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Original post by walkingcarcass what if my desire is to act against my desires? That would be a paradox in a deterministic world, but it's no obstacle to free will. Unfortunately it is undemonstratable, I could cut my own hand off (which I don't want to do) but doing so could prove nothing beyond my desire's to win an argument greater than my desire for self-preservation.

That's a paradox in any world. You cannot act against your desires other than through some outside force. How is a deterministic world any different? You are an accumulation of experience onto some base personality/instincts whether the world is deterministic or not. Whether the world is deterministic or not only matters at an egocentric level where we like to think that we are masters of ourselves and our world.

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Original post by walkingcarcass Your gradual reconstruction experiment is a great demonstration of the liquidity of conciousness, although the construction of suitible artificial replacements for cells would have to accomodate nondeterminism (in my line of thinking). And yes, if this were possible, building the result from scratch without converting a person would be the creation of a mind. Does this mean strong A.I. is possible? Not unless a nondeterministic computer can be built whose possible actions can either be harnessed by a mind, or give rise to a mind.

Since the entire point is that the artificial cells are deterministic this would erode the point a little don't you think?

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Original post by walkingcarcass I wonder, as babies grow up, to they start out a TOTAL blank slate, where thought is concerned. Not only do they move their limbs randomly until they learn the neural patterns which give useful movement, but they seem genuinely suprised that actions are repeatable. My baby cousin recently spend a happy half hour putting sand down a crack in the floor. Do we learn modus ponens, or is it a priori?

we learn a posteriori [smile]

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My views on free will:

• I'd like to think it exists (that egocentric thing I mentioned before...)
  
• For all intents and purposes, whether we have it or not doesn't matter. The illusion is just as good as the reality (unless you know it's an illusion).
  
• A deterministic world is virtually indistinguishable from a non-deterministic world since the universe is a complex, nonlinear dynamic system. There is underlying order, but on the surface there appears not to be.
  
• For free will to exist there must be an extra-physical element to our makeup, or there must be some "as-yet unidentified ingredient of matter" to quote the OP.
  
• Given the last two points, and using Occam's razor, it is more likely that the world is deterministic.

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btw. why hasn't anyone else mentioned that the first two points mentioned by the OP are exactly the same? If free-will is a fundamental property of matter we obviously don't know about it, it is an "as-yet unidentified ingredient of matter"...

[Edited by - lucky_monkey on February 15, 2005 5:04:01 AM]

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Original post by walkingcarcass Apart from being a chicken-and-egg problem, this seems silly because if we alter our definitions, the world doesn't change either objectively, or how it appears to us.

Actually, if you alter your definitions then the world's appearance does change subjectively. I don't see why you would think that it doesn't, since appearance is always subjective. It might not change objectively, but then it might not exist objectively so that's irrelevant.

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Original post by walkingcarcass Our understanding of the world may change, but show me evidence our sensations alter.

Sensory input is different to sensation. Have you ever had an injection?

RE: a-posteriori

Sorry, that sentence was ambiguous, I meant are we born with a faculty for
understanding causation and then use that for learning, or is that logic itself learned from scratch? It makes a world of difference when we build a logical learning machine.

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That's a paradox in any world. You cannot act against your desires other than through some outside force.

I disagree, that ability characterises free will: we can base our actions on any criteria. Typically (rationally, usefully) that criteria would be our desires.

From Dauntless' explanation of monistic idealism:

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Original post by Dauntless The idea that there are seperate objects is something of an illusion. This idea is not the same as everything being causally linked and therefore everything is in effect affected by everything else. But rather, there is only one thing...again, consciousness, God, Brahman or whatever you want to call it.

And yet, whether it is an illusion or not, it is sufficient to believe it isn't and live happily in the delusion of free will (which, whether it exists or not, most people enjoy doing)! Actually, I think most people don't like the alternative, so they're happy to stay with the delusion; take the red pill or the blue pill!

Beware: GOING OFF TOPIC

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Takuan, a famous Zen philosopher once advised Yagyu Munenore (whom some consider to have been a better swordsman that Miyamoto Musashi since the latter turned down an invitation to duel by the former's father)

Interestingly, Musashi (during his early years) was also greatly influenced by Soho Takuan's teachings. Takuan was an advisor to the Shogun and the Yagyu clan. Yagyu Munenori was Swordmaster to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Munenori's father was Yagyu Muneyoshi. Muneyoshi died in 1606 when Musashi was only 24. While already a competant swordsman by that age Musashi was not yet at the peak of his art. Musashi won his first duel at 13, interestingly though, not with a sword, but rather through the use of jujutsu. He threw his opponent to the ground and bludgeoned him to death with a stick. Musashi and Munenori fought on opposing sides during Seki ga Hara, although at that time Musashi was but a common soldier and it is unlikely that the two ever saw each other in battle (Munenori was advisor and protector of Tokugawa Hidetada during that war, in which it is said 70,000 warriors died).

It is difficult to answer the question as to who was the greater swordsman; Muneyoshi, Munenori or Musashi. Munenori took what he had learned from his father and altered it significantly, based on his battlefield experiences and his deeper quest of self-enlightenment. Most of Munenori's skills were honed on the battlefield, whereas Musashi (also highly experienced on the battlefield) fought and won around 60 individual duals. Personally, I think it highly unreasonable to suggest that Munenori was a better swordsman simply because Musashi declined to dual. Indeed, because of his reputation, Musashi received challenges to dual from all over the country. Thus, I think it is an open question that will never be answered.


Cheers,

Timkin

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Original post by walkingcarcass Quote: That's a paradox in any world. You cannot act against your desires other than through some outside force. I disagree, that ability characterises free will: we can base our actions on any criteria. Typically (rationally, usefully) that criteria would be our desires.

If I could think of an example of someone acting against their desires then I'd say you are right. I can't. People can act against some of their desires, but always at the behest of some other, greater, desire.

Give me one example. An example of something that you or someone you know, or someone that you've heard about, or even a hypothetical situation in which someone would act against all their desires. One example of someone acting against their desires and not because of some other, overriding, desire or because of some outside force. One example. Otherwise the simplest explanation is that a person cannot act against their desires.

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Original post by lucky_monkey Quote: Original post by walkingcarcass Quote: That's a paradox in any world. You cannot act against your desires other than through some outside force. I disagree, that ability characterises free will: we can base our actions on any criteria. Typically (rationally, usefully) that criteria would be our desires. If I could think of an example of someone acting against their desires then I'd say you are right. I can't. People can act against some of their desires, but always at the behest of some other, greater, desire.

I think your are right right there. But I think you both are talking about different desires.

Instincts != Aspirations.

My instincts tell me to be violent sometimes (ie: Somebody insults me badly) even to a point in which my body reacts before I can think about it, but my aspirations keep me alert about my instinct tendences, and with some will and training I can control and nullify them. Based on this experience I can say I can act against my physical desires. No other non-human creature on this planet can do this.

-o-

And this makes me think twice about Timkin's experiment... I belive the "encoding" of our instincts reside in our whole body, like if every cell of our body were "configured" to react in a specific way given a certain stimuli. If that were the case, the nanites of Timkin's experiment should perform this task aswell, thing that I find highly unlikely to be "replicated" artificially.

[Edited by - owl on February 15, 2005 8:59:16 PM]

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If I were to continue until all of your organic cells had been replaced, you would be made entirely of nano-cells and would not be the same physical matter you were before I started. Are you still you? Functionally, you would be exactly the same. Would you be 'intelligent'? There's no reason to believe you wouldn't be.

Well, maybe we (as the observers) might not notice any difference. But what about the subjective consciousness of the subject? And if that changed, how could we ever know?

If they communicate their subjective experience ("weird...I feel like part of me just faded out") then that's an observable change from our perspective. What inferences (if any) could we draw from this?

There's a possible practical objection to your example - it may be that such nanites could never, ever be constructed - a 'running' brain may be too complex to 'stealth-replaced' without making massive observable changes. Think about quantum effects preventing perfect observation of the original cell states.


How about a practical slant on this issue? Is anyone here able to behave as if they don't have free will. If I say "okay, working on the basis that my brain's just a machine and that my agency is an illusion, I'll just not make any decisions or take any actions.". Result? - I sit there like a pudding. Nothing happens.

If you can't behave as if you don't have free will, then surely its existence (or lack of it) is irrelevant?

Timkin-
On the topic of monistic idealism, it's a philosophical viewpoint that really runs totally against our grain of common everyday understanding. It just seems to make so much sense that objects exist whether or not there is a mind to create them. Objectivity seems so much more powerful than subjectivity.

I used to fear the idea that I didn't have free will, but now I understand that it doesn't really matter. All I can do is be who I am. Is freewill necessary for artificial intelligence? I doubt it. Is it necessary for sapience? Hmmm, that's a little more tricky.

Because I'm an idealistic monist, I think "I" don't exist in the sense that we normally think. I'm just an observer, but an observer that can tap into consciousness. Can we design machines to do the same? I think we will, though only until Quantum Computation comes of age. And even then, current research on quantum computation seems to be focusing solely on how qubits work mathematically. Trying to figure out how quantum mechanics and consciousness are related may be left to some other field (probably when the cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, AI, philosophers and theoretical physicists all bump heads together)

== WARNING: TOTALLY OT==
Have you heard of the Peony flower that Muneyoshi cut and had a messenger deliver to Musashi? As the story goes, Musashi had become an accomplished duellist, though as you mentioned not yet at his peak, and he wished to challenge the legendary Muneyoshi. However, Muneyoshi had retired so he wrote a letter to Musashi suggesting he have a duel with his son Munenori (who was with the Shogun in the Bakufu at this time IIRC). Before giving the letter to the messenger however, he cut a peony flower with his wakizashi to be delivered with the message.

When Musashi recieved the letter with the flower in it he was puzzled. He carefully examined the peony flower and noticed the perfect cut on the stem. Going to some nearby peony flowers, he attempted to cut them as well, but he could never get them as perfectly cut as the peony that Muneyoshi had cut. He thereby called off the duel with Muneyoshi and declined the offer of duelling Munenori as well. Perhaps Musashi returned the favor of Muneyoshi's katsujinken "the sword that saves lives" (the flower was basically a warning) by allowing Muso Gonnosuke to beat Musashi with a Jo staff in a duel. Musashi's legendary reply was that he could have won, but only if he had killed Gonnosuke. Instead, Musashi wanted Gonnosuke's skill to flower so Musashi suffered the defeat to let Gonnosuke's skill flourish.

If you read The Book of Five Rings (Musashi's) and The Life Giving Sword (Munenori's), it's interesting how different they are. Munenori definitely takes the spiritual approach to things, through a disciplined and formal training. Winning was subservient to doing your duty, which was to be the best you could possibly be to serve your lord. Musashi's book on the other hand is sort of a treatise on how to win. Thoroughly understanding something to its core is the means to an end...winning. Understanding is not the end. BTW, I'd also recommend to anyone Soho Takuan's The Unfettered Mind to read.
==END OT==

I think this post kinds of reminds me of "A mind forever voyaging" game.

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Original post by owl And this makes me think twice about Timkin's experiment... I belive the "encoding" of our instincts reside in our whole body, like if every cell of our body were "configured" to react in a specific way given a certain stimuli. If that were the case, the nanites of Timkin's experiment should perform this task aswell, thing that I find highly unlikely to be "replicated" artificially.

Your 'instincts' as you call them are a variety of hardwired behaviours within your central nervous system. Some of them, like your instinctive reaction of pulling your hand away from a hotplate, are encoded within the neuronal loops that exist between your hand and your spine. In other words, your brain doesn't play a role in that instinctive reaction. Many of your autonomic functions (those that you perform without thinking) are encoded in your cerebelum. Your midbrain and brain stem control the activiation of these functions based on signals received from the body and from the cortex. Many of your fundamental (some call primitive) desires are encoded in this way. For example: sexual urges, hunger, fight-or-flight. I don't personally see any reason to believe that if I replaced all of the cells in my body, I couldn't have the same instincts.

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Original post by Rob Alexander Well, maybe we (as the observers) might not notice any difference. But what about the subjective consciousness of the subject? And if that changed, how could we ever know?

If the subject themselves noticed no functional or perceptive difference in their being, then what is the more reasonable explanation: that there was no change to them, or that they were somewhere along the line disconnected from their soul but they didn't notice it.

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Original post by Rob Alexander If they communicate their subjective experience ("weird...I feel like part of me just faded out") then that's an observable change from our perspective. What inferences (if any) could we draw from this?

Given the way in which I described the experiment (that cells were slowly replaced with nano-cells), at which point would they report this finding? When the experiment was complete? When 60% of their cells were changed? Or when certain cells had been changed? If there was a reportable change from the subject, then yes, presumably you could try the experiment many times (on different subjects), replacing cells in different orders to determine exactly which cells were responsible for the soul.

If we do have a soul though, why would it necessarily be connected to one or more cells. Wouldn't it more likely be a part of every cell? Then if that is the case, what is it about those little bags of chemicals that connects them to a soul?

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There's a possible practical objection to your example - it may be that such nanites could never, ever be constructed - a 'running' brain may be too complex to 'stealth-replaced' without making massive observable changes. Think about quantum effects preventing perfect observation of the original cell states.

That well may be the case; that a replica nano-cell may be impossible to create. In which case, yes, the simple practicalities prevent it. But then, that would imply that free will arises purely from the complexity of the system. If our supposed 'free will' or 'soul' arises from chaotic complexity (a highly nonlinear system and sensitive to initial conditions) then its still deterministic and therefore lacking of free will. If it arises from the uncertainties associated with quantum states of the system, then yes, it might be possible to suggest quantum free will; but then, that suggests that by mere mind-power alone we have the ability to control the evolution of quantum systems. Highly unlikely.

If the practical limitation is the uncertainty in our observation of the state and our inability to model it exactly, then we can overcome that. We design a nano-cell that adaptively learns the functional input-output relationship for the cell (we can already do this for nonlinear, complex, dynamic systems for which we can only influence some of the inputs and observe some of the outputs... exactly what I'm working on these days) so I don't see a problem with hypothetically making a 'learning nano-cell' that learns to replicate the cell before eating it!

Having just spent a couple of years working in a neuroscience research team I can tell you that very few neuroscientists (from the sample I met and read literature from) support the notion of quantum consciousness. Most believe it to be nonsense. Enough is known about the computational abilities of the complex, nonlinear interactions of networks of stochastic oscillators (of which our brains are an example) to suggest that quantum variation plays no part. Indeed, evidence suggests that most neural systems are not even stochastic. That is merely a way of describing their time-averaged distribution of firing events.

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How about a practical slant on this issue? Is anyone here able to behave as if they don't have free will. If I say "okay, working on the basis that my brain's just a machine and that my agency is an illusion, I'll just not make any decisions or take any actions.". Result? - I sit there like a pudding. Nothing happens.

Wasn't that a choice to sit there? ;) In all seriousness though, I think that most of our actions during the day are driven by external forces and internal desires and that in fact, we make very few decisions requiring any form of evaluative judgement.

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If you can't behave as if you don't have free will, then surely its existence (or lack of it) is irrelevant?

Yes, I do believe that the existence of free will is irrelevant. Since we are capable of believing that we have free will and our observations of the world and our part in it don't negate the illusion of free will, then for the most part, we should be content. Of course, it would throw our legal systems into a tailspin if we managed to prove that we didn't have free will! ;)