200 replies to this topic

[Clifford Greenblatt]

Clifford, I was thinking more of the Schroedinger equations. What solves them for a particular value for a particular historical event? As I understand it, that is not determined by any known thing.

The Schroedinger equations are very useful but they do not give a unique solution for a particular historical event. This does not mean that absolutely nothing determines a quantum-mechanical event, it just means that there is something more to the determination than the Schroedinger equations can predict.

The language of numbers may be a consequence of some natural laws, but the language has been changing and evolving throughout human history, with human mathematicians inventing various styles for treating the seemingly endless deductions from the methods of counting and abstract logic.

Agreed.

The embracing nature of the disciplines of mathematics and logic obscure the fact that they contain a wide variety of potentially exclusive, or parallel, ways of understanding the world. For example, it is possible to imagine an advanced alien civilization that does not use number (counting).

Could you think of any technologically useful system of mathematics that has no counting numbers? As far as I can see, counting numbers are an essential foundation. There are many mathematical abstractions that do not involve any counting numbers, but I do not see how any system of measurement could be implemented without them. The process for defining counting numbers is very elementary. The number 2 is defined as 1 + 1. The number 3 is defined as 2 + 1.

[arc3025]

Clifford,

There may be something determining a quantum-mechanical event, but until there is a warrant for believing it is something in particular, I group it under nondetermined.

A technologically useful system of mathematics that had no counting numbers -
Let's say there might be an alien species which evolved in such a way as to have very fine, subtle abilities to sense amounts, lengths, directly - "analog" as opposed to "digital" - and a mind that conceptualized the amounts rather directly, in a similar way. Then a form of mathematics would arise that would describe degrees or amounts of various parameters and the relations between them, as basically indivisible wholes (imagine ratios without numbers). This species might then develop space-faring technology by application of its mathematics to navigation, control systems, etc.

[Lazarus Long]

A technologically useful system of mathematics that had no counting numbers -
Let's say there might be an alien species which evolved in such a way as to have very fine, subtle abilities to sense amounts, lengths, directly - "analog" as opposed to "digital" - and a mind that conceptualized the amounts rather directly, in a similar way. Then a form of mathematics would arise that would describe degrees or amounts of various parameters and the relations between them, as basically indivisible wholes (imagine ratios without numbers). This species might then develop space-faring technology by application of its mathematics to navigation, control systems, etc.

Do mean like bees?

[arc3025]

Lazarus,
Is that a good description of bees? I don't know.
I would assume that an alien species would have to move beyond instinct, innate behavior patterns, to develop actual technology... perhaps that is an assumption that could also be revisited.

[Chip]

What was that sci-fi novel, The Mote in God's Eye? Ah yes, here's a review: http://www.scifi.com...02/classic.html

[Infernity]

That's a very sophisticated question A941, and so our brain.
That question brings us lots of wonderings about how the human brain works.
Personaly, I am very interested about how the human system works, and actually, how everything works; from the tiny electrons to the whole universe and over.
I am also wondering alot about that maybe all of what we know as a simple tiny atoms are actually a whole universes of themselves and that our ostensibly known huge universe is only a teeny piece of something much much greater.
I have nothing to say that shall answer the question because of the simple fact I don't have anything to base oneself on, but I'd like to know more about it, and thanks for bringing up that musing.

Yours
~Infernity

[amar]

I think the answer is simply paradoxical. All things will freely. At the same time, all things are subject to a higher power. Some people call this higher power God, but what I refer to is simply the greater universe of which we are all subject to the motion of.

[Infernity]

I think we are subjugated to the laws of nature, and experience which are also - ... the laws of nature and of the current physics. and that means ALL the laws known to us- be creative...!
When I think of it, heh we don't have free will then!
Even if laws shall be changed- still to our notion it will fit the basic laws of physics, which cannot be changed because it is always being translated according to humanity notion...
BUT- what's wrong with that? It's not like we are suffering because of that are we? moreover, it is what bestowing us order. I think it is good to have nature with rules. it shall always have- even the most arbitrary rules- are still rules...
Yeah, every choice is obvious... would have been so because of the experience leads to the same laws...

Yours truthfully
~Infernity

Edited by infernity, 08 March 2005 - 11:22 AM.

[amar]

Rules and laws? Those are human imposed, mutable, and breakable. However, there is the law referred to as 'natural law' which is unbreakable. If you wish to master mother nature, you must obey her every command.

[Infernity]

amar,
I am not sure you understand me...
Take a second look and analyse it.

Yours
~Infernity

[amar]

Okay. I'll analyze it.

I think we are subjugated to the laws of nature, and experience which are also - ... the laws of nature and of the currenr physics. and that means ALL the laws known to us- be creative...!

Sounds all right.  We are influenced by all laws, but I still hold fast that many laws are mutable and breakable.

When I think of it, heh we don't have free will then!

I don't agree.  I'd even argue that a rock has free will.  It does what it can.

Even if laws shall be changed- still to our notion it will fit the basic laws of physics, which cannot be changed because it is always being translated according to humanity notion...

agreed.

BUT- what's wrong with that? It's not like we are suffering because of that are we? moreover, it is what bestowing us order. I think it is good to have nature with rules. it shall always have- even the most arbitrary rules- are still rules...

It's good except that the order condemns us to death, so far as we fathom.  "No dancing star was ever born without a little bit of chaos." -Nietsche

Yeah, every choice is obvious... would have been so because of the experience leads to the same laws...

Not every choice is clear, immortality for example.  We don't know yet if we can be immortal.

Yours truthfully
~Infernity

Mine truly,
~Amar

[Lazarus Long]

Rules and laws? Those are human imposed, mutable, and breakable. However, there is the law referred to as 'natural law' which is unbreakable. If you wish to master mother nature, you must obey her every command.

Precisely, objectively, and absolutely true but consider then the physicist and geneticist like lawyers searching for every loop hole through which to create an opportunity. )

The more indepth we understand those laws the more we can manipulate sufficient conditions that bend them while not in fact breaking them.

[Infernity]

amar,

Sounds all right.  We are influenced by all laws, but I still hold fast that many laws are mutable and breakable.

True, but all that is why I said BE CREATIVE too. That means- think of ALL the possible laws.

I don't agree.  I'd even argue that a rock has free will.  It does what it can.

Heh, this is the part when I would have upload myself. At any rate, first, rock cannot decide, it is working by the laws of nature, does what the elements spare it to do with no choice.
We- everything we do, is considered somewhat, which we would have choose for our notion it is the best - - one of the laws- the humanity egoism.

It's good except that the order condemns us to death, so far as we fathom.  "No dancing star was ever born without a little bit of chaos." -Nietsche

Well, this is not a basic law, this is breakable, but we are still humans, we still have nature laws- our perspective on the world is somewhat a part of it... Reminds me this: "The reality of human's nature is to excel, and rise above the nature's reality..."

Mine truly,

Um... ha?

~Infernity

[Bruce Klein]

Lloyd sums up mainly how I see we don't have free will:

http://www.staff.ncl...e/freewill.html

[amar]

I still see it as a paradox. I'm not free of this particular existence, thinking, and feeling, but paradoxically have a freedom of choice in what I am, think, and feel. It is no illusion. As for my argument that a rock has free will, well, I retract that argument because what do I know about the thoughts and feelings of a rock? Nothing.

[Infernity]

From what Bruce has just advertized:

.....I was always going to decide not to buy the glasses. My brain was in a particular chemical state when the opportunity to buy the glasses arose, and given the particular combination of circumstances (the mood I was in, the light in the shop, my knowledge of my bank balance) I was always going to decide against the investment. My conscious mind didn’t know what the final decision would be, however, and what I consciously experienced was the agony of decision. Such difficult decisions are very rare............The world I live in is a very large and complicated place. Consequently, though it has a certain and comforting degree of predictability, I do not ever know for certain what stimuli I am going to experience next. Also, since I do not have conscious access to everything my brain is doing, even if I could predict what is going to happen to me next, I still could not predict how I would react. Life is an interesting three-dimensional experience, with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. Why should I complain that I have no free will, when I have the perfect illusion of it, and the world is so marvellous? How would having free will make me any happier?

I totaly agree with all of that, the quoted part is something which I tried to say too.
Heh great to know we have the same notion Bruce, I have a deja-vu somewhat [tung] .

amar,
A rock does not even have brain, how can it possibly think, decide, act, feel, etcetera- - simply be?!?!

Yours
~Infernity

[amar]

Maybe it thinks independent of a brain hmmmm?

[Infernity]

Well amar,
That's like believing in god, that assuming. So groundless and fallacious in my opinion...
Why should that be true?! that is against the laws of physics, I am VERY skeptic about it, till you prove it...
Question for you- how did you feel hundred years ago?

~Infernity

[amar]

Can't prove or disprove whether a rock, the substance of the earth, has any intelligence. How did I feel a hundred years ago? I was unborn, bored as a rock until the moment of ignition 75 years later. I was non-existent; I can't remember that many incarnations back. I have a foggy memory even about this incarnation. What were we just talking about?

[Infernity]

amar,
I found from your reply you believe in some spiritual things, sorry, then don't bother trying understanding my argue, unless you are about to change your notion.
I assumed you shall answer, that because of your non-existence you were simply nothing and couldn't be , but since it wasn't your answer, I cannot tell you "so is the rock, no awarness because it has no brain..."
I still stick to nothing is for sure, but everything is possible but your reasoning is very not reasonable in my opinion.
I am a total materialistic for your information, don't believe in after life and gods or any other type of these stuff...

~Infernity

[amar]

I am spiritual, but a total materialist as well. It appears we are both stubborn in our reasonings, so I believe we are at an impasse. Game over.

[Infernity]

amar,

I am spiritual, but a total materialist as well

Heh, you remind me of Susma now.

~Infernity

[E.L]

Actually 'fate' and 'freewill' are really the same thing: it is our minds which divide them.

[Infernity]

Actually 'fate' and 'freewill' are really the same thing: it is our minds which divide them.

No, you mean- not having free will corresponding to fate...

Indirectly- yes, same thing.

But that's still unpredictable- not for as long as we don't have the organized scrip with the meaning of life- which explains everything. In such case- we will be able to tell what's next.

But- we cannot do something which we know it's wrong because we claim it to be the way of destiny, because whatever we do- would have happen- the fact- it just did and there is no other way.

All we know is past and present.

Indirectly- the ultimate goal is to know all. Including the future.

Luckily we won't ever figure it all- that will mean perfectness- no reason to live. As there always won't be a reason to die- since then- all was nothing- all never happened and no one figured anything- nothing has ever existed.

However- that goal is still a fuel, desire and aspire- we should always want to get.

That's our essence of being humans. So limited. Unchangeable goals. Survival. Egoism. Limitations.

Obstacles- among: death- the worst one, at this point of no return...

Ah.

~Infernity

[Infernity]

I somewhat agree Paul, I am not sure completely, about all the program thing, but we are not controlling it- but the laws of nature- and the effects that would have been at any rate since everything sets on the action before and so on.

I have said my opinion already, pretty much as Bruce's notion...

Yours
~Infernity

[John Doe]

Everyone:

I've made a survey to test folk or lay intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. It should take about 15 minutes, and anybody who takes it will be helping me out. You can find the survey link below. Please pm the answers, if you wish to participate. Also, please do not answer any questions with "NA", "?" or conditional answers (of the form: if x, then A, else then B).

http://www.ece.utexa...king/survey.htm

[asian_american]

I didn't read this whole thread as yet, but I will go ahead and post an excerpt from What Is Thought? By Eric B. Baum, 2004 http://www.amazon.co...6580293-0107268

"Looking at mind from this evolutionary point of view makes natural something that some authors defending strong AI seem skeptical about: the unity of self. Daniel Dennett and Marvin Minsky, for example, have emphasized that the mind is a huge, multi-module program with lots of stuff going on in parallel. They doubt there is any single individual, any single interest; rather, they see a cacophony of competing agents. But, as we found in our economic simulations, the coordination of agents is crucial in exploiting structure. The program of mind was designed for one end: to propagate the genome. The mind is indeed a complex parallel program for reinforcement learning, but it comes equipped with a single internal reward function: representing the interest of the genes. Thus, the mind is like a huge law office with hundreds of attorneys running around and filing briefs but with a single client, the self. Because we are designed for complex and long-range planning—representing our genes' interests over generations and in widely different circumstances—exactly what the interests of the self are differs from individual to individual and over time. Suicide bombers, mothers, and capitalists are all striving to advance the interests of their genes as their respective minds compute those interests. But for all the modules in the mind and all the many computations going on in parallel, there is one central self focusing all the computation—one central reward being optimized—the resultant of the interests of the genes."

"Incidentally, if we are going to understand the mind as an interaction of many subprocesses, there is no reason to be surprised that we might have multiple personalities, and indeed there is some question about what it means to have one personality. In each of us, there might be multiple agents with different goals. At one time one wins, at another time another wins. The mediation process is then of some interest. I discuss why these different agents typically act in consort: they are programmed by genes for the benefit of the genes, and the genes' survival ultimately benefits from the interest of the one body they control. Therefore it makes sense that they compute some notion of 'self' and coordinate their actions so as to act in 'the self's' interest. Later I also discuss how these different agents are coordinated and how the hard computational problems are factored into such interacting modules and solved. For now I want to stress only that the picture muddies Searle's implicit assumption that there is one unique 'me' that can be isolated clearly."

"Now, it is true that the human mind is by no means rational, logical, or always right, even when it is completely convinced it is. Our errors come from at least two distinct sources. One source is that the evolution process that produced us does not select for rationality, it selects for survival and propagation. But logic and survival can actually work at counter-purposes. Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth. I discuss the proposal of Trivers that we have been evolved to consciously believe as fact things that are not only untrue but which are known to be untrue at some level of mind, simply for the purpose of better lying to others. It is quite plausible that we have likewise evolved other counterfactual beliefs: there is some evidence for an evolved module for religious faith, which might well exist whether or not there is in actuality an anthropomorphic god. Evolution has, in many ways, selected precisely for nonobjectivity: our beliefs reflect what is good for us or our kin, not necessarily objective truth…."

"Consciousness has many aspects. We are aware of our world and our sensations. We have a sense of self. We have goals and aspirations. We seem to have free will and moral responsibility. Yet, as I've said, the mind is equivalent to a Turing machine. Moreover, we have arisen through evolution and are descended from microbes by a smooth chain of evolution, with more complex mental processes at each stage evolved from the processes at the one before. Where in this process did consciousness enter? Why are we conscious? What is consciousness?"

"The conclusion that we do not really have free will, discussed earlier in the context of classical physics, quantum physics, and algorithmic information theory, is after all a very abstract conclusion, of interest only to philosophers and stoned college students late at night. Whether all my actions are completely predictable given the quantum state of my brain is of no practical interest to my genes or to any ordinary person. For all practical purposes, we have free will. There is no experiment I can propose that will show directly, and simply that we don't. The lack of free will only follows from lengthy, complex, abstract arguments. These arguments are almost surely correct: the physical arguments make a vast number of verified predictions along the way, the mathematical arguments have been scrutinized and seem airtight. But who really cares, for all practical purposes? It's much more reasonable and practical for my genes to build me believing in free will, and for me to act and think as if I have free will."

[DJS]

**NOTE** -- starting at this post, all posts up until DonSpanton 6/15/2005 were split and merged from thread titled: "Predeterminism".


Osiris, I will ask you the same question that I asked Justin. Can you please elaborate on your conception of FW?

Edited by DonSpanton, 18 June 2005 - 09:38 PM.

[jaydfox]

Osiris, I will ask you the same question that I asked Justin.  Can you please elaborate on your conception of FW?

Well, I don't understand enough of the relevant theories to make any sort of insightful contribution, but to me, it seems that FW, if it exists (and I believe it does, but I know it's not a given), then it must be non-algorithmic, and non-random. Of course, from a computer programming perspective, this is somewhat meaningless, but that's the point: it can't be simulated in a computer. If it could be simulated, then it's not really free will, is it?

Anyway, another take on free will is that if decisions could never be calculated in advance within the system (e.g. within our universe), then free will exists, even if an omniscient being outside the system (with access to more computational power and knowledge of certain "rules" that are not discernible withing the system) could determine in advance what you're going to do. I prefer the first definition, but the second one is a good fallback if it can be proved that our decision making processes involve no non-algorithmic, non-random processes.

The problem with "non-algorithmic", of course, is that an algorithm could be designed outside the universe that predicts the outcomes of a seemingly non-algorithmic process, as a very large mapping table (universe looks like A' at time t0, decision of particle or system q will be q*). Such an algorithm would be indescribable in a finite universe/system, but would probably still be a finite table that could fit in a much, much, much larger finite universe, or worst case, an infinite universe.

But that would be the same as the omniscient being scenario. The question is, if there were NOT an external observer who could derive the algorithm or predict out decisions ahead of time, then is that equivalent to free will? Does the mere possibility of an algorithm for what appears to us to be non-algorithmic mean that there is no free will?