free will vs natural determinism

[Cephus]

Points for the ability to be non sequiter.

Me: Either I am wearing pants or I am not.
You: You haven't demonstrated that.

But you haven't proposed a binary solution, you have simply asserted that there are two possibilities, haven't shown that your possibilities are the only ones possible and have insulted anyone who doubts that your conclusion is valid. My, how religious of you.

I sometimes wonder if it's smart people trolling or erst idiots. If you seriously believe what you've just said; seek mental help.

Ah, leap straight to the ad hominem. If someone questions your conclusions, there must be something wrong with them!

 

[JerryL]

But you haven't proposed a binary solution, you have simply asserted that there are two possibilities, haven't shown that your possibilities are the only ones possible and have insulted anyone who doubts that your conclusion is valid. My, how religious of you.

Either I am wearing pants or I am not. You've set a reversed burden of proof (prove not other options exist).

Again: any sane person will accept that either my pants are true or false. There's no a third option.

Ah, leap straight to the ad hominem. If someone questions your conclusions, there must be something wrong with them!

Add that to the list of your issues. You don't know what an ad hominem logical fallacy is.

FTR: to be an ad hominem would require that you presented an argument and I asserted that the argument was wrong because of who you are. In this case: I asserted who you are because of your statement.

Much like the burden of proof: you have it backwards again.

*Your* fallacy is "red herring"... and reversed burden of proof.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

We understand the basics of a neural network better than you think. We can even replicate it (though not to the complexity level of the human brain; Artificial insect intelligence (they make decisions about left vs right too) is surprisingly advanced.

We're still using models that were developed in the 40s. We've simply become faster at doing what we've been doing for many decades. We do not understand the most important and most basic aspect of neural computation: how it results in conceptual representation & processing.

I was doing some reading thanks to another thread, and happened upon an article which displays all the optimism I have criticized (and been criticized for criticizing it). However, the one thing I actually found interesting about the article was the passing remarks the authors made regarding naysayers:
"Not all experts believe that the time is ripe for a return to the original goals. Craig Silverstein of Google (a company that carries out a huge amount of narrow-AI research under the supervision of AI guru Peter Norvig) recently told a reporter that such computers are “hundreds of years away” [19]. Mark Andreesen, the founder of Netscape, said that “we are no closer to a computer that thinks like a human than we were fifty years ago” [19]. Some AI researchers, such as Selmer Bringsjord (chair of RPI's Department of Cognitive Science) even doubt that computers will ever display humanlike intelligence. And the standard university AI curriculum continues to focus almost entirely on narrow AI, with only passing reference to the field's original grand goals."
I don't know why the authors restricted themselves to these few, as they are neither representative of those who think that A.I. is farther away from the current work than commonly thought, nor representative of the various types of nay-sayers (from those who argue that a soul is necessary to those who argue that we simply need better algorithms which are not likely to be created in the near future). But I have repeatedly said that we are simply doing with computers what we have always done (meaningless manipulation), only faster and with wider application. And it was interesting to hear that the founder of Netscape (not a philosopher, not a cognitive scientist, not a theologian, not a neuroscientist, but a visionary in the computer industry who currently is involved with the most popular developments/sites of web 2.0) thought exactly the same thing. Obviously, I'm not asserting this makes either of us correct (and I would bet that both of us would be happy if proved wrong, although clearly I can't speak for Andreessen). But this does at least indicate that there are those whose interests are in commerce, and who are very familiar with the cutting-edge R & D, who are at least as skeptical as I.

There is a serious gap in the neurosciences & cognitive sciences between computational neuroscience in which the dynamics of a neuron or some idealized network are modeled to understand e.g., the "neural code" and how the brain does basically anything we're interested in understanding (such as how our brains allow us to understand anything). The most sophisticated computational intelligence systems/paradigms available are vastly inferior than mice. They can appear to be far superior only because we have become better at taking conceptual/semantic data and stripping it of all meaning so that it can be syntactically manipulated via what is essentially a big calculator.

 

[Slorri]

I find this surprising coming from a hard determinist. Hard determinism asserts that all actions are the result of a cause/effect chain of events the envitably lead to a specific outcome. An outcome that can not be anything other than what it is. A person holds up a Jewelry store because he cannot do otherwise. He is under the explicit dictates of prior causes. To hold him responsible is to assume he could have done otherwise, but the fact is, he couldn't. Holding him morally responsible is like blaming a rock for where it lies. Hard determinism asserts that the will is not free. That to have done differently is not possible. Coupled with this is the notion of in-determinism, the state in which utter randomness rules, or co-rules with determinism. Taken individually or together they make freewill a folly. An illusion at best.

Yes. We can address this from many angles.
I say like this: The responsibility is part of the causal chain. When someone does something we react, as a consequence to what he did, to how we feel we should react, and to how we deliberately or intuitively estimate future consequences to be following our action / reaction.

We might grab the burglar by the scruff of his neck, and give him a good shake; holding him responsible; being more determined; And hope that he will behave better in the future.

What excuse can we have to do nothing, and blame determinism for the uselessness of reacting, while all along being ignorant of that our passivity was also determined.

 

[JerryL]

We're still using models that were developed in the 40s. We've simply become faster at doing what we've been doing for many decades. We do not understand the most important and most basic aspect of neural computation: how it results in conceptual representation & processing.

Your data is terribly out of date. Also: your "most important" assertion is arbitrary.

There is a serious gap in the neurosciences & cognitive sciences between computational neuroscience in which the dynamics of a neuron or some idealized network are modeled to understand e.g., the "neural code" and how the brain does basically anything we're interested in understanding (such as how our brains allow us to understand anything). The most sophisticated computational intelligence systems/paradigms available are vastly inferior than mice. They can appear to be far superior only because we have become better at taking conceptual/semantic data and stripping it of all meaning so that it can be syntactically manipulated via what is essentially a big calculator.

Your brain is essentially a big calculator; but again this is a red-herring.

The question was over choice, and there's no logical way to have "free choice" regardless of the details of the mechanism.

 

[JerryL]

What excuse can we have to do nothing, and blame determinism for the uselessness of reacting, while all along being ignorant of that our passivity was also determined.

Agreed

There's a precept in science that the goal of theoretical models is to accurately predict outcomes; the question of "is it real" is one of philosophy.

When deciding what to do about a burglar, the question of "what is real" is less important than the question of "what is functional". Society is built on a model that (with exceptions for things like mental illness), people make choices and are responsible for them; though personally: I'd rather see the criminal justice system focus solely on protecting me rather than worrying about "punishment" or "holding responsible".

So yes, the reality of determinism vs randomness isn't really important to the model; and you cannot use one with regards to the other.

 

[Skwim]

Yes. We can address this from many angles.
I say like this: The responsibility is part of the causal chain. When someone does something we react, as a consequence to what he did, to how we feel we should react, and to how we deliberately or intuitively estimate future consequences to be following our action / reaction.

We might grab the burglar by the scruff of his neck, and give him a good shake; holding him responsible; being more determined; And hope that he will behave better in the future.

Agreed, this is how we all operate, as if we and others had the freedom to do otherwise, however this notion is nothing but an illusion; the truth still being; nothing we do can be other than what we're caused to do.

What excuse can we have to do nothing, and blame determinism for the uselessness of reacting, while all along being ignorant of that our passivity was also determined.

Thing is, there are no rational excuses. Excuses presupposes that we consciously decide to what we want, and that what we want can take different forms. But as determinism dictates, there are no different forms that we have access to. What we do is the only thing we can do. This isn't to say that I, as a hard determinist, live my life as such, never judging anyone or tossing out all concepts of morality. Despite the conclusions I've come to about freewill and determinism, I still live my life as if I have the actual ability to choose, and attaching blame or praising others is justified---I can't help it. It's the illusion I live under that's part of my determined self.

 

[allfoak]

Everything is an illusion, free will included.
The thing is, we have to live with it.
That means doing things like making choices.
Try telling a woman trying to choose a wedding dress that it's all an illusion.

 

[illykitty]

Can someone explain to me or give a link, what does determinism mean exactly? That we have no choice?

So does that mean it's not someone's fault for anything? Then why punish a murderer? Why look down on someone who's lazy? Not their fault they're this way! Why even bother trying to better ourselves? Oh wait why can I even think I can better myself?

Anything goes with this mentality. That doesn't seem realistic at all to me. We have choices.

 

[Skwim]

Can someone explain to me or give a link, what does determinism mean exactly? That we have no choice?

Correct we have no choice.
As Wikipedia puts it.

"Determinism is the philosophical position that for every event, including human action, there exist conditions that could cause no other event.

Determinism often is taken to mean causal determinism, which in physics is known as cause-and-effect. It is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely determined by prior states."​

What this means in the context of human actions, including thought, is that all of them are determined by prior causes, and cannot be other than what they are. Therefore the notion of freewill, that one could have done differently, is false. There is no such thing as true choosing between options.

So does that mean it's not someone's fault for anything?

Fault is a condition we assign to people and other things, but in light of their origin, having been causally determined, it's really an unfair appellation. People who do wrong or do good cannot help doing either.

Then why punish a murderer? Why look down on someone who's lazy?

Because our human nature is such that it rejects the determining factors. and prefers to look at human actions as having been freely done; an illusion to be sure, but one we live under---prior causes determines that we hold just such a view.

Not their fault they're this way! Why even bother trying to better ourselves? Oh wait why can I even think I can better myself?

As disturbing as this may be, it's the fact of the matter.

Anything goes with this mentality.

Not at all. What goes is limited by what has been determined to go. There is no such thing as truly choosing what goes.

That doesn't seem realistic at all to me.

I agree that it flies in the face of how we normally regard life and see the world, but looked at coldly (not letting our emotions or psychological preferences interfere) it's the only conclusion that stands up to logic.

We have choices.

Unfortunately, saying so doesn't make it so.

 

[JerryL]

If only I could like that post twice.

 

[Harikrish]

There will always be free will for those who wish to exercise it. But natural determination is guided by natural and physical laws and one cannot escape from its overreaching influence.

 

[Skwim]

There will always be free will for those who wish to exercise it. But natural determination is guided by natural and physical laws and one cannot escape from it overreaching influence.

Whaaaaaa . . . . . .t?

 

[Willamena]

Can someone explain to me or give a link, what does determinism mean exactly? That we have no choice?

Fatalistic determinism, yes.

So does that mean it's not someone's fault for anything? Then why punish a murderer? Why look down on someone who's lazy? Not their fault they're this way! Why even bother trying to better ourselves? Oh wait why can I even think I can better myself?

Precisely. Fatalistic determinism eliminates the need for responsibility, guilt, punishment and justice.

Anything goes with this mentality. That doesn't seem realistic at all to me. We have choices.

Actually, nothing goes with it.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Your data is terribly out of date.

It's what I do now.
So simple a component of a neuronal model as is a threshold is questionable (especially represented by a single parameter extrapolated to any and all networks), given that
1) Neurons have no well-defined thresholds (though they may have a well-defined rheobase)
2) The main classes of neuron types, integrators and resonators, are not only quite broad but also somewhat misleading given that e.g., a neuron’s characteristically integrating behavior need not remain so, as such a neuron can resonate
3) Resonators may not have even a well-defined rheobase
4) Despite the ongoing debate over the neural code, it is probably safe to say that whatever their contribution to neural information may be, spiking is not dependent upon any threshold so much as by a number of dynamic parameters governed by everything from the “classes” of firing patterns one can divide neurons into, dendritic structure, neuronal type, and whether the neuron even has a well-defined rheobase.


So we can resolve this in a few ways. From bad to better:

1) You can accept the claim of authority from someone who could be anybody and you have no really good reason for believing.
2) I can throw a lot of citations at you from the literature most of which you won't have access to.
3) I can quote from said literature and find sources that are available to you (e.g., studies from peer-reviewed neuroscience & artificial intelligence journals that are available thanks to someone putting it up on some professor's website or some lab's website).
4) I can refer you to the many explanations and so forth from the many times I've gone over this before on this forum
5) I can explain anew to you myself what the issues involved are and the state of play in the fields concerned.

The question was over choice, and there's no logical way to have "free choice" regardless of the details of the mechanism.

Because?

Also: your "most important" assertion is arbitrary.

Arbitrary in the sense that it is the "most important" goal of those working on neural networks, neuronal models, etc., have goals and consider this to be the "most important." True, how the question is approach can differ greatly. From a neuronal modelling perspective it's "the neural code".

"In every small volume of the cortex, thousands of spikes are emitted each millisecond...What is the information contained in such temporal pattern of pulses? What code is used by the neurons to transmit that information? How might other neurons decode the signal?... The above questions point to the problem of neuronal coding, one of the fundamental isssues in neuroscience. At present, a definite answer to these questions is not known." from Gerstner & Kistler's Spiking Neuron Models: Single Neurons, Populations, Plasticity (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

There's a volume of papers by neuroscientists put together in the spirit of Hilbert's 1900 address on the most important 23 unsolved problems in math: 23 Problems in Systems Neuroscience. Like Hilbert, the volume seeks to clarify the most important unsolved problems in their field. They all relate to what I said.

Your brain is essentially a big calculator

The perfect opportunity for a preview of the options (at least some of them).

“no formal system is able to generate anything even remotely mind-like. The asymmetry between the brain and the computer is complete, all comparisons are flawed, and the idea of a computer-generated consciousness is nonsense.”

Torey, Z. (2009). The crucible of consciousness: An integrated theory of mind and brain. MIT press.

"The biological “hardware” on which the brain is based is extremely slow. A typical interval between the spikes of an individual neuron is about 50 ms and the time needed to propagate a signal from one neuron to another is not much shorter than such an interval. This corresponds to a characteristic frequency of merely 100 Hz. Recalling that modern digital computers should operate at a frequency of 10^9 Hz and yet are not able to reproduce its main functions, we are lead to conclude that the brain should work in a way fundamentally different from digital information processing."
Manrubia et al. (2004). Emergence of Dynamical Order : Synchronization Phenomena in Complex Systems. World Scientific

"Why would the mind work like a computer? This book is aimed—like some other recent books (e.g., Kelso, 1995; Port & van Gelder, 1995; see also Fodor, 2000)—at responding to that question with the following answer: “It doesn’t.”"
Spivey, M. (2007). The continuity of mind. Oxford University Press.

A sample previous explanation I wrote on this

Spoiler: How ANNs work

From an explanation I wrote here in 2012: "The simplest ANNs have just an input layer and an output layer with a defined threshold value. Basically, a single output y ∈ {0,1} is a function (or, iterated function) of n 2-valued inputs (x1, x2...xn) of the "neuron", each with a weight w ∈ {-1,1}. The output y is a piecewise summation function of the weighted inputs such that if the result is greater than the threshold, the neuron "fires", and if not, it doesn't


Let w represent a vector of n weights and x an input vector with n elements. Then we have

y= 1 if w(transpose)x>= threshold value
&
= -1 if w(transpose)x< threshold value.

In reality, we'd have y(t+1) [and the matrix formed by the w-transpose *x-transpose is a transformation on t) because we're dealing with an iterated function, but the gist is still the same. Schematically:

You can't do much with this. But you can still do a lot even with a signum threshold function by adding other elements. A "simple" method which vastly increases the power of network schema above is the addition of another threshold function with an adaptive parameter of some sort. Instead of just a simple summation of weights, the linear combination y (the output) becomes part of a larger summation function. This linear combiner not only takes the output as input, but is also a composite function of the input vector and some adaption function. For example:

Adding hidden layers, multiple outputs, etc., further increases the power and complexity of the network all without changing the binary threshold.

However, such networks are still limited by the binary nature of the threshold. Using an interval, rather than a 2-valued output, vastly improves the adaption process and consequently the power of the neural net. The adaption mechanism described earlier is limited in that one of it's arguments, y (or the "output"), can only provide two values. Thus, no matter how complicated your adaptive algorithm is, the central mechanism changing the state of the network is a binary function. Replacing this with some sort of nonlinear function not only maps the output onto some interval in R (usually [-1,1] or [0,1]), allowing a dynamic threshold, but also greatly improves the network's capacity to adapt:

Here a nonlinear threshold function is "updated" using nonlinear adaption functions. However, there is still a threshold. You can store the threshold values within the weight matrix, as the initial output is the product of the weights and inputs. If the resulting value reaches the threshold, the activation function will adjust the network accordingly."

 

[illykitty]

Unfortunately, saying so doesn't make it so.

Firstly, thank you for the information, I wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding the subject.

My experiences so far tell me otherwise. Also maybe you're forgetting, it's philosophy not a fact. You or anyone else saying it doesn't make it so either. Just a quick googling, nope not a fact. Perhaps that's your conclusion, certainly isn't mine.

I'm not going to reply after this, I was simply curious about it. I don't know enough to debate the subject but thanks for replying.

Fatalistic determinism, yes.


Precisely. Fatalistic determinism eliminates the need for responsibility, guilt, punishment and justice.


Actually, nothing goes with it.

What I meant by anything goes, theres no more accountability nor responsibility nor morality. So no matter how bad someone turns out it's not their fault, it was determined. I don't agree with this AT ALL.

But I see what you did there.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Everything is an illusion

is it a fact that everything is an illusion? Put differently, is it an illusion that everything is an illusion? Because if it isn't true that it is an illusion that everything is an illusion, then everything isn't an illusion. If it is an illusion, then it's not true that everything is an illusion (it's just an illusion).

It's always important, when making universal negations of some sort (everything is an illusion, there are no facts, there's no such thing as "truth", etc.) to consider the paradoxes that can be entailed.

 

[allfoak]

is it a fact that everything is an illusion? Put differently, is it an illusion that everything is an illusion? Because if it isn't true that it is an illusion that everything is an illusion, then everything isn't an illusion. If it is an illusion, then it's not true that everything is an illusion (it's just an illusion).

It's always important, when making universal negations of some sort (everything is an illusion, there are no facts, there's no such thing as "truth", etc.) to consider the paradoxes that can be entailed.

What i said was clear you just picked out a part of what i said and criticized it.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

What i said was clear you just picked out a part of what i said and criticized it.

That's mostly true. However, if what you said is your position, and that position leads to its own demise (i.e., that position holds to be true that which makes the position false), then your position's "clarity" (in the intuitive sense you use) isn't really helpful.

 

[allfoak]

The intuitive sense is the most important part.
I am sorry that it is not helpful to you.
It is a paradox, it can't be explained with reason.