Can a materialist conception of the mind really preserve free will?

[SentinelofTruth]

Bagheera:

You still think in a linear fashion. A learning, self-modifying system (whether it is made of electronic chips or neurons) cannot be compared (even analogously) to a pocket calculator.

Yes, it can. a) modern computers are at least to some degree self-modifying, yet still do not think, even in the view of (most) materialists. b) what does it matter how complex a system is? Consciousness is not something ridiculously complex. It is a very simple thing. The reason the brain can’t be conscious isn’t because it’s not complex enough, it’s because it’s just of the completely wrong nature.

 

[polytropos]

You still think in a linear fashion. A learning, self-modifying system (whether it is made of electronic chips or neurons) cannot be compared (even analogously) to a pocket calculator.

Except you were the one who made the comparison. I said my calculator does not think, and you responded with an anecdote:

A young ant was reading his book of folk-tales. One of the stories was about an elephant. He asked his mother: “Mommy, what is an elephant?”. And the mother replied: “It is a big, enormous, huge ant!”.

Ostensibly, you were drawing an analogy between the ant/elephant and calculator/human, implying that our thinking is just a “big, enormous, huge” version of the calculator’s processes.

Otherwise, I can’t even begin to wonder what the anecdote was supposed to mean.

That said, I would stand by saying that the question of whether something like our minds genuinely emerges from computational systems is what is at stake. The learning and self-modifying aspects of a system, as I’ve said before, do not clearly have any relevance. I can write a program today and make it learn and modify itself; I can still do a stack trace of it, keep track of what it’s doing, figure out what memory it allocates, and even determine how it will modify itself based on what data it collects. But none of the complexity added by the program modifying itself seems related to the emergence of something like mind.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

polytropos:

Otherwise, I can’t even begin to wonder what the anecdote was supposed to mean.

Yeah. I couldn’t even think of the interpretation that you did.

 

[Bagheera]

polytropos:

Ostensibly, you were drawing an analogy between the ant/elephant and calculator/human, implying that our thinking is just a “big, enormous, huge” version of the calculator’s processes.

You keep misunderstanding.

I said that the actual hardware or wetware for the process of thinking is not relevant, it can be either a bunch of neurons, or some electronic platform, it is the process that is relevant. Just like a few separated neurons cannot exhibit “thinking”; a small pocket calculator is not the “equivalent” of complex, self- modifying, learning system. (And it was you who keeps referring to the pocket calculator, not I.) We have many examples of quantitative changes turning into qualitative differences, and you seem to forget about this fact. One example: “a small number of disgruntled people can turn an angry crowd into a revolution if the number of people reaches a certain limit”.

Obviously we are still ignorant of how, precisely this happens in the billions of neural connections in the brain. But the principle is well established. What you ironically call the “science of the gaps” is exactly how science works. An honest admission that we do not have the answer, and we posit a fully materialistic null-hypothesis. All the (otherwise religious) scientists work according to this principle. No matter how deeply religious they might happen to be in their personal life, when they get into their labs, they leave their faiths in the cloakroom. Laymen are, of course, different.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You keep misunderstanding.

I said that the actual hardware or wetware for the process of thinking is not relevant, it can be either a bunch of neurons, or some electronic platform, it is the process that is relevant. Just like a few separated neurons cannot exhibit “thinking”; a small pocket calculator is not the “equivalent” of complex, self- modifying, learning system. (And it was you who keeps referring to the pocket calculator, not I.) We have many examples of quantitative changes turning into qualitative differences, and you seem to forget about this fact. One example: “a small number of disgruntled people can turn an angry crowd into a revolution if the number of people reaches a certain limit”.

You keep forgetting that a “small number of disgruntled people” may in fact have the characteristics of intentionality, consciousness and free will that are in dispute. To claim this is an example of an emerging property or apply it as an analogy to material processes to demonstrate that similar qualities may emerge from “a bunch of neurons” or “water molecules” is, to put it simply, begging the question.

Obviously we are still ignorant of how, precisely this happens in the billions of neural connections in the brain. But the principle is well established. What you ironically call the “science of the gaps” is exactly how science works. An honest admission that we do not have the answer, and we posit a fully materialistic null-hypothesis. All the (otherwise religious) scientists work according to this principle. No matter how deeply religious they might happen to be in their personal life, when they get into their labs, they leave their faiths in the cloakroom. Laymen are, of course, different.

It is interesting how an admission of “we don’t have the answer” is laudible when it comes from the lips of scientists, but a similar admission from believers is inexcusable. When I hear people such as Peter Atkins, Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Lawrence Krauss go on about “God did it” as being a science stopper, I have to shake my head. They keep forgetting that for a believer, “God did it” applies equally to EVERYTHING, the things we know about AND the things we don’t. I have never heard a believer say “God did it” meaning “At this point we stop trying to know.”

“God did it,” for a believer functions as a placeholder to mean roughly “We don’t know” or “We don’t know how.” Both of which mean the same as “We don’t have an answer,” does for the scientist, atheist or otherwise, which you cast as an honest and principled admission.

A religious person puts their faith in God, who remains largely unknown, but who commands us to strive to know him. A materialist scientist puts faith in the unknown aspects of the universe and his faith insists that these CAN be known or will be revealed by continued effort.

 

[polytropos]

You keep misunderstanding.

I said that the actual hardware or wetware for the process of thinking is not relevant, it can be either a bunch of neurons, or some electronic platform, it is the process that is relevant. Just like a few separated neurons cannot exhibit “thinking”; a small pocket calculator is not the “equivalent” of complex, self- modifying, learning system. (And it was you who keeps referring to the pocket calculator, not I.)

The calculator was brought up as an example of why the execution of an algorithm has no necessary connection to thinking (and was a pretty small point in my entire post). You responded with a perplexing (and still unexplained) anecdote, in which the calculator/human are apparently not supposed to stand in for the ant/elephant.

And the complexity of a self-modifying/learning system is still being trotted out as though they are obviously relevant to the point at hand. But then, since a computer scientist can write a “self-modifying” program and still trace it in principle like he would any other simpler program, it is hard to figure out where this irreducible emergence really crops up.

We have many examples of quantitative changes turning into qualitative differences, and you seem to forget about this fact. One example: “a small number of disgruntled people can turn an angry crowd into a revolution if the number of people reaches a certain limit”.

Obviously we are still ignorant of how, precisely this happens in the billions of neural connections in the brain. But the principle is well established.

I seem to forget about that fact? I have actually countered it repeatedly, noting that the point does not hold as strongly as your argument requires with respect to computers, water, uranium, acids, etc.

The point you are making seems to be this: Qualitative differences emerge from quantitative changes. The mind (broadly) can be described qualitatively. Therefore, the mind can in principle emerge from quantitative changes.

The principle simply is not established as strongly as your argument needs it to be. Even if the qualities you have been talking about did emerge in the ways you say (and I contend that they do not, cf. my other posts), it would not follow, without a prior postulate of materialism, that the mind must be explained materialistically, for no one holds that any quality can emerge from any substrate with a proper structure. Saying that qualities often emerge from quantitative changes does not justify the argument that any particular quality does emerge from a quantitative change (it just doesn’t follow).

What you ironically call the “science of the gaps” is exactly how science works. An honest admission that we do not have the answer, and we posit a fully materialistic null-hypothesis. All the (otherwise religious) scientists work according to this principle. No matter how deeply religious they might happen to be in their personal life, when they get into their labs, they leave their faiths in the cloakroom. Laymen are, of course, different.

Of course, theists are not the only critics of materialism. There are naturalists like John Searle, Raymond Tallis, Hubert Dreyfus, and Thomas Nagel, who all point to the difficulties that modern science faces in principle when it attempts to explain the mind. Such philosophers and (and scientists, in the case of Tallis) might be said to “honestly admit” not just that they don’t have the answer, but that the method might be flawed.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Bagheera, about a whole page ago, I asked you to restate your standing objections to the OP (and to my proof of it’s premise). You ignored this.

 

[Bagheera]

polytropos:

But then, since a computer scientist can write a “self-modifying” program and still trace it in principle like he would any other simpler program…

Can they? No. Not even in principle. The modification happens at the binary level, not at the source code.

…it is hard to figure out where this irreducible emergence really crops up.

That is correct. It will be very hard, when we shall reach that level. So what?

polytropos:

The point you are making seems to be this: Qualitative differences emerge from quantitative changes. The mind (broadly) can be described qualitatively. Therefore, the mind can in principle emerge from quantitative changes.

Correct. And the buzzword is in principle. I did not say that it actually does, even though I think that is the actual explanation. I only said that it is a rational null-hypothesis. Your counter argument was that there are certain hypothetical attributes, which cannot emerge, due to the underlying “infrastructure”. And, of course, in principle, you are correct. One cannot hope to use butter to build a spaceship, no matter what “structure” one gives to the butter.

But the complexity of the neural systems and the fact that higher animals exhibit rational and proto-human like behavior (without assuming a “rational soul”) gives us a reasonable expectation. All the experiments performed on the brain (electrical or chemical stimulation) indicate that the thoughts (the mind) are the product of the activity of the brain. There is the fact that the neural connections change whenever you learn something. As far as I know, not even the believers argue any more that the memory is somehow “supernatural”.

Furthermore it is supported by the fact that insofar all the “goddidit” type of non-explanations have been refuted and discarded, from the lightning being the flaming sword of God all the way to the demonic possessions causing all sorts of diseases. What track record can you show for the usefulness of the “goddidit” type of non-explanation? There is only one rational null-hypothesis, the materialistic one.

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SentinelofTruth:

Bagheera, about a whole page ago, I asked you to restate your standing objections to the OP (and to my proof of it’s premise). You ignored this.

Yes. I ignore most of the posters. There is no rule against picking and choosing.

 

[polytropos]

Can they? No. Not even in principle. The modification happens at the binary level, not at the source code.

You’ll have to be clearer about what you mean. There is certainly an epistemic issue - if I tell my computer to do something involving a lot of steps, and run the program before countenancing what it will do, then it will of course do unanticipated things, given self-modification. But that is only because I have not looked ahead, or because the computer will perform a lot of operations, or because I might make a mistake.

Certainly a basic self-modifying program can be made and traced. I think the burden is on whoever is going to claim that once the activities of the self-modifying program “get away from us” due to their complexity, novel qualities can actually emerge. What makes the operations any different, in principle, from something like recursion, which might, according to (name removed by moderator)ut, act in different, though still principally predictable, ways? (I may not be able to trace a program that makes thousands of recursive calls and is performing various complex operations in between - but still, where does anything novel emerge? Why is telling a computer to modify itself different? If there is a different, why is it relevant, and how do you know that the qualities in question do emerge from it?)

What do you mean “the modification happens at the binary level”? For example, if I write a program in a higher-level programming level and compile it, the computer is translating what I wrote into binary level already. Also explain how the modification at the binary level should be different from higher-level modifications.

That is correct. It will be very hard, when we shall reach that level. So what?

My comment was clearly facetious. As I’ve enumerated above, the difference between a self-modifying program that we can trace and can’t trace is just an issue of epistemics. The burden lies with whoever is making the claim to prove that anything qualitatively knew is arising from a fundamentally epistemic complexity.

But the complexity of the neural systems and the fact that higher animals exhibit rational and proto-human like behavior (without assuming a “rational soul”) gives us a reasonable expectation. All the experiments performed on the brain (electrical or chemical stimulation) indicate that the thoughts (the mind) are the product of the activity of the brain. There is the fact that the neural connections change whenever you learn something. As far as I know, not even the believers argue any more that the memory is somehow “supernatural”.

You are attributing a stronger position to me than I would accept (or have defended). I think the mind is largely material (but not fully); as I intimated earlier, I believe it is the rational operations of the mind that are immaterial (for which I have separate arguments - but this topic is about the weaknesses of materialism). I am open to an emergent view of consciousness, although I (following Nagel) think that the question of emergent consciousness rather poses larger problems for the materialistic worldview (ie. it demands a consideration of intentionality as a fundamental character of the universe).

I think it is pretty obvious that animals are conscious. But consciousness is not the seat of the rational soul (which I haven’t argued for here). In that sense other animals are proto-human; humans are animals, after all. But I do not think it has been established that other animals engage in the rational operations that we do.

Furthermore it is supported by the fact that insofar all the “goddidit” type of non-explanations have been refuted and discarded, from the lightning being the flaming sword of God all the way to the demonic possessions causing all sorts of diseases. What track record can you show for the usefulness of the “goddidit” type of non-explanation? There is only one rational null-hypothesis, the materialistic one.

My explanation is not that God did it. Theism obviously makes dualism (broadly) seem more plausible, but it’s telling that the most prominent dualists (and naturalistic critics of materialism) in philosophy today are not theists. One needs a constitutive and historical explanation of the mind. Theists take God as the historical explanation; materialists take natural selection as the historical explanation. But the historical explanation, in either case, is kind of a moot point as long as the constitutive explanation is not accounted for. The case for materialism is bad enough that non-theists are willing to accept a constitutive explanation that does not square with mainstream evolutionary biology.

It is also a rather separate case from other god-of-the-gaps explanations. If someone saw lightning thousands of years ago and claims a god did it, seeing no other possibility, then they were certainly wrong. But this is a case where arguments have been adduced for why it is principally impossible for the mind to emerge from a material substrate. It may be the case that saying that the mind, on the contrary, can emerge from a material substrate is simply a vacuous claim, based on what things are (like it would be vacuous to claim that it is “possible” to build a computer out of water), in which case the materialist null-hypothesis is not the most rational hypothesis. (I also do not consider the immateriality of the intellect to be a “hypothesis,” since it isn’t a scientific position that I’m in the process of gathering evidence for - but that is another topic.)

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Bagheera:

Yes. I ignore most of the posters. There is no rule against picking and choosing.

This behavior would be excusable in a thread that gets twelve replies per second, like some of the ones I’ve been on. But this thread is not one of them. It is moving plenty slow enough for you to answer at least half of what I say, which you don’t. Instead, you spend all of your time responding to polytropos, because he is content to let you sidetrack this debate while I attempt to bring the focus back to your refutedness.

Bagheera:

But the complexity of the neural systems and the fact that higher animals exhibit rational and proto-human like behavior (without assuming a “rational soul”) gives us a reasonable expectation. All the experiments performed on the brain (electrical or chemical stimulation) indicate that the thoughts (the mind) are the product of the activity of the brain. There is the fact that the neural connections change whenever you learn something. As far as I know, not even the believers argue any more that the memory is somehow “supernatural”.

I hope this is just a thesis, and not an argument, because if it’s an argument then it’s a more perfect circle than any I can draw. Besides, alleged experiments- that you can’t prove on the spot- far from outrank a logical deductive proof like the one polytropos used in the OP. And while most “believers” may have too limited enthusiasm for their faith to argue that memory is supernatural, this not apply to all believers. I, for instance, assert that no mental function is at all neural.

Bagheera:

Furthermore it is supported by the fact that insofar all the “goddidit” type of non-explanations have been refuted and discarded, from the lightning being the flaming sword of God all the way to the demonic possessions causing all sorts of diseases. What track record can you show for the usefulness of the “goddidit” type of non-explanation? There is only one rational null-hypothesis, the materialistic one.

These have not all been “refuted and discarded”. In fact, there are two phenomena that the not-as-all-encompassing-as-you-think tide of science has not swept away into materialistic terms: the mind (see the butt-kickingly complete refutation in OP and in my first post), and the entire universe itself (discussing atheism is banned, so we cannot debate this point).

 

[polytropos]

I, for instance, assert that no mental function is at all neural.

This is a stronger claim than I am committed to.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Yeah, I know that.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Well, will everyone let me know if you run into a real talking horse?
Or when you run into a talking rock, or a cat who can do calculus or when you see a cow jumping over the moon. If pure matter can change into mind, any of these strange things and even more strange things can happen.

Linus2nd

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Linusthe2nd:

Well, will everyone let me know if you run into a real talking horse?
Or when you run into a talking rock, or a cat who can do calculus or when you see a cow jumping over the moon. If pure matter can change into mind, any of these strange things and even more strange things can happen.

Yeah, it does. But this is not a good argument because even such firm opponents of materialism like idealists can hold that it would be possible for God to create a sapient creature with the body of a cat or cow.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Yeah, it does. But this is not a good argument because even such firm opponents of materialism like idealists can hold that it would be possible for God to create a sapient creature with the body of a cat or cow.

But the point is that a materialist could not possibly have a mind because the intellect is a property of an immaterial soul. And nothing material could produce a spiritual/immaterial substance.

Linus2nd

 

[SentinelofTruth]

That’s circular.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

That’s circular.

Hardly. By definition a material subject has no spiritual substance, Therefore, since mind is a property of the immaterial soul, the materialist cannot have a mind. To say otherwise is a violation of the principle of non-contradiction. But whoever said materialists were logical !

Linus2nd

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Linusthe2nd:

Hardly. By definition a material subject has no spiritual substance, Therefore, since mind is a property of the immaterial soul, the materialist cannot have a mind.

But the thesis that a mind must be spiritual is what is being denied.

 

[The_Walrus_1]

No, absolutely not. Under a materialist notion of mind we would have to think of action as the brain selecting one choice from a set of potential choices laid out sequentially in a simplex. The choice to select a given action A by the brain could only depend on information about the brain’s past states in terms of its chemical metabolism. The only way you could make it seem like there was free will operating in the brain would be to introduce some random selection mechanism, but that in itself would have to depend on a physical mechanism to generate the random deviates for the stochastic selection mechanism. Ahhh!! grad school has made me crazy!,…

 

[tonyrey]

No, absolutely not. Under a materialist notion of mind we would have to think of action as the brain selecting one choice from a set of potential choices laid out sequentially in a simplex. The choice to select a given action A by the brain could only depend on information about the brain’s past states in terms of its chemical metabolism. The only way you could make it seem like there was free will operating in the brain would be to introduce some random selection mechanism, but that in itself would have to depend on a physical mechanism to generate the random deviates for the stochastic selection mechanism. Ahhh!! grad school has made me crazy!,…

There’s nothing crazy about your post. It consists of impeccable logic.