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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 14:36:29 GMT
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In article <3br81l$e24@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>In <D08qGA.HGw@armory.com> rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>>In article <3aqbmu$uk@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>>In <CzMC94.1Fr@armory.com> rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>
>>>>The fact that in common parlance, "humans make choices", is useful jargon for
>>>>some purposes, does NOT indicate that those choices are not themselves, in
>>>>turn, caused, and therefore deterministic, no matter whether there is also
>>>>another mechanism in the human brain which will "believe" that it made the
>>>>choice out of thin air!!!
>
>>>You demonstrate my point -- we do not agree on the meaning of "free
>>>will".
>
>>>I most certainly have not claimed that choices are made out of thin
>>>air.  Making choices out of free air is not free will -- it would be
>>>irrationality.  We make choices based on our knowledge and our
>>>perceptions, and I do not claim that either of these exists in "thin
>>>air".
>
>>And what I am saying is that you are making illogical assumptions when you
>>say that "WE" make choices! There is NO proof that WE make choices, just that
>>choices are made, and then that this thing called the "We" generator, just
>>another process function in the constellation of intellect, takes credit
>>FOR them, whether it can show HOW "it" derived them or not!
>
>What exactly is the "WE" that you refer to?  If the "WE" does not
>make choices, what is the purpose of the "WE".  Why don't you just
>insist that you are an unconscious zombie.
---------------------------------------------
To insist that I am unconscious would be to lie. But what I am saying is
that the "thing" among all our other functions which declares that it is
"us" and feels it to be ourself, is just one function, and there is NO way
to show that it does more than preside over meetings at which it simply
adopts what the others vote for, and is not, itself, a voting member! It's
job is merely to declare that it is some fanciful unity, when it is highly
questionable that we can be called one individual, except by that
"awareness function"!! People who have had their corpus callosum cut right
down the middle can be shown to have two brains, but something still thinks
that it is one person, when it can easily be proved that it isn't!!! And
an older couple who have been together many decades, upon the death of one of
them, the other will react often as though they have had a piece cut out or
off of the thing they have come to feel is "them"!!! It can take a very
long time before that awareness can function again as a version of unity of
awareness!!! It is like they had a stroke and lost a part of their brain!
Awareness is not the attribute of the body, nor is individuality. It is an
idea, generated by its own generator, looked at physiologically.
-Steve

>The whole point is that there are different levels of description.
>There is one level where the proper terminology is to discuss
>molecular action.  At that level there is no consciousness and there
>is no free will.  At another level there is consciousness which
>allows the exercise of free will to make choices.  If you prefer to
>talk at one level, that is fine.  Other people may prefer to discuss
>things at a different level.  That everything has an explanation at
>one level does not refute the possibility that everything has an
>explanation at the other level.  These different levels need not be
>seen as in conflict.
-----------------------------------
Not unless something patently ridiculous is asserted. Like "free-will".
We would seem to provisionally agree about "levels", but more needs to be
exchanged to know. The real world is not made of atoms. The REAL world is
made of stories! That the world is made of atoms is just one of the
stories, one of the tales we tell to try to explain how to remember how
things work and predict them. The ST microscope does not "see" atoms. It is
made to see what it sees, and it does a wonderful job of making people
think that there is a "world" "outside us" that "we" "see" with our "eyes"
and that "atoms" really exist. The fact is that we have never seen other than
ideas, as nothing can be shown to be other than ideas, not you or me, not
the corner of the room you are in, they all exist within us, and all we
know is that we seem to see these things in a place which we "CALL"
"outside ourselves" or "outside our bodies". All these things and all life
is just a percept, not a subject, not an object! The subject and object are
one and indivisible in the perception. They cannot exist alone. We imagine
they can. They CANNOT!! If "I" or "you" exist, and the world "exists", then
it exists within the thing "we" call "life" or "existence". This is
awareness at work!! Wild mechanism, eh? Yes, it IS time to bring in this
phenomenolgy, because physicists and philosophers forget all too often that
they cannot count on any of this stuff as an "objective" reality, and that
this fact DOES, unlike it sounds, make QUITE a difference in the cut of
people's philosophies!! But remember, the self, the individual, it is only
ONE of many possible stories, interpretations, of what it looks like it
looks like! As solipsistic as it sounds, there is not proof that anything
exists outside the perceiv-"ing" self. Do lizards "know" they exist? I
doubt it. Does a dog? I have an idea that they have a marginal awareness,
but perhaps not a real self-awareness. It seems so to me. Just let's
remember this when we try to declare the existence of atoms and selves.
They are the imagination, and I am not sure whether that is singular,
plural, or neither!
-Steve 

>>FOR them, whether it can show HOW "it" derived them or not! Similar to the
>>way you never actually give your opinion so that you can avoid looking
>>stupid, (no offense, of course.) You never DO seem to tell anybody what
>>exactly you DO think, do you? You simply point out your objections to their
>>hypotheses. Not very convincing, if you have no analysis to replace theirs!
>
>I have given my opinion very clearly in earlier postings.  You can go
>back and read them.  There is not point in my repeating them again
>since you ignored them the first time.  In case you haven't noticed,
>we are talking past each other.
-------------------------------
Well, I had supposed this was futile anyway. I read what was crossposted in
comp.robotics. I don't chase you on other groups. I find it hard to believe
that you have failed to at least mention your seemingly jello-like position
cogently at least one more time, but to me it seems you have!
-Steve

>>Well, for one thing, it's oxymoronic! If will is will, then will is free by
>>definition or it cannot be will! Since everything is caused and does NOT
>>pop out of thin air, I doubt that "will" in any non-fallacious sense really
>>exists, except to say that due to previous events occuring to this process,
>>it "wills" to do the logical or logically illogical thing and call it
>>original!
>
>There is a theory about how language works.  According to that
>theory, nouns have attached to them objects as their meanings, and
>adjectives have attached to them properties of objects as meanings.
>Language is also said to follow a set of syntactic rules which define
>how sentences can be composed from words.  Language itself is a type
>of algebra using the syntax and the meanings.  Use of this algebra
>involves a coding process by the speaker and a decoding process by
>the listener.
>
>This theory of language is nothing more than a just so story.
>Language does not work that way.  You cannot analyze the expression
>"free will" into component parts "free" and "will".
-----------------------------------
This is quite true! But using them is as much a blunder, when they cannot
be defined by you as other than something you would have us believe is
self-evident, and which I can find alternatives to!!! Even *I* have tried
to enquote myself to call attention to the fact that I was using an
insufficient language to attempt to express things which the language does
not lend itself to expressing. I am calling into question many of the
assumptions that language is built upon! That is culture. I am trying to
"meta"-speak the langauge to outpace its failures.
-Steve

>>What people, even the most stubborn and most ignorant try to do is to
>>predict and explain their world. That they do not follow good rules in
>>doing it simply means that their science has not progressed to a given
>>level.
>
>Firstly, I never claimed that people follow rules, whether good or not.
>I suggested that science is methodical, but that need not require
>the adherence to fixed rules.
---------------
Ok.
-Steve

>>       That's because that's all that science IS, the effort to predict and
>>explain the world. Science as a concept, "may" be done in what is NOW
>>considered a methodical manner, but even so, the method is not proven to
>>work!
>
>When I suggested that science is done methodically, I was not saying
>that it is *considered* to be methodical.  That is a different question.
>A great deal of scientific discovery takes place within the brain below
>the level of consciousness.  Whether it is considered methodical, is based
>only on conscious scientific activity.
--------------------
Agreed.
-Steve

>>>>Whatever happens tomorrow, it was always going to happen tomorrow, and if
>>>>it doesn't, then it obviously WASN'T what was always going to happen
>>>>tomorrow!
>>>
>>>Self fulfilling prophecy.  Wait till tomorrow, see what happens, then
>>>declare that what happened was already fore-ordained the previous day.
>
>>It's clearly the only thing that WAS certainly pre-"ordained".
>
>Then who predordained it?
---------------------------
I could have used the word "determined", but then you might well have asked
me who "determined" it. I do not pretend to know how the world works, but
the sureness of the past remaining the same and not continuing to change as
we attempt to speak of it presupposes that it is fixed once it happens, and
that is all that that is necessary to postulate an inevitability. After
all, it could change constantly, with or without our knowledge, and then
cause and effect would not be a reasoned guess about things and how to make
them do what we wish. And we either do not know that it changes, or meaning
suddenly becomes impossible. In either case, either the world seems stable,
once it happens, and that is as inevitable as it need get! We could get
into parallel time-lines from right here, but the one we live in is enough.
Even if a person could move from time-line to time-line, they would
experience causation, unless they didn't survive.
-Steve

>>                                                               And to say
>>that it was not begs the already true! If there was no certain tomorrow,
>>then, when we got there, anything could be happening willy-nilly, and
>>everything could happen at once, for no particular reason. Thus cause, by
>>whatever laws is proven. QED.
>
>The majority of physicists reject determinism as contradictory to the
>evidence at the quantum level.  The idea that a lack of determinism
>would imply complete chaos is silly.
---------------------------------------
Now that is incorrect on its face. Most embrace a deterministic multiple
universe of multiple pasts and multiple futures and also recognize the
phenomenological analysis. To pretend that we can predict a universe that
possesses uncertainty is a fallacy, it is true, but they do NOT say that
any one time-line one occupies in life is not simply determined, if only by
chance! You need to read the latest from chaos theorists and philosophers
who work with uncertainty interpretations. Many laymen believe the load
you're shoveling, because it protects their precious sense of control, but
uncertainty is not a source for free-will, unless you wish again to assert
and then to deny that "free-will" is or is not choice picked out of
randomness, out of "thin air". And certainly most physicists who have noted
the closeness to Buddhism would not say what you imagine, as the Buddha
preached the doctrine that the mind is an illusion (mu-shin, or "no mind"),
and that only percepts, these "stories" exist and form all existence in all
times and time paths.
-Steve

>>Okay, smart guy! Say something interesting about the nature of the world
>>and causation and about this thread! I'll bet you CAN'T!!!;-)
>
>If, as you claim, the universe is deterministic, then there is no
>such thing as causation.  If everything is bound to happen in a
>particular way, then to say that A causes B is simple confusion.
>Under determinism, all you can say is that A was bound to happen and
>B was bound to happen.  To say A causes B is, among other things, to
>say that if A doesn't happen then B won't happen.  But if the world
>is such that A must happen, then to talk about A not happening is
>meaningless nonsense.
------------------------------------------------
Not under the multiple universe or multiple causation theory. A "life" is
formed out of a near infinity of percepts, which can simply be linked by a
thread of causality so that they make sense within themselves. These
percepts are multiply utilized at one and the same time in all lives, but
with different organization of causality so that their associations exist
as lives, which ARE caused, whether entirely describable in its principle
or not. There is always a flaw in the carpet! In this one and perhaps many
others it is uncertainty per Heisenberg. Thus, it is true that all percepts
are uncaused and non-causing, as the Buddha has said. But the illusion of
connectedness of these percepts that form "stories" or "lives" is the maya,
the illusion, and the assumption of causation between otherwise unrelated
moments. And the "big bang" never happened, as there was no one to see it!
As mass was near infinitely close to infinite, the gravity slowed down time
to nil as well. The big bang is the sum total of the assumption of all
lives that it "occurred". It is as important to say that time never began,
and that to connect moments, stories, percepts into caused lives is merely
assumption, maya, illusion, the dance, the play. The play is the thing. The
assumption of individuality is the "error" by which the universe is born!
It is the assumption of "free-will" and of causality. It is also
separateness from the Void. It is also Adventure! It is the Imagination!
Lots of Zen physicists about these days! Wonder why!;->
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

