Book Report
( i actually proofread this one a little )
Fate, Time & Language
An Essay on Free Will
© 2011
An Anthology of Essays from:
Fatalism by Richard Taylor
With Responses by:
John Turk Saunders, Peter Makepeace, Bruce Aune, Raziel Abelson, Richard Sharvy, Steven Cahn & Charles D. Brown
Terminating with An Essay by David Foster Wallace
“Richard Taylor’s “Fatalism” and The Semantics of Physical Modality
Edited by Steven M. Cahn & Maureen Eckert
With An Meandering Introduction by James Ryerson
And An Epilogue by Jay Garfield
i have for some time become more & more disillusioned by The Search for Deep Truths by ‘Philosophers’. Many idle thinkers prior to this have come to this conclusion quite some time ago; That philosophy is just a lot of hooey.
i have been holding out for some time, but this book is The Lynchpin of All Hooey.
The Initial Essay; By Richard Taylor; “Fatalism”
Which is built up as a major consideration for all deep philosophical thought, Consists of a brow beating to The very Simple Idea of Determinism;
If p Then q
The unique flavor of this argument, twists this around to suggest that p is either true or false ( Eliminating The Grey Area of Reality ) according To The Philosopher’s Law of The Excluded Middle.
i had some considerable difficulty after this first principle, as i have been developing my own Propositional Logic for many years that is based on A Fractional Continuum of Truth Values from 0 to 1.
This system requires a complete reworking of Propositional Operators that allows for The Use of AND, OR, XOR, IFT and so on, so that they can manipulate these fractional values.
Taylor’s Argument then goes on to assert that The Truth Value of p is dependent upon whether q turns out to be True or False at some Future Time.
( ! )
Then he twists this around some more in an attempt to create a dichotomy between whether or not this Law of The Excluded Middle ( Which he assumes to be a fundimental Axiom of Logic & Sound Reasoning ) or That Fatalism ( known to most of us as Determinism ) is Real.
His implied Conclusion ( Completely Unsupported by any Intervening Argument ) is that Fatalism is -Obviously- Wrong, Therefore This Presumed Premise, which can not be wrong ( ? ) is Wrong.
He seems to have attempted to have created an Argument by Absurdum, which he then proves his Absurd Conclusion, and then failed to show us why it’s Absurd.
What is so very annoying about this book is that Taylor’s whole argument is so silly and then The Authors & David Foster Wallace consider it so Serious & Important.
( sigh. )
In The Spirit of Full Disclosure,
i did not read The Entire Book.
i found The Introduction, which pretty much covered The Contents of The Entire Book so Tedious & Redundant, And Taylor’s Essay so Silly, that i only flipped through The Remainder of The Book.
If There was some deeply subtle idea concerning Freewill in any of these essays, They sorrowfully Neglected to Bring it or them to light.
My own idea of Fractional Propositional Logic is based on The Idea that while in some Cartoon Reality Occupied by Sherlock Holmes, Plato or Kant, They may insist that any given proposition must be either True or False.
This False Dichotomy is The Principle reason why Computers have been so Astonishingly Lame in Modeling Real World Problem Solving, because we can just Never Really Know if Some Statement (x is True or False.
i often use The Expression; As True as Elephants ( in Africa ).
Are there Elephants in Africa?
i believe that there are, But it’s entirely conceivable that there aren’t.
There might not even be an Africa. It could be that all The Books i’ve read on Africa were faked for some Nefarious Reason.
So i give The Statement that there are Elephants in Africa a Truth Value of .8 .
Most things that we encounter in our daily lives are True or False to a more certain degree, but there should always be some reasonable doubt.
If you’re going to construct a ‘Real World’ Argument Using Fractional Propositional Argument for The Guilt or Innocence of An Accused Murderer, Who Killed JFK, Who was behind 911 or Whether Flying Saucers are occupied by Aliens from Other Worlds;
The Problem is: How do you Initially Determine What The Truth Values should be for all of your Assumed Premises ? ( !!! )
The Solution that i would propose is to simply & entirely arbitrarily, give all these statements a Truth Value of .5 ( Completely Unknown ) And then let The Argument, as Worked through inside a Super Computer, Churn through it Recursively, Back & Forth, Round & Round, Changing these Values according to How Often & To What Degree The Other Statements believe that some Other Statement is True or False.
Ultimately; The Process will only find The Conclusion to be True to Some Fractional Value of Truth;
But i believe that this result would be considerably better than The Usual Way that People Decide if some Conclusion is True or Not,
Based on how Pleasant it is to Believe or Not.
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A Methodology for Determining if FreeWill is Necessary
Premise:
Given a Simple Environment & One Rule,
How Much Complexity Could Conceivably be Created?
Since it seems to me that if we are living in a universe that actually is,
Pretty much as it seems to be - -
As Opposed to living in universe that is completely different than as it seems to be.
- - Then; Given that The Fundamental Unit of Reality must be just one thing ( ? )
( It seems to me that if there were two fundamental particles, then in order for them to interact, they would have to have common properties, and thus have parts. )
So that The Universe as we know it is The Result of just such a scenario.
One particle with One Rule.
Of course; Given that there must be a whole bunch of this one ( kind of ) particle, There would have to be some underlying substrata that tells all these particles to be exactly The Same.
What is this SubStrata made of?
Never mind that.
Is there some way to calculate how much complexity may result from a given number of Rules, and additionally measure The Complexity of These Rules,
And from that:
Determine how many Rules would be required to Produce this Reality.
The Question Being :
Does The Universe Contain more Complexity than The Number of Rules Warrant?
Another way of looking at this;
Given that The Universe must ( ? ) consist of a given number or structural rules,
Which allow The Fundamental Units of Matter or Energy or Forces,
To Make all of Our Familiar Leptons & Quarks, & Elements,
And Then These may combine to form Suns & Planets,
And possibly even Self Replicating Molecules - -
There is a problem ( ? ) at some point ( ? ) where The Complexity of The Universe,
Particularly in Any Fully Actualized Organic Environment
or Post Literate Culture of Sentient Beings - -
Become Too Complex for This Kind of Model of ( x ) Rules ?
It seems to me that it would indeed be Very Curious if The World,
As it is Observed,
Could be Created from a Fixed Number of Simple Rules.
Is it -More Reasonable- to simply Assume that There Exists a Different Kind of Determinism ( That we call Freewill ) ?
It has occurred to me previously that if you made a Common Fly, and tried to build into it, All The Rules of Behaviour that would be Necessary to make it behave like a Common Fly - -
A Better Example may be if you Substituted The Fly with a Bee or Ant )
- - Or Would it Be More Reasonable to Build into It, A Conscious Sentience that Could Act Appropriately to A Wide Variety of Unexpected Circumstances without trying to Incorporate All The Behavioural Routines in Neural Synapses that had to be Encoded into a limited number of DNA Shoelaces.
The AntiThesis to The Approach is that given ‘humanimals’ that are presupposed to possess Sentience, They Clearly Contradict this model of Consciousness that allows for Intelligent Behaviour without A Foundation of Built in Behavioural Instincts.
People just appear to be amazingly stupid in all The ways that this Cognitive Sentience Model is Supposed to Prevent.
This may be The Definitive Approach to Lots of Different Questions.
Is it more reasonable to assume that Magic explains ( x ) or Some Insanely Complex System of InDefensible NonSense ?
When it comes to Evolution, The Big Bang Theory or Quantum Mechanics, Biologists, Astronomers & Physicists are so Entrenched in their Pet Dogma that They are willing to Allow Their InDefensible NonSense to Take on Greater & Greater Tiers of Accumulative Silliness to Argue Against whatever Evidence is presented that Contradicts their Theories as they were defined a few moments before.
They simply refuse The Possibility of Either Magic or The Unknown.
At some point; Magic is The Least Crazy Alternative.
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Free Will :
A Deterministic Universe...
Implies that Everything that is happening at any given point in time (x) is The consequence of An ( infinite & holistic ) Chain of Falling Dominoes that Preceded it.
This model means The Apparent Order & Structure of Our World was ( Decided ) at The Moment ( or AntiMoment ) of Creation.
-[ Very Improbable; But in An Infinite Universe, One would -Expect- a bubble appearing exactly like ours, not only eventually, but this exact ‘Universe’ occurring an Infinite Number of Times - - But still; It seems -wrong- because we believe that we have freewill, but this may be a consequence of our -real- experience of -conscious awareness- ! What is substantially less palatable though, is that while this Awareness is Real, We experience it only as observers, Not as Controllers. ]-
A Deterministic Universe, Whose Determinism Constructs The Laws of Physics
The First Scenario Implies that as A Line of ( Chaotic ( Deep Complexity ) ) Dominoes; There is No Structural Overview of This Process.
But of course; There -Must Be- Some Mechanical -Rules- That govern The Toppling Process. ( ? )
There is also ( Slight Digression ) The Side Issue that seems to be mislaid in these discussions; Why are all The Electrons in The Universe Exactly The Same?
This implies that they’re all getting their instructions from ( Where? ).
The Chinese Called it The Dao, And i call it The Kitchen Floor.
The Bottom of The Universe.
Where The True Reality Resides.
This Magical Realm decides what is really possible & impossible.
Asking Crazy Questions like : What is below The Kitchen Floor?
Is like asking, Who Broke that Vase?
or Why did they Cancel my Favorite TV Show?
End of Digression.
But This Option Considers that The Initial Determinism Constructs a More Expansive Physical Process, Which is then responsible for Allowing Stars to become Fusion Furnaces and even Chemistry to Produce Self Replicating Molecules.
This Strikes me as Rather Odd Though; In that This -Structural Orderliness- somehow side-steps The Purely Deterministic Universe by Applying A Blind Watchman.
If anything; It Implies that There May Be Determinism AND A Directional Force that Creates Order & Patterns, Albeit; A Blind & Deaf Gawd without Any Plans for Tomorrow.
If you’re going to allow that We are living in A Deterministic Universe,
That is Governed by The Most Elemental -Dominoes- Physics,
AND A Second Kind of ( Unique ) Structuralism that Gives Rise to A More Complex Collection of Physical Rules - -
AND We allow that -Awareness- & -Benign Consciousness- Are Real - -
THEN Is it so Unreasonable to allow for Still Another kind of Orderliness that gives rise to A Finer Structural Mechanism?
Granted; This Finer Layer of Structural Orderliness remains Completely Undefined & Unknown, But There is That Pesky Loose Shoe Lace of Consciousness that needs to be fitted into The Standard Model + Gravity.
If anything; This Crude Analysis suggests that There are Layers of Determinism.
?
Many Time Traveling Skiffy Stories Suggest that It is Possible to Go Back in Time and Change some Detail so that Event (A is Severely Altered or Eliminated, While The Events Surrounding it are Substantially NOT Changed !
i have always found this Analysis of Chronological Determinism rather ludicrous, as it defies my basic understanding of Domino Determinism.
If you change any, Any little thing at some point in Time, It is going to have Gigantic Chronological Effects to Everything down The Road.
But Now.
i am thinking that there is another kind of Determinism that certainly allows for this kind of ‘Small Changes Have No Effect’ Determinism.
The Easiest Example would be a Cloud of PreStellar Material that is Collapsing into a Solar System. If you could Duplicate this Cloud Exactly Several Dozen Times, And then Stir Up Each Copy, i would assert that each will then collapse into very Similar, Perhaps even Indistinguishable Versions.
The Kind of Star, The Number & Size of The Planets would be determined by Global Variances, and Depend very little on The Local Distribution of The Elements.
( ? )
While i allow that A Single Neuron that Discharges or Not may radically change future events, Would The Elimination of any Given Cell in your body change your future behaviour at all ?
While Every Particle in The Universe Effects ( Most Every Other ) Particle in The Universe; There are also likely to be Local Events that may seem to Causing Dramatic Global Events, Then be Washed Out or Diluted by Some Other Catastrophic Event that Much More Dramatically Changes Future Events, but Even this, May only Strongly Influence Relatively Local Events.
This still doesn’t explain or provide a model for Consciousness or Freewill,
But - -
It does continue to suggest that There are Numerous Distinct Layers, Tiers or Classes of Determinism.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011
New Video on YouTube
i just posted a New Video on YouTube,
And typically, i try to use a sound track that matches the length of the video.
In this case; Rather than using one of the 'Stingers' provided by Apple,
i used a Tune by Count Basie, and Mentioned this in the notes;
And YouTube Caught it -Immediately- !
They sent me a letter and informed me that the tune was The Property of EMI Records
And Curiously, they let it slide, allowing me to use it !
That was pretty nice of them huh ! ( ! )
And typically, i try to use a sound track that matches the length of the video.
In this case; Rather than using one of the 'Stingers' provided by Apple,
i used a Tune by Count Basie, and Mentioned this in the notes;
And YouTube Caught it -Immediately- !
They sent me a letter and informed me that the tune was The Property of EMI Records
And Curiously, they let it slide, allowing me to use it !
That was pretty nice of them huh ! ( ! )
Friday, June 17, 2011
Missing Luggage / NightLine Program
Monday, June 13, 2011 11:42:37 PM
Nightline Program Title : Unclaimed Luggage : Bought & Sold
On Nightline tonight they had a piece on ‘Lost Luggage’
and while Nightline and other ‘news’ programs like this often get astonishingly worked up over celebrities or politicians that are caught in the most benign examples of ’Shenanigans’,
When they are faced with Grand Theft Larceny against The World’s Travelers, they treat it like a giant Joke !!!
What they should have explained is How Exactly The Airlines make a reasonable attempt to find the owners of The Luggage that they’ve misplaced...?
Just What is: ‘UnClaimed’ ?
How can people get off a plane and simply forget about their baggage filled with expensive clothes, jewelry or electronics?
Just what does the Airline expect the traveler to do to ‘Claim’ their misplaced Luggage?
This is so amazing evil !
This is simply more evidence that everyone about western civilization is completely wrong.
- -
i will try to be charitable here towards the airlines;
Considering that according to this report, a full 1% ( A Stupendously Gigantic Number, given the millions of people traveling by air every hour ) of the luggage that everyone now has to pay an extra $100 per bag for, is misplaced.
This is assuming that the tag that was ostensibly attached to the bag at the time of check in was somehow, by some means, innocent or malicious, was removed.
If the tag is still in place, the owner should be painfully easy to locate and return at the expense & all difficulties of the airline.
The Third possibility is that the tag on the bag is Not the Tag that was put there at Check In, or During Check In, The Tags were somehow mixed up with Other Tags of Other Passengers. Once this is discovered, the Bag would be considered as a Bag without a Tag.
There may be some ‘Encrypted’ ( ? ) information that may be deduced from The Incorrect Tag, But it may also only lead to greater confusion by making fallacious assumptions as to when & how The incorrect tag was attached.
This also assumes that The Traveler has failed to include their name & address inside their bag, as every cautious & prudent traveler should.
If Not :
The traveler recognizes that their bag has not met them at their destination and they go to the airline’s counter and report that their bag is missing.
Let us now imagine that the traveler is unable to provide an accurate description of their bags, because they possess an IQ of only 100, and have never given more than a thought or two to ever having to provide an accurate description of their own luggage.
They may also be unable to remember in any detail what is in the bag. Clothes, This & That...
Expensive Jewelry or Electronics they may recall, but these are undoubtedly generic items and could match the contents of dozens of bags.
In the piece; There were dozens of Big Item Electronics, in particular i recall an iPad; As they mentioned the unusuality of this; ‘Who would have so easily abandoned an iPad?’ But certainly; This iPad and many of the other electronic items were Registered ! By some means; It should should be a simple matter to contact the manufacturer and discover the name & address or email of the owner, so as to return the entirety of the items found with it.
If a computer was found in the bag, It would be difficult to imagine that it would not contain numerous references to its owner.
What should the Airline be doing to find the owners of the bags that end up someplace, and are ‘UnClaimed’?
Upon Discovering that there is an UnClaimed Bag somewhere, they should immediately attach a difficult to remove sticker with the time and place that it was discovered, And enter that information into their UnClaimed Computer DataBase. The Computer compares the reports by Irate Travelers to the unclaimed bags, and determines if a given bag (A) could possibly be The Lost Bag (B). If there is still a question of compatibility, The lost bag would be opened in a constricted space ( that is; An enclosed space such that nothing could possibly be mislaid ) and an inventory made of the most ‘memorable’ or ‘unique’ items. And this inventory would be compared with an eye for ‘approximate’ matching to the inventories that the travelers report was in their bags.
The bags that meet this ‘Matching’ Criteria would then be delivered to the Traveler’s door, wherever they happen to be at that time.
- -
It’s just crazy that the airlines are simply accepting that these bags are ‘UnClaimed’.
- -
If you knock off a liquor store and accidentally shoot a clinically obese, chain smoking clerk that disrespected you by making a snide comment about your dear irish mother; You’ll get the electric chair,
But if you steal billions of dollars worth of luggage from deeply stressed and abused travelers, The 4th branch of our government, the last line of defense that is supposed to protect us from the abuses of the rich & powerful; they think it’s fawking hilarious. !!!
- -
Nightline Program Title : Unclaimed Luggage : Bought & Sold
On Nightline tonight they had a piece on ‘Lost Luggage’
and while Nightline and other ‘news’ programs like this often get astonishingly worked up over celebrities or politicians that are caught in the most benign examples of ’Shenanigans’,
When they are faced with Grand Theft Larceny against The World’s Travelers, they treat it like a giant Joke !!!
What they should have explained is How Exactly The Airlines make a reasonable attempt to find the owners of The Luggage that they’ve misplaced...?
Just What is: ‘UnClaimed’ ?
How can people get off a plane and simply forget about their baggage filled with expensive clothes, jewelry or electronics?
Just what does the Airline expect the traveler to do to ‘Claim’ their misplaced Luggage?
This is so amazing evil !
This is simply more evidence that everyone about western civilization is completely wrong.
- -
i will try to be charitable here towards the airlines;
Considering that according to this report, a full 1% ( A Stupendously Gigantic Number, given the millions of people traveling by air every hour ) of the luggage that everyone now has to pay an extra $100 per bag for, is misplaced.
This is assuming that the tag that was ostensibly attached to the bag at the time of check in was somehow, by some means, innocent or malicious, was removed.
If the tag is still in place, the owner should be painfully easy to locate and return at the expense & all difficulties of the airline.
The Third possibility is that the tag on the bag is Not the Tag that was put there at Check In, or During Check In, The Tags were somehow mixed up with Other Tags of Other Passengers. Once this is discovered, the Bag would be considered as a Bag without a Tag.
There may be some ‘Encrypted’ ( ? ) information that may be deduced from The Incorrect Tag, But it may also only lead to greater confusion by making fallacious assumptions as to when & how The incorrect tag was attached.
This also assumes that The Traveler has failed to include their name & address inside their bag, as every cautious & prudent traveler should.
If Not :
The traveler recognizes that their bag has not met them at their destination and they go to the airline’s counter and report that their bag is missing.
Let us now imagine that the traveler is unable to provide an accurate description of their bags, because they possess an IQ of only 100, and have never given more than a thought or two to ever having to provide an accurate description of their own luggage.
They may also be unable to remember in any detail what is in the bag. Clothes, This & That...
Expensive Jewelry or Electronics they may recall, but these are undoubtedly generic items and could match the contents of dozens of bags.
In the piece; There were dozens of Big Item Electronics, in particular i recall an iPad; As they mentioned the unusuality of this; ‘Who would have so easily abandoned an iPad?’ But certainly; This iPad and many of the other electronic items were Registered ! By some means; It should should be a simple matter to contact the manufacturer and discover the name & address or email of the owner, so as to return the entirety of the items found with it.
If a computer was found in the bag, It would be difficult to imagine that it would not contain numerous references to its owner.
What should the Airline be doing to find the owners of the bags that end up someplace, and are ‘UnClaimed’?
Upon Discovering that there is an UnClaimed Bag somewhere, they should immediately attach a difficult to remove sticker with the time and place that it was discovered, And enter that information into their UnClaimed Computer DataBase. The Computer compares the reports by Irate Travelers to the unclaimed bags, and determines if a given bag (A) could possibly be The Lost Bag (B). If there is still a question of compatibility, The lost bag would be opened in a constricted space ( that is; An enclosed space such that nothing could possibly be mislaid ) and an inventory made of the most ‘memorable’ or ‘unique’ items. And this inventory would be compared with an eye for ‘approximate’ matching to the inventories that the travelers report was in their bags.
The bags that meet this ‘Matching’ Criteria would then be delivered to the Traveler’s door, wherever they happen to be at that time.
- -
It’s just crazy that the airlines are simply accepting that these bags are ‘UnClaimed’.
- -
If you knock off a liquor store and accidentally shoot a clinically obese, chain smoking clerk that disrespected you by making a snide comment about your dear irish mother; You’ll get the electric chair,
But if you steal billions of dollars worth of luggage from deeply stressed and abused travelers, The 4th branch of our government, the last line of defense that is supposed to protect us from the abuses of the rich & powerful; they think it’s fawking hilarious. !!!
- -
More Confusion Regarding The Illusion of FreeWill
Regarding : A concise statement of the problem of free will
From Wm Jas’ Bugs to fearen babes withall
John C. Wright recently posted on Determinism and Indeterminism and quoted this concise statement of the problem of free will, which was written by a reader of his called Lucky Marty:
Consider the following propositions:
1) All events are either the deterministic result of prior events or else they are random. ( Are there ANY Random Events? / Is Determinism Defined ?
2) Free choices are not fully determined by prior events. ( Definition
3) Free choices are not random. ( Definition
4) People make free choices. ( Wistful Dreaming
All of them seem highly plausible,
and in fact it’s not easy to see how any of them could be false.
But they can’t all be true
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - <
It seems to be that statements of Fact may be considered either true or false;
But these are Not statements of fact; At Least Some of them are Definitions.
As such; Are Some or All of them Exclusive ( XOR ) Definitions?
In my final conclusion of Assertion;
Or Assertion that remains an unsubstantiated Conclusion:
The First Claim is Suspect.
Everything that we experience in the macroworld closely adheres to the model of cause & effect; Yet Quantum Physicists ( seem to ) be suggesting that there are events within or in the vicinity of atomic nuclei that are random.
We have no direct experience with anything that is genuinely random,
So it’s not entirely proved that there even are random, uncaused events.
My Unsubstantiated Assertion is that there is another class of phenomena that occurs routinely, but is something other than cause & effect.
To make this Claim slightly more palatable,
If i were to successfully make distinctions between well understood examples of cause & effect, then these separate cases of what we are tentatively calling Causality; Then it may be reasonable to lay them out along a continuum that features realms that we do not have ready examples for, but which we may provisionally assert that -Maybe- There are Undefined Instances which fit into that niche of QuaziCausality.
( ? )
1) There is the simplistic idealized case of one domino falling against the next.
In this example; The ONLY thing effecting Domino B is The Action upon it from Domino A.
2) There is a Perception of Another Case in which things are Caused by Localized Events. A Workings of An Automobile Engine, or The Behaviour of this Automobile is entirely the result of it’s construction & the instructions given to it by it’s driver. / Another Example is That The Mind is The Result of The ElectroChemical Activity of The Brain, which in Influenced by Its Senses & Related Local Events.
But [ 3 ] will show that this is an illusion.
3) In The Real World; Every Domino is Effected by The Gravitational & Electromagnetic Fields of Every Other Particle in The Universe that supports these forces. This asserts that when a Domino in The Real World Tips over, It is The State of The Entire Universe that is Effecting it.
This may not be convincing when applied to Dominoes, But it may be more reasonably believed when applied to Whether or Not a Single Neuron in A Brain, Teetering on Firing or Not Firing, May be Influenced by such subtle effects as The Gravitational Waves radiating from a distant quasar or The ElectroMagnetic Fields of all The Toasters in North America. This Single Neuron may determine the outcome of some grandiose, historical effect.
In such a case; Each Decision is the result of how the entire universe is ‘set’ at that moment.
This hardly seems like classical ‘Cause & Effect’,
It is more like ‘What is; Is.’ or ‘Everything is.’
It should be added that i am not suggesting that simply because a system is insanely complicated, or even Chaotic, that it Categorically Transcends The Simpler Models of If A then B, or A causes B.
In all cases, There are numerous causes for B.
But - When Chaos transcends Chaos and slaps upside the butt cheeks of Randomality, Then maybe there is a sliver of A Categorical Shift.
This is a NetherRegion of; Not Quite Random.
It’s one subunit short of Infinite Chaos.
.999... doesn’t equal 1.
.999... doesn’t in any way explain, justify or allow for Freewill,
But it does suggest that there is another Category that is not Cause & Effect,
And it’s not Genuine Randomality. It’s Something else.
And if .999... is a unique value,
Then there are undoubtedly other kinds of ‘Order’ that are not readily familiar to us.
4) If There are Tachyons or other particles that freely travel back & forth through time, or perhaps; Electrons or Photons or Other bundled Leptons or Quarks may occasionally skim off the edge of A Black Hole’s Event Horizon, Falling backwards or forwards in time; The it may well by that every decision that any given neuron contributes to, May be Influenced by All Past & Future Events.
This is even less like classical ‘Cause & Effect’.
5) Since there are particles that apparently ( According to The Standard Model & Other Theories that Include Gravity ) Are Not effected by some Forces; The Remaining Particles Are Effected by Proximal Forces Only. This is slightly different from The Single Domino A falling on B. It is more like A Mysterious Cloud of Indeterminacy Telling an Electron to Fall from One Atomic Orbit to Another, Either Absorbing or Releasing An Photon.
There may be other Classes;
But i think that this should demonstrate that this idea of Classical Cause & Effect doesn’t really exist at all.
Everything effects Everything.
The Universe, Like The Brain, filled with dozen & dozens ( et. al. ) of neurons that may or may not be responsible for The Mind, consists of A Pattern at any given moment, that Determines what the next Pattern in the sequence of Time & Space or Consciousness will be.
Or
Maybe there are other causal forces that we are not familiar with,
Even within our ability to imagine,
Or our meta-ability to imagine.
This Meta-Ability to Imagine ( x )
Simply means that there are ( Undoubtedly ? ) Phenomena within the universe,
Or The Universe that our Universe Resides within,
That is beyound The Human Mind to Consider even as nonsensical gibberish.
This is where freewill may be able to stick it’s fingers into.
The final conclusion here is that ( ? ) The Universe is The Sole Generator of The Mind, Which is Distributed to Innumerable ‘Nodes’ which are encased in Brains.
The Autonomous Universe is The Mind Generator.
And Brains are somehow uniquely structured to allow Minds to Coalesce These Patterns into Awareness.
The Paranoid Solipsist Universe
Consists of One Mind that Believes it is many Minds.
- - -
i have also asserted ( elsewhere ) that freewill is necessary for Consciousness.
i realize that this conclusion is detached from an argument.
So perhaps one should be forwarded.
i should first suggest or reveal; that i am of two minds when it comes to these metaphysical topics.
i often wonder; If the brain is solely responsible for creating the mind,
How might it do this?
And i believe that i am comfortable with the assertion that the brain may indeed be responsible for all human behaviour,
But i am deeply flummoxed ( or vexed ) by the idea the brain creating the mind.
i am even comfortable with a robot ( without conscious reflection or awareness ) duplicating ALL Human behaviour, from the lowest to the highest, the most altruistic to the most senselessly violent & sadistic behaviours.
This robot would be able to make art, compose symphonies, and provide itself with self directed motivations, based on very simple core instructions ( our instincts ).
But how can a pattern of ElectroChemical Neurons spread out over a brain, Create The Holistic Experience of ’Seeing’, which is quite different from what the robot does. The robot can identify things in it’s visual field and act on them, but does a robot ‘See’ things? Is The robot conscious of a visual field in front of it, where these identified things all fit together into a 1::1 correspondence with what is actually out there?
In the brain; In the visual Cortex; The impulses from the eyes have to be ( ? ) broken apart into their smallest constituents to determine their color, form, edge properties and whatever else is used a cues to finally identify the innumerable blobs of light as stems of grass, faces, formless clouds, encyclopedias of symbols, or any number of other objects which may appear in countless orientations and be very reliably identified, and then; Be somehow reassembled into this movie screen which the mind ‘Sees’.
How is this done? The Robot may be able to accomplish everything quite easily,
Up until that last step.
A computer may easily identify a blobby green thing as a leaf,
But the mind doesn’t ‘See’ A Blobby Green Thing; It sees every detail of every leaf.
This seems like quite a different thing to me.
It is as nearly incomprehensible to consider how an ordinary computer can display characters on a screen, as for a human mind to see them.
It may be argued that the former may be astonishingly tedious for the computer,
But genuinely impossible for The Mind to Understand the latter.
But when sufficient tedium meets complete impossibility,
The effects are equally weighed.
But how does this relate to Freewill?
By Freewill, Maybe what i mean is Autonomy.
Does one need Autonomy for Freewill?
i would think so.
Is Autonomy necessary for Consciousness?
The Conscious Mind without Autonomy, would be either;
A Subset of A Greater Autonomous Mind or Mind Generator
or
A Mere Observer in A Mechanical World.
The Theory of Epiphenomenalism takes this latter Conclusion.
It is Very Convincing.
Epiphenomenalism argues that Consciousness is real,
Awareness is Real, The Autonomous Mind is Real,
But it is trapped in a bubble from which all it’s thoughts are generated by the brain, which is subservient to the machines of reality.
It Watches Only.
The Mind has No influence on The World or even it’s own robot vehicle or it’s own thoughts.
If The Conscious Mind were without Autonomy And as such; A Subset of a Greater Mind that Controls it; Then this Argues for Either a Genuine Autonomous Mind, and or A Recursive, Infinite or Torus Shaped Continuum of Conscious Entities.
i’m not entirely opposed to a boot-strap theory of these things, but i don’t necessarily see how that’s really going to advance a greater understanding or explain away elemental difficulties.
The Major Problem with Epiphenomenalism is not that the argument itself is critically flawed, it’s just that it provides no clue whatsoever how this agent of awareness is generated.
It simply takes The Conscious Mind and strips it of any involvement in The Mechanical Universe.
What is Required to make a Conscious Mind?
This is remain unanswered until one is given to a robot,
And even so; As i have suggested already, This robot may exhibit all genuine human / Conscious behaviour, without being conscious at all.
How would you test for Consciousness?
Assuming that it -Could Be- Successfully faked.
Could a Robot Successfully Fake Freewill?
If this Very Human Like Robot were made ( Very Large ) so that every decision or action it partakes in could be mapped out as the result of every fully documented Gear rotation or Transistor Switching Action, Then The Assertion; Made By The Robot, that it was Free & Self Aware, would be suspect or utterly disproven- -
But if This Robot was composed of elements that could take advantage of gravity waves propagating from distant quasars or The weak force shedding apparently random neutrons, Then No Such Map of Every Decision could be made, and The Robot would be, should be, considered humanly autonomous until demonstrated as otherwise controlled.
But is it Really Free?
Does it all come down to The Appearance of Freewill for all possible Cases?
Is there, Conceivably, an AntiThesis to this Assertion?
From Wm Jas’ Bugs to fearen babes withall
John C. Wright recently posted on Determinism and Indeterminism and quoted this concise statement of the problem of free will, which was written by a reader of his called Lucky Marty:
Consider the following propositions:
1) All events are either the deterministic result of prior events or else they are random. ( Are there ANY Random Events? / Is Determinism Defined ?
2) Free choices are not fully determined by prior events. ( Definition
3) Free choices are not random. ( Definition
4) People make free choices. ( Wistful Dreaming
All of them seem highly plausible,
and in fact it’s not easy to see how any of them could be false.
But they can’t all be true
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - <
It seems to be that statements of Fact may be considered either true or false;
But these are Not statements of fact; At Least Some of them are Definitions.
As such; Are Some or All of them Exclusive ( XOR ) Definitions?
In my final conclusion of Assertion;
Or Assertion that remains an unsubstantiated Conclusion:
The First Claim is Suspect.
Everything that we experience in the macroworld closely adheres to the model of cause & effect; Yet Quantum Physicists ( seem to ) be suggesting that there are events within or in the vicinity of atomic nuclei that are random.
We have no direct experience with anything that is genuinely random,
So it’s not entirely proved that there even are random, uncaused events.
My Unsubstantiated Assertion is that there is another class of phenomena that occurs routinely, but is something other than cause & effect.
To make this Claim slightly more palatable,
If i were to successfully make distinctions between well understood examples of cause & effect, then these separate cases of what we are tentatively calling Causality; Then it may be reasonable to lay them out along a continuum that features realms that we do not have ready examples for, but which we may provisionally assert that -Maybe- There are Undefined Instances which fit into that niche of QuaziCausality.
( ? )
1) There is the simplistic idealized case of one domino falling against the next.
In this example; The ONLY thing effecting Domino B is The Action upon it from Domino A.
2) There is a Perception of Another Case in which things are Caused by Localized Events. A Workings of An Automobile Engine, or The Behaviour of this Automobile is entirely the result of it’s construction & the instructions given to it by it’s driver. / Another Example is That The Mind is The Result of The ElectroChemical Activity of The Brain, which in Influenced by Its Senses & Related Local Events.
But [ 3 ] will show that this is an illusion.
3) In The Real World; Every Domino is Effected by The Gravitational & Electromagnetic Fields of Every Other Particle in The Universe that supports these forces. This asserts that when a Domino in The Real World Tips over, It is The State of The Entire Universe that is Effecting it.
This may not be convincing when applied to Dominoes, But it may be more reasonably believed when applied to Whether or Not a Single Neuron in A Brain, Teetering on Firing or Not Firing, May be Influenced by such subtle effects as The Gravitational Waves radiating from a distant quasar or The ElectroMagnetic Fields of all The Toasters in North America. This Single Neuron may determine the outcome of some grandiose, historical effect.
In such a case; Each Decision is the result of how the entire universe is ‘set’ at that moment.
This hardly seems like classical ‘Cause & Effect’,
It is more like ‘What is; Is.’ or ‘Everything is.’
It should be added that i am not suggesting that simply because a system is insanely complicated, or even Chaotic, that it Categorically Transcends The Simpler Models of If A then B, or A causes B.
In all cases, There are numerous causes for B.
But - When Chaos transcends Chaos and slaps upside the butt cheeks of Randomality, Then maybe there is a sliver of A Categorical Shift.
This is a NetherRegion of; Not Quite Random.
It’s one subunit short of Infinite Chaos.
.999... doesn’t equal 1.
.999... doesn’t in any way explain, justify or allow for Freewill,
But it does suggest that there is another Category that is not Cause & Effect,
And it’s not Genuine Randomality. It’s Something else.
And if .999... is a unique value,
Then there are undoubtedly other kinds of ‘Order’ that are not readily familiar to us.
4) If There are Tachyons or other particles that freely travel back & forth through time, or perhaps; Electrons or Photons or Other bundled Leptons or Quarks may occasionally skim off the edge of A Black Hole’s Event Horizon, Falling backwards or forwards in time; The it may well by that every decision that any given neuron contributes to, May be Influenced by All Past & Future Events.
This is even less like classical ‘Cause & Effect’.
5) Since there are particles that apparently ( According to The Standard Model & Other Theories that Include Gravity ) Are Not effected by some Forces; The Remaining Particles Are Effected by Proximal Forces Only. This is slightly different from The Single Domino A falling on B. It is more like A Mysterious Cloud of Indeterminacy Telling an Electron to Fall from One Atomic Orbit to Another, Either Absorbing or Releasing An Photon.
There may be other Classes;
But i think that this should demonstrate that this idea of Classical Cause & Effect doesn’t really exist at all.
Everything effects Everything.
The Universe, Like The Brain, filled with dozen & dozens ( et. al. ) of neurons that may or may not be responsible for The Mind, consists of A Pattern at any given moment, that Determines what the next Pattern in the sequence of Time & Space or Consciousness will be.
Or
Maybe there are other causal forces that we are not familiar with,
Even within our ability to imagine,
Or our meta-ability to imagine.
This Meta-Ability to Imagine ( x )
Simply means that there are ( Undoubtedly ? ) Phenomena within the universe,
Or The Universe that our Universe Resides within,
That is beyound The Human Mind to Consider even as nonsensical gibberish.
This is where freewill may be able to stick it’s fingers into.
The final conclusion here is that ( ? ) The Universe is The Sole Generator of The Mind, Which is Distributed to Innumerable ‘Nodes’ which are encased in Brains.
The Autonomous Universe is The Mind Generator.
And Brains are somehow uniquely structured to allow Minds to Coalesce These Patterns into Awareness.
The Paranoid Solipsist Universe
Consists of One Mind that Believes it is many Minds.
- - -
i have also asserted ( elsewhere ) that freewill is necessary for Consciousness.
i realize that this conclusion is detached from an argument.
So perhaps one should be forwarded.
i should first suggest or reveal; that i am of two minds when it comes to these metaphysical topics.
i often wonder; If the brain is solely responsible for creating the mind,
How might it do this?
And i believe that i am comfortable with the assertion that the brain may indeed be responsible for all human behaviour,
But i am deeply flummoxed ( or vexed ) by the idea the brain creating the mind.
i am even comfortable with a robot ( without conscious reflection or awareness ) duplicating ALL Human behaviour, from the lowest to the highest, the most altruistic to the most senselessly violent & sadistic behaviours.
This robot would be able to make art, compose symphonies, and provide itself with self directed motivations, based on very simple core instructions ( our instincts ).
But how can a pattern of ElectroChemical Neurons spread out over a brain, Create The Holistic Experience of ’Seeing’, which is quite different from what the robot does. The robot can identify things in it’s visual field and act on them, but does a robot ‘See’ things? Is The robot conscious of a visual field in front of it, where these identified things all fit together into a 1::1 correspondence with what is actually out there?
In the brain; In the visual Cortex; The impulses from the eyes have to be ( ? ) broken apart into their smallest constituents to determine their color, form, edge properties and whatever else is used a cues to finally identify the innumerable blobs of light as stems of grass, faces, formless clouds, encyclopedias of symbols, or any number of other objects which may appear in countless orientations and be very reliably identified, and then; Be somehow reassembled into this movie screen which the mind ‘Sees’.
How is this done? The Robot may be able to accomplish everything quite easily,
Up until that last step.
A computer may easily identify a blobby green thing as a leaf,
But the mind doesn’t ‘See’ A Blobby Green Thing; It sees every detail of every leaf.
This seems like quite a different thing to me.
It is as nearly incomprehensible to consider how an ordinary computer can display characters on a screen, as for a human mind to see them.
It may be argued that the former may be astonishingly tedious for the computer,
But genuinely impossible for The Mind to Understand the latter.
But when sufficient tedium meets complete impossibility,
The effects are equally weighed.
But how does this relate to Freewill?
By Freewill, Maybe what i mean is Autonomy.
Does one need Autonomy for Freewill?
i would think so.
Is Autonomy necessary for Consciousness?
The Conscious Mind without Autonomy, would be either;
A Subset of A Greater Autonomous Mind or Mind Generator
or
A Mere Observer in A Mechanical World.
The Theory of Epiphenomenalism takes this latter Conclusion.
It is Very Convincing.
Epiphenomenalism argues that Consciousness is real,
Awareness is Real, The Autonomous Mind is Real,
But it is trapped in a bubble from which all it’s thoughts are generated by the brain, which is subservient to the machines of reality.
It Watches Only.
The Mind has No influence on The World or even it’s own robot vehicle or it’s own thoughts.
If The Conscious Mind were without Autonomy And as such; A Subset of a Greater Mind that Controls it; Then this Argues for Either a Genuine Autonomous Mind, and or A Recursive, Infinite or Torus Shaped Continuum of Conscious Entities.
i’m not entirely opposed to a boot-strap theory of these things, but i don’t necessarily see how that’s really going to advance a greater understanding or explain away elemental difficulties.
The Major Problem with Epiphenomenalism is not that the argument itself is critically flawed, it’s just that it provides no clue whatsoever how this agent of awareness is generated.
It simply takes The Conscious Mind and strips it of any involvement in The Mechanical Universe.
What is Required to make a Conscious Mind?
This is remain unanswered until one is given to a robot,
And even so; As i have suggested already, This robot may exhibit all genuine human / Conscious behaviour, without being conscious at all.
How would you test for Consciousness?
Assuming that it -Could Be- Successfully faked.
Could a Robot Successfully Fake Freewill?
If this Very Human Like Robot were made ( Very Large ) so that every decision or action it partakes in could be mapped out as the result of every fully documented Gear rotation or Transistor Switching Action, Then The Assertion; Made By The Robot, that it was Free & Self Aware, would be suspect or utterly disproven- -
But if This Robot was composed of elements that could take advantage of gravity waves propagating from distant quasars or The weak force shedding apparently random neutrons, Then No Such Map of Every Decision could be made, and The Robot would be, should be, considered humanly autonomous until demonstrated as otherwise controlled.
But is it Really Free?
Does it all come down to The Appearance of Freewill for all possible Cases?
Is there, Conceivably, an AntiThesis to this Assertion?
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