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warpspeedpetey
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What does “multiply up” mean?
The human mind is not limited by the brain and can even exist outside of it
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GEddie
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I am not going to listen to this, as I would become seriously depressed.
What, in your words, is the Professor’s idea regarding the nature of our mind?
ICXC NIKA.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
Surprisingly it’s not depressing. The title of the course could have just as well been “Existence.” But I understand where you are coming from and can totally understand why you would not want to risk exposing yourself to something with a name that makes it suspect to cause depression.
I dare not summarize his words for fear of misrepresenting them. There’s a certain amount of distortion introduced by summarizing something, and more by putting it into my own words and there was just too much discussed on that question for me to be capable of summarizing it in a manner that I think would be adequate. It was over multiple lectures that the question of “what is the mind” was explored. For those that dare venture I think the lecture that best addresses your question was “Arguments for the existence of a soul” (part 1, part 2).
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GEddie
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Specifically, for me, it would be depressing, and so I will give it a pass.
Understood, ICXC NIKA
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James1215
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I mean that free will (as a factor) might increase the indeterminacy of even totally logical/informed extrapolations from the present, without making those predictions undeterministic, because the further ahead you predict, the more complexity is likely to increase or multiply up. In a chaotic situation like some of the denser scenes in the Sony coloured balls advert ( youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A ), you could work out where all the balls will end up if you know everything at the start. If the balls could make decisions based on the position of other balls and alter their movement (like an animal), there might be conditional predictions which become laden with more and more ‘if this decision, then that result’ over time. While these balls might make very simple decisions based on obvious causal factors, people with consciousness, values, memory and forgetting etc might not be very easily predictable. Hence you could know every atom of their makeup but you only know capacities and possibilities and actual predictions would be vague - their atoms could end up in a wider range of arrangements due to the existence of free will.
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GEddie
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Even if our minds could exist outside of our head, it certainly cannot function without it, given even minor disruption up there causes the mind to stop working.
Fortunately, GOD has provided for that need. That is why there is a pneumatikon soma.
ICXC NIKA
Fortunately, GOD has provided for that need. That is why there is a pneumatikon soma.
ICXC NIKA
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warpspeedpetey
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If those balls could choose where to bounce regardless of the determinant physical factors then they would have free will wouldn’t they?
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James1215
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YES! Precisely - this is what I think the Christian idea of free will is, but I do not think those hypothetical balls would be able to step outside causality, merely to complicate it and be involved deliberately in it.
If the balls really could ‘bounce regardless of the determinant physical factors’ we have to ask: How? What new magical force would move them?
I guess if you accept that everything is caused, free will has to be a part of it too, or if you think free will cannot be caused, determinism of this sort falls.
Intuitively speaking, do we make decisions outside of causality? We deliberate on what forces itself into consciousness based on what we know, want and what our values are. Consciousness can be modified by cutting up the brain, suggesting a material basis/cause. Knowledge doesn’t spring from nowhere. Desires and values are shaped from outside and deliberately and repetitively inculcated by ourselves. So there seems to be a case for the situation of free will inside causal chains.
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James1215
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lol to make sense of this, maybe we should think of balls with legs or little jets for decision-based/will-based movement within the bounds of physics. My main point is that I think ‘free’ is a misnomer for ‘will’
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warpspeedpetey
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That just leads back to the same dilemma. A chance pattern being completely coherent. With every particle in the universe just happening to be in the right place at the right time, every time, for all time, for no reason at all, to form a coherent picture of a world full of people.
A further issue occurs to me…
If Free Will were solely a matter of material and quantum wouldn’t it seem strange any large enough conglomeration of matter didn’t exhibit it? Wouldn’t it seem strange that it only happens in homosapiens? Why not a rock? There are gigatonnes of rock for every neuron of every person on the planet. Why not trees? There are a great many number of trees for every human being, Why not colonies of bacteria? They far outnumber us. Fish? by the quadrillions, yet among all these conglomerations of matter, animate and inanimate, the only configuration of matter that has ever said I believe that I have free will, are the conglomerations configured like a human being. It would be a quite a strange situation for a universe where quantum indeterminancy only works for us like that.
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UnworthyApostle
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Well, first, I think that the mind can exist outside of the body. The reason another user stated earlier regarding the mind defying limits of matter while the brain is only matter shows that the mind is by nature immaterial. I believe a formal rule of logic like “what is of A is B” applies here.
Secondly, I might have to agree with somewhat with James as to freewill existing within causality. If I am not mistaken the position of classicThomism is that people and their enviroments are intrinsically linked, including but not limited to people’s actions. It is very Catholic to say that our free will actions are largely effected by a causal enviroment, but to the extent they are I do not have an answer. It is only through the Cartesian divorce of mind/body that we have this type of discussion.
Secondly, I might have to agree with somewhat with James as to freewill existing within causality. If I am not mistaken the position of classicThomism is that people and their enviroments are intrinsically linked, including but not limited to people’s actions. It is very Catholic to say that our free will actions are largely effected by a causal enviroment, but to the extent they are I do not have an answer. It is only through the Cartesian divorce of mind/body that we have this type of discussion.
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ThinkingSapien
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I don’t think it only happens in humans. There are a number of other animals that I would say have some degree of free will.
That doesn’t seem strange at all. One of the central components of any entity that can achieve at least the appearance of free will is some apparatus or system of processing information. In biological entities this takes the form of the nervous system and is usually centralized into a brain and/or ganglia. A nervous system is a collection of agents that receive some (name removed by moderator)ut, perform some processing on that (name removed by moderator)ut, and produce some output (I can elaborate on that but if I write a book sized post here no one would read it, so please ask pointed questions if you want me elaborate on specific aspects of it). Right now I am only concerned with the appearance of free will. So computer controlled machines could be included in this category too. But instead of a system of neurons they have a system of gates and wires. Simply put rocks don’t have any type of processing ability.
These entities also have some method of gathering information about their environment through senses. We usually think about 5 senses (touch, sound, taste, hearing, smell) but some animals also can sense electric fields. So keep an open mind as to what could be sensed.
A being with free will also needs to have the ability to act within an environment. If you could some how endow a rock with the ability to think and the desire to do something the rock being composed of rigid material has no way to perform any action; its inflexible so it cannot perform actions mechanically. It has no internal reserves of any chemical reactive agents to release so it can’t perform actions chemically, and so on.
All of these abilities and some others are going to be needed to be able to achieve cognition. Another topic wither of it’s own discussion (I suggest the book(s) “Neuroconstructivism” for any one interested in this).
Within humans we can find variances in all of these properties. Different people may have different capabilities for sensing their environments. Some people have perfect vision, other people may be far sighted or near sighted. Some people have cloudy vision, some people can’t see at all. There are variances in one’s capacity to form memories from genetic, environmental, and physical factors. People also have different abilities for performing mechanical actions from variances in strength, missing limbs, or being partially or completely paralyzed. Because of the impacts that all of these variances have on one’s potential I don’t see free will as dichotomous but better viewed as having gradations. So I would see a blind partially paralyzed person as having less free will than a person with vision and full body control (assuming all other factors are equal). I also wouldn’t see a person with significant brain damage as having as much free will as a person with a health undamaged brain, and so on.
If I evaluate the entities that you mentioned against the properties that I’ve mentioned and try to put those entities on a scale I find rocks and trees on the low end of the scale. Most people would be on the high end of the scale. Fish would be less than people but greater than rocks and trees. The bacteria would be on the end with the rocks and the trees.
What I’ve typed is lengthy but by no means complete. But I wanted to highlight some of the considerations in evaluating your question.
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warpspeedpetey
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Which is whats so strange. A 2 pound rock has as many quantum events occurring as a 2 pound brain, and can be just as chemically active over much longer periods of time. So how do we know that rocks aren’t all telepathic and talking about us in the same light? “Those slimy bio units cannot talk so they must not have free will, anything that dies so quickly would not have time to form free will”. Its a little tongue in cheek here, but the point is that our perceptions of what constitutes an appearance of free will doesn’t matter. All claims to biological necessity are assertions based on our psychological desires to see the world in our terms. Since we have not ever seen anything that we can attribute to free will coming from an entire universe of matter suggests that mere quantum indeterminancy is an insufficient explanation for the appearance of free will among Homo Sapiens.
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tonyrey
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The success of science is ample evidence that we transcend physical laws with our insight and ability to use them.
Physical laws determine the brain’s activity but it is directed by the mind.
Then how do you explain our power to transcend physical laws and direct the activity of the brain?
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GEddie
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Well, the rocks possessing no voice or body mechanism, could express no discernible volitional activity.
ICXC NIKA
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ThinkingSapien
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I’m not going to say with absolute certainty that they don’t. There are some that will hold a panentheistic view that the universe as a whole is a giant mind. For now I’m holding the position that rocks don’t think because it isn’t supported by any evidence (if you have evidence that they do think feel free to present it).
There is a good bit that can be said of questions of the form “How do we know that XXXX isn’t the case.” (Such questions are sometimes worded in a statement such as “For all wee know XXXX is the case”). In most cases where I see this XXXX is something that is unknown.
How does my employer know that I won’t steal equipment? How do I know that my neighbor isn’t going to try to kill me? How do I know my car won’t break down when I take this trip? My employer doesn’t know that I won’t steal. Though the results of my background check do not contain evidence that support the belief that I would. I don’t know that my neighbor won’t try to kill me in the future. But there’s never been any interaction that supports the belief that they will. I don’t know that my car won’t break down on me. But between its track record and information I have on the reliability ratings of similar vehicles I have no reason to believe that it is. For some things we demand supporting evidence before proceeding; for some occupations or tasks some one must provide evidence of being capable of performing a job through in the form of a license or certification. (I’m ignoring faked licenses for now. They don’t contradict this example, but explaining their place in this example would make for a much longer description) But the evidence that some one is capable doesn’t let us know that the person won’t make mistakes and be unsuccessful in performing the task.
It kind of does; there’s different philosophies on what constitutes free will, some of which are incompatible with each other. The question of “what is free will” is deserving of a thread and introductions to free will fill many books. If we nail down a specific description of free will and decide to use it (and if that description allows) then we could remove the perception of free will all together and evaluate whether or not a given system has the agreed upon properties. But if any of the properties can’t be objectively evaluated then even in the agreed upon description there will be room for perception to be introduced.
I will assume that either is not to be applied to anything I said or it is being misapplied to something I’ve said. As I have not asserted biological necessity. I even made mention computer controlled machines (nonbiological). Biological entities do form a majority of the things I’ve discussed because there are so many examples of them. I have not seen nearly as many non-biological entities that have displayed the appearance of free will. The capabilities that I’ve asserted are an ability to sense the environment, the ability to process the information from those senses, and the ability to act within the environment. I also made mention to cognition and desire, but I never asserted that agents with free will need to be biological.
Quantum indeterminacy wasn’t stated or implied in my response, so I will also assume that is meant for another response until I hear otherwise.
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warpspeedpetey
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From the rocks view point our nearly instantaneous existences wouldn’t necessarily seem to express volitional activity either. To them all of biological history may be little more than a slight case of athletes foot. The point being is that life as we know it is not necessarily important to the concept of free will if it is really a buildup from quantum indeterminacy. The argument made implies that all matter should have an emergent free will, because all matter experience the quantum indeterminacy that the argument relies upon. Yet this quantum indeterminacy hasn’t resulted in discernible effects anywhere but Homo Sapiens. That seems awful strange given that the total mass of the observable universe is unimaginably greater than the mass of our physical brains. So quantum indeterminacy seems to be an insufficient explanation for the appearance of free will in the species.
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warpspeedpetey
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You quoted a post from a conversation where we were discussing it. As to the rest see the post immediately above this one for my general response.
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warpspeedpetey
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That’s my point, there is no basis to the assertion that biology or any particular configuration of matter is a prerequisite for free will. So making the claim doesn’t solve the problem that the argument implies all matter should have emergent free will because free will emerges from quantum phenomenon.
You are asserting that free will requires a certain configuration of matter. Call it biology, call it a computer. The contention that free will requires a specific configuration is insupportable simply on the basis that such an arrangement is most familiar to us.
You replied to a post in which James had raised an argument from quantum indeterminacy from something he had read. Dennett I think he said.
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ThinkingSapien
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Your correct, I did. My apologies. Though one of the points of my response was to show that humans are not the only entities that display free will and to describe some of the necessary components for free will.
The number of stars in the universe is estimated at 70 sextillion(7*10^22) by the Australian National University. Feel free to disagree with this number and use what ever number you think to represent the number of stars in the universe. Of all of those stars we (humans) have only explored a subset of the worlds that rotate around one of those stars. If we take the entire universe into consideration we are talking abot a collection of items for which an overwhelming majority have never been observed up close. So in trying to make that statement more accurate one can say “That seems awful strange given the small percentage of the total mass of the observable universe that we have examined.” The mass of a human brain doesn’t bear much relevance here. If that is in any way a misrepresentation of reality please let me know. I don’t think that it is.
No, I have not asserted that free will requires a certain configuration of matter. I have asserted that an agent with free will be capable of acting within its environment, gathing information about that environment, and being able to process that information in some way. I’ve not constrained that to requiring a certain arrangement of matter. If you remove any of these from a being then you will have destroyed its free will. We humans will limit another beings free will (even other humans) if we find that their excercising of free will is destructive of a nuisance to us (usually through physical restraints such as hand cuffs or prisons).
The examples provided were physical. The people reading this forum have experience with physical entities that display free will and in communicating ideas it is useful to relate those ideas back to things with which the audience is familiar.
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