Free Will

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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RogerSH
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Re: Free Will

Post by RogerSH »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 2:14 pm
RogerSH wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:09 pm The evidence for quantum theory is as strong as for any theory known to science.
Quantum Theory is not the Multiverse Hypothesis. They're two distinct postulates, and the latter is 100% speculative, by definition.
That's all very interesting, but I'm not talking about the "Multiverse Hypothesis"! I'm talking about the "Multiverse Interpretation" of standard quantum theory, which is something quite different, which it sounds as if you are not aware of. It's not trying to explain existence. It's trying to find a parsimonious interpretation of what is already empirically established. It's trying to explain such things as 2-slit experiments where single photons apparently pass through two slits at the same time. Do we regard "both" protons as real or not? How are quantum computers, which are predicted to be possible by standard quantum theory, able to calculate so quickly except by calculating in lots of parallel strands at once? Parallel reality is implicit in traditional quantum theory: the only debate is how long the other strands last. Please read my last post without preconceptions.

A reminder to any passing browsers: the reason we are discussing this is that standard quantum theory without speculative "collapsing" of other strands of reality is actually a deterministic theory!
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

RogerSH wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:07 pm I'm talking about the "Multiverse Interpretation" of standard quantum theory, which is something quite different, which it sounds as if you are not aware of. I
I see. I'll have to find out about that.

I do know the Multiverse Hypothesis, of course; and I know of standard quantum theory. I had not heard of the "multiverse interpretation." I'll have to see if it has relevance to the question in hand, a relevance which still is a little opaque to me.

How does opting for this interpretation amount to a case for Determinism (or Compatibilism), or, on the other hand, for free will? I can't see that it does. Maybe you can clear that up for me.
RogerSH
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 2:56 pm For a Determinist, "the will" has to be no more than a very odd way we describe a physical step in an inevitably physical chain of causes-and-effects
That word "chain" implies a very dated version of determinism - it's a straw man version. Even apart from quantum uncertainty, the world is nothing like the line of toppling dominoes you seem to have in mind: it has many different levels of structural organisation, which completely changes the picture of how causality works. Chaos was first discovered by looking at deterministic simulations. Complexity theory applies to perfectly deterministic systems as will as indeterministic ones. Dennett pointed out long ago that perfectly deterministic computer simulations can generate rich complexity from simple rules, with the emergence of novelties (including new levels of organisation), actions that look remarkably like agency, “evitability” rather than inevitability, quasi-random series very hard to distinguish from genuine randomness, and so on. (See also chapter 3 of my e-book on Free Will).
RogerSH
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:13 pm
RogerSH wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:07 pm I'm talking about the "Multiverse Interpretation" of standard quantum theory, which is something quite different, which it sounds as if you are not aware of. I
I see. I'll have to find out about that.

I do know the Multiverse Hypothesis, of course; and I know of standard quantum theory. I had not heard of the "multiverse interpretation." I'll have to see if it has relevance to the question in hand, a relevance which still is a little opaque to me.

How does opting for this interpretation amount to a case for Determinism (or Compatibilism), or, on the other hand, for free will? I can't see that it does. Maybe you can clear that up for me.
It doesn't, it's just avoiding a potential ambiguity in the distinction between determinism and indeterminism. On this interpretation (aka the Everitt interpretation) the multiverse/entire universe is deterministic, but any given "physical universe" or "strand" appears to be indeterministic because an observer at any moment is confined to a strand. David Wallace argues that this makes very little practical difference from the traditional interpretation, but you do have to reconsider traditional categories like identity!

On my analysis, the important difference between deterministic and indeterministic processes is that the former are convergent and the latter divergent (chaos being exponentially divergent so the most important case). This means that sustained causality (such as I claim is necessary for identity) depends on convergent cases, which happen when there is some kind of quasi-fixed structure. (That's a very condensed summary of Chapter 2 of my e-book, so I hope it makes some sense!) This begs the question of how structures emerge in the first place, which is the focus of Ch. 3....
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

RogerSH wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:30 pm ...actions that look remarkably like agency...
Ah. I think I see the problem.

Almost everything a computer does nowadays could be said to "look like agency." But it's just "complexity." They aren't the same thing at all, as you will know.

You will also know that lots of people are inclined to feel as though their computers are "understanding" something. (Weizenbaum's "Eliza" experiment was but an early example of this: it seems he had no idea how far it would go.) But they're not. And nowadays, we habitually use plenty of anthropomorphic language to describe computing, like "answers" and "responding": the most extreme example of which might be "(artificial) intelligence." But again, that's all just a mirage created by the sheer complexity of routine operations. The addition of "randomness" increases this impression, but "random" isn't "intelligent" either, of course.

And then there's the problem of justifying the assumption that computer process are the right comparison to whatever is going on in the human cranium -- again, manifestly untrue at the rudimentary level, but somehow more convincing when the complexity of the processes is high enough to fool ordinary judgment.

All that being so, if "quantum computing," entails merely a combination of complexity and randomness, even if we tack on inexplicability (as in the protons) doesn't take us even a single step closer to human cognition. We still have no justification for saying that we understand a thing about free will on that basis.

So what basis would you suggest?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

RogerSH wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:47 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:13 pm
RogerSH wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:07 pm I'm talking about the "Multiverse Interpretation" of standard quantum theory, which is something quite different, which it sounds as if you are not aware of. I
I see. I'll have to find out about that.

I do know the Multiverse Hypothesis, of course; and I know of standard quantum theory. I had not heard of the "multiverse interpretation." I'll have to see if it has relevance to the question in hand, a relevance which still is a little opaque to me.

How does opting for this interpretation amount to a case for Determinism (or Compatibilism), or, on the other hand, for free will? I can't see that it does. Maybe you can clear that up for me.
It doesn't, it's just avoiding a potential ambiguity in the distinction between determinism and indeterminism.
Oh.

But "indeterminism" has nothing to do with "free will." In fact, it would probably be preferable for all of us if we were no more than cogs in a Deterministic machine than if we were the mere playthings of indeterministic "forces." We'd still have no freedom, but then we'd be massively confused as well, to the point that we simply couldn't predict a thing.
RogerSH
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Re: Free Will

Post by RogerSH »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 2:34 pm
RogerSH wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:13 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:36 pm What would make us think that "truth" and "algorithm" had anything to do with one another?
"That sentence contains exactly 20 vowels." How would you check the truth of that claim? Why wouldn't you call it an algorithm?
Well, in order to reply, you found you couldn't use an algorithm. :shock: Instead, you used a linguistic predication formed of three sentences, two interogative and one declarative.

Linguistics has a relationship to truth. But algorithms are only correctly-formed or incorrectly-formed. That's because mathematics is a closed system of abstractions, one that defines its own terms. The numbers refer to other numbers, but only to empirical objects if we humans force the particular applications ourselves: as a symbol system, its operations are entirely internal to the system it stipulates. A "2" for example, does not have to refer to any particular objects to operate successufully in the equation 2+2=4. You can do maths with no reference at all to the external world.

By contrast, linguistic utterances are capable of referring to the empirical world. In that, linguistics is not its own closed system, but refers to things outside of itself and its symbology...i.e. to the real, and hence to questions of "truth" and "falsehood". As we say, linguistics can predicate things of reality. Maths, in itself, does not predicate any particular thing.

That's its great advantage, actually: it can be used for anything, but is not confined to referring to anything. But linguistics posit claims about particular things.

You posited a claim about my sentence, and did it by way of linguistics. An equation like 16:20 doesn't even tell us what it refers to: but it actually can be used to describe the ratio between words and vowels above. But it doesn't have to. It could also refer to the number of hairs in somebody's left and right armpits, or the number of football teams in two divisions, or anything else at all. It could even be just a mathematical confection, with no reference to anything. We don't know, without some linguistic application being supplied with the ratio.

That's why mathematical arrangements are not inherently bout truth and falsehood, but are really only about internal constistency with the mathematical symbol system.
Well, I was an applied mathematician, so I only used symbols that meant something! By algorithm, I meant a formal procedure, which could be expressed in language or in symbols with understood meanings. "Set count to zero, check each letter in turn, increase count if the letter is a vowel, on completion compare total with 20, if they are equal the claim is true" would be an algorithm, for example.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

RogerSH wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 3:07 pm By algorithm, I meant a formal procedure, which could be expressed in language or in symbols with understood meanings.
Well, my first degree was in linguistics, as was my career. And I can tell you for sure than the analogy between mathematical symbols and language is not merely tenuous but seriously misleading.

But I think you can see one way that's true from your own example. For what language-information do we obtain from the (quite correct) mathematical observation that the count of vowel symbols in a string of language totals 20? And how is that an "algorithm," since it can also be true of an infinite list of other utterances? It's yielding us no information.

Surely it's the most trivial kind of observation, and fails actually to communicate any useful linguistic content. I submit to you that the "summing up" of linguistic symbols tells us zero about language itself, about communication, and about human understanding.

It's not that it's wrong: it's that it's utterly trivially true.
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henry quirk
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Re: Free Will

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By algorithm, I meant a formal procedure, which could be expressed in language or in symbols with understood meanings.

Okay: algorithm-tize this...

This mornin', I chose to have coffee instead of a full breakfast.

Format it so the important part I chose is quantified, catalogued, explained.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:58 pm
Do you think the exact same brain processes can occur with or without consciousness?
Do Determinists think that? Yes. But I'm not one.
Actually determinists don't think that.

If there is a link between the physical brain and consciousness such that any physical difference in the brain must result in a difference in consciousness, or vice versa, that would be physical determinism. Unless some brain processes are independent of consciousness, that is, unless some, "exact same brain processes can occur with or without consciousness," you have made consciousness a function of the brain.

I don't think that's what you meant.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

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RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:21 pm If there is a link between the physical brain and consciousness such that any physical difference in the brain must result in a difference in consciousness, or vice versa, that would be physical determinism.
No, not necessarily at all.

If, for example, a change in consciousness issues in a physiological change in the brain, then consciousness is causing the physical change, not being caused by it, and Determinism does is wrong. But even if some physiological changes in the brain have some effects on consciousness (as when, for example, a person takes certain drugs), that does not imply that all or even most of the consciousness-states are of that type. It's also evident that such consciousness states are not strictly predictable, so that suggests something else is going on.

What we can safely say is that brain states and mind states have a relationship. But it's also evidently not so simple as cause-effect. And, of course, correspondence is not causality is an old axiom in logic that applies importantly here. There could be a third factor -- for fun, let us call it "soul," that accounts for both the consciousness AND the brain state. We would need some way of proving that one theory or the other was correct.

For the moment, though, the important point is that Determinism only works if brain states are the exclusive and only cause of consciousness-states. And I think we have good reason to say that's not so.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:17 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:58 pm
RogerSH wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 9:15 am but only if the will is something apart from prior physical or ideal forces, which is just an assumption, and a very debatable one.
No, that's backwards. Determinism has to hold that the will is strictly a product of prior forces. A belief in free will allows that its not. So there's no "debate" allowed by the Determinist side: it's all or nothing, for them.
Can you accept computer data in the causal chain? Or software?
The Determinist (who is not me, of course) can accept computer data and software, but only because they are products of human engineering, and only because human engineering is itself also a product of prior forces.
Well, I'm a physicalist, and according to physics the multiverse is deterministic but any universe "strand" isn't. Questions about freedom of will only make sense within a universe, so for practical purposes I'm not a determinist either in your sense - but that doesn't prevent there being very many processes that are deterministic. And what I am arguing is that free will would be compatible with complete determinism, so is certainly compatible with a world in which many processes are deterministic. In fact, a decision that is not the product of prior forces could not be the product of a will. (The will itself being the product of prior forces is a different matter that I'll come back to below).

The point about software is this. Suppose a computer contains the object code for a program that (e.g.) renders a CGI, but the source code and compiler have been deleted. How can we explain the capabilities of the computer? The program (as defined by the source code) appears to be the cause of the behaviour but is not materially present. Is it an illusion, or an epiphenomenon, or what? Of course, one can choose one’s terms so that is classified as an illusion, but this leaves no way to make sense of what happens. Explaining the capability in terms of the changes in the hardware bits is beyond impractical. It is far more intelligible to say that, where the context allows, when we refer to the program we mean the logical structure that was created in the source code (in the context of the compiler) and then rearranged as the object code and embodied in hardware. Then we can indeed legitimately say that the behaviour is caused by the program. This is a rather roundabout convention but a vastly more useful one, and one that conforms to normal usage.
Although the cases are different, exactly the same approach can be taken to the mind and the brain. When I say “the mind” I refer to whatever ultra-complex arrangements of matter exist in the brain to enable it to function in the way that we normally associate with the behaviour of minds. With this convention there is no problem with the idea that minds can cause things. It follows that the mind, so defined, is a part of the causal relationships within the material world. Metaphysicians may find this unorthodox, but it is simply a formalisation of everyday usage in the light of basic neuroscience.
You apparently do not believe any creature other than human beings is actually conscious. You seem to think consciousness is something that just results from some level of complexity analogous of a computer program, but if that is all it is, an organism's behavior would be just as successful with or without consciousness. When I accidently step on kitty's tail and she yowls as though she felt pain, I should assume it's only a complex physical reaction of the cat's neurological system--that there is really no, "conscious experience," of pain. What would be the point of that experience?

Attempting to explain the function of the human mind by the analogy of digital processing is absurd. No digital process can address more than one thing at a time, no matter how many parallel channels there are or how many separate processes are threaded together, they remain separate and discrete. Human consciousness is not digital (it is analog) and is capable of awareness of an indefinite number of things simultaneously.

There is no physical/electrcal/chemical process that describes my conscious experience, or yours, if you are honest. It is only to that conscious experience that volitional choice pertains. The physical brain is the physical/biological aspect of human nature that makes consciousness possible and the means to conscious control of behavior, but it does not produce the consciousness or the behavior. There cannot be consciousness without a brain anymore than there can be life without a physical organism. But an organism reverts to a mere physical entity when the life process ceases, and except for the autonomic nervous system, an unconscious brain is useless.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:30 pm Chaos was first discovered by looking at deterministic simulations. Complexity theory applies to perfectly deterministic systems as will as indeterministic ones.
Fractal, strange-attractor, and all other forms of chaos algorithms are totally deterministic. There is no such thing as an "indeterministic," physical system.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:30 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:21 pm If there is a link between the physical brain and consciousness such that any physical difference in the brain must result in a difference in consciousness, or vice versa, that would be physical determinism.
No, not necessarily at all.

If, for example, a change in consciousness issues in a physiological change in the brain, then consciousness is causing the physical change, not being caused by it, and Determinism does is wrong.
We agree on the rest so I'll only address this. Certainly conscious choice will result in brain activity whenever the motor nerves are involved or when memory is accessed. My point is, if there can be no conscious phenomena without a corresponding cerebral action it makes that conscious phenomena dependent on the physical brain. It doesn't matter what you want to call the, "cause," if all consciousness depends on the physical behavior of the brain, that is, if there is any specific conscious experience that cannot occur without a specific corresponding action of the physical brain, that would be physical determinism.

It is true, however, that there can be no consciousness without brain activity.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:35 am My point is, if there can be no conscious phenomena without a corresponding cerebral action it makes that conscious phenomena dependent on the physical brain.
Actually, it doesn't. It may rather mean that the physical brain's activity is dependent on what consciousness is flowing through it. Or it may mean that there is a third thing that is causing both.

So no, that's not Determinism. If the cognition or something conscious is either exactly contemporaneous with or prior to the physical manifestation of chemicals in the brain, then the physical is not the cause of the cognition.
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