Monkey heads?

(thanks (.)(.)(.)(.)(.)(.), thanks for the continuation of the saga in the form of this thread too)


Haha I didnt mean you cant have will! I meant, you, the person you call you, cannot have will. As in own it, have it alone, have it being yours and yours alone.

If will is to want, to desire, to think and to act, etc, it is a phenomenon but it not your phenomenon. I tried to isolate the system to make it mostly yours in development (in earlier example) but that is a not well defined concept either (ie isolation) (ultimately i am confident i can involve even quantum vacuum somewhat far from what you call your body even in the influence of what you call you! So you are never isolated for indefinite amounts of time but maybe for brief periods you can be). So lets try to define it then better in future posts. We can do that by studying simpler physical systems than a human brain.

Will can exist but its not your will and its not free locally. Its the will of cosmos and the product of the laws of nature. Only the universe in totality can have will and own it completely. And then the question of whether it is free becomes a question of whether it has any choice or not. Deterministic means no choice. The alternative that we have now (under present QM say) is free but free only for the universe in totality (not individuals) in the sense that it fully is the product of that universe (its interactions etc its own luck even) and nobody else, provided that for this universe to exist with these laws given, the only thing that defines them and its initial states is consistency itself (ie not a multiverse theory). If there is alternative and something (multiverse super theory) produces that universe (ours) the way it is with these laws and there is no self consistency issue to lock things the way they are, then that universe (ours) is not free, it depends on what designs it to be that way (and the laws that evolve it) but assuming it is not deterministic it owns that future development and the outcome of that development (like the very isolated system in a sense) if sufficiently separated from interacting with the mutliverse, past the first era of its "creation". It is the result of these laws and the statistical nature of its essential "decision" mechanism that is the interaction itself (or what you can call measurement). Interactions give you the phenomena and one of them emerging is what you call will at a local level (ie for animals). (you can also say life is the will of this galaxy too and then ask if it is really its own isolated will? Probably not the way i see things, you still need all the universe within causal influence etc ie extragalactic cosmic rays, microwave background radiation, light from other galaxies, neutrinos , see what mean ie all of universe owning the will etc, life is its will not that of earth alone etc).


Why dont we try to understand what a thought is, what consciousness is and then when we recognize its not different than a detector that does one thing if it detects a certain input and another if it doesnt (only imagine that in trillions of directions to match the complexity that is a human thought) then we will have our answers.

Basically humans are not something special (i mean they are as final local products of complexity but not really at a fundamental physics level). They are machines in reality of substantial complexity and chemical foundation, thats all.

I think there is the output of the laws of large numbers and systems that makes humans so intricate and chaotic . Simpler systems are intelligent but not so interesting. In the end its just interactions that when they get complex enough and involve many systems you synthesize emergent concepts such as thoughts, desires, theorems lol, etc. Some of those emergent thoughts can be universal too, independent of the entity that produced them (ie math, physics, chemistry etc).


-----------
PS: Non free will signature in development. 2+2 community, BruceZ, 2+2 leaders etc, all with your choices give back BruceZ and others you "chase" away to this discussion and the ones that will follow. We are all in this together.

I think you might be thinking (or think that) this will exists as some sort of platonic form. It is just a denotation of activities that are common in people. Kind of like hiking. Certainly you wouldn't say that Brian can't go for his own hike, would you?

You wouldn't claim that the cosmos goes for hikes either, I presume. Or even the trail. It doesn't seem to follow that an object in the cosmos going for a walk or thinking about something indicates that the cosmos will buy some cosmos-sized hiking boots. Sure, there are interactions, I change through time, etc.

Well the thing is to see who decides to do something. The state you happen to be at and the input from the universe and the side interactions that senses cant capture but affect the internal system and therefore eventually brain, internal quantum interactions that statistically can affect macromolecules eventually or even simpler molecules that added up take you to a decision point because some input function/variable reached a critical level, all those things and more decide it.

I mean why cant you imagine cosmic rays penetrating the body and hitting neurons or destroying DNA in some place arent also participating in the decision? All they need is to participate once to alter the entire sequence of thoughts and suddenly instead of thinking about what to eat you are thinking of a girl or that you have a headache etc. I mean what took me to this moment to type this. The fact that its halftime in a soccer match i am listening to from Greece lol. So who decided for me to start posting at that moment, the fact the referee didnt hold 1 more min extra time and that nothing major had happened in the news to make a news break etc. All those things decided for me to post now and not do something else. What prompted you to post now and not 35 min later during which i would be listening to second half etc...

So yes mostly you decide what to do based on prior states but the prior states are defined by all that has happened before and that is the universe. You decide because thats what comes next at the top. But who takes it at the top of the list?

See it that way too if a person had better family he wouldnt be a killer now. What if he had won the lottery? What if he had been loved and given the chances to succeed and not hate society etc. I mean who decides to kill? The universe does. But we have to treat it as the responsibility is with the last guy in the sequence because that introduces an extra defense. So we have affected all those that dont kill when they get mad now havent we? Society decides it for them, the fear to go to prison or lose something of value if they did or their ethics stops them etc.


What is a human but a complex computer. So define me as a single detector that does or not something based on some input (only trillion times that over). Now who decides? The detector decides based on the input so its both input and detector.

How shall we define my will to avoid the universe? Its not only free its not even mine. Can you see it as yours?


----------------
Non free will signature in development. 2+2 community, BruceZ, 2+2 leaders etc, all with your choices give back BruceZ and others you "chase" away to this discussion and the ones that will follow. We are all in this together.

I believe that I can summarize that as "no man is an island" and that no man is the architect of his fortune. I agree. Appius Claudius Caecus would take issue with the second bit.

If the cosmic ray causes me (in conjunction with all the other causes) to get a yucky tumor, then it will be my tumor. The cosmic ray is not cancer. It does not experience cancer. The cancer will be my cancer.

So, yes, my will (keeping in mind that it is just a nice category of some aspect of things that I do) is my own, just as the cancer is mine.

(Can we stop giving me cancer now?)

I usually try to keep close enough to the available ingredients. Substitutions that are possible based on what I can glean from the actual menu items. Strangely, they nearly always misunderstand as some strange request for extra spittle.

Oh but its so much more than out of anyone's path cancer. The very vacuum interacts with your body even. Neutrinos strike and change atoms, in fact the entire thing is super heavy in such events. Cancer is not what i had in mind as outcome. The electromagnetic waves alone that pass through brain do have some effect and deposit energy too, they can change temperature in that sense even a bit and affect how it all functions in very subtle ways that do propagate though. So its not a sporadic input, its in my opinion a very heavy input if we care to analyze it all. Even the sounds you hear on the background (just background noise not words) influence your thoughts like you cant imagine actually.




----------------
Non free will signature in development. 2+2 community, BruceZ, 2+2 leaders etc, all with your choices give back BruceZ and others you "chase" away to this discussion and the ones that will follow. We are all in this together.

If change takes time and there’s no time, it’s hard to imagine a free-agent that couldn’t change anything.

That’s logical determinism, as opposed to physical determinism or the deterministic physics the author argues is compatible with free-will. I understand what you're saying, now, but I don't think it applies to his argument.

Looked at from that perspective, whether It is conceived of as God’s will, the Tao, the holomovement or the ‘whole’ dynamic universe, personal freedom consists only in our ability to understand It and harmonize our actions with It, not to control It or anything else. Like the Jews say, “We can’t break the Law (God's will), only ourselves upon It.”

So when we act in accord or harmonize with It, It is acting through us. Hence, if It’s completely free, then so too are we when acting in harmony with it. How free It is I don’t know, but if It is all there is, there’s nothing to stand in opposition to It.

Yeah but for physics opposition in the form of a gun in the head or the moon in the sky and jazz music in the background or just 30 C temperature room vs 17C are essentially similar things. (i mean what we understand is affected by environment a great deal even if in a traditional every day person thinking without the gun all else sees not particularly restricting environments, in fact they all are similar)



----------------
Non free will signature in development. 2+2 community, BruceZ, 2+2 leaders etc, all with your choices give back BruceZ and others you "chase" away to this discussion and the ones that will follow. We are all in this together.

You might be interested to know that some people are actually keenly aware of the things that affect their thoughts and emotions.

Not surprisingly, since all of it is empirical, there are actual branches of science studying these things.

I'm kind of glad you posted this because it saves me a bit of time. How you're describing it here is basically how quite a lot of people in psychology would describe free will, as the "detector" is you. And you yourself pointed out (if I get it correctly from the domino example) that the influence of chaos and what not in the system, is negligible in the (99.999999%?) causal realm we call earth.

alright, but while this is true, we can actually imagine how much these background noises influence us, simply because we are us and we do experiments in science to see what happens to people in noisy environments (try malta!). We can also train our mental flexibility and responsiveness to these external events to a certain extent.

Lets call it relative free will then, not absolute in the sense of physics and our determination to the universe (no matter its causes).

You are arguing against a point that isn't even being made!

I am not suggesting that things aren't 100℅ restricted. They are actually abso****lutely 100% restricted.

If you mean that a cause is a cause is a cause, I agree. Everything is caused. That is exactly what you are saying you believe when you say you are a determinist. Since I've quite explicitly stated "I am a determinist" I am not really sure why you keep trying to explain that my actions are caused. I already know that.

If you are trying to suggest that all causes are the same, why is is e=mc^2 rather than e=ee^2. That is plainly ridiculous in the same way as saying jazz, the moon, temperature, etc are the same.

All i am arguing is that;

"Free will is the ability of agents to make choices unimpeded by certain factors."

The above statement is not realized. There is no such thing. There are always some factors. I can even claim the factors we kind of conveniently ignore for human brains are potentially very significant. We cant have any thought if its very hot or cold for example. But that doesnt mean that when the temperature is ok it doesnt still play a role on what we think for instance that changes if it changes by 1C! It will find a way to impact the thoughts eventually through the processes that are all interacting and depend on Temperature (such as rate of losing water that will force one to want to drink water at some point and suddenly alter the thought sequence for these seconds lol and this is one tiny example among billion others that have to do with temperature).

I didnt say the factors are the same but temperature, jazz, noise, moon, light, a gun in the head, vacuum polarization etc are all such factors.

People naively think that a gun in the head is by definition not free but its not essentially different than 15C temperature that forces you to feel cold and eg prevents you from thinking all that well about math problems before getting warm again etc.

I claim that only the universe has will that belongs to it (free in a way if there is no determinism and QM is not revised to avoid randomness). The others (subsystems) have will that is kind of forced on them by the interactions and the development of the states (it is not their will i mean even if they think so because its all they "have" as it feels to them).

What is it that we disagree here on if anything according to you Brian?



----------------
Non free will signature in development. 2+2 community, BruceZ, 2+2 leaders etc, all with your choices give back BruceZ and others you "chase" away to this discussion and the ones that will follow. We are all in this together.

David says this also, too much really. Of course he brings that on himself because many of his OP's are, shall we say, Quixotic.


Pardon the interruption, but it is an important issue and needs emphasizing.

I don’t think Socrates was free to choose escaping over drinking the hemlock, once he determined the latter was the better choice. Of course, as the moment approached he could have re-evaluated his choices and determined that escaping was the better choice. So I think there’s a mental determinism that necessitates our doing whatever it is we value as better at the moment, and necessitates our not doing whatever it is we value as worse at the moment. That’s different from a physical determinism where the laws of nature along with antecedent conditions render only one ensuing act as possible. The two are distinct because while we can say Socrates’ eventual action was determined; it wasn’t determined ‘by’ the laws of nature and antecedent conditions, but rather ‘by’ a mental evaluation, which isn’t part of the laws of nature and antecedent conditions. Granted, from what he’s said and done in the past, we may be able to predict with a degree of certainty what he will do as the moment approaches. But in such a case, we’re not directly predicting his actions; rather, we’re predicting what his evaluation will be and indirectly his ensuing actions. So even though he’s always done what he said he’d do, and always valued death over hypocrisy, he’s still ‘free’ to value or re-evaluate what option is the better choice as the moment approaches.

So what I'm saying isn't quite logical determinism, logical determinism involves a move from a true proposition about future events to necessity that I'm not making. I'm just saying events either have necessitating reasons or they don't.

If you say there's a mental determinism that necessitates our doing whatever, then my claim is that mental determinism rules out freedom too. Why was Socrates' mental evaluation to drink the poison and not run away? I'm not asking to get a physical determinist answer, I'm asking whether his mental reasons were necessitating or not; if they were necessitating, then if he had the reasons that he had, he couldn't have done otherwise, he could do no other so to say. And if his reasons were not necessitating, then the decision he made was made for no reason, in the same way that flipping an ideal coin comes up heads over tails for no reason.

We agree on that.

We agree on that.

This is technically true, but misleading. There are ALWAYS 100% perfectly,absolutely, with no questions asked, money back guaranteed, 24x7x365 causation.

People absolutely follow the laws of nature. All the time. People do not have supernatural powers.

Hmmm. You would be more correct to say that knowledge of the laws of nature are not required in order to follow the laws of nature. This is true of a falling apple, so I don't think it is a claim worth making.

You combine that with a belief that lack of knowledge of the laws of nature cause some people to imagine that there are no laws. Although true, the claim is nothing more than " some people are stupid."

Leaving aside extremely dumb people, that is incorrect. Nearly everyone knows that situation matters (as does mood, temperament, knowledge, skill, ability, wants, needs, desires, etc.).

What we distinguish between is when the situation is the driving cause. If I put a gun to your head and tell you to "drink it or else"*, you know that 100/100 people will drink the water. If I simply hand you a glass of water, you know that some people would drink the water and others wouldn't.

Will != free != free will. Will + free = free will.

I have yet to discover the universe's amygdala, so I am going to deny it any sort of will tentatively.

Socrates imagined a world in which he drank the hemlock and a world in which he didn’t, found the former more aesthetically pleasing or more beautiful than the latter, and drank the hemlock. Hence, his choice was neither wholly reasoned, even though reasoning was involved, nor random. Put in the extreme: under identical “x or y” circumstances, you may choose x while your clone may choose y, based entirely on respective aesthetic valuations. Now when quarks do so, I agree we can term that random. But with humans, we know there is a mental assenting to the momentary good or better valuation, hence, the ‘choice’ is not random; we just can't determine what that choice will be based on the laws of nature and antecedent conditions.

Yes, of course. Communication is not an easy task for even the most socially gifted individuals. When the topic inherently includes an individual's theory of mind it is bound to be quixotic.

I don't follow. If time is removed, either there is no change, or change simply doesn't take time, depending on how you look at it. If we say change still occurs sans time, then how does that imply free agents are involved? Does removing time redefine determined causes as indeterminate, or something else?

I like the way you put this. I have a feeling it will be destroyed soon, but for now it's nice to enjoy like the taste of good cigar smoke.

Yes of course. But the point that actually needs stressing is that you should be eating at restaurants in which asking for monkey heads would not be that far off the menu items. You Nincompoop!

This probably says sometime about the narrow nature of your restaurant choices and/or the availably of the eating establishments in your immediate vicinity. You may not be responsible for some of the above and may have no control over it; but I don't care and I am going to drive the point home nonetheless, beat the horse dead, hack it into bloody chunks of flesh and bone, toss it all into a dumpster and then set the remains on fire. The ashes will be compressed into pellet form and shot, via space vehicle, into the sun. And that will be that. All this can be avoided if you simply apologize now.

And to quote a great philosopher who thought another type of apology was necessary:

I don't care to who. Just pick somebody and make it sincere. I know you can do this.