Mike, The conscious mind thinks literally, freely. How long it will spend on any
given decision, and what course of thought it will pursue in reaching that decision are definitely NOT set, but free.
Ah, well, I'm glad to see the age-old problem of free will versus determinism is solved now! Mike has spoken!! ;-) Seriously ... have you read Libet's work on free will and the brain? Have you read Dennett's book "Freedom Evolves"? How about "The Illusion of Conscious Will"? The illusion of free will is a pretty subtle issue. I have made my own hypothesis regarding the sort of mechanism that underlies it in the human mind/brain, which is described in my 2006 book "the Hidden Pattern" and in preliminary form here: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2004/FreeWill.htm You guys are clearly moving that way - but still appear to have a somewhat
confused philosophical understanding of why all this is really necessary.
Mike ... really ... has it ever occurred to you that you might NOT have a deeper understanding of these issues than people who have read all the existing literature on the topics and thought about them for decades?? On some topics, naive intuition can be misleading. Especially topics that involve illusions we humans have **evolved** to hold intuitively, so as to make our lives simpler... Please note that the naive notion of freedom you advocate contradicts all known physics including quantum physics and (all currently seriously debated variants of) quantum gravity. (As an aside, it also contradicts most mystical and spiritualistic thinking which denies the typical, naive Western over-hyping of the "autonomous individual.") I remember a story by Kafka about a monkey trapped in a cage, who developed human-level intelligence with the goal of escaping the cage. I don't recall the wording but , translated into Goertzel-ese idiom, Kafka wrote something like: "The monkey was not seeking freedom. By no means. Freedom is just a complicated illusion. What the monkey was seeking was something simpler and more profound and important: **a way out** " ;-) This monkey is also seeking a way out, and I don't think the old illusions of free will are necessary (or sufficient) for this purpose... -- Ben G ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
