The Free Will Of Cockroaches?

[dlawbailey]

I was noting to myself that even atheists are remarkably unwilling to see themselves as products of evolution. We know that everything we are seeing and doing is the product of evolution-created bunches of neurons. We know that these structures developed through evolution and we have many, many structures in common with creatures who don't participate in philosophical discussions about free will. We don't care to think from the evolutionary starting point. It seems weird or not useful.

But it seems to me that evolution gives us a "Darwin's Razor" to help sort good ideas from the ones that will ultimately prove unsuccessful. By this I mean that in any philosophical discussion, any answer or concept that effectively assumes a consciousness zapped suddenly into place is less likely to describe Nature than a concept which assumes consciousness developing through an evolutionary process.

Determinism is the problem. We humans instinctively hate it, but it seems inescapable. Determinism bothered the ancients as much as it bothers us, so the first human antidote to determinism was the development of God. God, after all, is a "second self" unbounded by determinism. Many philosophical arguments begin from a view of a human consciousness floating God-like in the Cosmos, detached from evolutionarily-created body. But is this a rational starting place or a bit of a dodge?

I suggest that our ancestors were "freed" from determinism long before they developed God - back when they had exoskeletons, in fact. Here I can't help thinking of some animated ants whose ant farm is broken in an episode of the Simpsons, causing them to exclaim: "Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!"

Cockroaches make choices.

It's awful, but it's true. Non-deterministic choice - the defining element of free will - is possessed by these disgusting little bugs, as it is arguably possessed by most creatures with a complex nervous system. Choice is not new with humans, as indeed it logically cannot be.

Somewhere, back in evolution, an ancestor of ours was faced with a problem posed by randomness in Nature and the existence of competitive beings and she made a choice. She zigged and lived when her ancestors would have zagged and perished.

That this happened - that choice was born - is essentially inarguable. How choice happens is mysterious. But why it happened is pretty easy to speculate about: Information.

Consider this little story:

A cockroach-like ancestor-bug of ours feels the vibration of a predator and runs for a hole in the ground. She sees two, equally dark, of equal size, equally far away and very close together. Actually, the one just to the right looks a little darker (and therefore evolutionarily safer) than the one on the left, but they were close together, so as visual stimuli they were one target to run to, initially.

Running over dirt with an exoskeleton is awkward so there is a lot of randomness to the motion. When running towards images of close-together holes, the members of our ancestor-bug species had - up to this moment - let chance guide them like Pachinko balls. They just kept busy correcting the steering a bit until chance made one hole a greater visual stimulus than the other, at which point they dove in.

But as this particular female got closer to the holes, she happened to trip on a grain of sand and her antenna hit the ground. The antenna being the organ of smell, she suddenly detected that that while the hole on the right had started to register as bigger visually, the hole on the left had her own smell (remember, bugs have essentially no memory). In that moment, her tiny nervous system was overwhelmed by something completely new in the history of the world: Choice.

Her neurons fired madly with visual neurons now *competing* with olfactory neurons. Long ago, her ancestors had adapted to use olfaction for crawling and searching for food, but the high-speed information of visual stimuli to guide running away from things. But suddenly these systems presented divergent information! Somehow, our ancestor's nervous system chose between two neuronal models of the world. She zigged and lived where her fellow species-members would have zagged and died.

The hole on the right was actually the maw of a terrible predator. She made it back safe, laid a lot of eggs and that was the beginning of the horror we live now.

Choice.

Information. Self-generated information. We have adapted to use it all the time and this has freed us from deterministic behavior.

Freedom. Horrible, horrible freedom.

This article (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution/dn11858-fruit-flies-display-rudimentary-free-will.html) may help with the discussion.

[dlawbailey]

This TED talk is also germane:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/93

Hard to see how an argument that excess choice can be bad for people would even exist if we didn't really have choice in the first place.

[ughaibu]

Mods: Science and skepticism.

[dlawbailey]

Mods: Science and skepticism.

Huh??

This is a question about the development of free will offered as evidence for the anti-deterministic argument.

Inherent in the argument is that choice is the essential "building block" of free will and that free will can be understood as meta-choice.

I think the idea that the fact you are asking for the thread to be moved speaks to exactly the argument I'm making.

By the way, I know that we have a common ancestor with arthropods and are not descended from them. It was just a conceit, in case anyone wonders.

[Laurentius]

From Philosophy to Science & Skepticism.

[DBT]

Inherent in the argument is that choice is the essential "building block" of free will and that free will can be understood as meta-choice.


What exactly is meta-choice? And depending on your definition - which particular biological process allows us this ability? How does it work?

Perhaps a description of 'self generating information' may help to clarify it better?

[LukeS]

I asked him to back up his biological/biophysical claims (neurons' firing threshold and passage of information in the brain is random, and is the equavalent of quantum indeterminacy) in another thread (http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=245359)entitled "The answer to the free will question" he started yesterday.

What did he do? Ignore me and start afresh with a brand new thread, but about cockroaches' free will again!!! He probably wants to talk to real scientists???

Perhaps he hopes that eventually everyone will just agree without thinking (dlawbailey's razor - cut out the thought process:Cheeky:).

ETA That new scientist article actually states there the "free willed" behaviour of flies is chaotic, but non-random, so I don't think there's a coherent theory here.

Note a claim:

"Choice.

Information. Self-generated information. We have adapted to use it all the time and this has freed us from deterministic behavior. "

[LukeS]

Here are some of the claims:

It can't run in all directions at once and its movements can't possibly be the result of a deterministic process…..


….A lot of people have speculated that free will has to be located in quantum effects or something. But I think that the reason it appears that way is that the quanta of our free will - neurons - behave in some way like the quanta of reality itself.

A quantum particle has position or momentum. It is and it isn't. But which is when?

A neuron fires and charges. It is and it isn't. But which is when?....



…. The sensory neurons receive a small sample of data from reality, then repeat each meta-datum (or a version of it) to other neurons - more than one, maybe a random number....[snip]...And they redirect their repetition - also somewhat randomly.

I hope I'm doing a good job of "critiqueing" the ideas and not the person.

[dlawbailey]

Inherent in the argument is that choice is the essential "building block" of free will and that free will can be understood as meta-choice.


What exactly is meta-choice? And depending on your definition - which particular biological process allows us this ability? How does it work?

Perhaps a description of 'self generating information' may help to clarify it better?

We know that free will involves choice. That is without doubt. Some people separate the concepts of will and choice. I suggest that they can be put together when you think of will as the choice to choose, if you will.

Self-generated information is the information all complex creatures generate in their nervous systems. For example, what you see is not the impulse from your retinas, or even the impulse from your optic nerves or even the impulse from the nerves the optic nerves are attached to directly, but an image fed to the thinking areas from the areas in the brain involved in creating an image of what you see.

Therefore, the information from the retinas is repeated many times - self generated.

We also know that we see things far more definitely (if not correctly) if these things are familiar in some way. This implies strongly that at least part of what we see is a composite of the repeated, translated impulses from the retina and the images from our memories - our "map" of the world.

This is not my contention, but simply the science.

As far as simpler animals go, we know that many creatures leave a scent trail of some kind and employ that to guide their movements. And at a higher level, the social insects communicate information to each other - the "self" in that case being the hive or nest.

[dlawbailey]

I asked him to back up his biological/biophysical claims (neurons' firing threshold and passage of information in the brain is random, and is the equavalent of quantum indeterminacy) in another thread (http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=245359)entitled "The answer to the free will question" he started yesterday.

What did he do? Ignore me and start afresh with a brand new thread, but about cockroaches' free will again!!! He probably wants to talk to real scientists???

It can be refreshing talking to real scientists - or even just reading them. You should try it.

What I actually wrote was that many people have speculated that free will might, at some elementary level, come from quantum effects. Again, I'm not making the claim, just using it as a premise.

Indeed I disagree with the claim and suggest that it may be the fact that a neuron has a dual state - firing or charging - that mimics the quantum effect logically and therefore we might look at something less esoteric than quarks what searching for the place free will might come from.

I started this thread to concentrate on the evolutionary argument particularly. Indeed, the moderators thought that because I did, the thread should be here rather than in Philosophy.


ETA That new scientist article actually states there the "free willed" behaviour of flies is chaotic, but non-random, so I don't think there's a coherent theory here.

Note a claim:

"Choice.

Information. Self-generated information. We have adapted to use it all the time and this has freed us from deterministic behavior. "

As I wrote before, if you don't understand the significance of a finding that something is chaotic rather than purely random, you need to to understand the argument. Chaotic systems are NOT "non-random". They are both random and predictable, which is why they're so mysterious and important.

If their behavior was deterministic, flies without visual information would either fly with a consistent, determined pattern (always turning to the left, for example) or they would fly on a random path - no information, no direction.

Instead, they fly on a chaotic path, strongly implying self-direction - a rudimentary free will. Remember, these are fruit flies, so their level of free will should be basic.

[DBT]

What exactly is meta-choice? And depending on your definition - which particular biological process allows us this ability? How does it work?

Perhaps a description of 'self generating information' may help to clarify it better?

We know that free will involves choice. That is without doubt. Some people separate the concepts of will and choice. I suggest that they can be put together when you think of will as the choice to choose, if you will.

Sure. Will and choice are inseperable, but I'd be more inclined to call will an impulse - an impulse to act or choose. But as will (the impulse to act) is generated by a wide range of physical needs and pschological drives, or else instinctual, will or the impulse to act - being subject to causality - cannot be described as free.


Self-generated information is the information all complex creatures generate in their nervous systems. For example, what you see is not the impulse from your retinas, or even the impulse from your optic nerves or even the impulse from the nerves the optic nerves are attached to directly, but an image fed to the thinking areas from the areas in the brain involved in creating an image of what you see.

Therefore, the information from the retinas is repeated many times - self generated.

But isn't what we 'see' a result of the brains interpretation of the information it received from the external world via light entering the retina? Without that exernal source of stimuli we tend to suffer from a sate of sensory deprivation, and eventually start to hallucinate. Doesn't that suggest that information is not 'self generating,' but in fact dependant on an external source?


We also know that we see things far more definitely (if not correctly) if these things are familiar in some way. This implies strongly that at least part of what we see is a composite of the repeated, translated impulses from the retina and the images from our memories - our "map" of the world.

Yes, but the retina must first receive that information in the form of light.

Basically...the retina is covered with photo-receptive cells which respond to the light, and the information received by these cells is transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve. The visual cortex and motor regions of the brain, in concert with other regions that are responsible for interpretation, recogniton and response - the process being largely unconscious to the 'user' - the conscious self, the personality.

[EricK]

What is the difference between the choice exhibited by the cockroach and the choice exhibited by a computer chess program when it decides what move to make?

[Simen]

This article (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution/dn11858-fruit-flies-display-rudimentary-free-will.html) may help with the discussion.

From the article: Fruit flies have free will. Even when deprived of any sensory input to react to, the zigs and zags of their flight reveal an intrinsic, non-random - yet still unpredictable - decision-making capacity.

That is not free will. First, actions are either probabilistic or deterministic, and there is no such thing as "neither random nor deterministic". Second, if it's unpredictable, I would call it random -- of course, it may not be truly random, it could be pseudorandom and hard to predict but ultimately deterministic. Third, randomness doesn't imply free will.

So, on the face of it, this article claims to have found a revolutionary new behavior that is neither random nor non-random. Wow. Good game.

[dlawbailey]

Will and choice are inseperable, but I'd be more inclined to call will an impulse - an impulse to act or choose. But as will (the impulse to act) is generated by a wide range of physical needs and pschological drives, or else instinctual, will or the impulse to act - being subject to causality - cannot be described as free.

Will and choice are only inseparable at the human level and that's the point of looking at free will from an evolutionary standpoint. Simple animals choose, but it's too much to say they have will.

Mine is not an anti-causal argument, but when you talk about "impulse" you are implying something that is self-generated. The question is how self-generated impulses arise evolutionarily from nervous systems that simply react.

Logically, the answer has to be that competing reactions have to be offset in time and neurological "space". In effect, there would have to be more than one nervous system and that the impulses from these competing nervous systems can be offset in time and neurological "space".

Per my little story, we know that - in effect - different nervous systems developed as some behaviors and inputs became preferentially linked. And because neurons fire repeatedly, complex animals do not get a single impulse from something in the environment, but get many, repeated in time. Thus nervous systems have the *time* to compare and contrast impulses.

In effect, this forces choice.

But isn't what we 'see' a result of the brains interpretation of the information it received from the external world via light entering the retina? Without that exernal source of stimuli we tend to suffer from a sate of sensory deprivation, and eventually start to hallucinate. Doesn't that suggest that information is not 'self generating,' but in fact dependant on an external source?

No, much - arguably most - of what we see comes from our own brains. You can imagine things. You can dream. You can see things with your eyes closed. You can see different images in the same cloud. You can do those things because the visual areas of your brain can be stimulated by a lot of things other than what is physically visible.




We also know that we see things far more definitely (if not correctly) if these things are familiar in some way. This implies strongly that at least part of what we see is a composite of the repeated, translated impulses from the retina and the images from our memories - our "map" of the world.

Yes, but the retina must first receive that information in the form of light.

Basically...the retina is covered with photo-receptive cells which respond to the light, and the information received by these cells is transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve. The visual cortex and motor regions of the brain, in concert with other regions that are responsible for interpretation, recogniton and response - the process being largely unconscious to the 'user' - the conscious self, the personality.[/QUOTE]

Well, we know that humans are apt to see faces in abstract images more than they are apt to see random objects. I'm familiar with how the retina works, but I would ask you to consider how often people react to things they don't actually see, but nevertheless imagine in vivid detail.

For example there have been murderous riots in reaction to "ninjas" in Indonesia" and "penis stealing" in Africa. Nobody's retinas took in either of these two phenomena because they don't exist. Yet otherwise reasonable people were so persuaded by the images in their minds that they went to the extent of murdering people based on the fear and outrage these images produced.

Nobody actually knows what the prophet Muhammad (PBUH) looked like and yet there was a huge reaction to a Danish cartoonist's ridiculous "depictions" of a man with a turban. More than that, since depictions of human beings are forbidden and depictions of the Prophet (PBUH) especially forbidden, people could only have a sense that a person depicted was Muhammad if they had internal images of Muhammad in their minds.

But on a simpler level, the environment forces us to *choose* what it is that we see - witness the optical illusion illustrations that seem to show one thing, then another. The information we get from the real world is very incomplete and indistinct and it is evolutionarily advantageous for us to see more than we are looking at.

Seeing *more* tigers in the bush than are really there is evolutionarily preferrable to seeing fewer tigers in the bush than are really there.

[Togo]

We also know that we see things far more definitely (if not correctly) if these things are familiar in some way. This implies strongly that at least part of what we see is a composite of the repeated, translated impulses from the retina and the images from our memories - our "map" of the world.

Yes, but the retina must first receive that information in the form of light.

Basically...the retina is covered with photo-receptive cells which respond to the light, and the information received by these cells is transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve. The visual cortex and motor regions of the brain, in concert with other regions that are responsible for interpretation, recogniton and response - the process being largely unconscious to the 'user' - the conscious self, the personality.

dlawbailey is correct though. Memory is used to build up images in the visual cortex. There is some debate as to where exactly at what point it comes in, but most accounts put it around the point that objects are defined from boundaries - (cf Marr's 2 1/2d sketch).

You can, of course, prime people with cues to expect certain images, which then lead to them interpreting ambigious images in line with what they expect to see. In that sense, at least, conscious expectation does interfere with the operation of the visual cortex. Unconscious /= independent of consciousness.

[Togo]

That is not free will. First, actions are either probabilistic or deterministic, and there is no such thing as "neither random nor deterministic".

That follows if you assume determinism to be true. Otherwise it's assuming what you want to prove. Free will isn't random, and isn't determined, and so doesn't fit into your categories.

So, on the face of it, this article claims to have found a revolutionary new behavior that is neither random nor non-random. Wow. Good game.

You're conflating 'non-random' with determined. You're not saying anything more than that free-will isn't deterministic behaviour, and it isn't random behaviour. Most advocates of free-will would agree with you on that point, but they wouldn't accept your determinist premise that behaviour must either random or determined in the first place.

[dlawbailey]

What is the difference between the choice exhibited by the cockroach and the choice exhibited by a computer chess program when it decides what move to make?

I can't speak to the way the neural nets in sophisticated chess programs work, but it's a great question.

First, accept just for the sake of argument that running and crawling are very different activities for our cockroach. This is consistent with what we know from experiments about movement and the evolution of movement. Different "gaits" that animals have work on different neural levels. But the cockroach is not the perfect example of this - it's actually too complex an animal. So let's call our protagonist a neo-cockroach.


I think the overwhelming difference is that chess programs always take in and produce the same kind of information. That is, they "see" only chess moves and their output is in chess moves.

For the neo-cockroach in the story, running is a like-like input-output relationship (to the extent possible) very much like the chess program. The neo-cockroach correlates her complex running movement pattern to visual stimuli. Movement in space is controlled by visual information about that space - a good correlation.

Crawling, for our neo-cockroach, is a slow wriggle towards food. The antennae slowly create a model of the chemical space and the neo-cockroach moves towards the most rewarding part of that space in whatever way she can wriggle herself forward (digging, rooting around, whatever).

In the story, she is running and suddenly forced by the logic of comparable alternatives to *smell* her visual/running environment. Her olfactory/crawling neural nets are suddenly forced to output to the visual/running system.

In a chess program, the challenge is to create a computer model that can compete with a system that makes choice easily. And I'm sure it's very difficult to get the deterministic computer models to compete with non-deterministic thinking. The inputs are consistent, the outputs are consistent, and so I'm sure the computer falls into flow-charting very easily.

But in natural systems, even if the neural nets *output* deterministically, the inputs they receive are very random and inconsistent. In the present and especially over evolutionary time, animals move to environments that challenge the limits of their sensory apparatus, forcing them into situations that are a blur of options. They will take one option whether they like it or not. Evolution will inevitably favor the animals who can take data from outside the normal input-output behavior pathways.

Compare a chess-playing computer to a poker-playing computer. The odds of poker are easier to calculate than the huge number of possible chess moves. So, compared to a professional poker player a computer has no information/calculation advantage. They both know the odds. Against humans, the professional will do much better than the computer because the professional will take in other information about his opponents - ticks, "tells", tone of voice, even the smell of his competitors. To a human observer, all these speak volumes about a human competitor's mental state. And all this information is invisible to the computer.

More importantly, the human information does not speak directly to guiding poker plays. The computer wouldn't be able to do anything with it. There is no direct correlation to the odds. If a person is nervous, it may be because he has a bad hand or a good hand or because he just saw his old girlfriend walk into the casino. By choosing what is important and what not, the professional poker player consistently forces this possibly random, mostly ambiguous information through the deterministic system of poker plays and makes money through information advantage. And because of the nature of poker, any consistent, rule-based decision making will be found out and exploited by the other players in an effort to turn the odds back in their favor

Because the definition of "professional" poker player is "one who makes enough money playing poker to live on) he is not born. He "evolves" by showing the ability to consistently take in new, non-poker information, apply it to poker through constantly-evolving modeling and choice and win more money than his competitors.

[dlawbailey]

This article (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution/dn11858-fruit-flies-display-rudimentary-free-will.html) may help with the discussion.

From the article: Fruit flies have free will. Even when deprived of any sensory input to react to, the zigs and zags of their flight reveal an intrinsic, non-random - yet still unpredictable - decision-making capacity.

That is not free will. First, actions are either probabilistic or deterministic, and there is no such thing as "neither random nor deterministic". Second, if it's unpredictable, I would call it random

Well, if you did you would be missing out on the entire science of chaos and chaos theory. The central insight of that theory is that there order and patterns that can arise out of randomness. Try this (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mandelbrot04/mandelbrot04_index.html) interview with Benoit Mandelbrot.

-- of course, it may not be truly random, it could be pseudorandom and hard to predict but ultimately deterministic. Third, randomness doesn't imply free will.

So, on the face of it, this article claims to have found a revolutionary new behavior that is neither random nor non-random. Wow. Good game.

No, what it claims is that the behavior observed is best described by a statistics that would not support the claim that the movements are random and would not support the claim that the movements are determined, but would best support the claim that the movements are chaotic - containing inherent randomness and inherent order.

If the order is self-generated, then there is something like choice going on. Choice is the building block of free will.

[Simen]

There's no middle ground: it's either determined or random. (If not, please prove an exception without assuming it). Chaos theory is only an approximation because we don't have all the information; the behavior could be random, or it could be entirely deterministic, only there are too many variables to predict completely accurately.

As for this "self-generated choice" nonsense: if a choice is not made for a reason, but only pops up, as it were, it's not a choice, it's random.

[Togo]

There's no middle ground: it's either determined or random. (If not, please prove an exception without assuming it).

Any decision. Game theory is an obvious example of decision analysis that doesn't map to a determined outcome.

Alternatively, I could just assume the opposite and invite you to disprove it. The fact is that not everyone is a determinist. Does your refutation of free-will rests entirely on your assumption of the validity of determinism?

[Simen]

There's no middle ground: it's either determined or random. (If not, please prove an exception without assuming it).

Any decision. Game theory is an obvious example of decision analysis that doesn't map to a determined outcome.

Um, what? I think you're going to have to show me how game theory is neither random nor determined, in what relevant sense.


Alternatively, I could just assume the opposite and invite you to disprove it. The fact is that not everyone is a determinist. Does your refutation of free-will rests entirely on your assumption of the validity of determinism?

I'm not a determinist. I rest my case on the fact that anything that's indeterministic behaves like what we call random, so why the hell not call it random? I have yet to see a counterexample that shows something to be indeterministic but not random.

[ughaibu]

assumption of the validity of determinismthe fact that anything that's indeterministic behaves like what we call randomThis is either the assumption of determinism or it's the position that some events are determined and some aren't. If globally complete determinism is false, then everything is "indeterministic" because indeterminism is the position that determinism is false. The form of this reply isn't fixed by the conditions, ie the preceding posts, so it isn't locally determined, but this reply addresses earlier posts and is grammatically conventional, so it's not random. Language is neither determined nor random, if there are things that are determined and things that aren't. On the other hand, determinism as a globally complete thesis fails to circularity, regresses, irreversibility and observation, so, apropos free will, neither position, the claim of global determinism or the claim of local determinism, cut much ice.

[DBT]

Yes, but the retina must first receive that information in the form of light.

Basically...the retina is covered with photo-receptive cells which respond to the light, and the information received by these cells is transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve. The visual cortex and motor regions of the brain, in concert with other regions that are responsible for interpretation, recogniton and response - the process being largely unconscious to the 'user' - the conscious self, the personality.

dlawbailey is correct though. Memory is used to build up images in the visual cortex. There is some debate as to where exactly at what point it comes in, but most accounts put it around the point that objects are defined from boundaries - (cf Marr's 2 1/2d sketch).

Yes, quite. But I'm disputing that aspect of the process. Just the point where free will is supposed to enter the system, and take control.

After a seemingly endless procession of free will threads, all I'd like to see is;

1- A clear and concise description of free will.
2 - How free will generated.
3 -What [specifically] is its source?
4 - At what precise point does free will take control of behavior?

[Simen]

Language is neither determined nor random, if there are things that are determined and things that aren't.
No, it's either determined or random. Random doesn't mean "totally unpredictable".

On the other hand, determinism as a globally complete thesis fails to circularity, regresses, irreversibility and observation, so, apropos free will, neither position, the claim of global determinism or the claim of local determinism, cut much ice.

How so?

[ughaibu]

Random doesn't mean "totally unpredictable".A thing is random if there is no way to prefer any particular member of the set of possibilities and all members and sequences of members will be actualised equally. From within the set of possibilities, which possibility will occur is "totally unpredictable", if there were an algorithm by which one could prefer a particular possibility or subset of possibilities, it wouldn't be random. This is implicit in the definition.How so?Globally complete determinism, as a thesis about reality, is a failure. Accordingly, there is no reason to suppose that strict determinism exists at any level, which is why the free will denialists talk about "deterministic systems". They are talking about highly predictable but non-determined systems, basically they mean simple stable systems with few members or interactions, and tools. There is no reason to suppose that animals apparently possessing free will are tools and they obviously aren't stable systems with few members or interactions.
To the point, the content of this post isn't random, even though it's unpredictable, if you're contention is that the content is determined, how do you justify that? It isn't globally determined, so what, other than me, determines it?

[Simen]

Random doesn't mean "totally unpredictable".A thing is random if there is no way to prefer any particular member of the set of possibilities and all members and sequences of members will be actualised equally.

No. Every outcome need not be equally likely. It's still random if one outcome has probability 0.9 and another has 0.1.

Since every outcome doesn't need to have equal probability, we can predict behavior. We can't predict with 100% accuracy, but probabilistic predictions aren't useless, either. If one outcome has a 0.9 probability and the other 0.1, guessing the outcome with p = 0.9 will be correct nine out of ten times. That's not what I call totally unpredictable.

From within the set of possibilities, which possibility will occur is "totally unpredictable", if there were an algorithm by which one could prefer a particular possibility or subset of possibilities, it wouldn't be random. This is implicit in the definition.

No, it isn't. The probability distribution need not be uniform for a process to qualify as random.


How so?Globally complete determinism, as a thesis about reality, is a failure.

Why?

[ughaibu]

Every outcome need not be equally likely. It's still random if one outcome has probability 0.9 and another has 0.1Not by any definition of randomness that I'm familiar with: "When discussing single numbers, a random number is one that is drawn from a set of possible values, each of which is equally probable, i.e., a uniform distribution. When discussing a sequence of random numbers, each number drawn must be statistically independent of the others"
http://www.random.org/randomness/Why?Because of circularity, irreversibility, observation and regresses.

[Togo]

After a seemingly endless procession of free will threads, all I'd like to see is;

1- A clear and concise description of free will.
2 - How free will generated.
3 -What [specifically] is its source?
4 - At what precise point does free will take control of behavior?

Well, I guess I'll bite, and post the same account I posted on the last thread.... Note that this is a suggested account, not the only possible account.

1) Free will is the choosing between differing (weighted) influences on decision making. Through free will weighting between differing alternatives may be changed, some supressed entirely, and new alternatives sought.

2) Not sure I understand this. Free will is traditionally thought to be a conscious control process. It's not a substance to be generated any more than any other neural system

3) The brain contains within it the ability to model and predict social behaviour. This 'social simulator' operates to model behaviour in others by running possible alternative scenarios. Such as system has evolved to model a great many things, including one own's behaviour. Modelling one own's possible behaviour leads to predictive planning around differing courses of action, and overrides on intended behaviour to advance some courses of action and surpress others. In other words, you have a sense of self, and that sense of self overrides and changes your behaviour depending on the results of it's own modelling process. It is this sense of self that forms the basis for free will, and this simulation of self that ends up making choices.

4) It doesn't intervene at a single point, but at multiple points. It may well piggyback on other systems for most of it's interventions, as you would expect for a control process. It is often thought to be linked to attention, as attention studies have identified a non-specific, general purposes, limited mobile processing resource that can be attuned to particular tasks by conscious direction, which appears to have very different characteristics from more normal channel-specific processing. This would fit the model of the social simulator, and by extension conscious thought, fairly well.

I'll point out (again) that whatever your thoughts about this mechanism, consciousness presumably has some kind of mechanism behind it, whether you think it's a useless appendage that serves no purposes, or whether you think it's the centre of free-will and the mediator of most of human action. Broadly similar structures are needed either way.

There are thus two main sources of disagreement between those who do not believe in free will and those who do.

The first point of arguement is not whether consciousness exists, but whether it's output mediates action or not. You can argue that the brain merely produces a convincing representation of free-will, with all the decision-making already having been made invisibly somewhere else. What evolutionary function this detailed deception serves is less clear.

The second, and to my mind, principal point of difference is whether you accept determinism as an a priori belief system. Most of those who deny free will end up basing their belief on the idea that as free will must be determined by the systems that gave rise to it, and thus not 'free'. There is no justification for this that anyone has yet raised, save the initial a priori assumption that the universe is a deterministic one.

[Oxymoron]

The second, and to my mind, principal point of difference is whether you accept determinism as an a priori belief system. Most of those who deny free will end up basing their belief on the idea that as free will must be determined by the systems that gave rise to it, and thus not 'free'. There is no justification for this that anyone has yet raised, save the initial a priori assumption that the universe is a deterministic one.

This nonsense of a strawman has been rebutted so many times on many other threads that I am really not going to waste much time doing it again. If you haven't registered the response by now, it seems pretty unlikely you'll acknowledge it this time.

[dlawbailey]

There's no middle ground: it's either determined or random. (If not, please prove an exception without assuming it). Chaos theory is only an approximation because we don't have all the information; the behavior could be random, or it could be entirely deterministic, only there are too many variables to predict completely accurately.

As for this "self-generated choice" nonsense: if a choice is not made for a reason, but only pops up, as it were, it's not a choice, it's random.

Simply repeating your contention that things are either determined or random does not prove them and you have the same burden of proof as I do.

1) Your contention FAILS to predict the behavior of the fruit fly in the experiment I cited.

You try to ignore that, but it's fatal to your contention. Unless you can come up with a reason why no input results in neither random nor determined statistics, your argument is finished.

But I'll save you the trouble.

The fruit fly is GUESSING. You see? The fruit fly, like all creatures with imperfect senses has to GUESS how to react to its environment.

Guessing is neither a random NOR a deterministic process.

Why not?

2) Measurement error creates non-determinacy

This was well known before quantum mechanics.

The most glaring fallacy those who insist on deterministic behavior commit over and over and over again is their assumption that living things react in perfect analog to their environment. I have never understood why they don't see such an obvious error. It should be trivially obvious that the senses are wildly imperfect, but it seems not to be. Determinists always conjecture eyes than can detect every photon, ears that hear every vibration and senses that never make a mistake.

And yet it is mistakes, not precision, that are the rule.

Living things don't react deterministically because they CAN'T react deterministically - even if they wanted to. They react approximately, with LOTS of measurement error. And because living things actually sense so little relative to what they would like to know, they have to take in data that are ambiguous, possibly contradictory, possibly meaningless and try to use them.

To play poker perfectly, all you need are the cards, the odds and money. It is a perfectly delimited game of numbers. What do facial ticks, dilating pupils and tone of voice have to do with the numbers that make up the game of poker? Nothing. But there is a second, separate game going on - the game of trying to GUESS what another player has in his hand.

Poker is precise. Trying to guess another player's cards is fraught with error. Yet an expert poker player will introduce measurement error from the guessing game into his precise calculations in the mathematical game because he is trying to play yet a third game - WINNING at poker. In a perfect world, he would be able to see his opponent's cards. He can't. So, he must incorporate information that is error-filled.

The sensory systems of animals are crude tools which create crude analogs of the real world. Ultimately, an animal that reacts deterministically to the crude, error-filled data it gets from its senses will be out-competed by the animal that uses measurement "error" in its favor. And they both will be outcompeted by the animal that creates crude internal models of the environment and then uses them to organize the data from the senses.

The development of sensory/neural systems practically necessitates choice.

Because these systems are chaotic-dynamic and because their inputs are fraught with measurement error, very different "models" or analogs of the universe will appear to these nervous systems from moment to moment in a non-deterministic way. Like a non-deterministic or maybe a probabilistic Turing machine, the nervous system has to choose among these models.

In addition, if the neurons repeat their firings *as if* in response to outside data, another, self-generated model is available for comparison. This is not random or unrelated to the input. It may even be more accurate - or less accurate but in a predictable way. In any case it is more information for a system starved of precise information to use.

Again, you will always get stuck on the horns of the deterministic vs. random binary if you forget measurement error.

[Oxymoron]

And again, the ridiculous strawman "determined" = "predictable" rears its stupid ugly head.

[dlawbailey]

dlawbailey is correct though. Memory is used to build up images in the visual cortex. There is some debate as to where exactly at what point it comes in, but most accounts put it around the point that objects are defined from boundaries - (cf Marr's 2 1/2d sketch).

Yes, quite. But I'm disputing that aspect of the process. Just the point where free will is supposed to enter the system, and take control.

After a seemingly endless procession of free will threads, all I'd like to see is;

1- A clear and concise description of free will.
2 - How free will generated.
3 -What [specifically] is its source?
4 - At what precise point does free will take control of behavior?

[For this explanation, it's easiest if one imagines an the firings of an animal's processing neurons to be divided into "frames" of patterned firings, corresponding (imperfectly) to the firings of its sensory neurons. It's also important to remember that neurons fire repeatedly in response to stimulation so there is a time lag in response to change in sensation.]

1) Meta-choice. Choice to choose. Choice of choice of choice. Whichever of those you like

2) Within the nervous system of the animal, at least two co-existing and apparently co-equal but non-deterministically divergent, crude analogs of the outside world appear, with only a moment separating them. The animal is forced to push ambiguous data sets through its own deterministic neural nets and the neural nets must "pick".

3) Measurement error introduces a non-deterministic relationship between reality and an animal's internal analogs of it.

4) When the animal makes its first internal "guess". This is probably when an "echo" effect AND/OR stray data excite the neurons into self-generating yet another analog to which the first two can be compared.

With multiple analogs co-existing and competing, the logical/ontological question of which is the "real" one and which is the one the "real" one is being compared to is indecipherable and unsolvable.

These competing internal realities are offset in time and space from material reality. Because measurement error creates a non-deterministic ambiguity between reality and internal reality that can never be resolved, the animal's nervous system is in a constant state of comparing patterns of neuron firings. But which is chicken and which egg? Which is the one to react to and which reference?

One could easily imagine any number of simple rules developing, but try this one: what if the animal's neural nets came to "notice" those pairs of firings that were most similar and those that were most divergent?

You would then have a simple rule that could create emergent new patterns. "Divergent" and "similar" are completely valid ways to interpret the data, but a neural system can only measure divergence and similarity with reference to itself. But then new data would come in. An emergent pattern of relationship between outside reality and inside begins.

[Togo]

The second, and to my mind, principal point of difference is whether you accept determinism as an a priori belief system. <snip>

This nonsense of a strawman has been rebutted so many times on many other threads that I am really not going to waste much time doing it again. If you haven't registered the response by now, it seems pretty unlikely you'll acknowledge it this time.

And I'll yet again ask for a link, post reference, or some way of finding these arguements that you assure me exist.

I'm happy to look at them, but I can't just assume they exist.

[Oxymoron]

And I'll yet again ask for a link, post reference, or some way of finding these arguements that you assure me exist.

I'm happy to look at them, but I can't just assume they exist.

Dude, it's very simple. People you accuse of having some belief that everything is deterministic, DON'T.

Radioactive decay is random. I can't be bothered retrieving the link, but there's a paper showing that it is random - in the Markovian sense (events are independent). Therefore it is true that not everything in the universe is deterministic. For some reason, you seem to think that this means anything you want to label as non-deterministic (whatever that means) can be labelled so.

[Simen]

Every outcome need not be equally likely. It's still random if one outcome has probability 0.9 and another has 0.1Not by any definition of randomness that I'm familiar with: "When discussing single numbers, a random number is one that is drawn from a set of possible values, each of which is equally probable, i.e., a uniform distribution. When discussing a sequence of random numbers, each number drawn must be statistically independent of the others"
http://www.random.org/randomness/

Random sequences of discrete numbers isn't all there is to randomness. Wolfram Mathworld defines randomness:

Stochastic is synonymous with "random." The word is of Greek origin and means "pertaining to chance" (Parzen 1962, p. 7). It is used to indicate that a particular subject is seen from point of view of randomness. Stochastic is often used as counterpart of the word "deterministic," which means that random phenomena are not involved. Therefore, stochastic models are based on random trials, while deterministic models always produce the same output for a given starting condition.

Wikipedia says: Randomness is a lack of order, purpose, cause, or predictability in non-scientific parlance. A random process is a repeating process whose outcomes follow no describable deterministic pattern, but follow a probability distribution.

That is, any process described by a random variable that isn't deterministic is random.

Further, we must distinguish between objective and subjective randomness. (Objective and subjective being my terms for them; the terms don't matter, but the distinction does). Objective randomness is what cannot be predicted with 100% accuracy no matter how much information you have, while subjective randomness is just whatever cannot be predicted by the information we have currently.


Why?Because of circularity, irreversibility, observation and regresses.

So you repeat, but you don't say what you mean or why this is a show-stopper for determinism.

[Simen]

1) Your contention FAILS to predict the behavior of the fruit fly in the experiment I cited.

No, it doesn't. Determinism doesn't mean we will understand every behavior we see. The underlying process could be either deterministic or indeterministic. Since there is no way to map sensory inputs to behavior outputs here, I can't show you that it's deterministic, but for the same reason, you can't show me that it's not.


The fruit fly is GUESSING. You see? The fruit fly, like all creatures with imperfect senses has to GUESS how to react to its environment.

Guessing is neither a random NOR a deterministic process.

Wrong. Guessing, such as when you say "guess a number between 1 and 10" and I say 7 (as, I've been told, people will do more often than any other number, for some reason), can be either a deterministic or an indeterministic process. It is in no way neither random nor deterministic. Either the underlying brain is deterministic, in which case the guess is deterministic, or it's indeterministic, in which case the guess is probabilistic. In neither case is it non-random and non-deterministic. Same with educated guesses: the education sets the borders for what is an acceptable guess, and then either a complicated deterministic process that we do not at present, maybe ever know how to predict or an indeterministic process chooses a guess inside this possible guesses-space.

But I don't even have to say any of this. You were the one that claimed guessing was not random but not deterministic either. You are the one that needs to show it cannot in principle be deterministic, but cannot in principle be random either.

[LukeS]

As I wrote before, if you don't understand the significance of a finding that something is chaotic rather than purely random, you need to to understand the argument. Chaotic systems are NOT "non-random". They are both random and predictable, which is why they're so mysterious and important.

AFAIK a chaotic system is deterministic but unpredicatble, and small differences in the mechanics can result in massive differences in effect.

If you know otherwise, please quote from a authoritative source. You can't just redefine words and concepts and expect people to just agree with your conclusions.

If their behavior was deterministic, flies without visual information would either fly with a consistent, determined pattern (always turning to the left, for example) or they would fly on a random path - no information, no direction.


No, their behavious can be deterministic but inconsistent. The complexity of the brain systems, even in a fly, result in different responses to the seemingly same stimulus.

It is a little like trying to predict the weather, whings are so abominably confusing, one can only make relaiable guesses for a few days ofr steps at a time. The classic illustration of this is the "butterfly effect" where a flap of the wings on one side of the planet can contribute to the development of a storm on the other. There is a "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" and those conditions are practically unknowable.

So with the fly thre is probably an evolving set of brain states when it tries to fly one way or the other. It's choice not to go left all of the time does NOT necessarily imply randomness,and in fact if you return to the source (New Scientist) as I suggested it is described as a non-randon, but "chaotic" process.

Which definition of "chaotic system" do you think the article was using, the established scientific one or your novel definition?

Wikipedia has this to say:
"In mathematics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose state evolves with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Chaotic behaviour is also observed in natural systems, such as the weather. This may be explained by a chaos-theoretical analysis of a mathematical model of such a system, embodying the laws of physics that are relevant for the natural system."

[ughaibu]

Random sequences of discrete numbers isn't all there is to randomnessAssuming that probabilties are "random", given n degree of predictability within a range of probability. The number of unexpressed grammatically valid sentences far exce..,. I am completely sick of posting this stuff, what the fuck is your problem with understanding this?

[Simen]

I don't know what your problem is. Your definition of randomness is too narrow, I backed up my claims. So where lies the problem? You haven't explained why you think determinism is bunk, either. Seems like the problem isn't on my side.

[dlawbailey]

1) Your contention FAILS to predict the behavior of the fruit fly in the experiment I cited.

No, it doesn't. Determinism doesn't mean we will understand every behavior we see. The underlying process could be either deterministic or indeterministic. Since there is no way to map sensory inputs to behavior outputs here, I can't show you that it's deterministic, but for the same reason, you can't show me that it's not.

And here we see how determinism becomes a RELIGION. You can't identify it. It's inconsistent with the analysis. But it must be there. Bizarre.



The fruit fly is GUESSING. You see? The fruit fly, like all creatures with imperfect senses has to GUESS how to react to its environment.

Guessing is neither a random NOR a deterministic process.

Wrong. Guessing, such as when you say "guess a number between 1 and 10" and I say 7 (as, I've been told, people will do more often than any other number, for some reason), can be either a deterministic or an indeterministic process. It is in no way neither random nor deterministic.

Except you JUST contradicted yourself. Why would 7 be so much more popular? Is that a random process? No. Is it determimistic? No. If we asked equally intelligent aliens from space they would almost certainly guess another number most of the time - but they would always favor some number. You see, our brains GUESS what the "right" answer is all the time. In effect, we assume there is something to the question we aren't seeing and try to fit our answer to the unseen data.


Either the underlying brain is deterministic, in which case the guess is deterministic, or it's indeterministic, in which case the guess is probabilistic. In neither case is it non-random and non-deterministic. Same with educated guesses: the education sets the borders for what is an acceptable guess, and then either a complicated deterministic process that we do not at present, maybe ever know how to predict or an indeterministic process chooses a guess inside this possible guesses-space.

But I don't even have to say any of this. You were the one that claimed guessing was not random but not deterministic either. You are the one that needs to show it cannot in principle be deterministic, but cannot in principle be random either.

Again, you're bringing in a Deus Ex Machina to save determinism.

The fatal flaw is measurement error. Measurement error creates indeterminacy.

"Educated" guesses - based on error-filled data - are the only kind of guesses there are. Witness the guess of 7. Like the fruit fly, when are asked to pick a number between 1 and 10 we are robbed of meaningful data to make the decision. Therefore we look to some pattern in our minds - but not always.

Evolution forces brains to apply information that doesn't necessarily even belong in the thought process to EVERY decision.

That's why there's such a thing as decision.

The disproof of behavioral determinism is exactly like the disproof of God. It's a reductio ad absurdum. For determinism to define behavior, animals would have to be sensitive to phenomena below their level to detect phenomena.

Because animals are systems that are clearly super-sensitive to initial condition, you get down to single photons and single waves of sound if you want to say their behavior is predictable deterministically. But terrestrial nervous systems simply CAN'T react to data that fine-grained.

And because nervous systems make constant error, they must SELF-CORRECT. Self-correction by a system that never can know the outside world precisely involves choice - inherently.

[Simen]

No, it doesn't. Determinism doesn't mean we will understand every behavior we see. The underlying process could be either deterministic or indeterministic. Since there is no way to map sensory inputs to behavior outputs here, I can't show you that it's deterministic, but for the same reason, you can't show me that it's not.

And here we see how determinism becomes a RELIGION. You can't identify it. It's inconsistent with the analysis. But it must be there. Bizarre.


It's inconsistent with your analysis, but your analysis is hopelessly invested in the incoherent concept of the neither-random-nor-determined. There is no larger physical system we know how to predict completely, and that's just what you would expect from a deterministic world.


Except you JUST contradicted yourself. Why would 7 be so much more popular? Is that a random process? No. Is it determimistic? No. If we asked equally intelligent aliens from space they would almost certainly guess another number most of the time - but they would always favor some number. You see, our brains GUESS what the "right" answer is all the time. In effect, we assume there is something to the question we aren't seeing and try to fit our answer to the unseen data.


You keep saying it's neither random nor deterministic, but the thing is, you don't know that. To know it, you would have to know that the brain isn't deterministic and isn't indeterministic, and you don't know that. You just assume it. The brain is a complex beast, and it follows certain patterns, but we are so far from understanding it and there are so many unknown and perhaps unknowable variables that we can at best describe it probabilistically, at worst can't describe it at all. However, that is only evidence of humanity's ignorance. It's not evidence that the brain is neither random nor deterministic. In fact, you haven't even argued to show that this concept is coherent. I think random and deterministic exhaust all possible options, and I've shown definitions to that effect, yet you keep on going with your toy concept.


Again, you're bringing in a Deus Ex Machina to save determinism.


No. I'm saying we don't have all the data we need to rule out determinism, or something very close to determinism (that is, something that is indeterministic but only slightly so -- where certain outputs have very high probabilities), because we don't have the necessary understanding or the necessary data. This is because humans are ignorant, fallible beings who have only been seriously investigating nature for the last 4 - 5 centuries or so. There's no Deus Ex Machina at work, because we would observe the things we observe in a deterministic universe too. That doesn't mean the universe is deterministic, it just means that idea hasn't been falsified yet (or at least, hasn't been falsified by that particular test).

I would be more worried about your own theory's credentials. Just where do you propose to fit in your concept of will, when random and determined seem to exhaust the space of possible options? You have done nothing to address these concerns.

The disproof of behavioral determinism is exactly like the disproof of God. It's a reductio ad absurdum. For determinism to define behavior, animals would have to be sensitive to phenomena below their level to detect phenomena.


No.

[dlawbailey]

Which definition of "chaotic system" do you think the article was using, the established scientific one or your novel definition?

Wikipedia has this to say:
"In mathematics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose state evolves with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Chaotic behaviour is also observed in natural systems, such as the weather. This may be explained by a chaos-theoretical analysis of a mathematical model of such a system, embodying the laws of physics that are relevant for the natural system."

Opponents please note: Luke S. catches me out here - and it's a fair cop.

However, what he does is force me into a finer-grained argument than I wanted to get into - but should have known was inevitable.

Animals are a special kind of chaotic system - a self-correcting chaotic system.

Yes, chaotic systems are deterministic. But from a philosophical point of view, living systems convert chaos to indeterminacy. How? Measurement error. If the sensitivity to initial condition is large and the identity of the initial condition is ontologically uncertain, the system is highly indeterminate.

We know that:

1) A living being will "react" even if there is nothing there to react to. Witness the fruit fly.

2) A living being will react the same way to erroneous or true information. Witness the neo-cockroach and the two holes.

3) A living being will "re-set" or "re-start" its chaotic process of analysis based on an initial condition that is emergent and self-induced. Witness the neo-cockroach after it gets the olfactory data.

Chaotic systems were created in the laboratory when deterministic systems were shown to be so sensitive to initial condition that the initial conditions of an experiment were almost unrepeatable. But the surprise came exactly because these were artificial systems designed to be deterministic and the data they used were precise to levels approaching theoretical limits.

Add measurement error to such a system. Add error which essentially disallows the system from "knowing" its own initial conditions. Add the ability to have multiple chaotic systems running in parallel.

From Wikipedia:

"Indeterminacy in measurement was not an innovation of quantum mechanics, since it had been established early on by experimentalists that errors in measurement may lead to indeterminate outcomes. However, by the later half of the eighteenth century, measurement errors were well understood and it was known that they could either be reduced by better equipment or accounted for by statistical error models. In quantum mechanics, however, indeterminacy is of a much more fundamental nature, having nothing to do with errors or disturbance."

Here I'm not suggesting that we are dealing with quantum mechanical effects but an analog to quantum mechanical effects which introduces irreducible indeterminacy into nervous systems. That is, inevitable measurement error, and not only measurement error - measurement error that decreases over time only to be replaced by measurement error at a different scale. Inevitable, constant, erroneous measurement of the information around us means that above a very simple level of nervous systems, a living being's only possible strategy is to compare its sensations to each other - to react to self rather than reality - or it cannot self-correct. But by reacting to self, it introduces an even greater level of indeterminacy. But in so doing, it gives itself a better opportunity to react correctly to reality.

The point is to focus on the tremendous imperfection of the living creature. Any argument that has a living creature going around successfully reacting to perfectly fine-grained stimuli or even perfect Gaussian models of the world is simply wrong on its face. It just doesn't happen.

Error and self-correction are the fundament of life and the evolution of life. In Nature everything MUST become more disorderly and yet life produces more order. A miracle? No. It's just a mathematics that includes indeterminacy. By constantly favoring more precise processes living things react to their environment with increasing success. At some level this is always choice. At some point it becomes actual choice - by necessity.

The imprecise living creature must compare models of its world that seem equal and then choose the best one. Inside our brains is a true "metaverse". Yet there is only one real world. So, to return to chaos, if the real world excites in nervous systems PARALLEL chaotic systems of analysis but there is only one system (the real world) to take input from and put output to (and then take input from and put output to and so on and so on) you have a system that will mimic the real world but in an indeterminate way.

It's not that the internal world of the living being will be unrelated to the outside world, it's just that the statistics that describe that relationship will be very unstable.

That's where the part of the nervous system that reacts to the nervous system itself comes in. Those same parallel, chaotic systems of analysis can react to the output from their own parallel, chaotic systems of analysis. Here the constraint is not the real world but the fire/charge binary of neurons. The all-important measurement error is introduced by time lag, excitation by proximity rather than connection, new connections, hormones, reinforcement. But at the meta- level the measurement error is more likely to be positive - towards reality rather than away from it.

Reality will not dictate the state of this system, but the system will be "attracted" to reality in the mathematical sense.

But the complexity is not something we have to analyze, really, so long as we remember three things.

1) The nervous system WILL react to erroneous and true information equally.

2) The nervous system WILL react.

3) The nervous system that adapts compare and contrast true and erroneous - by accident or intent - will out-compete the nervous system that doesn't.

To get after the notion of behavioral determinism from the other side: how is it that a behaviorally determined being (humans) can imagine things that do not exist, like Gods and monsters and theories? And if you think that has no bearing on reality, think of the constant way that humans react to imaginary things: TV, movies, books, religion and thereby "determine" the fate of other things and people. How could determinism flow through the unreal from person to person? A deterministic argument that connects the minute sensations and actions of a person in India with a person in the U.S. through their personal impressions of the imaginary characters in an "Indiana Jones" movie is too bizarre and ridiculous.

Clearly, there has to be a break between the cold precision of the real world and the fantastic unreality of the inner world. The relationship CANNOT be determinate if the inner world can conceive things that cannot be produced by the real world.

Measurement error, folks. We have to think and choose and imagine because we're wrong all the time and we're desperately trying to get back to reality.

[ughaibu]

I don't know what your problem is. Your definition of randomness is too narrow, I backed up my claims. So where lies the problem? You haven't explained why you think determinism is bunk, either. Seems like the problem isn't on my side.1) language is not random
2) language is not a matter of chance
3) language is not determined
The first two are so in the face obvious that it beggars belief that I'm getting grief with lunatic re-definitions of "random". What's the problem with admitting this?

[DBT]

After a seemingly endless procession of free will threads, all I'd like to see is;

1- A clear and concise description of free will.
2 - How free will generated.
3 -What [specifically] is its source?
4 - At what precise point does free will take control of behavior?

Well, I guess I'll bite, and post the same account I posted on the last thread.... Note that this is a suggested account, not the only possible account.

1) Free will is the choosing between differing (weighted) influences on decision making. Through free will weighting between differing alternatives may be changed, some supressed entirely, and new alternatives sought.

The trick is, who or what is the chooser? A chess program can 'assess' a new move and cross reference that move with all possible combinations and games in order to 'decide' the appropriate response - yet there is no choice maker in the program - only memory, the ability to process information, and the ability to select from a wide range of possibilities.


2) Not sure I understand this. Free will is traditionally thought to be a conscious control process. It's not a substance to be generated any more than any other neural system

Again, who or what is the controller - consciousness itself? An entity that possesses consciousness?
I've already provided studies that clearly point to consciousness, being at the end of the cognitive process. The actor rather than controller. The latter being the domain of the brain.


3) The brain contains within it the ability to model and predict social behaviour. This 'social simulator' operates to model behaviour in others by running possible alternative scenarios. Such as system has evolved to model a great many things, including one own's behaviour. Modelling one own's possible behaviour leads to predictive planning around differing courses of action, and overrides on intended behaviour to advance some courses of action and surpress others. In other words, you have a sense of self, and that sense of self overrides and changes your behaviour depending on the results of it's own modelling process. It is this sense of self that forms the basis for free will, and this simulation of self that ends up making choices.

Yes, the brain does all that you say. But then you seem to adding an additional entity to the process - a psychological 'self' as the controller.

Our personality, our sense of self, is a construct of the brain and consciousness, and as such it is absolutely essential to the normal functioning of the organism. But that psychological entity, that contruct of memory and experience we call 'self' is not the information processor, it is not the ultimate decision maker, as that is the role of the brain - the frontal lobes, etc. That is the generator of feelings, emotions, perceptions, insights, the stream of conscious thought, and the resulting decisions.



4) It doesn't intervene at a single point, but at multiple points. It may well piggyback on other systems for most of it's interventions, as you would expect for a control process. It is often thought to be linked to attention, as attention studies have identified a non-specific, general purposes, limited mobile processing resource that can be attuned to particular tasks by conscious direction, which appears to have very different characteristics from more normal channel-specific processing. This would fit the model of the social simulator, and by extension conscious thought, fairly well.

This still implies a single system or entity that intervenes at multiple points and systems, and that proposition is not supported by human behavior, or neuroscience. For example -inner conflict, decisions or action that are based on emotion (amygdala) and later regretted, (frontal lobes) irrational behavior, habitual behavior....

"The identification of brain systems and circuits (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2008/imaging-identifies-brain-regions-and-chemicals-underlying-mood-disorders-may-lead-to-better-treatments.shtml) whose activity can be correlated with specific symptoms is a first step toward the development of more targeted and effective treatments for depression and other disorders of the brain," says Wayne Drevets, MD, of NIMH. Drevets' review of five studies — involving about 120 patients and as many controls — reveals abnormal patterns of neural activity and brain chemical function in specific circuits in depressed people as they perform reward processing tasks. The series of neuroimaging studies from the NIMH show how abnormalities in their brain reactions during the act of winning money could be turning normal pleasures into unimportant or even uncomfortable events''



The first point of arguement is not whether consciousness exists, but whether it's output mediates action or not. You can argue that the brain merely produces a convincing representation of free-will, with all the decision-making already having been made invisibly somewhere else. What evolutionary function this detailed deception serves is less clear.

I don't think it is a deception, only a false impression that's the result of the inherit divisions in the neurological system. And then it's only an occasional impression - the rest of the time we simply function, eat, sleep, work, play.

Sort of like the old adage -the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

[Simen]

I don't know what your problem is. Your definition of randomness is too narrow, I backed up my claims. So where lies the problem? You haven't explained why you think determinism is bunk, either. Seems like the problem isn't on my side.1) language is not random
2) language is not a matter of chance
3) language is not determined
The first two are so in the face obvious that it beggars belief that I'm getting grief with lunatic re-definitions of "random". What's the problem with admitting this?

Language follows certain patterns, but we can't predict it. That much is true. Whether it's deterministic or indeterministic depends on how that works out for the universe as a whole, and you don't know that. As for random, I have offered perfectly respectable definitions of the word, which you proceed not to show are false, but just slap a sticker on as if that somehow invalidates all I've said.

[Oxymoron]

"Determined" does not equal "predictable".

How many times must it be repeated before the Woos will stop bashing it?

[Togo]

The trick is, who or what is the chooser? A chess program can 'assess' a new move and cross reference that move with all possible combinations and games in order to 'decide' the appropriate response - yet there is no choice maker in the program - only memory, the ability to process information, and the ability to select from a wide range of possibilities.
You're drawing a distinction between selection and choice, and I'm not convinced you've really shown that they're different. It's certainly misleading to talk about a 'chooser' as a who - since we're talking about the inside of someone's head here. I don't see, based on what you've said, why there would be any difficulty in having a 'chooser' system.

I'm not trying to duck the issue, but I really don't see what your point is here.

Again, who or what is the controller - consciousness itself?
Yes. The simulation of self, that we both agree is represented within the brain.

I've already provided studies that clearly point to consciousness, being at the end of the cognitive process. The actor rather than controller.
With respect, DBT, you haven't. We discussed Libet and other studies at great, great, length, and the results do not support your interpretation over others. The distinction seems clear to you because you already hold certain beliefs - that the brain is a deterministic system, that consciousness is a small and unimportant part of it that can't therefore be assumed to play a part in information processing. Without those a priori beliefs, there is nothing to support or recommend your interpretation above any other.

I'll add that I don't agree that consciousness acts at a single 'point'.

Yes, the brain does all that you say. But then you seem to adding an additional entity to the process - a psychological 'self' as the controller.
I thought we agreed that there was a psychological sense of self. Is that a controvertial claim? No entities are being added. I'm giving it a useful role, you're dismissing it as irrelevent, but we both have the same number of entities.

Our personality, our sense of self, is a construct of the brain and consciousness, and as such it is absolutely essential to the normal functioning of the organism. But that psychological entity, that contruct of memory and experience we call 'self' is not the information processor, it is not the ultimate decision maker,
Yes, it is the ultimate decision maker. And an information processor.

To clarify, it is _an_ information processor. There is certainly evidence for a central executive information processor directed by conscious thought and possesing capabilities that are not limited to the modality of particular cognitive subsystems, as Broadbent et al. clearly demonstrate in their attentional studies.* But that model is dependent on the modal subsystems doing most of the grunt work. And it is the ultimate decision maker, which is not to say it doesn't go with the results of the lower level processing it's given a fair amount of the time.

as that is the role of the brain
Um... we're both talking about the brain. Well, mostly about the brain. Where else would consciousness come from?

This still implies a single system or entity that intervenes at multiple points and systems, and that proposition is not supported by human behavior,
It's not? How so? How would behaviour be different if I were right?

or neuroscience. For example -inner conflict, decisions or action that are based on emotion (amygdala) and later regretted, (frontal lobes) irrational behavior, habitual behavior....
Neural functions are not as localised as you're making out. Emotions are not contained entirely within the amygdala, regret certainly isn't. There isn't one neural subsystem for 'irrational behaviour', and another for 'habitual behaviour'.

"The identification of brain systems and circuits (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2008/imaging-identifies-brain-regions-and-chemicals-underlying-mood-disorders-may-lead-to-better-treatments.shtml) whose activity can be correlated with specific symptoms is a first step toward the development of more targeted and effective treatments for depression and other disorders of the brain," says Wayne Drevets, MD, of NIMH. Drevets' review of five studies — involving about 120 patients and as many controls — reveals abnormal patterns of neural activity and brain chemical function in specific circuits in depressed people as they perform reward processing tasks. The series of neuroimaging studies from the NIMH show how abnormalities in their brain reactions during the act of winning money could be turning normal pleasures into unimportant or even uncomfortable events''
Right, so depressed people's brains have a different chemical balance to normal people's brains. And if you change the chemical balance in the bits that are different, you may change their behaviour. How does this conflict with consciousness acting at multiple points? Again, I don't see your point here.

Also - Ever see 'The Secret of NIMH'? One of my favourite films when I was small. Never though to check if it was a real place...

I don't think it [Consciousness] is a deception, only a false impression that's the result of the inherit divisions in the neurological system. And then it's only an occasional impression - the rest of the time we simply function, eat, sleep, work, play.

Hm... I'm not convinced that I'm not conscious pretty much all the time I'm awake. I'm certainly conscious every time I check, and subjects report being conscious whenever an experimenter asks them to check, but I guess that doesn't really prove much to you.

It's a bit like the whole 'does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if noone can hear it' arguement. You can say that I'm not conscious all the time, but only when I think about it, and I can't easily prove you wrong. I can't prove that unattended trees make noise either.

* Note that I am, as requested, talking about a particular model of free-will. This model is based on attentional studies, since they are cognitive studies that are widely known and understood, and appear in basic psychology textbooks. It's not a model I'm particularly fond of, but it works.

[ughaibu]

Whether it's deterministic or indeterministic depends on how that works out for the universe as a whole, and you don't know thatThe conditions dont determine the outcome, nothing in your post determined the words I'm presently writing, so it is not locally determined. As global determinism, as a thesis about reality, fails to circularity, irreversibility, regress and observation, I have no reason to suspect that it's true. Overall, I have no reason to think that language is determined.As for random, I have offered perfectly respectable definitions of the wordI disagree, your definitions are over inclusive, rendering the term superfluous. Here's an example of random typing: mnjkbhbxzbBK cfbljhxzlj,c ,ckxpu As you can see, this isn't language, it doesn't express any communicable thoughts. Language is intentional behaviour, not random behaviour. On the question of chance; there are words that I'll never use, so the probability of me using them is zero but there are also words that I haven't used but will use, there is no way to distinguish between these two groups of words until I die, so language is not covered by probability.

[Simen]

As global determinism, as a thesis about reality, fails to circularity, irreversibility, regress and observation, I have no reason to suspect that it's true.

You've said that three times, and not once have you substantiated it.

I disagree, your definitions are over inclusive, rendering the term superfluous. Here's an example of random typing: mnjkbhbxzbBK cfbljhxzlj,c ,ckxpu As you can see, this isn't language, it doesn't express any communicable thoughts. Language is intentional behaviour, not random behaviour. On the question of chance; there are words that I'll never use, so the probability of me using them is zero but there are also words that I haven't used but will use, there is no way to distinguish between these two groups of words until I die, so language is not covered by probability.

This argument is bunk for the simple reason that it's logically possible that a deterministic world contains language exactly such as ours.

[ughaibu]

You've said that three times, and not once have you substantiated it.I've been substantiating it for months, on a great many threads, try the search function. In any case, a lot of the arguments are well known, you could try Googling them or work them out yourself.This argument is bunk for the simple reason that it's logically possible that a deterministic world contains language exactly such as ours.See post 34, the arch-denier himself doesn't (usually) hide the fact that global determinism is false.

[Simen]

You've said that three times, and not once have you substantiated it.I've been substantiating it for months, on a great many threads, try the search function. In any case, a lot of the arguments are well known, you could try Googling them or work them out yourself.

You can't just go asserting that determinism fails for a number of reasons, and then refuse to show why it fails for these reasons.


This argument is bunk for the simple reason that it's logically possible that a deterministic world contains language exactly such as ours.See post 34, the arch-denier himself doesn't (usually) hide the fact that global determinism is false.

That isn't a response to what I said.

[ughaibu]

That isn't a response to what I said.What is a "deterministic world"?

[Simen]

Take one guess. Seriously, what is unclear in "deterministic world"?

[ughaibu]

Take one guess. Seriously, what is unclear in "deterministic world"?Okay, I assume it's a world in which determinism is true. We dont live in such a world, so you're claim that language must be either determined or random becomes 'language must be random', and this claim is false, language is neither random nor a matter of chance.

[Simen]

Yes, I would agree that language is random. Using the definition(s) of random I provided, that is. Those that allow for a very high degree of predictability. Anyway, you said that language couldn't be deterministic, and I pointed out that in a deterministic world, there could still be language, so language could be deterministic. If we don't live in a deterministic world, then language certainly can't be deterministic in our world, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be.

[ughaibu]

I would agree that language is randomThe nonsense that people are willing to espouse amazes me. The claim that everything is either determined or random is false, language is a counter example, so you're now in the position to discard a false belief, discharge yourself of the burden of proposing and defending that false belief, but instead, in order to maintain that false belief, you're prepared to make the more obviously false claim that language is random. Why, what do you gain by this?

[Simen]

I would agree that language is randomThe nonsense that people are willing to espouse amazes me.

This is no use. You keep quoting me out of context. I dispute your definition of randomness, and I've backed up this with a counter-definition from several sources, but you're so convinced you're right that you can't be bothered to even consider it. It's very frustrating and ultimately useless to discuss with someone who doesn't uphold any standards of decent discussions. You spout soundbites, but when I ask you what arguments you have for them, you tell me it's my duty to dig them up if I want to hear them. When I disagree with you and offer sources that support my viewpoint, you assert that they're nonsense and proceed as if you've debunked them. This discussion isn't going anywhere, and that's thanks to you.

Why, what do you gain by this?

I prefer true beliefs to false beliefs, and I prefer honest debating to useless bantering. For both of these reasons, I'm outta this thread.

[Oxymoron]

Yes, I would agree that language is random.

Heavens NO!

The structure of language is intimately linked to the way we in internally represent the world, as well as the physical apparatus we use to communicate with (hands, vocal cords...). Language may contain arbitrary elements, but in no way are they random.

[Togo]

I'm not a determinist. I rest my case on the fact that anything that's indeterministic behaves like what we call random, so why the hell not call it random? I have yet to see a counterexample that shows something to be indeterministic but not random.

I believe the difficulty, based on his original definition above, is that Simen has defined random as meaning anything that is not determined. This means he can indeed confidently state that everything is either defined or random, because that is how he has defined the terms. That makes it impossible to challenge his conclusions without changing the definitions. Hence the conflict.

Defining everything as A or not-A, determined or not-determined, is a logical truism, but I don't think it adds much to a discussion of the problem.

Of course it's impossible that, having re-read all the posts on the thread, I still don't properly understand Simen's position.

[dlawbailey]

Like God, Determinism is an undisprovable concept, which is why people cling to it. Actually, I don't quite understand why people cling to it except that it must give them some sense of certainty they need.

But to determinism (as commonly understood) every thinking person should be a "teapot agnostic".

1) At a universal scale, determinism is true - but trivial to the point it lacks meaning.

2) At the smallest scale determinism is untrue - quantum indeterminacy is a necessary feature of the Universe, but this is an almost ineffable ontological state.

3) At medium scales determinism mostly accounts for what we see.

4) The behavior of living things is almost necessarily indeterminate, but all that is flesh turns to dust and so we are back to determinism - trivial determinism - at the medium scale.

But although it is a convenient mental catch-all for what we see, determinism is an unpersuasive argument because it fails so often to predict what we see. This is because determinism as commonly understood is "single-cause", positing a single beginning point of causality from which all reality flows.

Single-cause determinism is easy to imagine and thus it has been the dominant theory through the religious age until today. Laid bare, it is a trivial, undisprovable argument and I am agnostic to it as I am agnostic to the idea that there is a perfect blue Spode teapot orbiting the planet Uranus. It might be true but (as Simen keeps admitting without seeing the significance) we'll never know and, in my view, it is insignificant.

Single-cause determinism has been threatened and, in my view, undermined by the discovery that the Gaussian statistics which should always describe a single-cause deterministic Universe do not work in many situations. This is the predictive failure of single-cause determinism and it shows up more and more. The main insight of Mandelbrot is that the Universe consistently fails to show either the regular geometric "smoothness" the early determinists (like Newton) believed it should or even the Gaussian "smoothness" the determinists of today feel rules the Universe.

Where Mandelbrot is not willing to go (because he's a mathematician) but I am willing to go is the observation that at some degree of fractal "roughness" single-cause determinism itself is undermined as a valid concept.

Why? Because chaos theory does not propose a bottom limit to sensitivity to initial condition. So to imagine the Universe as a single-cause, deterministic system, we would have to imagine that the position and momentum of a single quantized particle would dictate the entire structure of the Universe.

Imagine the complexity of the Big Bang and expansion of the Universe. In a deterministic model, the chaotic, young Universe would be so sensitive to the position and momentum of the tiniest particles that it is impossible to say when or why the Big Bang would ever occur. And at any time during its expansion, huge portions of the young, hyper-sensitive Universe could logically spin off into completely different realities with completely different physical regimes.

This would happen because, as we know, the position and momentum of these quantized particles to which the young Universe and all portions of it would be so sensitive are not simultaneously knowable. Therefore, ontologically, the initial condition of the Universe is "unkowable" to the Universe itself, even though (in the single-cause argument) the Universe and all complex, chaotic parts of it are totally dependent on that initial condition(s).

What does sensitivity to initial condition mean if the initial condition can never be defined?

What is the resolution?

The resolution is multiple-cause determinism - even quantum-cause determinism. Mandelbrot et al discovered for us that much of the shape of the Universe can be explained by iterations of simple mechanisms. One can easily and logically extend that idea to finer and finer grain. Indeed there is no logical reason why not.

To the question of free will, I think Mandelbrot could make his insights exactly because his huge brain is made up of a multiplicity of simple mechanisms - each a cause in itself - structured, working in concert, creating structure at a higher level in its thoughts. And we know that physical structure is the product of evolution. So too, logically, is the structure of thought.

So to the question of free will I have proposed that we look for the simplest examples of choice. Experiments, like the one on the fruit fly, show that even in the absence of relevant information, the actions of even the simplest animals are best described by a statistics that imply "self-causing" which is another way to say "choice".

Because "self-causing" requires indeterminacy in a Universe that is deterministic - at least at the scale which created the fly - I propose that the indeterminacy is created by simple measurement error. This measurement error causes the behavior of the fly to be indeterminate or, self-determining at a logical-mathematical level. It also causes the fly - and all beings that have nervous systems - to need to compare the instances of sensory information that form in their nervous systems to each other. This comparing creates yet greater measurement error but also creates a mechanism for self-correction. The real world - the world which they fail to measure correctly at any given moment - becomes an "attractor" for the increasingly complex, chaotic nervous systems as they grow AND as they develop through evolution. Nervous systems designed to self-correct more efficiently - those which are MORE self-referential - out-compete nervous systems that simply react.

And thus Mandelbrot is able to create a superior model of the Universe exactly because his amazing brain is made up of small, self-causing units - neurons - constantly comparing all his sensations and ideas to each other. And by doing this, they form structures that evolve toward reality. Mandelbrot himself calls the simulations he creates "forgeries". But they are memes which evolve towards an easier relationship with reality, just as the genes which created him came from an evolution towards maximum survival in the environment.

Thus, ironically, it is because our ancestors were wrong in their measurement of the real world that he is so right - but never quite right.

[DBT]

The trick is, who or what is the chooser? A chess program can 'assess' a new move and cross reference that move with all possible combinations and games in order to 'decide' the appropriate response - yet there is no choice maker in the program - only memory, the ability to process information, and the ability to select from a wide range of possibilities.
You're drawing a distinction between selection and choice, and I'm not convinced you've really shown that they're different. It's certainly misleading to talk about a 'chooser' as a who - since we're talking about the inside of someone's head here. I don't see, based on what you've said, why there would be any difficulty in having a 'chooser' system.

I wasn't trying to draw a distinction between selection and choice as the differences are too insignificant. And yes, there is a chooser system - the most dominant impulse takes precendence over lesser needs. If you have an urgent job that needs finishing immediately, but you are feeling extremely tired and all you really want is a hot cuppa and a nap - which takes precedence, and why?

I'm not trying to duck the issue, but I really don't see what your point is here.

The point is that there is no central decision maker - no entity that is seperate from the decision itself. The brain performs not only the underlying work, but in the process generates a stream of conscious perceptions, conscious emotions, conscious thought, and conscious decisions. That the conscious 'self' is making these decisions, is the illusion.


With respect, DBT, you haven't. We discussed Libet and other studies at great, great, length, and the results do not support your interpretation over others. The distinction seems clear to you because you already hold certain beliefs - that the brain is a deterministic system, that consciousness is a small and unimportant part of it that can't therefore be assumed to play a part in information processing. Without those a priori beliefs, there is nothing to support or recommend your interpretation above any other.

Sigh...Interpretation? Libets work, and all the follow up studies clearly show that brain activity that's specific to decision making does in fact precede a decision. It can be no other way, as information must first be processed from raw sensory imput before the information becomes conscious. You can't put the horse before the cart, and that is what you are trying to do.

''Every moment ( http://library.thinkquest.org/26618/en-2.1.1=The%20human%20nervous%20system.htm) of the day your nervous system is active. It exchanges millions of signals corresponding with feeling, thoughts and actions. A simple example of how important the nervous system is in your behavior is meeting a friend.
First, the visual information of your eyes is sent to your brain by nervous cells. There the information is interpreted and translated into a signal to take action. Finally the brain sends a command to your voice or to another action system like muscles or glands. For example, you may start walking towards him.''



I'll add that I don't agree that consciousness acts at a single 'point'.

I didn't imply it. So I'm not sure what you mean.



I thought we agreed that there was a psychological sense of self. Is that a controvertial claim? No entities are being added. I'm giving it a useful role, you're dismissing it as irrelevent, but we both have the same number of entities.

There is undoubtedly a psychological sense of self, and it is composed of the sum total of our life experiences (brain/organisms), it certainly does play an indispensible role, but it is not in control of the biological process - information input, processing, prioritizing....



Yes, it is the ultimate decision maker. And an information processor.

To clarify, it is _an_ information processor. There is certainly evidence for a central executive information processor directed by conscious thought and possesing capabilities that are not limited to the modality of particular cognitive subsystems, as Broadbent et al. clearly demonstrate in their attentional studies.* But that model is dependent on the modal subsystems doing most of the grunt work. And it is the ultimate decision maker, which is not to say it doesn't go with the results of the lower level processing it's given a fair amount of the time.

Perhaps you can give a brief description of the link between the brain's central executive function and the conscious personality? What is their relationship?



It's not? How so? How would behaviour be different if I were right?

There would be very little indecision, and no inner conflict. As will would have a single source, and a single purpose. It would be free rather than determined. (subject to causality)


Neural functions are not as localised as you're making out. Emotions are not contained entirely within the amygdala, regret certainly isn't. There isn't one neural subsystem for 'irrational behaviour', and another for 'habitual behaviour'.

It was just a token example. Surely there's no need to go through the whole spiel for each and every point?


Right, so depressed people's brains have a different chemical balance to normal people's brains. And if you change the chemical balance in the bits that are different, you may change their behaviour. How does this conflict with consciousness acting at multiple points? Again, I don't see your point here.

Consciousness does act at multiple points, that's what I've been saying all along. That is why we have inner division, a feeling of inner conflict as a result contradictory drives, and their decisions....

Damn, these posts have a habit of getting longer and longer. I'll try to get back to the other points. And I haven't had a chance to reply to dlawbailey yet.

[dlawbailey]

DBT - do you imagine things or not?

Can you imagine things that are not real or are you limited to "selecting" things that you've already encountered?

If you are limited to selecting, what if you are selecting among things that someone else has imagined?

What if you don't actually understand that thing you "selected" from someone else's imagination - meaning you get them wrong?

Now are you telling me that if you imagine something based on a MISconception of something someone else imagined, that this process was deterministic?

How does the flow of deterministic causality survive two imaginations and at least one mistake? Was there no new source of causality in all that or at least some indeterminacy?

[DBT]

DBT - do you imagine things or not?

The ability to imagine is a normal function of the human brain.


Can you imagine things that are not real or are you limited to "selecting" things that you've already encountered?

It is called imagination because we do possess the ability to form mental constructs that go beyond the normal scheme of things. But imagination does have its limits because the imagery is generated from the content of our consciousness. Thus a five year old cannot write a good science fiction novel until he/she has filled his/her head with all the right ingredients.


If you are limited to selecting, what if you are selecting among things that someone else has imagined?

Practically everything is built on preceding ideas, information, knowledge, beliefs...only new observations can add to that.


What if you don't actually understand that thing you "selected" from someone else's imagination - meaning you get them wrong?

Now are you telling me that if you imagine something based on a MISconception of something someone else imagined, that this process was deterministic?

Of course it's determined. Information may be misunderstood, misinterpreted, overlooked...how does that demonstrate free will?

[Togo]

(I've not covered every point, for reasons of brevity.)

If you have an urgent job that needs finishing immediately, but you are feeling extremely tired and all you really want is a hot cuppa and a nap - which takes precedence, and why?

I'll be consciously comparing scenarios and expectations connected with the urgency of the task and the desirability of sleep to the unconscious cues connected with the urgency of the task and the necessity of sleep. I don't think we disagree on what's being compared. The difference is more that you think that it's a deterministic process that compares signals from different sub-systems, while I think that a social simulator is making a choice based on weighted inputs - from the sub-systems, and from the conscious processor.

We don't disagree on how the information is gathered, or that some processing takes place beforehand. The difference appear to be these, and please correct me if I'm wrong, or if I leave any out:

1) You think decisions are made and finalised by sub-systems, and then they (crudely?) battle one against another in strength to determine a single outcome. I think that the subsystems provide information, but that this information is fed into a central processor where the decision is taken. The comparison is not simple, may involve changing the weights of various inputs, or even halting the decision to go back and process further information.

2) You believe this to be a deterministic process. I don't.

3) You believe conscioussness to be a non-operative byproduct of processing. I believe it to be an active part of processing. This isn't as big a split as it might seem, since we both believe the initial data gathering systems to be unconscious.

So at first blush it seems that we disgree about determinism, consciousness and the operation of a central processor.

A central processor was established experimentally by Broadbent et al in the 70s and 80s. At the risk of simplifying over a decade of cognitive research by many scientists, I'll summarise. (you can get a better summary from any decent psych textbook, looking under 'attention'.) They drew a distinction between modal, channel specific subsystems, and a modality-free, channel switching, central executive. The central executive processed things that were being attended to. They showed that attention increased processing power, broke free of channel-specific contraints that otherwise operated, and generally demonstrated the operation of a central processor that wasn't qualitatively or quantitatively similar to the sub-systems.

That's where I'm getting my central processor from. You're seeming to deny it exists at all, whether because you've got a different explanation, or because you're not familiar with cognitive modelling (all your examples have been from neuroanatomy of neuropharmacology).

It's entirely possible to challenge the existance of a central processor. The most usual method is to claim it's simply the tail end of the modal subsystems, and that as information flows along them the processing gets less and less like a subsystem and more and more like a general processor, an approach more in tune with neuroanatomy, and one that merely relocates and distributes the central processor rather than removing it.

I'm not familiar with any scientific model that simply rejects the idea of a central processor altogether.

Sigh...Interpretation? Libets work, and all the follow up studies clearly show that brain activity that's specific to decision making does in fact precede a decision. It can be no other way, as information must first be processed from raw sensory imput before the information becomes conscious.

Sounds reasonable. It's the interpretation you draw after that, that because the initial processing shows a default position, the decision must be made at that point and all the processing that happens afterwards is just noise. That's the bit I disagree with.

You can't put the horse before the cart, and that is what you are trying to do.

The horse pulls the cart, the cart steers the horse. There's no need to reverse the order. The processing comes up with a default position, and the consciousness accepts or rejects that position, or shifts attention or raids memory looking for alternatives. Most of the time you can predict a horse and cart's movement by watching the horse. That doesn't mean those reins aren't doing anything. It certainly doesn't mean the horse decides the destination.

Perhaps you can give a brief description of the link between the brain's central executive function and the conscious personality? What is their relationship?

Tricky. I'd say that the central executive function is largely made up of consciousness. Consciousness is the social simulator part, modelling the self in order to better predict consequences of actions. As such, you get an impression of yourself doing things. The central processor includes this function, and may be largely composed of this function.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'personality'. I'd describe it as something we ascribe to actors, based on their actions, and it would roughly correspond to a general social model of their future actions.

There would be very little indecision, and no inner conflict. As will would have a single source, and a single purpose. It would be free rather than determined. (subject to causality)

Why no inner conflict? Come to think of it, where does your inner conflict come from? You have rival impulses, one of which is stronger than the other, so why would all of them be represented in consciousness? Simulation takes effort, structure, calories. Why simulate to no purpose? My model involves a social simulator actively modelling alternative consequences from rival courses of action to arrive at a single decision. That would involve, yes, effort and calories going into actively contructing a sensation of competing choices. That seems much closer to personal experience than your model of the auditory loop proposing a course of action and getting outvoted by the visual cortex.

[Oxymoron]

I'd say that the central executive function is largely made up of consciousness.

All those denials of determinism, and yet all you have to offer is more determinism to replace them. "Executive" & "function" - both implied in determinism. You talk about "processes" - determinism. Implicitly you refer to structure - determinism. But in the end, you can't quite admit that you're a determinist. So you punt all that Woo-Woo indeterminism into the magic pixies of "consciousness", a concept so nebulous that even those who research it can't come up with a consistent definition.

[dlawbailey]

DBT - do you imagine things or not?

The ability to imagine is a normal function of the human brain.

It is called imagination because we do possess the ability to form mental constructs that go beyond the normal scheme of things.

By "normal scheme of things" I assume you mean "reality". Now, explain to me the determined relationship between reality and something which is "beyond" reality. Keep in mind that in a very few words you will be telling me that this state which is "beyond" reality is, in fact, simply a composite *of* reality, which kind of undoes its "beyond" character, if you ask me.


But imagination does have its limits because the imagery is generated from the content of our consciousness. Thus a five year old cannot write a good science fiction novel until he/she has filled his/her head with all the right ingredients.

Yes, I know that what is imagined is "generated from the content of our consciousness". That's actually my argument. What you're saying is that what is imagined is generated deterministically from reality, which doesn't make sense.

And are you telling me that children cannot write science fiction novels because they don