psychoslice
Veteran Member
I can only say to you, your trapped in your mind, believing that is who you are.
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What Most People Fail to Understand about the Concept of Free Will
- Thread starter Gambit
- Start date
No, it's like saying it's impossible to suggest that a computer change it's own internal structures, not just code. There is no sound basis in comparing the brain to a computer at all (as seen in e.g., the sources I quoted in my last post).
Neither will assuming he or she is a programmable computer despite all evidence to the contrary.
Begging the question (or circular reasoning). You are using "care" to define what results "care" is supposed to yield (and have yet to answer, even using circular reasoning, what determines how "care" is "supposed" to do anything).
Which means beliefs have causal efficacy, but doesn't explain how one twin is able to belief anything without mental causation.
Biological machines aren't programmable.
If that's all you can say about the brain, consciousness, free will, and the evidence for your views about any and all of these, then I must wonder why you seem to think you know enough to have anything like an informed opinion.
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Find out for yourself, don't take my word.
Find out for myself what it is that makes you think you have an informed opinion? Short of you stating why, not exactly a doable endeavor.
psychoslice
Veteran Member
As I said, find out for yourself.
Banjankri
Active Member
Why do you want to change computer internal structures??? Nobody want's to change your brain, just make it rewire.
What evidences are you talking about? You talk about "all", but do you really have one?
If we assume someone is a programmable device, we will re-program him, which will give an actual result. No place for guessing and playing with supposed free will.
Generally speaking:
Care is a sensation which triggers thinking related to the subject. By thinking, you join the pieces you have, building knowledge which drives your actions.
Pavlov's dog.
"Free will is necessary but not sufficient for the enjoyment of civil liberties. These can be exercised under a liberal social order, where “liberal” is meant in the broad sense, not in the narrow economic sense intended by the neo-liberals, who are only interested in free enterprise. A fair social order will make it possible for nearly everyone to enjoy her free will, with Mill’s condition that it won’t restrict another person’s liberty. But such nearly universal empowerment is unattainable in a very divided society, where power – whether economic, political or cultural – is monopolized by a minority (Bunge 2009). So, the problem of free will is as important in politics as it is in ethics and in theology."
Bunge, M. (2010). Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. 287). Springer.
I don't. Those who think there is some merit to comparing the brain to a computer or referring to "programs" in living systems do:
"Both living organisms and computers are “information-processing machines” that operate on the basis of internally stored programs, but the differences between these systems are also quite large. In the case of living organisms, self-assembly occurs following an internal program, and the nervous system and brain formed in this way function as an autonomous information machine. Unlike traditional computers which must be “driven” from the outside, biological systems have somehow incorporated within them rules on how to function. Moreover, in the case of biological entities for which there is no external blueprint, the design plan is entirely internal and is thought to undergo changes both in the evolution of species and in the development of individuals."
Filo, O., & Lotan, N. (2010). Information Processing by Biochemical Systems: Neural Network-Type Configurations. Wiley.
I recognize that as soon as one realizes so great an asymmetry is between the foundational architecture and logic of computers and living systems (let alone those with brains), it's pointless to talk about brains like they were computers. The "computers" have no software or hardware and whatever we wish to call "programs" are structural: they exist as dynamically constructed and dynamically, internally "re-programmed" physical structures and activities.
Which would be changing its physical structure (although the "wiring" metaphor is almost as bad as the computer metaphor).
I have many. I quoted some small number. This is still my field, after all.
We can't assume this or do anything based on this assumption without free will.
So is jock itch.
Again, implicit free will. Knowledge that exercises causal power is just another way to refer to mental causation, which supposes that conceptual content (the "mind" or consciousness) can "drive your actions" which is to assert free will exists.
Behaviorism is dead for a reason: it failed miserably in basically every domain. Chomsky blasted Skinner's behaviorist account of language into dust, behaviorists like Tolman showed that behaviorism couldn't account for the conceptual abilities of rats, Hebb's classic study of learning showed that it isn't passive, Rosen showed that living systems are non-computable, and so on.
Banjankri
Active Member
Outdated.
What you quoted ware opinions only!
Why?
So?
Wait a second, if something drives my actions, how is it my free will?!?
You seem to be stuck with opinions. Pavlov was able to program dog, that's what I was talking about. I don't care if somebody said that he thinks that... or blasted someones account into dust. Such talk doesn't really bring much into discussion. Leaning on authorities and their opinions is a dead road in this subject.
What is free will?
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Feel free to provide the slightest evidence of this statement or that you have any familiarity with the literature in the neurosciences, A.I., or the cognitive sciences in general.
Actually they were conclusions based upon the research they are taken from. However, as I can hardly quote an entire paper (let alone an entire monograph), I referred to conclusions. Academic publishing companies, whether they are publishing scientific journals or textbooks or monographs or conference proceedings or whatever, require that authors rely on research, not opinions (this is less true in non-scientific fields, but as I was using scientific literature this is moot). I can continue quoting source after source, simplifying the current state of research, and so forth, but ultimately the only convincing evidence comes from an ability to understand the literature, not my simplifications of it or anybody else's. I always recommend that people inform themselves, but this isn't easy and the next best option is to accept the current state of research.
Because it presumes free will.
A definition of "care" that holds equally well for jock itch is a useless definition even if it isn't woefully inaccurate (as it is in this case).
Because the "something" in this case is a property of the mind or consciousness, which means it is you.
Do you reduce all science to "opinions" or just the research you neither know nor are able to evaluate substantively (i.e., referring to a 2010 source as "outdated" despite the fact that many of the most currently used/cited papers in neuroscience, A.I., even physics are over half a century old, including references to Hebbian learning which cite Hebb's book, Chomsky's famous review of Skinner's book, McCulloch & Pitts' 1943 artificial neural network, Hodgkin & Huxley's still current model of neural dynamics from 1952, etc.). Is there some reason that the earliest basis for outmoded and outdated behaviorism (Pavlov) is somehow not utterly outdated despite being from the 19th century while a 2010 monograph is outdated or why this abandoned program (behaviorism) is for some reason not mere opinion but the 50+ years of research since it became defunct is?
Wrong. Pavlov was able to show that conditional learning is one type of learning, but the basis for positive psychology ironically stemmed from an inability to get a subset of dogs to be "programmed" even in this way. And humans aren't dogs.
The ability to self-determine or, more simply (and simplistically), to be able to choose actions such that you could have chosen otherwise.
Banjankri
Active Member
Why are you asking me about my familiarity with literature? Your approach is totally flawed.
"Unlike traditional computers which must be “driven” from the outside, biological systems have somehow incorporated within them rules on how to function."
Let me simplify things:
So, what is this "I"?
You say, you have free will, but what is that "you" that has it? Where does it come from?
Are those choices based on something? Where is the "free" part?
Every thought is based on past experiences.
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Because you write off the literature as "opinions", refer to 18th century science and a youtube video in favor of scientific literature. and because my approach is neuroscience and in particular the physics of the brain and cognitive processes. And because your views are incompatible with the scientific literature.
That's what they said after the work by McCulloch & Pitts in the 40s, Rosenblatt in the 50s, Chomskyan linguistics in the 60s, Hopfield and the new connectionism in the 80s, and quantum computing along with neuromorphic chips and other advances in HCI/AI since. Artificial intelligence has been simple enough and presented as in your little clip since Turing. Yet the more advances we've made, the more we've actually realized that we have done nothing more than make quantitative improvements to artificial intelligence as it was realized in the 40s (which is why the basic ANN is still that of McCulloch & Pitts'). After 50+ years of hoping that purely mechanical manipulations would lead to conceptual processing and complete and utter failure, some YouTube clip you managed to find that breaks things down for amateurs isn't likely to convince even experts who are proponents of the "computer" metaphor and believers that strong computational intelligence/A.I. are not only reachable goals, but realizable soon. For the majority who think such views daft, it's just more of the same we've seen for over half a century.
I don't see how you could offer a more simplistic view than you do.
A functionally emergent process of neural activity that takes as input local and nonlocally (synchronized) patterns realized by enormous numbers of neural networks and their interactions and that outputs (determines) future brain states. It is an irreducible concept that, unlike concepts in general, isn't merely represented by neural activity but determines it.
The "free" part is a decomposable semantic component of the prefabrication "free will." This is another way of saying it is largely pointless to ask where the "free" part comes from or what it is, or better yet such a question is like asking about the "fr" part of "free". Choices are based on conceptual processing of information (both conceptual and sensor).
Which logically entails the impossibility of thought. At some point, an organism has had no experiences. Once the organism has experiences, it is impossible to learn from these or think about them (and more broadly must have had experiences in which thought emerged despite past experiences), because once one goes from 0 experiences to a first experience no thought is possible as the only past experience is no experience, and the next experience can't allow the emergence of thought as the first didn't and it is impossible to base thought on experiences where thought was impossible, and so on. Then you run into the problem of novel thought. You are using the internet, an experience that was impossible for almost all humans who have ever lived. How was it developed such that you could use it if only past experiences could form the basis for thoughts?
Banjankri
Active Member
Once more, your approach is flawed. I can refer to ancient observations, what does it change? Argument should be accurate, that's all. When it comes to big mind, youtube videos is pretty much all you will get here. Nobody will tell you openly about a project that is worth billions.
"Unlike traditional computers which must be “driven” from the outside, biological systems have somehow incorporated within them rules on how to function."
Evolutionary algorithms are working, whether you like it or not, rendering such opinions outdated. That is a fact.
That only proves you have no idea what is going on around you. Once more, you are stuck with opinions.
Is it really your field?
What exactly do you mean by "realized by enormous number of neural networks"? If the outputs determines future brain states, where do you see a place for free will?
Your views are totally inconsistent.
So, they are deterministic in nature.
But when one goes from 1st experience to 2nd, it is. How hard is that to understand? And certainly, you need more then 2 experiences to start thinking. What do you think memory is for?
By combining knowledge about past experiences. This is how novelty comes into being, and the basis for it is trial and error.
Nothing. If you referred to the literature, it might indicate something. If you demonstrated an familiarity with the field, it would change things.
True. But rarely can just anybody present an argument about the veracity of some claim simply by evaluating it given their present knowledge. This is particular true when it comes to subjects of a technical nature.
Actually they do this all the time, from official websites and press releases to HCII conferences. Not only that, they'll hire people like me or contract work out to entire labs that will be published. The 2010 study you dismissed is a cutting edge publication of one of the most sophisticated artificial neural circuits/networks yet designed. It can be bought by anybody via amazon. Same with more recent technologies or methods.
Evolutionary algorithms are working, but are wholly irrelevant here. Have you ever programmed one or used them (or other computational intelligence paradigms)? One can build an actual Turing machine (i.e., a "computer" that is more rudimentary than the oldest computers built) that is capable of implementing evolutionary algorithms, gene expression, ANNs, wavelet analyses, SVMs, etc. That's because computational intelligence paradigms and machine learning methods are ways in which we have enabled purely mechanical, mindless manipulations to spit out answers to input with as much understanding as sea slugs.
Yes, it really is. I've spent the past half dozen years or so mostly on graduate research on the physics of the brain and complex systems for my doctoral dissertation, in addition to my lab's neuroscience research and my private consult work.
The output is also the input, because the system is self-determining. Free will is the ability for consciousness (a functionally emergent property) to self-determine the state of the system whence it arises.
Perhaps to someone who relies on Pavlov and YouTube while dismissing cutting edge research in A.I. and neuroscience as "opinions". But I'm not particularly concerned with being viewed as inconsistent by the uninformed.
How does that follow in your mind?
According to you, no thought is possible from the first experience, and therefore there is nothing that can be known or learned or remembered about the first experience. For the second experience to enable thought about the first requires that the first be accompanied by thought such that there was something learned, remembered, or otherwise encoded by thought during the first experience.
It's not. It's an easily understood logical flaw of infinite regress.
Which kind?
Tulving, E. (2007). Are there 256 different kinds of memory. The foundations of remembering: Essays in honor of Henry L. Roediger, 3, 39-52.
Which can never result on novel thought in your schema. That would require thoughts that did not require past experiences, unless your definition of "based on" here is so trivial that it must be true because in order to think we require a past (or we don't exist and hence can't think).
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Because it's not something else. It's you--the "you" that the whole system allows to be.Banjankri said:
It's usually defined in terms of agency having the power of choice. With that capacity it governs actions that are its, it owns thoughts that are its, it dictates its direction and determines its future.
Hunger is something we cast as a "state," meaning it happens to us, as opposed to something we do. You can see that in the wording above.
Learning that states like hunger and anger are actually "us" is a part of some eastern philosophies. In learning it, one actually can "choose to be hungry or not" (eat, or don't).
Free will is agency dictating itself, not the body.
Banjankri
Active Member
Cutting edge solution sold via amazon.... That says it all.
Once more:
"Unlike traditional computers which must be “driven” from the outside, biological systems have somehow incorporated within them rules on how to function."
Those algorithms not only have rules on how to function incorporated within them, but they can develop new ones based on current circumstances.
Have you actually watched that short clip I've posted? I doubt it.
That's what you call realizing??? What do you mean by self-determining? I ask for answers not randomly generated phrases. In place of one, you develop two or three. Please, start answering, because we won't get anywhere with this.
The only cutting edge knowledge you have is in ad hominem
. This is the best way to run into chaos.You said : "A functionally emergent process of neural activity that takes as input local and nonlocally (synchronized) patterns realized by enormous numbers of neural networks and their interactions and that outputs (determines) future brain states."
Is there free will, or is it an illusion and all decisions are determined??? Make up your mind.
No it isn't, but it seems it doesn't feet your picture.
Why?
Try thinking without using anything you learned in the past. Language is gone, same goes for knowledge about anything. Even the ability to distinguish things is not there. Please, give me an example of thinking in such conditions. There will be no thinking. But hey... you will not even try to solve thing problem, you will jump into ad hominem or simply ignore it. That's what you've been doing for some time now. And don't give me that crap about cutting edge research, because we all have this "thing" available and active all the time. It is enough to watch and see. If you are unable to do that, then you are stuck with acquired opinions. To be precise, I have nothing against research, or views that others hold. I just want them proven on a logical basis. If you cannot prove anything, keep on learning.
Banjankri
Active Member
How do you know?
Allows or forces? What I say, is that it's the system that determines how "I" looks like. I like to picture it as an "I" made out of empty space surrounded by arrows pointing to it. It's not really there right, just an illusion. We know stuff about ourselves (pointers/meaning), but actually, it ain't there.
Based on?
Please, make a choice, and describe it for me, from the beginning to the end.
Orange one draws my attention because it reminds me of a juicy orange, and the sensation I experience when eating it. Can I force myself to like mint one?
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Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
The Scandinavian systems are not failing. American prisons are miserable failures, but they are little more than criminal warehouses. The treatment of inmates is very different in places like Norway, and things such as recidivism rate is much lower. They actually do have a real rehabilitative approach, unlike America, and the difference is astounding.