As The Ghost In The Machine thread is getting rather long, but no less interesting, I thought I’d start another one here, specifically on the issue of Libertarian Free Will.
And I drew some diagrams which seem to me to represent the issues. Here is a straightforward account of how I-as-organism make a decision as to whether to do, or not do, something (round up or round down when calculating the tip I leave in a restaurant, for instance).
My brain/body decision-making apparatus interrogates both itself, internally, and the external world, iteratively, eventually coming to a Yes or NO decision. If it outputs Yes, I do it; if it outputs No, I don’t.
Now let’s add a Libertarian Free Will Module (LFW) to the diagram:
There are other potential places to put the LFW module, but this is the place most often suggested – between the decision-to-act and the execution. It’s like an Upper House, or Revising Chamber (Senate, Lords, whatever) that takes the Recommendation from the brain, and either accepts it, or overturns it. If it accepts a Yes, or rejects a No, I do the thing; if it rejects a Yes or accepts a No, I don’t.
The big question that arises is: on the basis of what information or principle does LFW decide whether to accept or reject the Recommendation? What, in other words, is in the purple parallelogram below?
If the input is some uncaused quantum event, then we can say that the output from the LFW module is uncaused, but also unwilled. However, if the input is more data, then the output is caused and (arguably) willed. If it is a mixture, to the extent that it depends on data, it is willed, and to the extent that it depends on quantum events, it is uncaused, but there isn’t any partition of the output that is both willed and uncaused.
It seems to me.
Given that an LFW module is an attractive concept, as it appears to contain the “I” that we want take ownership of our decisions, it is a bit of a facer to have to accept that it makes no sense (and I honestly think it doesn’t, sadly). One response is to take the bleak view that we have “no free will”, merely the “illusion” of it – we think we have an LFW module, and it’s quite a healthy illusion to maintain, but in the end we have to accept that it is a useful fiction, but ultimately meaningless.
Another response is to take the “compatibilist” approach (I really don’t like the term, because it’s not so much that I think Free Will is “compatible” with not having an LFW module, so much as I think that the LFW module is not compatible with coherence, so that if we are going to consider Free Will at all, we need to consider it within a framework that omits the LFW module.
Which I think is perfectly straightforward.
It all depends, it seems to me, on what we are referring to when we use the word “I” (or “you”, or “he”, or “she” or even “it”, though I’m not sure my neutered Tom has FW.
If we say: “I” is the thing that sits inside the LFW, and outputs the decision, and if we moreover conclude, as I think we must, that the LFW is a nonsense, a married bachelor, a square circle, then is there anywhere else we can identify as “I”?
Yes, I think there is. I think Dennett essentially has it right. Instead of locating the “I” in an at best illusory LFW:
we keep things simple and locate the “I” within the organism itself:
And, as Dennett says, we can draw it rather small, and omit from it responsibility for collecting certain kinds of external data, or from generating certain kinds of internal data (for example, we generally hold someone “not responsible” if they are psychotic, attribution the internal data to their “illness” rather than “them”), or we can draw it large, in which case we accept a greater degree (or assign a greater degree, if we are talking about someone else) of moral responsibility for our actions.
In other words, as Dennett has it, defining the the self (what constitutes the “I”) is the very act of accepting moral responsiblity. The more responsibility we accept, the larger we draw the boundaries of our own “I”. The less we accept, the smaller “I” become. If I reject all moral responsibility for my actions, I no longer merit any freedom in society, and can have no grouse if you decide to lock me up in a secure institution lest the zombie Lizzie goes on a rampage doing whatever her inputs tell her to do.
It’s not Libertarian Free Will, but what I suggest we do when we accept ownership of our actions is to define ourselves as owners of the degrees of freedom offered by our capacity to make informed choices – informed both by external data, and by our own goals and capacities and values.
Which is far better than either an illusion or defining ourselves out of existence as free agents.
Irrelevant. This is a philosophical debate. The significant point is what the consequences are of LFW and BA. LFW is presumed to have access to ***everything***, and be capable of things any particular LFW is entirely incapable of, and – importantly – has access to absolute standards. This results in entirely different conceptualizations about what human existence is and what all of those map terms are symbolic representations of.
WJM,
Do the other members of the ape family have LFW? They certainly seem capable of making decisions, and distinguishing ‘good’ from ‘bad’ behavior.
It’s far from irrelevant to me, William. If I had evidence that humans had access to information not “locally available” that would be cool.
Or to “absolute standards” – except that the problem there would be how to determine that they were “absolute”.
So how do you propose we distinguish between decisions that we have made using the regular old local system, and decisions we made using the LFW?
And is the LFW reliable?
Oh wait: is that a typo, William, or what do you mean by “LFW is presumed to have access to ***everything***, and be capable of things any particular LFW is entirely incapable of”?
Should that second “LFW” be “BA”?
And by “BA” do you mean what I am calling the brain/body decision-making module?
“Improve on” would mean “be able to compare against, and evaluate by, absolute standards” – something definitionally excluded from the materialist perspective.
LFW is the only view through which your question, or any answer, has any significant value or meaning. It is necessary – as necessary as the LNC. It is that which things are considered, argued, discussed and proved through and by; it cannot itself be proven or evidenced.
It is necessary, whether one knows it or not.
William asserts,
The problem with this argument is that, by William’s definition, the biological automaton is incapable of understanding the immaterial because it is “physically programmed not to be able to understand” (these are Williams’ words).
So how does William know anything about this immaterial realm? How do a biological organism and this immaterial libertarian free will exchange “knowledge” that the other doesn’t have? What is the mechanism?
This is one of the issues taken up in beginning philosophy courses. It is also an issue of epistemology in science.
Yet again we are seeing what comes of attempting to do “philosophy” as a substitute for actually interacting with the physical universe. Even if there is a mechanism of exchange between William’s “immaterial libertarian free will” and his “biological automaton,” what possible knowledge would such an ignorant biological automaton ever hope to share with its “libertarian free will?” And why would that “libertarian free will” ever transfer instructions to that automaton telling it to avoid studying the universe around it?
William doesn’t recognize the problem because he lives only inside his head. He has not taken note of the real, physical universe. It appears that William is a solipsist but doesn’t know it because it never occurred to him that there is a physical universe that can be studied and understood.
This looks too much like amateurish attempts at “philosophical” erudition that one might expect of a young and extremely inexperienced student.
Engaging in pseudo-philosophy is not a substitute for real learning; it is simply an excuse for avoiding doing something that takes time and effort and requires one to check one’s beliefs against reality.
William says,
He actually said that.
How could someone who is completely ignorant of the physical universe know what is irrelevant? William is just a kid getting attention from jerking people around.
I see no reason to accept this assertion, and no argument to back it up.
As far as I can tell, you have persuaded yourself that “under materialism” there can be no models.
You might not know that’s what you think, but it is, whether you know it or not 😉
You think that materialism offers no mechanism or justification for our habit of parsing the world into things with properties, well above the level of the physical interactions that underlie those things and properties and make them possible.
I hope, for once, that you disagree with this paraphrase of your position – that you do in fact think that materialism offers mechanisms and justification for parsing the world into things with properties.
But I’ll be interested in your response either way 🙂
Yes, I did find that rather extraordinary. I do wish he’d attempt to tackle the issue of how the LBW communicates with the brain/body decision-maker/BA, and of course, how we know which of our decisions come from one, and which from the other. Does the LBW sometimes fail to overturn the output of the BA? In which case, is it the fault of the LBW or of the BA?
Or neither?
William,
I’ve already shown that “autonomous access to an absolute arbiter” (AA2AA) is unnecessary.
Are you hoping that you can will your assertion into truth by repeating it endlessly while ignoring all counterarguments?
Yes, that was nicely done.
I do wish William would actually address these points instead of handwaving them away as “irrelevant” or “stolen concepts” or “meaningless under materialism anyway”.
There’s a hole in his argument a mile wide. He may be able to fill it, but he won’t until he recognises that it’s there.
William,
That’s as silly as saying:
Computations can be wrong, William, even if they don’t violate the laws of physics.
Computations that attempt to predict or anticipate the future will always be wrong. Sometimes in minor ways and often in major ways, but prediction and anticipation is what brains do.
Prediction is also an emergent property of evolution.
Whether or not you can demonstrate that what you are asserting exists actually does exist is irrelevant? I would suggest that if you can’t support your claim that it exists, it is irrelevant.
Please answer my original question: Do you have any evidence that this immaterial, magical thing actually exists, or is that impossible to demonstrate even in principle?
I can destroy this whole model in one simple sentence.
“Present your model for making a decision about a future event.”
For example, “Where should I go eat dinner next Thursday?”. Your model does not work. I must make a decision to initiate another decision, in the future. This is impossible without LFW. Of course you will not see this, but there is none so blind as he who will not see. ( operative word in the last sentence is “will”).
BTW – This is a major difference between humans and animals. Animals do not make decisions about hypotheticals.
JDH:
Hi JDH,
Can you explain why you think that is impossible without libertarian free will?
Hi, JDH, and welcome to TSZ!
Well, all decisions regarding actions are decisions about future events. But I think you are absolutely correct, that it is a probably unique, and certainly a characteristic, feature of human thought that we are able to be what I call “free from immediacy”. Indeed I’d say that that’s the freedom that is really worth having, and may even be, as you imply, what people have in mind when they talk about “free will”.
However, I disagree that a LFW module is required for this to work. In fact, it’s not clear to me how such a module, at least as described by William, could work. But that’s not the point – you ask me to present my model for making decisions about the [non-immediate] future.
I guess the first thing to point out is that to a neuroscientist your challenge is a little surprising. As I pont out above, all decisions about actions are decisions about future events. There’s no point in deciding to do something after you’ve already done it! (Although regret is another phenomenon you might justifiably ask a neuroscientist to explain).
But essentially, the model works like this: there is looping neural architecture by which signals sent to motor cortex are relayed back into the decision-making process, at sub-execution threshold. So when we envisage a future action, we actually use the parts of our brains that we would use if performing that action, and those in turn activate parts of the brain that would be activated by the likely consequences of that action. The brain is, indeed, a simulator, and the results of simulated actions are fed back into the decision-making process.
And if those simulated consequences are adverse, that program is inhibited, wherease if they are positive, that programe receives further exitatory input. This will remain at sub-execution threshold, but, by Hebb’s rule, in which “what fires together, wires together”, may become hard-wired so that when Thursday comes, the appropriate motor program is triggered.
Hugely over-simplified, but that’s the model!
Key words in that last sentence “hugely oversimplified”. Anyone who doesn’t consider real world cases can come up with a conceptual model, where naïve conceptual models fall apart is in real world examples.
First of all I am not talking about immediately observable future events. Animals make immediately observable decisions, “If I continue to go straight I will run into the tree.” I am talking about the world of abstract ideas which don’t currently exist. Two humans can plan to have lunch next year at an undisclosed location. They can agree to discuss a book which has not been published as of yet. When you enter the abstract world of things which currently do not exist, your model falls apart. There are not enough “states” to feed back into the loops to handle all the endless possibilities of those who can imagine things that do not currently exist.
JDH,
That’s an assertion. For your argument to be successful, you need to show us that it is true.
How many distinct states do you think that a human brain can assume? How many distinct scenarios can be imagined by a typical person?
Well, you asked me to present my model. It’s based on “real world cases”, and successfully tested hypotheses. The neuroscience of decision-making is my research area.
I disagree, and I was talking about things “which currently do not exist”. The neuroscience of memory and imagination (“forward-modelling”) is really quite advanced. You may not like the model, but the models exist, and if you want to demonstrate that they fall apart, you’d have to say exactly how. For example what is now well-established is that when we imagine something, or remember something we tend to use the same brain areas that we use when we see them or do them in the present.
Could you explain this point in more detail? I am not following you. Imagination and memory is largely serial, rather than parallel. We do not simultaneously remember everything that we can remember, nor simultaneously imagine everything we can imagine.
That’s why I like the analogy of the Fridge Light. The Fridge Light only comes on when we open the door, but we only ever see the light when the fridge door is open. So it’s as though it were on all the time. The fact that we can attend to anything, present, past, future whenever we need to creates the impression that all those thoughts are present all the time, we just pick the one we want to pay attention to. But all the evidence (and logic) suggests that when we think of something (past, present, future) we create/recreate the patterns associated with those thoughts “on the fly”.
Memory and imagination are a repertoire rather than a store.
Lizzie,
Lizzie,
Surely there must be some element of storage? Must there not be some sort of cue to begin the recreation process?
And how this is different to the reaction of Pavlov´s dog to the bell?
According to you in what differs a repertoire and a store?
A repertoire is a set of things you can do. A store is a place with stuff in it.
Yes, lots. I just think that it’s worth getting rid of the idea that memory is a kind of hard-drive with documents in it that can be “read”, and instead, a repertoire of neural cascades that can be initiated.
The “storage” part lies in the cascade of connections activated by experience, and, thereby, by Hebb’s rule, more likely to cascade again, given a similar trigger. So that’s real “writing” in the form of strengthened synapses (physically, proteins expressed in response to firing), but what is “written” is more like going over a tracing in blacker pencil, than writing a memo, and what happens when the memory is “read” is that the blackened cascade is initiated, rather than a memo being screened on some internal Notepad.
I think creationists hang on to the computer model because they know it is insufficient to explain human behavior.
It’s a straw man. Or a tin man.
Lizzie,
Here is what I have a problem with Lizzie. The sentences above are fraught with words which express what seems to be LFW – “we just pick”, “we want”, “we think”, “we create/recreate”.
So, I challenge you to answer the following questions limiting yourself to descriptions which fit into a materialist view.
1. Reword the above paragraph so it reads as a list of processes limited to
a) particles responding to one of the “four/three” observed natural forces ( gravity, (electromagnetism, weak nuclear – or electro-weak if you want to acknowledge Weinberg and Salaam), strong nuclear ).
b) random or pseudo-random events ( at either the macro or quantum mechanical level )
2. Explain why humans can do all the things which take the observed creation of additional information – art, mathematics, creation of stories, proving of geometry theorems, design of new artifacts with no natural counterpart – despite the fact that current informational theories suggest you can’t create new information when limited to processes as above.
3. Explain how lying works.
4. Explain how discovery of a new mathematical concept works.
5. Explain how creation of a work of fiction works.
6. Explain why no non-human animal has “evolved” which can do any of the above.
I will bet that you can’t do it. All you can do is rely on the vague obfuscation “emergent”. That is in general what people do when they can’t explain something. Call it by some term, and the problem goes away. Consciousness is “emergent”. Abstract language is “emergent”. Call the things that are evidence of the soul “emergent” or hide them in a model of unexplained “internal sources”.
What you seem to do, and most materialists/compatibilists( sp? I think it’s right but the spell checker does not like it ) seem to do, is sweep all the evidence that should change your mind under a great big rug, and then intellectually dishonestly say there is no evidence for the soul – no reason to believe in anything beyond the physical. Of course you don’t see any evidence when you have just crammed all the evidence underneath the carpet.
The only way I see your model working is that the brain is continually doing a serialized loop over a set of associated states – somehow allowing one random pattern to become dominant. I don’t see how this fits into any of the described functions above that we take for granted. In my mind making the statement “I pick”, “I choose”, or “I think” is much more logically explained by the input of something immaterial.
keiths,
Yes, but a computer can not LIE. It is very evident that humans can.
What was the book where you read that “materialism” = reductionism? Did you keep the receipt?
JDH,
Sure it can: Poker Bots Learn to Bluff
Regarding other things you think are out of the reach of “observed natural forces”:
Robot Scientist Becomes First Machine to Discover New Scientific Knowledge
and:
Computers as Authors? Literary Luddites Unite!
This is an interesting point. Actually, my computer frequently tells me untruths but I do not accuse it of lying, because there is no intention on its part to deceive (I assume….)
There is good evidence that the ability to lie and the ability to empathise are quite closely related, specifically to what is called Theory of Mind capacity (ToM) – the ability to form the theory that other people (or entities) have minds. Chimps have traces of it, and it develops in children over the first few years of life.
Except that when I refer to “we”, or rather “I”, I am not referring to my “LFW” – I am referring to Lizzie-as-organism. I call myself “I” to denote that the organism I am referring to is the one doing the talking.
No. My entire point is that organisms and their behaviour are far better modelled as choice-capable objects than as fundamental forces particles. A system has properties not possessed by its parts. If you atomised me, I would not exist, even though not a single particle of me had been destroyed.
Well, I think those theories are simply wrong. I think lots of processes create information.
It’s probably related to ToM capacity (see above) – simulating what is known, or knowable, by another person, and exploiting their partial knowledge for persona gain. Non-dominant chimps carry out their adultery literally behind the back of the dominant male.
Well, that’s a big subject, and I am not an expert in this area, but my own working model is that if..then relationships derive from the forward models we have evolved to navigate our environment successfully.
Imagination is closely related to memory. Both are mental simulations of events.
Chimps can do some of it, and they of course are our closest relatives.
Indeed these things are emergent. But it’s not an obfuscation, it’s a key concept.
It’s not that I see no evidence for “soul” or “LFW” it’s that I find it incoherent (see the OP). I have a concept of the “soul” but it is an emergent thing, not an extra logic gate with unknown and immaterial resources placed between the output of my material decision-making apparatus and my actions.
Apart from the word “random”, that’s exactly it. But I’m not sure what the word “random” is doing there – can you explain?
Well, can you explain how such immaterial input would work?
Thanks for the questions btw 🙂
All good ones, I think.
keiths,
If you can not tell the difference between a deliberate deception, and the results of a computer algorithm which “learns” to calculate odds, then you are truly deceived. The computer was programmed by a human to optimize something, it was designed by a human being to have the ability to form a feedback loop which went toward this goal.
The computer is not “lying”. It is just optimizing it’s strategy to fulfill its designed goal.
You are not “lying” either. All you are doing is letting your confirmation bias state things which are not really true.
But why should a similar feedback loop not exist in human beings?
And why is that not a good description of what we do when we lie?
Well, I agree that sometimes people are accused of lying, when in fact they are merely stating what they erroneously believe to be true. Hence the rule against accusing people of lying on this site: “assume other posters are posting in good faith”.
But certainly people can and do deliberately mislead each other, knowing that what they are saying is untrue.
ETA: I just realised this was to keiths – oh, well, I’ll leave my response!
JDH,
Here is a simple challenge to JDH using a simple system made up of only one kind of atom. Explain all the properties of lead using just the four fundamental forces of physics.
It appears that JDH has little or no conception of emergent properties. ID/creationists especially hate that concept.
The properties of complex systems are not described in terms of the four fundamental forces of physics. Even the properties of compounds as simple as NaCl are not the properties of Na or Cl.
This demand to express the properties and behaviors of complex systems in terms of step-by-step, atom-by-atom, molecule-by-molecule fundamental forces is a common misunderstanding of basic physics, chemistry, and biology.
JDH,
The issue isn’t whether the computer (or its program) were designed. You presumably believe that human beings were designed, don’t you?
The question is whether computers — material objects operating according to the laws of physics — can write fiction, do science, bluff, etc. I’ve given you evidence that they can.
I’ll echo Lizzie’s question. Don’t you think that is what humans are doing when they lie? Why else would they lie, if not to achieve some goal?
Your incredulity may stem from a belief that the fundamental laws of physics are too simple to form the foundation of complex behaviors such as bluffing, scientific discovery, and creative writing. That is a mistake. Extremely simple rules can give rise to systems of staggering complexity.
Are you familiar with the Mandelbrot set and the game of Life? In both cases the rules are simple enough to be stated on a Post-It note, yet the emergent complexity is mind-blowing.
Mike Elzinga,
Mike Elzinga – Yes all the properties of lead come from those four fundamental forces.
1. It is a metal so that when it forms a crystal, the orbits of the electrons are shared throughout the crystal so it is a conductor of electricity ( although not as good as elements like copper or silver ).
2. It has a density determined by being rather late in the periodic table.
3. It has a stable nucleus and is not radioactive.
…
All of these properties come about because of known ramifications of the four fundamental forces. Even the example you bring up Na and Cl is easy to understand in light of simple chemistry. The fact that an alkali metal (sodium) easily forms an ionic compound with a halogen (chlorine) is a simple fact of a electronegative electron receptor ( chlorine) willing to accept an electron that sodium wants to give. This is all basic stuff and has nothing to do with “emergent” properties.
The reason that intelligent design people do not like the term emergent is because it is a nonsense term. It’s an obfuscation. You have no idea how consciousness happens. When you say it is “emergent”, you are not bringing forth any new data. You are covering up your ignorance with dishonest words.
keiths,
Keiths, Yes I am familiar with both the Mandelbrot set and the game of life. The “properties” of these are not “emergent”. They simply follow from iteration. ( How about SpiroGraph. That was a really neat thing that used simple rules ( the ratio of gears ) and iteration to create lovely images. But it was not “emergence”.
There certainly are things where the system is much greater than the sum of its parts. But most of these are understandable in terms of the synergy of multiple parts which together solve a problem which can not be solved by any one of them individually. For example an axle combined with a wheel allows a stable platform ( the car body ) to travel smoothly down a road.
This is different how the term is used in behavioral science. In behavioral science it is a guess that is used to cover up the fact that the materialist presuppositions disallow the concept of consciousness, LFW, and intelligence. It is not used to elucidate new concepts, but to hide the state of ignorance. It is an information hiding term, not an explaining term. And it deceives people into thinking they have a reasonable argument, when they have none. That is why I don’t like the term “emergent”.
Lizzie,
Lizzie,
I don’t expect us to get to every question the other person raises – that’s just how the internet goes – but I will try to answer the interesting points.
1. I don’t understand what you mean by a “choice-capable object”. That sure sounds like LFW to me. We either can make choices or we can’t. The second you allow any choice at all, you have admitted that LFW is true.
2. Name any natural process that creates information. All natural processes on the average destroy information. The reason for this is that is information is dependent on a specification. The reason the eight letter phrase “I Love You” has so much more information than “A Feiw Sqr” is because of a specification that makes one a message of care, and the other gibberish. Any purely natural process will in general move things from away from a specification. This is a statement which is closely tied to the same reason the 2nd law of Thermodynamics works. The specification has information in it because it arranges things in a highly non-random way. Randomness is the opposite of information.
This is not lying, this is challenging. The chimp sees what he wants and finds a way to get it when the dominant male is not looking. In order to lie you first must believe that something is true. I see no indication that the chimp who does this thinks that in general as a purely moral consideration he shouldn’t sneakily have sex when the dominant male wants all the sex for himself.
Apologies in advance for the sarcasm – which I generally do not like – but is sometimes called for.
I must have missed it. Which Journal published the article about the chimps who do any of “art, mathematics, creation of stories, proving of geometry theorems, design of new artifacts with no natural counterpart”, I must have missed that one.
Because if we rule out LFW, we are only left with natural processes. These can only be either random ( which simply means that the next value does not depend on the previous values ) or ( contingent – which means that the next value is determined by the preceding values ). Without LFW those are your only choices. Since you seem to indicate that there is some loop going on, the next dominant though must be chosen at random. ( This merely means the choice is undirected, it does not mean that all thoughts have equal probability of occurring, think of a roulette wheel where some of the numbers are repeated — the repeated numbers come up more often, but the process is still random.) There is no way for us to “choose” what we reinforce and remember. Its really hard to talk about this stuff, because all our language acknowledges that we are quite able to make choices – that we are not automatons. But if you rule out LFW, you have no way left to give any direction to your processes – all must happen in an unguided way by random events.
Alas I can’t. But I don’t have to be able to explain how something works if I stipulate that a greater intelligence is responsible. Here is the difference between our two ways of looking at things.
1. I am confronted by the fact that people appear to make choices. This certainly does not square with natural processes that are only random or contingent. I can account for this because I believe there is a God who has given us a soul that is able to take our thoughts and channel them into real physical actions. Because I have a soul which was granted to me by God, I am able to be a conduit for immaterial things ( ideas, concepts, codes, abstract statements ) to have a physical effect on the world. I don’t understand how God creates a being with a free will — a being that can disobey him. I certainly can not create a computer program that does not do what it is programmed to do. But the point is that I believe in God who is capable of creating situations I can’t understand.
2. You seem to believe only in the material. There is no God in your worldview that can do the things that are not explained by natural causes. Thus you have to explain how some non-directed processes can create information and appear to be people making choices. Merely labeling something by the term “emergent” does not help matters. No amount of teasing together purely material processes can make people that make choices, sign contracts, write books, or prove theorems.
I admit, I believe some things which are hard to believe. You OTOH believe some things which can not possibly be true.
JDH,
Calling consciousness ’emergent’ isn’t dishonest unless the claimant offers emergence as a complete explanation. When I personally say that consciousness is emergent, I simply mean that a single neuron in a Petri dish is probably not conscious, whereas a normal human brain is. Consciousness emerges somewhere in between those two extremes, though I can’t tell you exactly where or why.
I think you’re correct that materialists don’t know how consciousness (in the sense of subjective experience) happens, but neither do non-materialists.
JDH,
So you are one of these ID/creationists that believe that the laws of physics cease at some level of complexity and intelligence has to step in and get the job done. I am not surprised. Your understanding of the properties of materials has not got out of the Middle Ages,
How do you explain the fact that properties of molecular assemblies are temperature dependent? How do you account for properties that emerge due to different temperatures as well as from interactions with a surrounding environment?
By the way; you didn’t even come close to enumerating the properties of lead. That is a simple system consisting of only one kind of atom; and it has hundreds of properties that are not the properties of those atoms. It has properties that are temperature dependent. Do you know what temperature is; I mean really know?
Lead is a simple enough system in which, in hindsight, emergent properties can be linked to binding energies and the sharing of electrons among atoms and the interactions of those electrons with lattice sites.
You can’t predict the properties of large collections of lead atoms from the properties of a single atom of lead. You wouldn’t even know about those properties if you had not encountered large collections of lead atoms.
Lead is a superconductor. Where in the properties of a lead atom is the property of superconductivity?
I suspect you don’t understand what emergent properties are. You don’t defend your claim by being ignorant of the concept.
You might be surprised at what I and other scientists know about consciousness.
Are you familiar with hypothermia and hyperthermia? You obviously didn’t read the previous comments on that; so I won’t bother to repeat them. But you should consider the experiment and then explain why you think consciousness is not a natural phenomenon that emerges out of the behavior of a complex network of complex molecules immersed in a heat bath.
You probably don’t know that the temperature range between hypothermia and hyperthermia tells us a great deal about the energies that are involved.
Knowing those energies tells us what a non-material entity would have to do to push ions and electrons around. It would violate the laws of physics and we would see it instantly.
Do you know what an action potential is? Do you know how big it is?
Do you know how sensitive CAT scans are and how sensitive fMRI scans are?
Did you know that there are off-the-shelf instruments that can measure picovolts?
Do you know how areas of the brain are mapped and correlated between activity and sensations?
It depends on your definition of “emergence”, I suppose. My point is that systems based on extremely simple rules can exhibit complex and unanticipated behavior. It is thus not surprising to me that computers can prove theorems, write music, bluff at poker, etc., despite being based on the simple rules of Boolean algebra.
Earlier in our discussion, you seemed to think that all of these things should be impossible for computers to do. Now you know that computers have already done all of them. You’ve been seriously underestimating the power of mechanism.
SpiroGraph isn’t iterative in the same sense as the others, and SpiroGraph figures, being periodic, are far less complex.
Which is exactly what the networks of transistors known as ‘computers’ do, as well as the networks of neurons known as ‘brains’. Individual transistors can’t spell-check, and individual neurons can’t drive automobiles.
Libertarian free will is disallowed not because of materialist assumptions, but because the concept of LFW is logically incoherent, even for a non-materialist. The OP explains this, as do many of the comments.
Consciousness (as in subjective experience) is a mystery, but it’s a mystery for both materialists and non-materialists.
Intelligence is clearly within the reach of mechanical systems, unless you deliberately set out to define it in a way that excludes them.
Definitely not. LFW is logically incoherent. It cannot exist (even if materialism is false) and it therefore cannot be the basis of our choices.
Also, to choose is merely to consider a number of alternatives and to select from them. Why do you think that a purely physical system can’t do this?
Mike Elzinga,
Mike, I hate to respond to you in such a harsh manner, but you really should not go about labeling someone as a idiot as far as science is concerned
without first doing some research.
What kind of person uses as a science test to tell someone else to “list the properties of lead”. This is not a reasonable inquiry. I humored you and listed a few. And you claim that since I did not list the fact that the properties are temperature dependent is reason to dismiss my scientific acumen. You are not worth debating with Mike. When I see evidence that you are not just a name caller I will respond to you. Not before that though. It makes me sad to see immature arrogance on display. Look up a reference to pearls and swine if you want a better understanding of my attitude towards your postings.
Convincing reply!
…Please honour us with answers to Dr Elzinga’s questions.
I don’t know and it’s irrelevant to the point.
I don’t propose that there is a way to distinguish between the two. I’m debating the necessary ramifications of the two premises, not whether or not either of the premises can be evidenced.
IF LFW is what is premised, then it is necessarily fundamentally different from BA as premised, so each leads to fundamentally different kinds of consequences philosophically. So, when under the materialistic premise of the BA (biological automaton), when they talk about “will” or “choice” or “I” or “morality”, etc., they are employing a fundamental frame of reference that is entirely different from that of the LFW perspective.
Right, it’s a typo, the second LFW should be BA, BA is biological automaton – free will under materialism as a computation of physics (as I have defined above).
Keiths’ response is, as usual, full of stolen concepts:
While I agree with this, the problem is that materialism offers no standard for this set-up, because how would one arbit “good’ and “bad” consequences of a premise, if there is nothing but subjective perspectives? All arguments must assume an absolute standard that we assume everyone has the capacity to access, or else keith’s set-up has no meaningful value. If, under materialism, I consider it a “bad” ramification that I would have to agree with materialists, then without any superceding standard to arbit by, that is a good enough reason to reject the keith’s entire argument.
But, keith is depending on the assumption that both he and are are regulating our arguments to the same absolute standard of “good” and “bad”, and the same absolute standard of logic as arbiter. If keith is not making this assumption, then he is simply **hoping** that whatever concoction of words he flings at me will just happen to “stick” to my particular arrangement.
Once again, you stolen concepts derail you. The difference between materialism and LFW is that, under LFW, “what is true and false” are not taken as subjective inventions of the computation of physics. Therefore, a “judgement” of “what is true and false” under materialism is an entirely different thing than such a judgement under LFW. Under materialism, the physics computation just outputs whatever it happens to output as “what is true and false”; under LFW, an autonomous agency is attempting to arbit what is actually true and false, and is working with other autonomous agencies to figure out such truths.
You can say that materialists do the same thing, but that is only because they are not actually operating under materialists premises; if they were, there is no reason to “figure out” what is true; there are only practical reasons to get the other side to agree with your position. “True” and “False” have no intrinsic meaning under materialism, they’re just arbitrary positions you are trying to get others to agree with.
Mistaken by what standard? Imperfect by what standard? There’s no such thing as “imperfect faculties of reason and argumentation” under materialism – you are again stealing a concept here. Under materialism, reason and logic are only whatever any individual BA says it is – nothing more or less. If one admits the ramifications of materialism, there is no room for the idea of “perfect” reason or logic, or “being mistaken” about anything, and certainly not philosphical concepts. You just betrayed your **actual** assumption of a non-materialist perspective.
You cannot claim that my argument employs “imperfect” or “faulty” reason or logic under materialism, because there is no absolute standard by which to make such a determination. Thus, your claims are merely rhetorical in nature – a maple leaf telling a fig leaf that it has “imperfect shape”. According to what? That is all your argument is, and my argument is, under materialism – two different physiological attributes generated by physics. Nothing more or less. Neither can be “imperfect” or “faulty” or “mistaken” in any meaningful sense.
By assuming the contrary of AA2AA, we have lost absolutely nothing in logical terms. It was not a necessary assumption.
Unfortunately, your entire argument utilized argumentative forms and premises you have no right to under materialism, which goes back to what I’ve already said – nor meaningful argument can be made without assuming the principles of the LFW system that materialism denies.
keiths,
Your claim that “computations can be wrong” relies upon something outside of the computation being able to judge that the computation is wrong according to some standard outside of the computation itself.
You are relying, once again, upon a stolen concept – that there are entities outside of the computation and standards outside of the computation.
This is also the reason why Liz (and most materialists) refuse the challenge of expressing their arguments in the language of materialism and insist on the use of LFW terminology; it will quickly demonstrate the absurdity of their position when they cannot refer to anything outside of, or fundamentally different than, the computation of physics as who and what they are, and as the basis for everything they say, believe and argue.