yet does not understand how these distinctions are made, will, when asked how it determines an object is yellow, respond "i don't know, it just looks yellow."

Yes, I am very familiar with these types of arguments. Bruno's view is as good as any if you are going to go down that road, and I believe that he has the mathematics to back it up. I get it. Machines don't know they are machines. Fine. I never said they did. That is not the problem. The problem is aesthetics and presentation. Information doesn't need them, but we do. There is no surface of a system, and no energy that crosses it. Systems have no shape unless something which is not information gives it shape. That's why you are staring at a video screen instead of the 'surface' of the system of the internet. It is not the veracity of the sense of freedom that we have which is important, but the existence of any sense of freedom in the first place. Such a feeling cannot be explained under determinism, not without resorting to goofy just-so-stories and denial of undeniable phenomena.
 

No matter how complex a system is, it can never be complex enough to contain itself, and is therefore unable to perceive itself directly as a deterministic process. Only in the special cases, where the major causes of its action are made apparent, such as when someone holds a gun to its head, will it realize that it is acting in compulsion and not freedom.

Why would holding a gun to someone's head be any different than a person holding a gun to their own head? If it were different, how would that change their response without their having the power to choose to change it?
 

In other cases, when the desire to act comes about in a subtle fashion, the system might say to itself, I did x because I wanted to do x, and I could have wanted to do y. The system may be satisfied with such an explanation,

What would it matter whether a system was satisfied with some explanation or not? If you have no free will, then your satisfaction is meaningless - you are a powerless puppet. Does it matter whether a stone is satisfied with rolling down hill?

without probing into a complete physical description of what constitutes wanting. Since the causal explanation is not easily available or comprehensible (it arose out of the particular and peculiar interaction of many subunits of the system in question), the system settles with the explanation that it acted freely and could have done otherwise. This is how an eight cylinder engine mistakes itself for something which is the specific opposite of engines.

Why would the explanation that it acted 'freely' be a possible explanation in a deterministic universe? What are you talking about?
 

You can deny that you are such a system, but I don't think you could deny these things are true of a complex deterministic system.

I deny that a deterministic universe could produce even a single thought of 'freedom' or 'will', just as I deny that you can produce even a single image of a color that does not exist.
 

Lastly, it is trivial to build a deterministic system that desires in a prototypical form. All you need is a system that exhibits operant learning. 1) Wire some sensors to trigger effectors. 2) In the event that the effectors bring about certain event (they might bathe the sensors in a certain chemical), strengthen the ability of sensors that were active directly before the event (that activated the effectors) to trigger the effectors they are wired to. 3) In the event that the chemical bath is removed, weaken the strength of sensors that were active right before the removal of the chemical. The system will begin to "want" to do things that increase the concentration of the chemical and dislike doing things that lower it. If the concentration exhibits noisy behavior (is not solely a function of the effectors of the system in question), then the system will even develop novel, unpredictable behavior.

Novel and unpredictable behavior is not intentional behavior. You conflate local causes with understanding. A garage door spring 'wants' to contract to the extent that the material behaves *as if* it wants to contract. That doesn't mean that attaching a garage door to the spring imparts an understanding to the spring about doors and houses and cars. It doesn't mean that pushing the garage door opener involves some system view intentionality about garages. There may be, on the microphysical level of  the spring's metal, some microphenomenal correlate to 'wanting' which is distantly ancestral to our own...and I suspect that there is, but no amount of configuring that metal is going to allow it to become aware of anything beyond those primitive interactions. If it did, the universe would be overflowing with intelligent non-biological species, or at least contain a single one.

Desire and qualia pose no real problem for determinism.

Why not? If I can program something to perform a function, why would I want to invent 'desire' or 'qualia' out of thin air in order to do what is already being done directly? If there is no free will, then desire is epiphenomenal, and an epiphenomenon which even has a hint of an illusion that it might be causally efficacious is a deal breaker for determinism.

Thanks,
Craig

 

[Dennis Ochei]

What specifically do you claim that I am ignorant about?

You misunderstood my intentions. I'm not trying to insult you or say that you are lacking knowledge. I'm saying that the appearance of free will and qualia can be explained in terms of ignorance of a system to the full details of its operation. You are not aware of what is happening in your body at the atomic level, i doubt you'd argue this is not true.

 Why do you project a psychology of attachment to my position on free will?

I seems you think free will has normative and explanatory value.

 Yet you believe this same system is capable of generating a belief about its own limitations which is crystal clear and immutably true. 

 Why would the explanation that it acted 'freely' be a possible explanation in a deterministic universe?

I'm just trying to explain why you believe what you believe. Which is, as are all explanations, deterministic. You seem to think both that deterministic systems cannot be trusted to arrive at "right" answers and that the same time they should never be wrong. If a deterministic system cannot perceive the necessitating causes of its actions it might suppose there are none. That is, it might suppose it has free will.

 If you have no free will, then your satisfaction is meaningless

I'm not convinced that one's satisfaction is meaningful even if free will exists. Why should it? This is evidence of the normative value you place in free will.

 If you assume choices rather than creativity, then you have already biased the framing of the question toward determinism. 

But creativity must at some point move my hands and feet, or articulators and resonators to make itself evident. A creative act consists in what I in fact do. And I can ask for the proximal cause of the movement of my muscles, and ask for the cause of that cause, ad infinitum. How does free will result in the movement of muscles? How does the free will result in the peripheral neural impulses that can be modeled deterministically? This is where I say free will lacks explanatory value.

 Novel and unpredictable behavior is not intentional behavior

 Desire and qualia pose no real problem for determinism.

Novel goal oriented behavior is intentional behavior. If a spring discovers novel ways to ensure that it contracts despite the best efforts of human actors to keep it expanded, then it is behaving intentionally. The system i described can develop subgoals in meeting its supergoal  of raising the chemical concentration and has a drive to raise the amount of this chemical. If its strategies are thwarted it will develop new ones. It is an explanation of how drives can exist in a deterministic system. I've already offered an explanation of qualia in a deterministic system.

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[Dennis Ochei]

Telmo and Brent,

The Humean quote sums it up nicely. You can think of a human as a collection of desires and a reasoning process that arbitrates between and attempts to realize them. In the process of reasoning, one might bring about new desires, but reasoning is always employed by desires one currently has.

Just couple days ago I was trying futilely to logically deduce what it is that I should want to do, I realized that "logic is the servant of desire," (im not quite as eloquent as hume, it seems...) and to find a logically justified want is futile. Desire is inherently illogical. Turns out Hume beat me to this insight by quite a bit, but I suppose he had a head start, =p

It seems that if we were completely logical, we would simply cease to function

[meekerdb]

On 9/3/2013 12:32 PM, Dennis Ochei wrote:
> Telmo and Brent,
>
> The Humean quote sums it up nicely. You can think of a human as a collection of desires
> and a reasoning process that arbitrates between and attempts to realize them. In the
> process of reasoning, one might bring about new desires, but reasoning is always
> employed by desires one currently has.
>
> Just couple days ago I was trying futilely to logically deduce what it is that I should
> want to do, I realized that "logic is the servant of desire," (im not quite as eloquent
> as hume, it seems...) and to find a logically justified want is futile. Desire is
> inherently illogical.

I'd say "extralogical". That doesn't mean though that your desires aren't caused (by
evolution, by metabolism,...). Many of them may even be predictable - that's how
advertising agencies make a living.

> Turns out Hume beat me to this insight by quite a bit, but I suppose he had a head start, =p
>
> It seems that if we were completely logical, we would simply cease to function

Dostoevsky beat you to that one, "If everything on Earth were rational, nothing would
happen." But he had a head start too. :-)


Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 3, 2013 3:12:17 PM UTC-4, Dennis Ochei wrote:

What specifically do you claim that I am ignorant about?

You misunderstood my intentions. I'm not trying to insult you or say that you are lacking knowledge.

That wasn't clear in your wording: "In all cases it seems to stem from ignorance of the processes that bring about your behavior, ", but OK.
 

I'm saying that the appearance of free will and qualia can be explained in terms of ignorance of a system to the full details of its operation.

Can it? Try it out. We have optical sensitivity to a particular range of the EM spectrum. Outside of that spectrum, we have ignorance, yes? If what you are saying were true, we should have an endless continuum of colors to represent our ignorance, but the visible wavelengths should not need qualia and should be replaced by a precise information transfer. Try to think of a new color to attach with a range which you are ignorant of, such as radio waves. Does it seem like this will work eventually if you keep trying? Why not? Ignorance, under your theory, is like Santa Claus.
 

You are not aware of what is happening in your body at the atomic level, i doubt you'd argue this is not true.

I would go further to say that at the atomic level, I have no body. My body is a function of my perceptual frame of reference.
 

 Why do you project a psychology of attachment to my position on free will?

I seems you think free will has normative and explanatory value.

Free will is an elementary scalar, from which all notions of determinism are derived in opposition. The explanatory value is to help turn the worldview right-side up, so that the proprietary and improbable are absolute, and the generic and statistical are local appearances.
 

 Yet you believe this same system is capable of generating a belief about its own limitations which is crystal clear and immutably true. 

 Why would the explanation that it acted 'freely' be a possible explanation in a deterministic universe?

I'm just trying to explain why you believe what you believe.

I don't believe anything, I have a hypothesis. The hypothesis is arrived at by questioning some fundamental assumptions which very few people have questioned.
 

Which is, as are all explanations, deterministic. You seem to think both that deterministic systems cannot be trusted to arrive at "right" answers and that the same time they should never be wrong. If a deterministic system cannot perceive the necessitating causes of its actions it might suppose there are none. That is, it might suppose it has free will.

You seem to be drawing a line from ignorance to whatever you want. I can't tell tell that I have a stomach. Maybe its a tesseract? Maybe my stomach is free will? Do you see the problem?

 If you have no free will, then your satisfaction is meaningless

I'm not convinced that one's satisfaction is meaningful even if free will exists. Why should it? This is evidence of the normative value you place in free will.

If free will exists, then satisfaction is part of significance. Satisfaction is the object of a motive. Depending on the strength of the appeal of that satisfaction, we may determine that it is worth the cost of our own subjective effort to pursue it. We dictate the weighting of that value subjectively. Our participation modifies it. There are feedback loops with our own motivation and the projection of the satisfaction - the feedback loop itself responds to our participation.
 

 If you assume choices rather than creativity, then you have already biased the framing of the question toward determinism. 

But creativity must at some point move my hands and feet, or articulators and resonators to make itself evident. A creative act consists in what I in fact do. And I can ask for the proximal cause of the movement of my muscles, and ask for the cause of that cause, ad infinitum. How does free will result in the movement of muscles? How does the free will result in the peripheral neural impulses that can be modeled deterministically? This is where I say free will lacks explanatory value.

It's not a matter of cause and effect, it is a matter of public facing affect having a public effect. It is very complicated in the case of a human being because we are actually more like a community of invertebrates living inside a crustacean living inside a fish living inside an inside out reptile, living inside a community of domesticated primates.

Our ability to move our hands and feet is not accomplished by our personal intent alone, but by the sub-personal intentions of billions of synchronized urges on the microcosm. It's bi-directional. Sometimes our personal will overrides the sub-personal (ever put off going to the bathroom?) and sometimes our sub-personal intentions override our personal intentions. There's a lot going on with humans, and it is the worst possible example to begin with to try to get a handle on basic sensory-motive interaction. What I'm trying to say here is that there is no result of free will, it is not a force pushing bodies. Bodies are only bodies within a perceptual context which renders them in a body-like aesthetic.

It is at that pre-body level where private motive becomes public motor by a simple polarization of self-investment. It's about turning of off the now and committing to a future. When we stand up, for instance, we participate in a single motion as far as our personal awareness is concerned, and that experience is irreducible in one sense. To the extent that the experience is reducible to other scales, the native experience is lost. The current assumption is that impersonal levels of sense are 'real' and personal levels are somehow other than real, but this is a function of being overly impressed by complexity. If molecules could see what you ate for breakfast, they would be pretty impressed too.
 

 Novel and unpredictable behavior is not intentional behavior

 Desire and qualia pose no real problem for determinism.

Novel goal oriented behavior is intentional behavior. If a spring discovers novel ways to ensure that it contracts despite the best efforts of human actors to keep it expanded, then it is behaving intentionally.

No, that's succumbing the pathetic fallacy. Maybe you just have a slippery spring that unconsciously responds to efforts to control it. Intention can only be determined internally, it is not a part of public physics. In the public range of physics, intention, like time, can only be inferred by projecting your own private experience of it.
 

The system i described can develop subgoals in meeting its supergoal  of raising the chemical concentration and has a drive to raise the amount of this chemical. If its strategies are thwarted it will develop new ones. It is an explanation of how drives can exist in a deterministic system. I've already offered an explanation of qualia in a deterministic system.

Goals in a deterministic system can only warrant that the system will try more often, or prioritize the goal to a higher position. Even assigning a distribution of strategic resources does not in any way imply a personal feeling of 'trying hard'. A machine will try as hard as it is set to try, even if it breaks into pieces of fries a logic board. It doesn't care, and it can't care. All of these are clues as to the nature of sense, motive/will, and the difference between a mechanism assembled from the outside in, and an experience which defines itself from the inside out.

Thanks,
Craig

 

[Craig Weinberg]

I used to argue that point all the time. My reasoning was that you are never free to want 'the bad thing' (even if to you the bad thing is what others might consider a good thing) - whatever your desire, it is already defined for you as desirable. That logic is sound as far as it goes, but it cannot help explain how the feeling of rubber stamping the effect of a desire to a public action makes sense in a deterministic universe. What is overlooked is the difference between sub-personal and impersonal influences.

Just because we are not aware of the origins of our desires does not mean that we do not intentionally participate in generating them. Humans are complex on many levels, and simple on other levels. If we try to look at the simple levels through the lens of sub-personal complexity, we lose ourselves. Every cell of our body is the same stem cell. They are all us in microcosm. The feeling of the whole is present as the feeling of the parts to some extent, and it is absent to some extent. As with the Libet type experiments, we get into trouble when we assume that the ability to act freely is identical to the ability to know that ability, and to report it, and to know that we are reporting it, especially when the private experience is rooted in eternity and the action is rooted in public locality.

Thanks,
Craig

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

It's a sleight of hand because it assumes a single self on a single level which does the wanting and the willing and the discerning between the two.

[Craig Weinberg]

"Desire is inherently illogical."

Which is precisely why no appearance of free will or qualia can be generated quantitatively. Logic is a lowest common denominator of sense. It is sense attempting to negate itself to the extent that it can. It's a skeletal generalization of sense-like tropes. This is the difference between thought and feeling. Thinking allows us to know what we cannot feel, but that is accomplished at the price of being able to feel that it feels. The intellect is blind to its own roots, and therefore conflates figures and logic with genuine agency. It mistakes the lack of tangible quality and significance with Platonic transcendence.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 3, 2013 3:42:53 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 9/3/2013 12:32 PM, Dennis Ochei wrote:
> Telmo and Brent,
>
> The Humean quote sums it up nicely. You can think of a human as a collection of desires
> and a reasoning process that arbitrates between and attempts to realize them. In the
> process of reasoning, one might bring about new desires, but reasoning is always
> employed by desires one currently has.
>
> Just couple days ago I was trying futilely to logically deduce what it is that I should
> want to do, I realized that "logic is the servant of desire," (im not quite as eloquent
> as hume, it seems...) and to find a logically justified want is futile. Desire is
> inherently illogical.

I'd say "extralogical".  That doesn't mean though that your desires aren't caused (by
evolution, by metabolism,...).  Many of them may even be predictable - that's how
advertising agencies make a living.

*Your* desires can be included in your experience by evolution, etc, provided that desire in general exists as a possibility in the universe. No amount of statistical reproduction of inanimate objects or unconscious machines could cause a desire to appear out of nowhere though. Could it? Why would it?

Craig
 

[Dennis Ochei]

Craig,

What UV looks like will depend on how it is transduced into the nervous system. I could add a new opsin into your blue cones and it would appear to be a shade of blue. Or, I could achieve the transduction in such a way that UV doesn't confuse with blue. In which case UV will look different from other colors in way you cannot describe because you don't have access to how you condition your behavior based of the intensity of UV light. 

I've told you in a rudimentary form what is required to build a system that has drives and motivations, from parts that are inanimate. Nature has constructed such a device using 302 neurons. It learns, and it has motivations. Is your argument here that if we model the nematode deterministically, its ability to learn and its biological drives will vanish like smoke? Because if so, I'd bet good money that you're wrong. Drives are traceable to electrochemical gradients "trying" to resolve themselves, driven by thermodynamic laws. Logic is how the pipes are connected up, desire is the water pump.

Furthermore, deterministic does not equal logical. There is no logic behind why opposites attract, even though this logically leads to like dissolving like. Whatever axioms there are in this universe, they are not logically justified.

--

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 3, 2013 8:57:13 PM UTC-4, Dennis Ochei wrote:

Craig,

What UV looks like will depend on how it is transduced into the nervous system. I could add a new opsin into your blue cones and it would appear to be a shade of blue.

Sure, we can look at an infra-red camera too and see IR light as green or some other color. That isn't what I'm talking about. I am talking about new primary colors.
 

Or, I could achieve the transduction in such a way that UV doesn't confuse with blue. In which case UV will look different from other colors in way you cannot describe because you don't have access to how you condition your behavior based of the intensity of UV light. 

It wouldn't matter if you did have access to how you condition your "behavior based on the intensity of the UV light". Color cannot be described, it can only be experienced directly. I don't want you to waste our time trying to tell me what I already know.

http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/light-revisited/is-visible-light-electromagnetic/

 

I've told you in a rudimentary form what is required to build a system that has drives and motivations, from parts that are inanimate.

Not at all. You are projecting drives and motivations onto a system that is unconsciously serving a function that serves your drives and motivations.
 

Nature has constructed such a device using 302 neurons. It learns, and it has motivations.

The neurons are an expression of the motivations, not the other way around.
 

Is your argument here that if we model the nematode deterministically, its ability to learn and its biological drives will vanish like smoke?

Does a rabbit's taste for carrots vanish just because we model him as Bugs Bunny? Yes. Models, cartoons, figures, functions, shapes, descriptions, simulations...none of them can have any sense of being or feeling. Bugs Bunny is not a rabbit. He is a symbol which reminds our psychology of particular themes which overlap with rabbit themes.
 

Because if so, I'd bet good money that you're wrong.

Sure, I'd love to take that bet. I was going to say $10,000 but I don't think that you are going to pay that when you lose. What amount sounds good?
 

Drives are traceable to electrochemical gradients "trying" to resolve themselves, driven by thermodynamic laws. Logic is how the pipes are connected up, desire is the water pump.

I agree that microphysical events correspond to microphenomenal experiences, but that does not mean that all that has to happen to scale up an inanimate object's thermodynamic motives to mammalian quality emotions is that it must be configured in the correct shapes. That is an assumption, and a seductively popular one, but it is 100% wrong. Using the hypothesis of sense as the sole universal primitive, we should anticipate that the relevant qualifier of sensitivity is not structure but experience. Giving your cat a computer will not make him computer literate, and dressing a water pump up in human clothes does not cause a human. The clues are all around us. No machine or program has every succeeded in being anything but completely impersonal and psychologically empty.

Furthermore, deterministic does not equal logical. There is no logic behind why opposites attract, even though this logically leads to like dissolving like. Whatever axioms there are in this universe, they are not logically justified.

Determinism doesn't explain why opposites attract, but given that they do in some particular context, determinism is the logic of the consequences of that attraction. Determinism doesn't address everything, but whatever it does address is considered to behave according to the logic of the precedents which have been established. If determinism was not logical, how could it claim to determine anything?

Craig
 

[Dennis Ochei]

1) rationality (logic) in this case is to mean founded on justified principles. This is inherently a normative judgment. the principles that govern a deterministic system needn't appeal to our psychology as justified, this is what i mean by determined doesn't mean logical. none of my desires seem to me logically justified, but that doesnt imply they are not deterministic.

2) your thesis is essentially, "i cant see how a set of rules could lead to to desire, i cant see how a set of rules could lead something that has experiences that seem to have irreducible qualities, therefore there can be no such rules." that's fine i suppose, but I'm unable to pretend that your blindness is some sort of insight. i just think you havent looked hard enough

[Dennis Ochei]

also, unless we come up with a clever way of raising the cost of reneging, we wont be able to make any bets

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 3, 2013 11:36:29 PM UTC-4, Dennis Ochei wrote:

1) rationality (logic) in this case is to mean founded on justified principles. This is inherently a normative judgment. the principles that govern a deterministic system needn't appeal to our psychology as justified,

Determinism is a logical justification of cause and effect or else it is meaningless. No particular determination need be justified by our expectations, but determinism in general is an expectation of a logic of causality - an airtight logic of perfect correspondence. Rationality is more of a broad term which I would not apply to determinism in the strict sense of a deterministic cosmology. Rationality implies more tolerance of humanistic dimensions like free will. A person can freely choose to act rationally or irrationally, but in a deterministic universe, the logic would be that a person always acts to complete effects set into motion by prior cause. Logic is scripted and automated. Rationality can be responsive. You're welcome to use words in whatever way you like, but I don't want to dwell on word definitions. If by introducing rationality as a logic equivalence you mean to soften determinism, then I think we should stick to the word logic, since the determinism that I argue against has a zero tolerance for soft reasoning. Determinism is a closed shop of locked steps with all novelty being a pseudo-novelty derived from recombination.
 

this is what i mean by determined doesn't mean logical. none of my desires seem to me logically justified, but that doesnt imply they are not deterministic.

The fact that you have desires at all does not make sense in a deterministic universe. It gets confusing if you pull examples from real life. If we are going to talk about the fantasy world of determinism, we should refer only to those things which we can justify as being logically deterministic.

2) your thesis is essentially, "i cant see how a set of rules could lead to to desire,

No, my thesis is not that I can't see something, it is that I can see something that others may not. Nobody, including you can see how a set of rules could lead to desire. My thesis is that fact, along with many others, suggests that 'rules' are an abstraction which are fictional and derived from experience, whereas desire is a concrete fact from which abstractions can be derived.

My thesis is that there is an important difference between presentations and representations, such that a natural presence has a coherent footprint across multiple levels of sense, which is itself multi-coherent and self-generated. By contrast, a representation, such as a 'rule', 'function', 'process', 'pattern', 'figure', or 'information' is a second order, symbiotic phenomenon within a natural presentation. Representations are not whole and are not grounded in the totality of nature (space, time, matter, energy, significance, entropy, sense, motive) but are rather a facade, like a hologram, which makes sense only from a particular set of externally defined perspectives.
 

i cant see how a set of rules could lead something that has experiences that seem to have irreducible qualities, therefore there can be no such rules."

Even if that wasn't a misrepresentation of my position, it isn't even a good Straw Man. Why would the impotence of 'rules' to create natural phenomena mean that there can be no rules? When did I imply that there can't be any rules?
 

that's fine i suppose, but I'm unable to pretend that your blindness is some sort of insight. i just think you havent looked hard enough

I can tell from your responses that you haven't looked at my blindness at all, only your own, dressed up to sound like me.

Craig
 

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[Dennis Ochei]

Determinism is a logical justification of cause and effect or else it is meaningless...

 Sure, whatever, I was speaking colloquially, I wasn't using it in a technical fashion.

 Nobody, including you can see how a set of rules could lead to desire

mmhmm, what's your evidence of this? This seems to be an empirical statement and arguing seems to be going nowhere. How are you determining if a given set of rules exhibits desires? That is, supposing (although apparently it is impossible [can you see my eyes rolling?]) someone dropped the rules on your lap that produce desire, how would you tell? Are there sets of rules that do not produce desire that you are likely to confuse as exhibiting desire? Would you deny or accept the claim, "No matter what behavior the rules produce, since the behavior emanates from rules, it cannot be desire"? And essentially, what would convince you your thesis is wrong?

Even if that wasn't a misrepresentation of my position, it isn't even a good Straw Man. 

 

me: ...therefore there can be no such rules [that could lead something that has experiences that seem to have irreducible qualities]. I didn't claim that that you thought there were no rules period.

 

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 1:46:14 PM UTC-4, Dennis Ochei wrote:

Determinism is a logical justification of cause and effect or else it is meaningless...

 Sure, whatever, I was speaking colloquially, I wasn't using it in a technical fashion.

 Nobody, including you can see how a set of rules could lead to desire

mmhmm, what's your evidence of this? This seems to be an empirical statement and arguing seems to be going nowhere. How are you determining if a given set of rules exhibits desires? That is, supposing (although apparently it is impossible [can you see my eyes rolling?]) someone dropped the rules on your lap that produce desire, how would you tell? Are there sets of rules that do not produce desire that you are likely to confuse as exhibiting desire? Would you deny or accept the claim, "No matter what behavior the rules produce, since the behavior emanates from rules, it cannot be desire"? And essentially, what would convince you your thesis is wrong?

Rules don't produce anything, just as triangles or steps don't produce anything. They are abstractions we use to analyze experiences after the fact. To ask what my evidence is is the same as asking what evidence I have that this emoticon ;) is not actually happy. The evidence is in our shared understanding (as is all evidence). What would convince you that your thesis is wrong?
 

Even if that wasn't a misrepresentation of my position, it isn't even a good Straw Man. 

 

me: ...therefore there can be no such rules [that could lead something that has experiences that seem to have irreducible qualities]. I didn't claim that that you thought there were no rules period.

Sorry, I see what you mean. It was more of the same claim twice. Since I don't believe X can exist, I also don't believe that X can exist (at all). My view is that since I understand why X doesn't yield Y, I'm not swayed by the counter argument 'maybe you don't understand X as much as you think'...which leads us back to 'maybe you don't understand my understanding as much as you want me to think'...

Thanks,
Craig
 

[Dennis Ochei]

Rules don't produce anything, just as triangles or steps don't produce anything

What about something like Conway's Game of Life? Why is it wrong to see the behavior of the game as produced by the rules of the game and initial conditions?

 To ask what my evidence is is the same as asking what evidence I have that this emoticon...

So are you or are you not making a predictive statement about what can be done using a system of rules? What exactly is it you are saying cannot be done? (Not what cannot be explained, but what cannot be done). What are the practical implications?

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 2:45:30 PM UTC-4, Dennis Ochei wrote:

Rules don't produce anything, just as triangles or steps don't produce anything

What about something like Conway's Game of Life? Why is it wrong to see the behavior of the game as produced by the rules of the game and initial conditions?

Because something has to be able to
1) privately sense the conditions which are being 'ruled',
2) respond to those conditions with a public facing motive-strategy, and
3) have the power to cause a public effect using 2 (i.e. the power to influence distant 1 experiences).
Otherwise it's rules, schmules. What cares about the rules, and how is the more fundamental issue. Once we have the factory, the workers, the raw materials, then sure, policies and procedures can be said to 'produce' a product, but what policies can produce an effect ab initio?

 To ask what my evidence is is the same as asking what evidence I have that this emoticon...

So are you or are you not making a predictive statement about what can be done using a system of rules? What exactly is it you are saying cannot be done? (Not what cannot be explained, but what cannot be done). What are the practical implications?

One practical implication is that we don't have to worry about accidentally creating AI which can feel or suffer. Otherwise I suppose the practical consequences are to do with how we live individually and socially - to see clearly where private and public approaches are appropriate and avoid the pathological extremes. I mean the implications are huge, ultimately...the reconciliation of religion, philosophy, and science, the dawn of a new era of understanding, blah blah blah, but that's anybody's guess.

Systems of rules are great, and they can only be better if we understand more about what it is that we are ruling. Or if/when they aren't great, we can understand that there is a whole other half of the universe we can look to for ways to escape them. The effects of over-signifying the quantitative are so pervasive and invasive that its going to take a miracle for people to adjust to a different view. It's like a hardcore meth addict considering for the first time that maybe there is a down-side to the drug.

[Dennis Ochei]

>but what policies can produce an effect ab initio?

then is there anything wrong with saying the *implementation* of the rules of GOL produce the behavior of the game?

i think you missed the nuance of what i was asking. (i was trying fecklessly to make it clear with few words) i dont want moral implications, but empirical ones. I might observe identical outputs from an AI that "doesn't really feel" and a human or something else that uncontroversially "does feel." I might observe the exact same thing whether or not the ai has a true inner life. what can i predict i might see or hear that is a consequence of your position bring true that isnt merely a consequence of your position being believed to be true? (obstensibly, we wouldnt worry about building ai's that can feel if we believed your position, even if it was false)

--

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 4:54:20 PM UTC-4, Dennis Ochei wrote:

>but what policies can produce an effect ab initio?

then is there anything wrong with saying the *implementation* of the rules of GOL produce the behavior of the game?

Nothing wrong with that, no, just like there's nothing wrong with saying that the implementation of a cookie cutter produces the shape of the cookie. I'm pointing out that it's still the metal and the cookie dough, and the intent of the baker that are doing the heavy lifting.
 

i think you missed the nuance of what i was asking. (i was trying fecklessly to make it clear with few words) i dont want moral implications, but empirical ones. I might observe identical outputs from an AI that "doesn't really feel" and a human or something else that uncontroversially "does feel." I might observe the exact same thing whether or not the ai has a true inner life. what can i predict i might see or hear that is a consequence of your position bring true that isnt merely a consequence of your position being believed to be true? (obstensibly, we wouldnt worry about building ai's that can feel if we believed your position, even if it was false)

My position would suggest that the more mechanistic the conditions of the test, the more it stacks the test in favor of not being able to tell the difference. If you want to fool someone into thinking an AI is alive, get a small group of people who lean toward aspberger's traits and show them short, unrelated examples in a highly controlled context. If you want to really bring out the differences between the two, use a diverse audience and have them interact freely for a long time in many different contexts, often without oversight. What you are looking for is aesthetic cues that may not even be able to be named - intuitions of something about the AI being off or untrustworthy, continuity gaps, non-fluidity, etc. It's sort of like taking a video screen out into the sunlight. You get a better view of what it isn't when you can see more of what it is.

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thursday, September 5, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote:

My position would suggest that the more mechanistic the conditions of the test, the more it stacks the test in favor of not being able to tell the difference. If you want to fool someone into thinking an AI is alive, get a small group of people who lean toward aspberger's traits and show them short, unrelated examples in a highly controlled context. 

You accept, of course, that people with Aspbergers have fe

 

If you want to really bring out the differences between the two, use a diverse audience and have them interact freely for a long time in many different contexts, often without oversight. What you are looking for is aesthetic cues that may not even be able to be named - intuitions of something about the AI being off or untrustworthy, continuity gaps, non-fluidity, etc. It's sort of like taking a video screen out into the sunlight. You get a better view of what it isn't when you can see more of what it is.

--
Stathis Papaioannou

[Stathis Papaioannou]

(Resending complete email - trying to do this on a phone.)

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Thursday, September 5, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote:

My position would suggest that the more mechanistic the conditions of the test, the more it stacks the test in favor of not being able to tell the difference. If you want to fool someone into thinking an AI is alive, get a small group of people who lean toward aspberger's traits and show them short, unrelated examples in a highly controlled context. 

You accept, of course, that people with Aspbergers have feelings even though they don't express them like everyone else?

 

If you want to really bring out the differences between the two, use a diverse audience and have them interact freely for a long time in many different contexts, often without oversight. What you are looking for is aesthetic cues that may not even be able to be named - intuitions of something about the AI being off or untrustworthy, continuity gaps, non-fluidity, etc. It's sort of like taking a video screen out into the sunlight. You get a better view of what it isn't when you can see more of what it is.

It sounds like you're proposing a variant of the Turing Test. What would you say if the diverse audience decided the AI probably had feelings, or probably had feelings but different to most people's, like the Aspergers case?

 

--
Stathis Papaioannou

--
Stathis Papaioannou

[Craig Weinberg]

On Monday, September 9, 2013 11:39:31 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

(Resending complete email - trying to do this on a phone.)

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Thursday, September 5, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote:

My position would suggest that the more mechanistic the conditions of the test, the more it stacks the test in favor of not being able to tell the difference. If you want to fool someone into thinking an AI is alive, get a small group of people who lean toward aspberger's traits and show them short, unrelated examples in a highly controlled context. 

You accept, of course, that people with Aspbergers have feelings even though they don't express them like everyone else?

Certainly. I was using the idea of selecting for Aspberger traits as a way of stacking the deck toward a result that de-emphasizes emotional discernment of others behavior.
 

 

If you want to really bring out the differences between the two, use a diverse audience and have them interact freely for a long time in many different contexts, often without oversight. What you are looking for is aesthetic cues that may not even be able to be named - intuitions of something about the AI being off or untrustworthy, continuity gaps, non-fluidity, etc. It's sort of like taking a video screen out into the sunlight. You get a better view of what it isn't when you can see more of what it is.

It sounds like you're proposing a variant of the Turing Test. What would you say if the diverse audience decided the AI probably had feelings, or probably had feelings but different to most people's, like the Aspergers case?

Between the two tests, I'm showing the opposite of what is typically intended by the Turing Test. I am proposing a way to test the extent to which any given Turing-type test reflects the bias of the interpreter rather than any intrinsic quality of the target of the test.

It's hard to say for sure that a positive outcome for the test has any meaning. It's mainly to prove a negative. Maybe only one person out of ten million can pick up on the subtle cues that give away the simulation, and maybe they are too shy to speak up in public. Maybe only dogs can tell its not a person. My hunch though is that this is academic. I expect that simulations will always be pretty easy to figure out given enough time and diversity of audience and interaction. If at some point in time that is no longer the case, the ability to tell the difference will probably be available as an app for our own augmented human systems.

Craig

[Dennis Ochei]

Craig,

I've been trying to stay focused studying the past few days (medical exam D: ), but now im procrastinating....

So which of the following are you advancing

No implementation of rules could ever perfectly exemplify (or at least to such a degree that no human could every tell it was a mere implementation of rules and not "the real thing") the behavior of:

1)  an electron

2) an atom

3) a molecule

4) a macro-molecule

5) an organelle

6) a cell

7) a sponge

8) a nematode

9) a fruit fly

10) a frog

11) a dog

12) a rhesus macaque

13) a human

?

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

You are assuming the entities around you either are or aren't conscious, but you have no way of telling. If you have no way of telling, then how do you know those around you are conscious, and how do you know that computers aren't? By analogy with your own experience, you can say that those like you are conscious, but you do this on the basis of their behaviour being like yours, not on the basis of any special tests let alone dissection to see what they are composed of. You say this test is invalid, but you presumably use it all the time. You also claim to know that a computer is not conscious regardless of its behaviour, but you need a test for consciousness and you have admitted you don't have one. The best test you can propose is an intuition, but you admit that only one in ten million might have this intuition; and it would not be possible to know if this one in ten million were right, nor if the many others who falsely claimed to have the intuition were wrong.

The way you talk implies that at least in principle there is a definitive test for consciousness, but there is no such test.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013 2:07:26 AM UTC-4, Dennis Ochei wrote:

Craig,

I've been trying to stay focused studying the past few days (medical exam D: ), but now im procrastinating....

So which of the following are you advancing

No implementation of rules could ever perfectly exemplify (or at least to such a degree that no human could every tell it was a mere implementation of rules and not "the real thing") the behavior of:

1)  an electron

2) an atom

3) a molecule

4) a macro-molecule

5) an organelle

6) a cell

7) a sponge

8) a nematode

9) a fruit fly

10) a frog

11) a dog

12) a rhesus macaque

13) a human

?

I am advancing the idea that that there is a formula. We can say that the numbers on your list, 1-13, can correspond to what I call the pathetic constant (p). The higher the number, the more likely that we, as humans will attribute feelings and/or the expectation that the public phenomena is associated with a private experience which is worthy of our consideration. If we misattribute a high p value (i.e. human feelings) to a very low p phenomenon then we are committing the pathetic fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy).

In light of that, let me reorganize the chart:

(13) myself
(12) people who remind me of myself
(11) people who are familiar
(10) people who look or behave in an unfamiliar way
(9) living primates
(8) living mammals
(7) animals
(6) reptiles, insects
(5) plants
(4) cells under a microscope
(3) movies of any of the above
(2) photos of any of the above
(1) dead bodies of animals
(0) stuffed animals (taxidermy)
(-1) stuffed animals (synthetic), robot looking robots
(-2) cartoons, fictional characters, graphic simulations, entopic hallucinations
(-3) AI, verbal simulations
(-4) natural phenomena - clouds, mountains
(-5) significant objects - jewels, antiques
(-6) common objects - trash can, pile of sand
(-7/14) invisible abstraction - wraps around from absolutely generic unconsciousness to God concepts

When we try to include phenomena which we cannot directly interact with, such as those on an astrophysical or subatomic scale, or 'information' constructs, we have to fit it into our natural schema intuitively, which I think is both deceptive on one level and potentially contains true insights on another.

If we looked at a pile of yeast, it might look to us like powder (-6) but the actual yeast cells deserve more of a (4 to 5) rating. The gap going in that direction would be an antipathetic gap. Treating a stuffed animal (-2) as a pet (7 to 9) would be a pathetic gap.

To make matters more complicated, our own state of consciousness alters and distorts the scale. A child's empathy may differ from an adult's. A child who has been traumatized by a bear may feel different about animals and be more susceptible to a pathetic gap because of their fear. Their toy bear may have to be thrown out. The entire scale is made of prejudice, but it is not prejudice which is completely unfounded. The lens through which we empathize with others is made of accumulated aesthetic experiences which have roots beyond our conscious mind. Our history as a species with snakes and spiders is present in the attitudes of people - some people more than others, and some cultures more than others.

It's not the rules that make something seem alive, it is the aesthetic presence. We are exquisitely sensitive to the aesthetics of living organisms. We may not be able to tell the difference between a real plant and a plastic plant from 10 yards away, but if we can look at it close up, touch the leaves, smell it, we can know very quickly what we are dealing with. We can be easily misdirected with simulations - puppets, trompe l'oeil, etc, but this superficial empathy is not exactly the same as our deep, even subconscious understanding, and it is certainly not the same as what the entity we are judging is experiencing.

To simulate an aesthetic presence is not necessarily possible. We can make synthetic fabrics now that have a natural feel to a much greater degree than was possible 20 years ago, but we can still tell the difference on some level, and our skin can tell the difference. If we keep improving the fabric, it may be possible that at some point no expert will be able to tell the difference without scientific tools, but that is not necessarily true. A human being who has a talent for appreciating fabric may have a palette whose sensitivity will always learn to spot a fake.

The assumption you make is that we are talking about degrees of complexity, and that complexity is an objective value defined in mathematical terms. My view is that the complexity is only the tip of the iceberg. What we are really talking about is sensitivity and authenticity. A woodgrain laminate is easy to distinguish from a hardwood floor to someone who is paying attention, but not as easy as it is to distinguish a mannequin from a living person. Even a casual observer can get a sense of fake diamonds vs real, but perhaps with a greater margin of error than a gemologist.

To sum up, I would say that the rules that make a living person different from a dead person are not proportional to the significance of that difference. Being alive is not something that arises from a confluence of rules, rather rules are derived from our generalizations about what we have observed of the publicly measurable aspects of life. Most of live, however, is not public or measurable.

Good luck on your exam!
Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013 4:09:22 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Monday, September 9, 2013 11:39:31 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

(Resending complete email - trying to do this on a phone.)

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Thursday, September 5, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote:

My position would suggest that the more mechanistic the conditions of the test, the more it stacks the test in favor of not being able to tell the difference. If you want to fool someone into thinking an AI is alive, get a small group of people who lean toward aspberger's traits and show them short, unrelated examples in a highly controlled context. 

You accept, of course, that people with Aspbergers have feelings even though they don't express them like everyone else?

Certainly. I was using the idea of selecting for Aspberger traits as a way of stacking the deck toward a result that de-emphasizes emotional discernment of others behavior.
 

 

If you want to really bring out the differences between the two, use a diverse audience and have them interact freely for a long time in many different contexts, often without oversight. What you are looking for is aesthetic cues that may not even be able to be named - intuitions of something about the AI being off or untrustworthy, continuity gaps, non-fluidity, etc. It's sort of like taking a video screen out into the sunlight. You get a better view of what it isn't when you can see more of what it is.

It sounds like you're proposing a variant of the Turing Test. What would you say if the diverse audience decided the AI probably had feelings, or probably had feelings but different to most people's, like the Aspergers case?

Between the two tests, I'm showing the opposite of what is typically intended by the Turing Test. I am proposing a way to test the extent to which any given Turing-type test reflects the bias of the interpreter rather than any intrinsic quality of the target of the test.

It's hard to say for sure that a positive outcome for the test has any meaning. It's mainly to prove a negative. Maybe only one person out of ten million can pick up on the subtle cues that give away the simulation, and maybe they are too shy to speak up in public. Maybe only dogs can tell its not a person. My hunch though is that this is academic. I expect that simulations will always be pretty easy to figure out given enough time and diversity of audience and interaction. If at some point in time that is no longer the case, the ability to tell the difference will probably be available as an app for our own augmented human systems.

Craig

You are assuming the entities around you either are or aren't conscious, but you have no way of telling. If you have no way of telling, then how do you know those around you are conscious, and how do you know that computers aren't? By analogy with your own experience, you can say that those like you are conscious, but you do this on the basis of their behaviour being like yours,

Not necessarily. Behavior that I am consciously aware of is perhaps the dominant factor, but our sensitivity transcends conscious attention. I may not be able to tell that a person is an imposter mentally, but my skin may feel the difference, and I may experience that difference in a subtle way which I might ignore by default, but it might be a sensitivity that I could train myself to develop. Maybe it's not the skin which can tell the difference, maybe its a history of personal experience. A familiarity with death on the battlefield, or a cultural background which is highly attuned to emotion.
 

not on the basis of any special tests let alone dissection to see what they are composed of. You say this test is invalid, but you presumably use it all the time.

It is an assumption that anyone uses any 'tests' to determine that someone else is alive. This presumes a default state of uncertainty where none necessarily exists. Just as Libet tests can show how our naive experience of our own will may not match reality, the assumption that we have no idea what is like us and unlike us except through a logic tree based on observed behaviors is not necessarily valid. It's a toy model of sentience and perception.
 

You also claim to know that a computer is not conscious regardless of its behaviour, but you need a test for consciousness and you have admitted you don't have one.

Because one is not necessary. Nothing could be more obvious about machines than the fact that they are utterly devoid of sentience.
 

The best test you can propose is an intuition, but you admit that only one in ten million might have this intuition; and it would not be possible to know if this one in ten million were right, nor if the many others who falsely claimed to have the intuition were wrong.

It wouldn't matter if it were one in 100 trillion. As long as something can correctly tell the difference between a living person and a computer program, we cannot believe that a computer program is alive in any way. In the worst case scenario, nobody could tell, and even the person themselves could be talked out of their own humanity. That still doesn't make them right. If I think that I know that I am a machine it doesn't mean that I'm right. If every test I submit myself agrees with my belief that I am machine it still does not mean I'm right. That's because private awareness is not the same thing as what can be measured publicly - presence is not representation.
 

The way you talk implies that at least in principle there is a definitive test for consciousness, but there is no such test.

Tests are not relevant. They can help clarify or distort, but sensitivity to sentient peers is ultimately grounded in the concrete authenticity of aesthetics, not abstract formalism.

Thanks,
Craig