Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: Dice and Hypotheses (and Flaming Swords) Message-ID: <1557@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Mon, 19-Aug-85 21:44:00 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1557 Posted: Mon Aug 19 21:44:00 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 19:58:30 EDT References: <1478@pyuxd.UUCP> <1221@umcp-cs.UUCP> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 121 >>Funny how Wingate accepts "established science" (almost like a religion?) >>only when it suits his purposes. Sorry, Charley, still no dice. In >>the worst case scenario, your position offers a random synapse firing, >>not a "free will". And that still doesn't account for what you hope to >>get out of it. [ROSEN] > Odd how you use that phrase "worst case". Seems like you are hardly one to > talk about other's emotional investment in their arguments. How so? The term "worst case scenario" is used whenever you are dealing with divergence from a given model. > As for a "will", you seem to have a very primitive idea of what it is. I find that statement odd coming from someone with your religious beliefs. > You seem determined > to take it to mean some metaphysical entity. I think it's much more > reasonable to take it to mean "the decision-making faculty of the mind". Fine. I'll agree with that. That defines "will". > This is consistent with what my dictionary says, and neither includes nor > excludes souls. If the will can ultimately be traced to quantum fluctuations, > then it's hard to see how it can be called anything but free at this time. No, Charles, not at all. It can be called this: "dependent on the current chemical makeup of the brain, and thus not free". You say "But that's not fully determined; the quantum fluctuations make it indeterministic." Fine. Then it can be called "dependent on the current chemical makeup of the brain AND any random quantum fluctuations, and thus not free". Unless the will determines the random quantum fluctuations. In that case, what is it if not a "soul", an entity external to physical cause and effect? > In any case, the question is largely moot, since at this point no > hypothesis about how the mind decides has any experimental basis. But some hypotheses are rooted in presumption of things that people would like to be so, rather than possibilities that make sense in light of evidence. >>>>Nor my giraffe hypothesis, Charles. It does (and should) have equal weight >>>>to yours. All these systems make assumptions. The "scientific" one >>>>makes the "assumption" that the same things go on in the brain as >>>>everywhere else, and no evidence has been shown to give the brain some >>>>special status separate from the rest of the world. >>>As the straw army marches on, we see Rich contradicting himself again. >>>Remember all that talk about Occam's Razor? Is not Rich's quantum giraffe >>>such an unnecessary complication? The "quantum" and "deterministic" >>>hypotheses, on the other hand, introduce nothing new. We already have >>>quantum randomness. >>But YOU introduce a good deal of "new" (presumed) material on top of that >>to complete your scenario. Who's the general of this straw army, Private >>Wingate? > Once again Rich has me wondering about his intellectual integrity. Rich, > for your information, the only thing we know about the brain that we also > about the rest of existence is that it (presumably) doesn't violate the > laws of physics as we now perceive them. These laws include random processes, > so the brain may indeed make random choices. "Choices"? Willful choices? To take an awful big leap (of fa...?) to get from randomness to willful choice. You spend too much time worrying about other people's intellectual integrity. > Our ignorance of anything else > about how the brain functions and produces consciousness (whatever that is) > is almost absolute. There's no basis for saying, for instance, that "since > mechanics is deterministic, so is the brain" or any similar analogy. We > simply don't know enough about the brain to justify any such analogy-- not > even in chemistry. We don't know enough about the brain to make rash assumptions about which way it is different from "mechanics", if indeed it is different at all. You have some sort of stake (apparently) in believing that the brain is somehow different. I have no such stake, and thus far no reason to believe otherwise. >>Then what is the mechanism of free will you wish for? If not a "soul", what >>name do you give it? The entity itself is still required in your model. > Wrong. That's your outdated concept, not mine. It's highly intuitive to > talk about the Will as if it were a being, but I think it's quite sufficient > to define it as a process. But if you are to call it a FREE will, that means something else entirely. That has implications that it is unconstrained by, independent of, the physical world around it. Not outdated, quite relevant. >>>Rich seems to me to be >>>erroneously implying that I am using quantum mechanics as a trapdoor to let >>>souls in from the supernatural. It isn't necessary. It's simply >>>sufficient to point out that, if quantum mechanics do play a part in the >>>workings of the brain, that the chain of causality so necessary to >>>Rich's position leads to nowhere. >>All it leads you to is a scenario with randomness at the particle level that >>offers no notion of either free will or anything else, unless you add in your >>preconceptions. If only you applied your stalwart defense of this >>"established science" to the rest of scientific knowledge... > I think it should be abundantly clear by now who it is that clings to this > spirtualistic model of Wills. Right, Charles. What I said above (and many times before this) is that the notion of FREE will (note how many times Charles talks about "wills" and makes statements that leave out the word "free", leaving the reader to infer that they also apply to "free will") is a fallacy in that for a will (as Charles has described) to be free, is must be unconstrained, and for it to be unconstrained, it must be independent of the effects of the physical environment it occupies. What I have shown is that such things as "souls", or whatever you want to call non-physical (whatever that means) entities, are necessary to the notion of true free will. Apparently Charles would not have us bear witness to his own clinging to this notion, which he must of necessity (unless he simply hasn't thought this through) if he believes in "free will" on his terms. -- "Meanwhile, I was still thinking..." Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr