Human Instinct and Free Will

[ryan]

It makes not the slightest difference in terms of chosen decisions because QM properties are not subject to your will or your choice. You are not aware of any quantum properties, yet alone able to benefit from them by bending them to your will.

If quantum effects alter the normal course of decision making, which is the function of a brain, these are not chosen. As they are not chosen, you are not the master of quantum consciousness, but the puppet of forces that you cannot harness to your advantage.

Quantum is not your friend when it comes to your idea of free will.

You are trying to take "me" away from QM when it is "me" that is QM. You are matter (in a monistic sense). It does what you do, and you do what it does - they are the same thing. The meaning of control is simply to cause. QM/I controlled/caused/willed X in a freely undetermined way. QM did X = I did X.

We have hit the very bottom, and we hit it hard. There is nowhere else to go.

 

[DBT]

It makes not the slightest difference in terms of chosen decisions because QM properties are not subject to your will or your choice. You are not aware of any quantum properties, yet alone able to benefit from them by bending them to your will.

If quantum effects alter the normal course of decision making, which is the function of a brain, these are not chosen. As they are not chosen, you are not the master of quantum consciousness, but the puppet of forces that you cannot harness to your advantage.

Quantum is not your friend when it comes to your idea of free will.

You are trying to take "me" away from QM when it is "me" that is QM. You are matter (in a monistic sense). It does what you do, and you do what it does - they are the same thing. The meaning of control is simply to cause. QM/I controlled/caused/willed X in a freely undetermined way. QM did X = I did X.

We have hit the very bottom, and we hit it hard. There is nowhere else to go.

Rats, cats, mice, rabbits, hens, roosters, donkeys, camels and aardvarks along with every organism on the planet with a central nervous system - including humans - being quantum substrata/macro scale physics organisms....yet all perceive, think, feel and act according to the architecture of their CNS/brain and not because of their quantum substrata which is common to all.

Nor can any of us manipulate quantum states, position, velocity, superposition, etc, for the purpose of acquiring certain desired outcomes or to meet the hopes and aspirations of our conscious will. It's all brain state, including its quantum substructure.

What does M. Gazzaniga say:


"With our new concept of the distributed self, the concept of free will is even more odd and, I have always thought, a misnomer. As Dan Dennett once asked, "Free from what?" We parents work all of our lives to raise our children not to be random, sporadic and impulsive, but to be directed, controlled and mature. We want their automatic brains to be well experienced in assessing the likely outcomes of behaviors. We want them to accumulate scenarios of how to behave in a moral and ethical way so that when they are given a new challenge, they have a context for a proper response. We want their decision-making brain to call upon a life's-worth of experience and training to do the right thing. We surely do not want our children to suddenly be free of all of this experience and education and to choose some wacky course of action that leads to personal disaster.

So what does free will mean? It has become a catchall term and means several things. In many ways the concept is fundamental to human thought and societal institutions. For example, our system of justice is built on the idea that we are all practical reasoners, working in a normal brain environment to produce coherent and ethical behaviors. We are held to be personally responsible for those decisions. Questioning the core concept, free will, necessitates rethinking many cherished notions of human institutions.''

 

[untermensche]

You do like to make dogmatic statements with no argument to support them.

I don't have a clue what you base this on.

You are not one who should be talking about dogma without taking a good hard look in the mirror.

You mean the dogma of being able to move my finger at "will"?

It is impossible to surmount this because it is a fact.

What you essentially said was, and I quote; ''The "mind" however is a kind of brain activity'' but then you go beyond brain activity and strongly suggest autonomy of mind when you said; ''What makes the human stand out is that it makes decisions with a "mind" not a brain.''

If you did not have some autonomy of "mind" you could not respond appropriately to anything. Since it is only in a "mind" where conceptions are understood.

A brain does not deal with conceptions. It deals with electricity and neurotransmitters.

I notice you completely ignore the arguments about the total absurdity of a brain creating a mind if that mind can do nothing. It is superfluous activity by the brain done for no reason. If we accept your dogmatism.

Total "Brain agency" is a hypothesis, not a proven fact.

There you have it. You are for all practical purposes claiming that mind is something more than just brain agency.

Based on observation.

Based on abilities.

It can't be denied with the arbitrary scraps of nothingness you provide.

And it doesn't make what you are peddling anything more than dogmatic claims without evidence to support them.

 

[Juma]

No. Not really. That would be so improbable that you would need centillons of universas for something remotely similar (fex a copy of a benzen molecule pops into existance).

Why are you telling me this??? I only said it was possible. I said nothing wrong.

So, no. It wont happen.

... until about the centillionth universe

Which is the same as to say that it will not happen == it is not really possible.

 

[fromderinside]

It simply comes down to the fact that my consciousness is a mechanism in the brain and might have QM properties. Whatever my consciousness does, might have an effect on what the rest of the brain does as exemplified in the quote as "interference on gap junctions".

Most certainly the brain constituents have QM properties. Photon releases from electrons as part of energy exchanges for example. However there is no evidence photon releases of any other QM phenomena are amplified up to the macro world other than as aspects of deterministic events. It takes a bunch (many thousands) of photon exchanges to complete a macro transaction, reducing the timing of the probabilities of those photon exchanges reduce to the highest probability for when they occur relative to other macro events. Wallah, deterministic.

This misconception on your part comes from both your failure to understand the relation between individual QM events and macro events and of your failure to understand statistics are just a mathematical form. Neither relate to observation beyond working out likelihoods given presumptions. Your presumptions are also weak in that they presume a single QM event translates to a single macro event when they don't. They don't because they are micro events within the macro structures and macro mechanics which in part is the definition of macro event.

 

[ryan]

You are trying to take "me" away from QM when it is "me" that is QM. You are matter (in a monistic sense). It does what you do, and you do what it does - they are the same thing. The meaning of control is simply to cause. QM/I controlled/caused/willed X in a freely undetermined way. QM did X = I did X.

We have hit the very bottom, and we hit it hard. There is nowhere else to go.

Rats, cats, mice, rabbits, hens, roosters, donkeys, camels and aardvarks along with every organism on the planet with a central nervous system - including humans - being quantum substrata/macro scale physics organisms....yet all perceive, think, feel and act according to the architecture of their CNS/brain and not because of their quantum substrata which is common to all.

So are you saying that the new research and quantum working models are false? Please post the scientific papers that have been peer reviewed and that have successfully falsified them.

Nor can any of us manipulate quantum states, position, velocity, superposition, etc, for the purpose of acquiring certain desired outcomes or to meet the hopes and aspirations of our conscious will. It's all brain state, including its quantum substructure.

If "I" is a quantum mechanical process, then whatever "I" does, QMP does. "QMP did X" is equivalent to "I did X".

What does M. Gazzaniga say:


"With our new concept of the distributed self, the concept of free will is even more odd and, I have always thought, a misnomer. As Dan Dennett once asked, "Free from what?" We parents work all of our lives to raise our children not to be random, sporadic and impulsive, but to be directed, controlled and mature. We want their automatic brains to be well experienced in assessing the likely outcomes of behaviors. We want them to accumulate scenarios of how to behave in a moral and ethical way so that when they are given a new challenge, they have a context for a proper response. We want their decision-making brain to call upon a life's-worth of experience and training to do the right thing. We surely do not want our children to suddenly be free of all of this experience and education and to choose some wacky course of action that leads to personal disaster.

So what does free will mean? It has become a catchall term and means several things. In many ways the concept is fundamental to human thought and societal institutions. For example, our system of justice is built on the idea that we are all practical reasoners, working in a normal brain environment to produce coherent and ethical behaviors. We are held to be personally responsible for those decisions. Questioning the core concept, free will, necessitates rethinking many cherished notions of human institutions.''

It seems like he just doesn't like the idea of free will.

Also, why don't we just raise a robot that does exactly what we want them to do in every possible situation? But we won't get much more creativity outside of what its makers brain can think of. There won't be much more originality for every possible industry and milieu that is beyond the minds of the makers.

How could we ever trust that we have the best solution to every possible problem that a child will come into? Randomness accidentally shows us better ways; it's like an evolution. We learn from the mistakes, and we keep what works. After a billion years, maybe there will be a god-like being capable of installing the "right" information into another being that will be the best for everyone in every situation.

 

[ryan]

Why are you telling me this??? I only said it was possible. I said nothing wrong.

So, no. It wont happen.

... until about the centillionth universe

Which is the same as to say that it will not happen == it is not really possible.

And so what exactly is the cut-off number from when it does happen to when it doesn't?

 

[Juma]

Why are you telling me this??? I only said it was possible. I said nothing wrong.

So, no. It wont happen.

... until about the centillionth universe

Which is the same as to say that it will not happen == it is not really possible.

And so what exactly is the cut-off year from when it does happen to when it doesn't?

That is arbitrary but I would say that half a centillion universe life times is a useable value.

 

[ryan]

It simply comes down to the fact that my consciousness is a mechanism in the brain and might have QM properties. Whatever my consciousness does, might have an effect on what the rest of the brain does as exemplified in the quote as "interference on gap junctions".

Most certainly the brain constituents have QM properties. Photon releases from electrons as part of energy exchanges for example. However there is no evidence photon releases of any other QM phenomena are amplified up to the macro world other than as aspects of deterministic events. It takes a bunch (many thousands) of photon exchanges to complete a macro transaction, reducing the timing of the probabilities of those photon exchanges reduce to the highest probability for when they occur relative to other macro events. Wallah, deterministic.

This misconception on your part comes from both your failure to understand the relation between individual QM events and macro events and of your failure to understand statistics are just a mathematical form. Neither relate to observation beyond working out likelihoods given presumptions. Your presumptions are also weak in that they presume a single QM event translates to a single macro event when they don't. They don't because they are micro events within the macro structures and macro mechanics which in part is the definition of macro event.

Did you read my links? Do you understand what it means to interfere with gap junctions?

 

[ryan]

Why are you telling me this??? I only said it was possible. I said nothing wrong.

So, no. It wont happen.

... until about the centillionth universe

Which is the same as to say that it will not happen == it is not really possible.

And so what exactly is the cut-off year from when it does happen to when it doesn't?

That is arbitrary but I would say that half a centillion universe life times is a useable value.

Okay, so (1/2) centillion universes X does happen. But (1/2) centillion + 1 universes X does not happen. Got it. I did not know that.

 

[DBT]

You are not one who should be talking about dogma without taking a good hard look in the mirror.

You mean the dogma of being able to move my finger at "will"?

You repeat this like a religious mantra despite having been provided with evidence for multiple distinct systems being at work to produce both the motor action and the awareness of desire and intention to move your finger.

Again:

Michael Gazzaniga;
''Our brain is not a unified structure; instead it is composed of several modules that work out their computations separately, in what are called neural networks. These networks can carry out activities largely on their own. The visual network, for example, responds to visual stimulation and is also active during visualimagery—that is, seeing something with your mind’s eye; the motor network can produce movement and is active during imagined movements. Yet even though our brain carries out all these functions in a modular system, we do not feel like a million little robots carrying out their disjointed activities. We feel like one, coherent self with intentions and reasons for what we feel are our unified actions. How can this be?

Over the past thirty years I have been studying a phenomenon that was first revealed during work with split-brain patients,who’d had the connections between the two brain hemispheres severed to relieve severe epilepsy. My colleagues and I weren’t looking for the answer to the question of what makes us seem unified, but we think we found it. It follows from the idea that if the brain is modular, a part of the brain must be monitoring all the networks’ behaviors and trying to interpret their individual actions in order to create a unified idea of the self. Our best candidate for this brain area is the “left-hemisphere interpreter.”Beyond the finding, described in the last chapter, that the left hemisphere makes strange input logical, it includes a special region that interprets the inputs we receive every moment and weaves them into stories to form the ongoing narrative of our self-image and our beliefs. I have called this area of the left hemisphere the interpreter because it seeks explanations for internal and external events and expands on the actual facts we experience to make sense of, or interpret, the events of our life.''

It is impossible to surmount this because it is a fact.

Yet, amazingly, despite all the research on how the experience and action is carried out, you still focus on the phenomena and ignore the means by which the action is produced.

If you did not have some autonomy of "mind" you could not respond appropriately to anything. Since it is only in a "mind" where conceptions are understood.

Nonsense, mind cannot do anything that brain is not doing. That is proven by any significant change to brain condition, being drunk, drugs, various chemical and structural changes to the brain, electrical stimulation and so on.

Memory function failure alone progressively destroys the mind.

I notice you completely ignore the arguments about the total absurdity of a brain creating a mind if that mind can do nothing. It is superfluous activity by the brain done for no reason. If we accept your dogmatism.

The total absurdity is that you have not even grasped the basics of what I have been saying, which is expressed in your remark.

I did not say the mind serves no purpose. I even outlined the purpose of our internal mental representation of information from the external world and our (organism/brain/mind) place in it as an adaptive means of interacting with our environment.

What I said was, the mind cannot do anything more or less than what the brain is producing/forming/generating on the basis of its immediate information condition.

Which is a long, long way from your charge 'mind can do nothing' Mind has an evolved purpose, but mind is not independent from the very means of its formation and existence.


That is your claim. A claim that you have been repeatedly asked to explain but instead set up a huge song and dance of avoidance. A smokescreen so thick that not even you can understand what you yourself are saying.

 

[DBT]

It seems like he just doesn't like the idea of free will.

It's got nothing to do with liking or disliking the idea of free will. It has everything to do with the issue of its validity.

As he said, the term 'free will' is a misnomer for the reasons that were given by him.

Also, why don't we just raise a robot that does exactly what we want them to do in every possible situation? But we won't get much more creativity outside of what its makers brain can think of. There won't be much more originality for every possible industry and milieu that is beyond the minds of the makers.

How could we ever trust that we have the best solution to every possible problem that a child will come into? Randomness accidentally shows us better ways; it's like an evolution. We learn from the mistakes, and we keep what works. After a billion years, maybe there will be a god-like being capable of installing the "right" information into another being that will be the best for everyone in every situation.

It has nothing to do with 'robots' - which gives the impression of a fixed system.

The brain is an intelligent, interactive, information acquiring, self programming (unconscious connections, dendrites, synapses, etc) information processor of vast ability that has the means to form an internal virtual representation of the external world and self.

That, ryan, is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[DBT]

Rats, cats, mice, rabbits, hens, roosters, donkeys, camels and aardvarks along with every organism on the planet with a central nervous system - including humans - being quantum substrata/macro scale physics organisms....yet all perceive, think, feel and act according to the architecture of their CNS/brain and not because of their quantum substrata which is common to all.

So are you saying that the new research and quantum working models are false? Please post the scientific papers that have been peer reviewed and that have successfully falsified them.

I'm saying that it doesn't mean what you believe it means in terms of significance for decision making and some vague notion of free will....for the reasons outlined both above and in numerous other posts by both myself and other posters.

 

[Juma]

Why are you telling me this??? I only said it was possible. I said nothing wrong.

So, no. It wont happen.

... until about the centillionth universe

Which is the same as to say that it will not happen == it is not really possible.

And so what exactly is the cut-off year from when it does happen to when it doesn't?

That is arbitrary but I would say that half a centillion universe life times is a useable value.

Okay, so (1/2) centillion universes X does happen. But (1/2) centillion + 1 universes X does not happen. Got it. I did not know that.

I said it is arbitrary. Thing is: a very unlikely thing is practically not happening at all.
See this discussion in the context where it was started.

 

[Juma]

Rats, cats, mice, rabbits, hens, roosters, donkeys, camels and aardvarks along with every organism on the planet with a central nervous system - including humans - being quantum substrata/macro scale physics organisms....yet all perceive, think, feel and act according to the architecture of their CNS/brain and not because of their quantum substrata which is common to all.

So are you saying that the new research and quantum working models are false? Please post the scientific papers that have been peer reviewed and that have successfully falsified them.

Nor can any of us manipulate quantum states, position, velocity, superposition, etc, for the purpose of acquiring certain desired outcomes or to meet the hopes and aspirations of our conscious will. It's all brain state, including its quantum substructure.

If "I" is a quantum mechanical process, then whatever "I" does, QMP does. "QMP did X" is equivalent to "I did X".

What does M. Gazzaniga say:


"With our new concept of the distributed self, the concept of free will is even more odd and, I have always thought, a misnomer. As Dan Dennett once asked, "Free from what?" We parents work all of our lives to raise our children not to be random, sporadic and impulsive, but to be directed, controlled and mature. We want their automatic brains to be well experienced in assessing the likely outcomes of behaviors. We want them to accumulate scenarios of how to behave in a moral and ethical way so that when they are given a new challenge, they have a context for a proper response. We want their decision-making brain to call upon a life's-worth of experience and training to do the right thing. We surely do not want our children to suddenly be free of all of this experience and education and to choose some wacky course of action that leads to personal disaster.

So what does free will mean? It has become a catchall term and means several things. In many ways the concept is fundamental to human thought and societal institutions. For example, our system of justice is built on the idea that we are all practical reasoners, working in a normal brain environment to produce coherent and ethical behaviors. We are held to be personally responsible for those decisions. Questioning the core concept, free will, necessitates rethinking many cherished notions of human institutions.''

It seems like he just doesn't like the idea of free will.

Also, why don't we just raise a robot that does exactly what we want them to do in every possible situation? But we won't get much more creativity outside of what its makers brain can think of. There won't be much more originality for every possible industry and milieu that is beyond the minds of the makers.

How could we ever trust that we have the best solution to every possible problem that a child will come into? Randomness accidentally shows us better ways; it's like an evolution. We learn from the mistakes, and we keep what works. After a billion years, maybe there will be a god-like being capable of installing the "right" information into another being that will be the best for everyone in every situation.

Randomness is uncontrolable by definition. Creativity is not randomness. On the contrary: creativity wast amount of knowledge and ability to see many solutions and filter out the uninteresting ones.

 

[Juma]

Also, why don't we just raise a robot that does exactly what we want them to do in every possible situation? But we won't get much more creativity outside of what its makers brain can think of. There won't be much more originality for every possible industry and milieu that is beyond the minds of the makers.

How could we ever trust that we have the best solution to every possible problem that a child will come into? Randomness accidentally shows us better ways; it's like an evolution. We learn from the mistakes, and we keep what works. After a billion years, maybe there will be a god-like being capable of installing the "right" information into another being that will be the best for everyone in every situation.

Randomness is uncontrolable by definition. Creativity is not randomness. On the contrary: creativity wast amount of knowledge and ability to see many solutions and filter out the uninteresting ones.

 

[ryan]

So are you saying that the new research and quantum working models are false? Please post the scientific papers that have been peer reviewed and that have successfully falsified them.

I'm saying that it doesn't mean what you believe it means in terms of significance for decision making and some vague notion of free will....for the reasons outlined both above and in numerous other posts by both myself and other posters.

But that's clearly not what I commented on. I commented on what I quoted from you.

Another thing that is frustrating is that you won't keep a very important part of the conversation going. Here is your quote and my reply again.

Nor can any of us manipulate quantum states, position, velocity, superposition, etc, for the purpose of acquiring certain desired outcomes or to meet the hopes and aspirations of our conscious will. It's all brain state, including its quantum substructure.

If "I" is a quantum mechanical process, then whatever "I" does, QMP does. "QMP did X" is equivalent to "I did X".

Can you comment on this?

 

[ryan]

Also, why don't we just raise a robot that does exactly what we want them to do in every possible situation? But we won't get much more creativity outside of what its makers brain can think of. There won't be much more originality for every possible industry and milieu that is beyond the minds of the makers.

How could we ever trust that we have the best solution to every possible problem that a child will come into? Randomness accidentally shows us better ways; it's like an evolution. We learn from the mistakes, and we keep what works. After a billion years, maybe there will be a god-like being capable of installing the "right" information into another being that will be the best for everyone in every situation.

Randomness is uncontrolable by definition. Creativity is not randomness. On the contrary: creativity wast amount of knowledge and ability to see many solutions and filter out the uninteresting ones.

QM is only objectively random, but it might be subjectively on purpose.

 

[ryan]

Why are you telling me this??? I only said it was possible. I said nothing wrong.

So, no. It wont happen.

... until about the centillionth universe

Which is the same as to say that it will not happen == it is not really possible.

And so what exactly is the cut-off year from when it does happen to when it doesn't?

That is arbitrary but I would say that half a centillion universe life times is a useable value.

Okay, so (1/2) centillion universes X does happen. But (1/2) centillion + 1 universes X does not happen. Got it. I did not know that.

I said it is arbitrary. Thing is: a very unlikely thing is practically not happening at all.
See this discussion in the context where it was started.

I am looking at the context, and it is silly. And you shouldn't have brought it up anyways.

 

[DBT]

If "I" is a quantum mechanical process, then whatever "I" does, QMP does. "QMP did X" is equivalent to "I did X".

Can you comment on this?

I have been commenting on that all throughout this thread. If ''I'' refers to the organism as a whole, body/brain/mind, ''I'' is much more than a quantum mechanical process.

It is also a macro scale structure with macro scale physics. Physics of scale, quantum behaviour does not fully describe macro scale physics.

"QMP did X" is equivalent to "I did X"

Whatever QMP, and whatever role QMP plays within the macro scale architecture of the brain is not chosen by you.