h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One potential relevance of contemplating consciousness is that it helps illustrate that our minds are capable of generating and sustaining theories of 'who' is in control that aren't entirely accurate, but are nonetheless comforting or otherwise useful.

What I'd like to know is :

What do beleivers in free will think about the physical processes necessarily underlying it.

What do beleivers in determinism think about the possibility of *truly* random processes in subatomic physics.

Surely, even free will beleivers accept the immense role that genetics and personal history play in human decision making, and determinists accept that, even if the future is preordained, it will never be possible to predict it entirely, and the only way to experience it fully is to wait.

Neither person knows precisely what anyone else is going to do, and neither know how they themselves will react to the actions of others.
Both can be surprised by events.
Both can use their theory to explain why something happened, but only given the benefit of hindsight.
The free-willer will say the determinist is using their free will to decide to be a determinist. the determinist will say that the free-willer can't help themselves, as they're a victim of fate.

Surely, that's *some* amount of common ground?

Seriously though, the only way to decide one way or another is to try and see if there really is true randomness in the universe. If there is, the universe isn't deterministic. If there is no randomness, the universe is deterministic. It's simply not a question that can be decided by philosophical argument.
It may well not be possible to answer with physics either (to the point where sufficient people understand and agree with the answer), but physics is the only hope.

Stepping back from the ferocity of our accepted doctrines for a moment that does seem more reasonable common ground, I agree. I would like to try to develop this idea more if you're agreeable ?

In answer to your first question, " what do beleivers in free will think about the physical processes necessarily
underlying it. ", speaking from Sartrian position, he argued that of course we live, in a world of things that are beyond our control, beyond out choice - incidently this is one of the main pillars of his philosophy, that we did not choose to be born and yet we find ourselves thrown into a world where we are forced to choose our natures ( and if we accept that we are indeed conscious creatures in, as Sartre saw it, a Godless universe, then we alone are the only ones who can choose our natures therefore we must necessarily have choice and Free Will, anything less than this makes our existence a mockery unto itself. - I should probably point out that I am not yet an aetheist, I'm more yer average agnostic existentialist, erring towards the fond hope that there is a God, but quite frankly not at all certain or convinced either way. ) - he called this backgound of facts Facticity.

This is perfectly compatable with what he believed because what is important is how we choose to respond to those facts. The place where I am born, for instance, is a fact beyond my conscious choice or control but I can choose to either accept it, rebel against, be angry, be happy, to even change my mind about this fact. None of this could be possible if my nature was determined strictly by the facts of, for example, where I was born. There are of course facts about us beyond our control ( even physical processes if you like. ) But I feel this existentialist philosophy is flexiable enough to be able to accomodate that. You can of course adapt this argument to explain the issues you raise about genetics and personal history. I am intensely interested to see what new science will emerge when the results of the Human Genome project are published, exactly what it is that our genes make us do, though I hold my hand up to say that I would be the one of the first to question anyone who claimed a solely genetic explantion for a behavioural trait ( such as homosexuality, for example ).

As for physics, I have read several books on Quantum physics ( the equations are always beyond me - I am not a scientist. ) but the issues it raises are very interesting. For instance in one of the books Schrodinger's Kittens by John Gribbin, he discusses the possiblity of Two identical sets of The cat in the Box experiment launched in opposite directions in space. Eventually say the Boxes came to rest on a different worlds that each had intelligent life ( unlikely, I know, but bear with me ) Inside the box Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is at work The cat is emiting two possible wave forms and exists in a supposition of states as both being dead and not dead at the same time. As soon as one of the boxes is opened the conscious decision impacts on the quantum Universe and one of the waveforms collapses, the other 'becomes' reality. ( This is relavant ) Photons, naturally travel at the speed of light, beause they are light. If, as you approach the speed of light, time slows down, then at the speed of light time ought to stop or more accurately for the photon in question, no sooner has left the surface of it's parent star than it appears to have arrived at it's destination. It has been speculated that the quantum particles involved in the cat in the Box experiment may travel faster than the speed of light ( ruled out by The Theory of Relativity ) and so actually back in Time! So not only has the cat just quantumly 'become' dead it ' has always' been dead. Meanwhile this resolves the waveform duality experienced by the other cat in the box and it is equally ' always been alive' ( Say, if when the vile of poison failed to break, it instead trigered a suspended animation system to keep the cat alive in the box. ) When I first discovered this kind of theory existed, I was enraptured, I do believe in the idea of this kind random Universe, ( In tandem with Relativity in order to explain all the big things like gravity and such like.) And for me it underlines again the imprtance of the conscious mind in, to put it crudely, ' deciding' ( not in connection with 'deciding' to do something ) whether the cat is alive or dead. Though it does make me wonder quite how this universal principle of physics operated when there were not Humans with conscious about to decide things. I suppose it could either be taken as proof of Extra-terestrial inteligences or possibly, God or Gods.

If Natural Philosophy has in ages past given way to separate disciplines of Aesthetics, Theology, Science, History and Education, who now debate these issue for us. Physics may yet provide the answer. But surely by considering and reflecting on our experiences we can conclude through philosophical argument whether we think the Universe operates to Laws of Mechanism and Determinism or Quantum Randomness and Free Will.

*Phew*! Lots more to write about of course however, I am involved in this at the negelt of other work I have to compete for Monday, So i am going to have to dissappear of of h2g2 for the next few days. I will see you all again next week and look forward to continuing the debate then.

Bye for now,

Best Wishes

Clive

Of course, that last paragraph should read as " neglect of other work" and it is " dissappeared off of", other than that, the above stands as the true testament of a hard hours slog at the keyboard.

Clive

It may well be that only physics can solve the dilemma of determinism v free will in the material universe. I think however that speculating about this dilemma on the assumption that 'mind' is a quality in some way independant of the material universe may give us common ground and that it may be interesting to continue the debate in terms of how the two positions affect other ideas. I am fascinated as to how a hard determinist might think about crime and punishment and how free will impacts upon the concept of social deprivation as a cause of crime. I would like to read your thoughts on these matters.

I just wanted to let everyone know, I talked to Peta about publicising this debate and maybe getting a front-page mention. Peta would find it hard to publicise a forum, so it was suggested that someone write a guide entry, put a link to this forum in it, an Peta will help us to publicise that, open the debate up to a wider audience. I would do this myself, but I am a bit busy at the moment, anyone else feel up to writing a guide entry, summerising more or less the issues involved with Free will v Determinism and what the main questions are that we have been addressing ? If you do, let me know how it goes and then go and tell Peta and see exactly what
The Oracle decrees we do.....

Clive

Hi SallyM, everybody,

Well Sally, there's no chance you'll be shouted down on this one, because although it's logically impossible for both positions to be true, thousands of years of philosophy haven't managed to settle this one to everyone's satisfaction. So feel free to take whatever postion you like in the sure knowledge that you're 50% likely to be right.

For myself, I think you should live your life as if free will were a certainty, because it gives you the right to take credit and blame for your actions.

I am unhappy about the idea of being responsible for a choice you were forced into, because if someone forces you to do something, you haven't made a choice have you?

Right now, theres an interesting example of this involving the paratroopers, who fired upon the crowd on Bloody Sunday.

Are the men, who fired that day guilty of murder? After all, they may have only been following orders. Unfortunately for them, legally no soldier, policeman etc is under any obligation to obey an illegal order, though whether an order is illegal is judged later by a court.

This puts any soldier/police woman/man in a very awkward position, don't you think? Especially when you consider that the person on the ground may be under severe stress, or even coercion (there are reports that some paratroopers were beaten with sticks when they seemed unwilling to act as required).

It seems to me that those men are going to have to face (and porbably ARE facing the fact) that they will be seen as murderers.

I hope they will be treated leniently, because are not other murderers in Northern Ireland being released? If we give no special legal protection to people who serve us, then how can we ask them to take harsher punishment than is being metered out to non-uniformed individuals?

Of course, this means that the normal, law - abiding citizen ends up paying to hold the wet end of the stick AGAIN.

Just to let you know, this topic isn't as academic as you might think.

Dirigini.

"Ignoring Heisenberg"

So, you vould iknore me vould you?
You zhould be more carevul, you never know vhat vill harppen if you iknore me.

More seriously,

How can you say you've addressed a question, when you chose to ignore such an important salient fact?

Dirigini

"If most sane people can happily live with the illusion of conscious control where it doesn't really exist"

If free will were an illusion, is it logical to say this?
Can they even chose to be happy about the illusion of free will?

If free will were an illusion, why have creatures with any (even illusional) awareness at all?

Yes, I do enjoy poking sticks into the spokes.

Dirigini

I would say that though this debate has occupied academic thinkers for...quite a while, really. It is naturally of great practical signifigance and encompasses all things, including whether soldiers are free to act to follow or to not follow orders, right through to whether to buy Full-Cream or Semi-Skimmed milk. (No, seriously, it does....honest.)

On a separate matter. Werser Heseinberg, along with his drinking buddies, Erwin Schrodinger and Max Plank and Niels Bohr had a lot to do with developing quantum theory. Something which really disturbed Einstein ( "I can't believe god plays dice with the Universe!", he huffed ), and flew into direct contradiction with the Galilean and Newtonian 'mechanistic' view of how the Universe operated. Though I agree it is unwise to " ignore such an important and salient fact", as you put it. Whilst we accept that these debates go on in physics, ( see the last few postings, um...let me just count......the last three days postings starting with a message from Potholer, who concludes that physics may be the only way to solve this dilemma ), I certainly wanted to concentrate our efforts on resolving the arguments through debate and discussion, (Physics aside, how do you really feel about life, do you feel your life is pre-determined our are we free to choose?) What exactly would heisenberg say about your Soldiers example, I wonder?
If you have an opinion you are of course cordially welcomed to our forum. Jot in down and see who replies Hopefully we can eventually condense this into a guide entry.

See you around

Clive

The point I was trying to make was that even if the universe *is* entirely deterministic, (so that in one sense there isn't free will), intuitive feelings of determinism and free will are both possible, and we can't prove either way.
On the other hand, if free will *does* exist, it is entirely possible that some people would choose to deny it. Even the most ardent free-willer can't deny that the universe exhibits immense causality at human scales.

I wasn't saying fundamental physics isn't part of the answer, just trying to simplify things initially to gain a little common ground whatever the answer may truly be. I don't recall claiming to have covered the entire topic - I did make more points later on. If anything, it seems to me that others were ultimately less keen on physical explanations than I. Maybe I foresaw that, and was trying not to scare them off too early.

the point I was trying to make was that even if the universe *is* entirely deterministic,
(so that in one sense there isn't free will), intuitive feelings of determinism and free
will are both possible, and we can't prove either way.
On the other hand, if free will *does* exist, it is entirely possible that some people
would choose to deny it. Even the most ardent free-willer can't deny that the universe
exhibits immense causality at human scales.

I wasn't saying fundamental physics isn't part of the answer, just trying to simplify
things initially to gain a little common ground whatever the answer may truly be. I don't
recall claiming to have covered the entire topic - I did make more points later on. If
anything, it seems to me that others were ultimately less keen on physical
explanations than I. Maybe I foresaw that, and was trying not to scare them off too
early.

The above posting is Potholers, i copied it onto my reply screen so that I could write a decent follow up and.......I went and posted it by accident, so just to clear things up. SORRY POTHOLER!

Clive

What I wanted to know was this, I dont deny that there is causality in the Universe but I would still affirm that we do have a radical freedom to choose our natures and to make choices because we are conscious. In this respect a billiard ball can't choose to not roll away if another billiard ball strikes it. Nor can a planet 'decide' not to start obeying gravity ( and neither can we because we too are affected by causality ) or a room think it rather hot and choose to open a window. The operating factor here is consciousness. What I don't want to accept though is that though there is causality that means our lives are fully determined. They are, I think, different. Because of this we ought to be clear as to what the distinction really is between causality and determinism to help us in our debate.

Clive

Does that mean that everything hinges on whether consciousness is a completely causal, physical process, or if mind is partially independent of matter.

Can any objective argument be made that consciousness is even partially independent of physics? Does that work for other animals as well? How smart do they have to be to be nondeterministic.?

Note - I'm not discounting quantum randomness here, but from my current stance, random effects are simply additional noise, and don't really affect the causality arguments.

Oh dear, our terribly neat message posting wedge on the left is looking rather confused isn't it?

Where exactly is the mind? Is it brain and chemicals alone .ie. reducable down to matter and subject to the laws that govern physical stuff or is it something else This is almost an entirely separate forum debate of it's own just waiting to be had. Circumventing that for the moment if I may, I'm not sure i can give any conclusive proofs as to what or where the mind is. What intrigued me about the sartrian existentialist position was that in his heavy-weight philosophical tome " Being and Nothingness", Sartre decribes consciousness as 'nothingness'. ( and hence, I suppose, not a physical thing to be found.) I'll try not to slip into jargon mode, but consciousness is a quality of our being. Being is our existence. All things have "Being - In -itself ". Pure, brute, raw existing stuff. We have physical bodies so we are Being -in-itself just like tables and trees and planets and so on. However we are singular in nature as we have consciousness, this Sartre termed Being - for - itself. It frankly sends me and others a bit screwy eyed just trying to explain it. Thinking like Sartre does for any period of time tends to result in headaches. but try to think of it like this ( I hope this works with the text-wrap )

We are aware ( conscious) of objects. when we bring them into consciousness. Consciousness then in this respect in like a giant empty hall things, are literally 'brought into' it and we become conscious of them. These things we can call objects - of - consciousness. So:

Conscious of____________________an object ( ie. A Tree. )


The line represents consciousness being distant from the object. This distance is like a sentence with a clause missing. Consciousness is incomplete unless it is conscious of something. It must be " I am thinking of....." It is somewhat ludicrous to say " I am just thinking....." Curiously, sartre believed that because consciousness is as it were, the subject viewing the object; so the subject cannot directly view itself:

subject of consciousness______subject of consciousness

or

" I am thinking about I"

This doesn't work becuase it is not viewing an object-of--consciousness and
is therefore not complete. Grammatically, it is a nonsence as well, you have to convert the second "I" into an object, so that it becomes:

"I am thinking about me."

For this reason Sartre coined one of many catchy little quotes " Consciousness is that which is not the object of consciousness."
Okay, so maybe not catchy but certainly a little quote nonetheless.

This is for Sartre what it was to be a conscious being and I suppose, that though this isn't as you may have asked for a objective argument ( in fact it positivly subjective! ) It is one example of separating the operations of the mind separate to that of the brain
( without falling into the pit of Dualism. ) and obstensibly, the physics that govern it. I am not sure if I totally subscribe to this view though I was certainly impressed by it. I am still making up my own mind about a lot of things but does this give you anything to work with Potholer ?



Clive

In the interest of clarity, jump to the post starting 'Continued...'

Where, exactly ?

Continuing on from Clive's post regarding Sartre, and consciousness...
(and moving on from physics to a computing viewpoint)

The concept of consciousness as a prexisting room into which objects are brought for observation does have a definite hint of a Cartesian theatre about it, and seems perilously close to the pit of Dualism you mentioned, as do some of the subject-object references

For me, broadly following the Daniel Dennett approach to consciousness, the mind is an entirely physical resident of the brain, thought is a form of computation, and consciousness is a relatively high level, serial process running atop (within?) massively parallel analogue hardware.

From another angle, consciousness could be considered as somewhat like having an inbuilt commentator looking over our shoulder, much of the time quietly mumbling a running verbal commentary on our major thoughts and actions.

I do think the linguistic element of consciousness may well be fundamental to its operation and usefulness - as the running commentary condenses and summarises selected thoughts in terms of words or similar internal tokens, the words themselves can serve as very useful secondary triggers for appropriate memories, in addition to the original thoughts themselves.

If language is a requirement for consciousness, that goes a long way to explaining the vast difference even between humans and their closest ape relatives - if consciousness was simply a emergent property proportional to brain size, the gulf that clearly exists would be very hard to explain.

I don't think *we* bring objects in to consciousness, at least not most of the time. I think relevant events boost the activation level of subconscious thoughts to the point where our consciousness starts paying attention to them, somewhat like a schoolteacher directing their gaze at a noisy child.

I don't see consciousness as a room waiting to be filled in the sense of a fixed, discrete space of variable emptiness, more a process waiting for input, so when there is no input, it doesn't run.

Of course, I may be entirely wrong, but it does go to show that many theories on the internal workings of the brain are possible. We can't really tell by introspection, and I think the situation is simlar with the original problem of free will. Just *feeling* something is or isn't the correct answer doesn't really carry weight with anyone else.

Whoops!, the empty hall analogy was my own and not an existentialist one, and I can see the flaws in it a mile off now that Potholer mentions the parity with the cartesian theatre. D'oh!

Oh well, anyway more what I had meant to get across was that consciousness " is a nothingness", an emptyness that is incomplete unless it is joined to an 'object of consciousness' that we are then aware of.

I have already said about how Sartre rejected the Freudian notion of a sub-conscious. He viewed people as being - in - itself, which is an object or thing but also and crucially as being - for - itself, which is a nothing.

This semeser, I have had lectures specifically on Descartes and I recognise the idea of 'the little man inside our heads'. This is a king of hommunculer view that "I" am inside "me". The bit that "I" really am is somehow inside or embodies within me. This very notion was attacked by Gilbert Ryle as being " the Ghost in the Machine." The last thing I want to do however is to turen this into a long dissertation of philosophy of mind, and just start batting names back and forth. I am however interested in this Daniel Dennet fellow, tell me more please.

Because, the subject of consciousness cannot be the object of consciousness, you are right we cannot perceive mind by mere introspection.

see you later

Clive

It seems that theories of consciousness and mind are central to the determinism v free will debate. I am particularly intrigued by the idea of consciousness emerging from language rather than 'from a larger brain'. Though it may be true that self-consciousness is not possible without the ability to communicate abstract ideas, that communicative ability itself arises from having both a larger brain and physical manipulative ability. This may sound very deterministic, but if we agree that free will is more than just a hint of randomness in the universe, is in fact the ability to choose to act in pursuit of some desired outcome, then consciousness as an emergent and transcendant phenomenon is required for free will.