"Chav - the Musical"

gek-opel said:

Ok, fair enough but then you still have the problem of how these pockets develop. And also how they connect back to the causal world. And whether in connecting back to the causal or hyper-causal they fail to disrupt its causality in some respect. Unless you limit this intentionality to a purely inside-mind concept.

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It's only a problem if you think it matters whether this model is 'correct' or not. I'm only concerned with practicality so I'd just say suck it and see.

noel emits said:

I have no idea but it allows for a basis for free will and independent thought not arising from deterministic processes. We don't really exist in linear time, that's just how it seems.

Anyway, like I say that's really just a personal preference and intuition and has no real bearing on the discussion. I just present it as another possible viewpoint.

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I seee how based on intuition there appears a disconnect between ourselves inwardly and the external world. But could a self outside of linear time somehow have an ability to retro-engineer its past self from a future position? Probably not on the level of imparting knowledge, but how then?

gek-opel said:

could a self outside of linear time somehow have an ability to retro-engineer its past self from a future position? Probably not on the level of imparting knowledge, but how then?

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Well maybe! But I'm certainly not claiming this. Just that by being outside of 'time' a self can project will from a position independent of regular causality, which is what we require for true intentionality I think. Also it's because I would prefer to avoid notions of a 'true-self' being entirely outside the world.

Probability vs determinism-- Obviously it is believed that in terms of physics at a quantum level we deal in probability. However this need not necessarily lead to a bleed-up the scale to the level of human actors. Even if it does I feel this does not necessarily imply a world of free will, merely of chance rather than guarentee within a chance based mechanism, rather than a certainty mechanism. This istherefore not necessarily of any help to those proposing a system of free-will. Indeed it may bugger things up even more comprehensively!

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Sure, I'm not arguing that probability gets you off the hook regarding free-will, I'm simply pointing out that it's not just a question of free-will or determinism, there could be a situation with no free-will but that is not deterministic. Just an aside really.

"A Kantian solution then? The phenomenal/noumenal split to allow a self outside of physical laws? That always felt like a terribly unsatisfactory conclusion to me..."

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Why?
To me - as far as I can immediately see anyway - if there is some kind of thing that is free-will then it must be somehow outside the things that are determined, almost by definition. My thoughts are that means it must be something of the kind I've clumsily described (or else I've got totally the wrong approach).
You didn't make any response to what I was saying about the validity of "internal data" or whatever I called it.

Sorry to present a bit of discontinuity in this discussion, but a few people might be wondering why I seem to be arguing for free will despite having nailed my colours firmly to the mast before now, arguing from a very much anti-dualist, anti-spiritualist viewpoint. OK, so probably no-one was wondering that, but indulge me for a moment...

I'm sure everyone would agree that lumpen, inorganic matter has no 'free will' - there are processes whose outcomes are perhaps impossible to predict due to computational difficulty (stochastic processes) or those which are, even in principle, inherently random (loosely, quantum 'measurements') - but these cannot be said to impart 'free will', just blind, physical indeterminism. Now some people might believe free will and other qualities such as consciousness are imbued into matter by some kind of spirit or soul, although I certainly don't hold this position. But is it possible that free will is an emergent property of a sentient mind, just as sentience seems (to a non-spiritualist) to be an emergent phenomenon? I mean, no-one would claim that a simple electrical circuit, or even a modern supercomputer, is conscious or has genuine intelligence (as opposed to powerful circuits running intelligently-written algorithms). Yet through some physical means or other - sheer complexity according to some, quantum-gravitational effects(!) according to Roger Penrose - there appears to be a property variously called intelligence, sentience or self-awareness in human brains - and to be quite honest, no-one really has the faintest idea how it happens.

So if we are prepared to believe that a lump of warm wet goo can give rise to intelligence, without appealing to some nebulous anima, is it really that much of a stretch to consider that maybe volition arises in the same way - perhaps even that volition is a necessary consequence of, or complement to, understanding and intelligence?

"So if we are prepared to believe that a lump of warm wet goo can give rise to intelligence, without appealing to some nebulous anima, is it really that much of a stretch to consider that maybe volition arises in the same way - perhaps even that volition is a necessary consequence of, or complement to, understanding and intelligence?"

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That may be the conditions for free-will to arise but it doesn't address what it means for something to have free will or solve the problem as outlined by Schopenhauer (and Gek) earlier in the thread (not that Schopenhauer actually contributed).

Mr. Tea said:

So if we are prepared to believe that a lump of warm wet goo can give rise to intelligence, without appealing to some nebulous anima, is it really that much of a stretch to consider that maybe volition arises in the same way - perhaps even that volition is a necessary consequence of, or complement to, understanding and intelligence?

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Sounds reasonable to me except why can't 'anima' or 'pneuma' or whatever be other words to describe the same phenomenon described by the words 'emergent properties resulting from quantum-gravitational effects'.

Actually, which one sounds wackiest?

noel emits said:

Sounds reasonable to me except why can't 'anima' or 'pneuma' or whatever be other words to describe the same phenomenon described by the words 'emergent properties resulting from quantum-gravitational effects'.

Actually, which one sounds wackiest?

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Hmm, good point! Actually Penrose's ideas (as clever as the guy undoubtedly is) are so far out I'm almost tempted to call immortal souls a more rational proposition. However, the difference is that he has at least attempted to knit together the outline of a sketch of a framework of how consciousness might arise using purely physical processes as a basis (and then goes on at great length to prove that 'physical' does not necessarily imply 'computational'). It's just that the physics he's talking about hasn't been discovered yet.

So this is definitely different from souls, spirits etc., which are resolutely immaterial, non-physical, and altogther in the realm of the mystical and so (unlike Penrose's ideas) not amenable to scientific understanding even in principle.

Idle, I see what you're saying about what the idea of free will actually *is* - so we're really talking about whether it's even logically and metaphysically (rather than 'just' physically) possible - I might come back to that when I've thought about it a bit more.

Mr. Tea said:

So this is definitely different from souls, spirits etc., which are resolutely immaterial, non-physical, and altogther in the realm of the mystical and so (unlike Penrose's ideas) not amenable to scientific understanding even in principle.

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I did read that Penrose book and, well I can't exactly remember what I thought at the time, except that he was really straining to make it all fit. Nice try though, it's definitely good to see science stretching out into these areas.

Not to labour the point but I think that when a Tibetan monk or a competent shaman or whatever talks about these things they are actually describing ideas backed up by a thorough framework of understanding and experiment, far from being nebulous concepts.

So, I don't really see why a 'soul' (assuming one has a good idea of what one means by that) should necessarily be seen as any more immaterial* than some supposed sub-atomic particle that pops into existence for a picosecond purely so it can balance out a small discrepancy in a proposed force that barely exists in the first place, and may not even be necessary if someone can find the bloody dark matter or one of those pesky fractional dimensions.

It's all just a matter of quibbling over terms though isn't it. I'll give that book another look I think. Sorry Science, I don't think you're all bad, just not much use at telling us how we should see ourselves in the world, and a bit chauvinistic when it comes to other ways of describing reality.

*OK, I get that this is a technical term.

I take your point, noel, about how seemingly separated from 'reality' some ideas in science can seem to be, especially those of some kinds of theoretical physics. But they are nonetheless proposed to for rational reasons* (e.g. "We need to make this field theory renormalisable") rather than emotional ones ("I can't cope with the idea that when I die, that's the end of my conscious existence"), may be studied or analysed using rigorously mathematical/logical techniques, and often turn out to have empirically testable consequences (like quarks, first hypothesised almost as a mathematical abstraction, later shown to really exist).

Of course, none of this makes them real, as such, but I think it does clearly separate them from souls, ghosts etc.

*leaving aside the rationality, or otherwise, of devoting your life to a science with no practical benefits!

Mr. Tea said:

I take your point, noel, about how seemingly separated from 'reality' some ideas in science can seem to be, especially those of some kinds of theoretical physics. But they are nonetheless proposed to for rational reasons* (e.g. "We need to make this field theory renormalisable") rather than emotional ones ("I can't cope with the idea that when I die, that's the end of my conscious existence"), may be studied or analysed using rigorously mathematical/logical techniques, and often turn out to have empirically testable consequences (like quarks, first hypothesised almost as a mathematical abstraction, later shown to really exist).

Of course, none of this makes them real, as such, but I think it does clearly separate them from souls, ghosts etc.

*leaving aside the rationality, or otherwise, of devoting your life to a science with no practical benefits!

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Well, presumably the difference is that Penrose is suggesting what he thinks science might come to look like, but won't put forward his ideas as 'scientific fact' until science actually does develop in that direction and gets experimental evidence that these ideas might be useful. It's as if Catholics said "we don't know if there is a God, but we intuitively think there might be, and we think it would be interest to see people work on developing an empirical test to see whether there is or not."

This has gone off on a proper tangent.

Wasn't there a neurologist a few years back who claimed to have proven that free will doesn't exist? He said our brains make us do something, and then we rationalise that action simultaneously to give ourselves the illusion that we chose to do it.
Anyone know who I'm talking about? It was on ver telly.

Hmm...wonder how that guy would react if you went up to him and punched him in the bollocks - after all, it's not like you had any choice in the matter...

Seriously though, I did read about some experiments whereby subjects were asked to raise a finger at 'randomly' selected (i.e. completely un-premeditated) moments, while electrodes measured neural signals in the part of the brain thought to be associated with choice and decision-making. They found that while the subjects thought they were impulsively deciding to raise their finger without thinking about it first, there was actually a build-up of electrical activity in the relevant lobe (or whatever) that started more than half a second before the finger was raised. So there could be some weirdness going on 'behind the scenes', as it were.

Mr. Tea said:

I take your point, noel, about how seemingly separated from 'reality' some ideas in science can seem to be, especially those of some kinds of theoretical physics. But they are nonetheless proposed to for rational reasons* (e.g. "We need to make this field theory renormalisable") rather than emotional ones ("I can't cope with the idea that when I die, that's the end of my conscious existence"), may be studied or analysed using rigorously mathematical/logical techniques, and often turn out to have empirically testable consequences (like quarks, first hypothesised almost as a mathematical abstraction, later shown to really exist).

Of course, none of this makes them real, as such, but I think it does clearly separate them from souls, ghosts etc.

*leaving aside the rationality, or otherwise, of devoting your life to a science with no practical benefits!

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No I think you missed my point

I've got no problem with bosons, some of my best friends etc.

What I take issue with is the assumption on the part of some scientists that because science doesn't know how to approach or understand something, or even if a thing (which may very well be directly equivalent to an existing scientific model of the same phenomena) is described in non-scientific terms then it must be vague wish fulfillment or superstition. Yes 'souls' and 'ghosts' can often be the vaguest of concepts but that's not what I'm talking about.

Mr. Tea said:

Hmm...wonder how that guy would react if you went up to him and punched him in the bollocks - after all, it's not like you had any choice in the matter...

Seriously though, I did read about some experiments whereby subjects were asked to raise a finger at 'randomly' selected (i.e. completely un-premeditated) moments, while electrodes measured neural signals in the part of the brain thought to be associated with choice and decision-making. They found that while the subjects thought they were impulsively deciding to raise their finger without thinking about it first, there was actually a build-up of electrical activity in the relevant lobe (or whatever) that started more than half a second before the finger was raised. So there could be some weirdness going on 'behind the scenes', as it were.

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This and what swears describes above mean nothing in terms of free will. All it says is that what the subjects of the experiments call their conscious 'I' might be fooling itself into thinking it runs tings. In fact I don't find these results surprising at all really. Even neurologists don't think that personality is localised in the brain so why should it all look like it's taking place simultaneously?

A little light reading.

Fractal Neurodynamics and Quantum Chaos : Resolving the Mind-Brain Paradox through Novel Biophysics. - 1996

Chris King Mathematics and Statistics Department University of Auckland in Mac Cormac Earl, Stamenov Maxin (eds)
Fractals Of Brain, Fractals of Mind , Advances in Consciousness Research 7, John Betjamins 179-232. ISBN 90-272-5127-4 (Eur) ISBN 1-55619-187-1 (US).

Abstract: A model of the mind-brain relationship is developed in which novel biophysical principles in brain function generate a dynamic possessing attributes consistent with consciousness and free-will. The model invokes a fractal link between neurodynamical chaos and quantum uncertainty. Transactional wave collapse allows this link to be utilized predictively by the excitable cell, in a way which bypasses and complements formal computation. The formal unpredictability of the model allows mind to interact upon the brain, the predictivity of consciousness in survival strategies being selected as a trait by organismic evolution.

http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/paps/consc/brcons1.htm

The paper looks very interesting. But just from the abstract there are some physics questions, for me.

Does the wave form really "transactionally collapse"? Isn't the idea of 'the observation' rejected in QM now? I'm not really sure, does anyone know what the thinking is?
Surely any observation is occurring between real world objects composed of wave functions themselves. The interactions of these wavefunctions need not be a discreet instantaneous incident causing a collapse. Surely the wavefunctions just remain mixed and propagate mixing further?
My point is; Quantum mechanical probability is a false alternative to determinism. QM is deterministic. But the things which are determined are different to the things we classically expect. The wavefunction, and the evolution in time of the wavefunction are determined. The statistical behaviour of the system is determined, but the individual action is only predicted.
If there was a complete QM model for the brain this probability still leaves no room for an external volition to choose a particular result from those probabilistically allowed.

The most important thing with free will for me seems to be explaning that transcendent personality which must do the choosing. Call it volition. If we have free will and we could strip away through psychoanalysis, or sensory depravation, the influences, lessons and behaviours of experience, bodies and environment what are we supposed to find? Is the free choice which supposedly exists beneath all the layers of biological and social behaviour capable of anything? Does it vary from person to person? If it's identical person to person different actions are determined by layers on top, or if different action is determined by luck in getting a good kernel of volition. I dont know how to recover morality.

The next problem is understanding the physics of the influential thing exisitng outside the world.
If there is an external-to-the-world mind which influences the computer-brain in choosing, what is the physical mechanism of interaction between the two? where does the information in the mind come from? what is the mechanism by which nonphysical minds vary and are created?


I'm trying to present a physical perspective, roughly. Since it's interesting to me the parallel conversations of physics and philosophy (and sometimes the lack of mutual interest) and upsetting to me that my chav school didn't give me the opportunity to find out about it sooner.
I'm sad I avoided this thread for so long. I blame the title.

Mr. Tea said:

Seriously though, I did read about some experiments whereby subjects were asked to raise a finger at 'randomly' selected (i.e. completely un-premeditated) moments, while electrodes measured neural signals in the part of the brain thought to be associated with choice and decision-making. They found that while the subjects thought they were impulsively deciding to raise their finger without thinking about it first, there was actually a build-up of electrical activity in the relevant lobe (or whatever) that started more than half a second before the finger was raised. So there could be some weirdness going on 'behind the scenes', as it were.

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Sensory impressions (hearing/feeling/seeing sth) are registered and processed at different rates. The brain compensates for this by referencing each impression and then presenting them as contemporaneous to the conscious awareness (to prevent confusion).

Given this fact, I would imagine that 'the feeling of making a particular decision' (ie. Will making itself known to the conscious mind) would, as in the above instance, be delayed until that part of us that acts upon the decision is ready to do so. If this were not the case, then we would get different lag times between 'willing something' and 'doing it', depending upon the ease with which the latter can be done (creating confusion).

It's all about confusing ourselves as little as possible, you see.

I would like to know what brain scans would make of those painfully protracted episodes at the supermarket, when I'm trying to choose one of fifty different types of cheese, with at least three being given temporary residency in my basket before being consigned again to the shelves.

What's the point of our having the impression that we have free will, if we actually don't?