On 10/4/2011 5:15 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Oct 4, 2:59 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
This goes by the name "causal completeness"; the idea that the 3-p observable
state at t
is sufficient to predict the state at t+dt. Craig wants add to this that there
is
additional information which is not 3-p observable and which makes a
difference, so that
the state at t+dt depends not just on the 3-p observables at t, but also on some
additional "sensorimotive" variables. If you assume these variables are not
independent
of the 3-p observables, then this is just panpsychic version of consciousness
supervening
on the 3-p states. They are redundant in the informational sense. If you
assume they
are independent of the 3-p variables and yet make a difference in the time
evolution of
the state then it means the predictions based on the 3-p observables will fail,
i.e. the
laws of physics and chemistry will be violated.
Why would they have to be either completely dependent or independent?
Did I use the word "completely"?
I've given several examples demonstrating how we routinely exercise
voluntary control over parts of our minds, bodies, and environment
while at the same time being involuntarily controlled by those same
influences, often at the same time. This isn't a theory, this is the
raw data set.
No it's not. In your examples of voluntary control you don't know what your brain is
doing. So you can't know whether you "voluntary" action was entirely caused by physical
precursors or whether their was some effect from libertarian free-will.
If it were the case that the 3p and 1p were completely independent,
then you would have ghosts jumping around into aluminum cans and
walking around singing, and if they were completely dependent then
there would be no point in being able to differentiate between
voluntary and involuntary control of our mind, body, and environment.
Exactly the point of compatibilist free-will.
Such an illusory distinction would not only be redundant but it would
have no ontological basis to even be able to come into being or be
conceivable. It would be like an elephant growing a TV set out of it's
trunk to distract it from being an elephant.
Or pulling another meaningless example out of the nether regions.
Since neither of those two cases is possible, I propose, as I have
repeatedly proposed, that the 3p and 1p are in fact part of the same
essential reality in which they overlap, but that they each extent in
different topological directions;
What's a topological direction?
specifically, 3p into matter, public
space, electromagnetism, entropy, and relativity, and 1p into energy,
private time, sensorimotive, significance, and perception.
"3p overlaps into entropy"!? Reads like gibberish to me.
No laws of physics are broken by consciousness, but it is very
confusing because our only example of consciousness is human
consciousness, which is a multi-trillion cell awareness.
Exactly what I said. In fact one's only example of consciousness is their own. The
consciousness of other humans is an inference.
The trick is
to realize that you cannot directly correlate our experience of
consciousness with the 3-p cellular phenomenology, but to only
correlate it with the 3-p behavior of the brain as a whole.
That's the experimental question, and you don't know the answer.
That's the
starting point. If you are going to try to understand what a movie is
about, you have to look at the whole images of the movie, and not
focus on the pixels of the screen or the mechanics of pixel
illumination to guide your interpretation. There is no human
consciousness at that low level. There may be sensorimotive 1-p
phenomenology there, and I think that there is, but we can't prove it
now. What we can prove is there in 3-p would only relate to that low
level 1-p which is unknown to us.
My proposition is that our 1-p consciousness builds from lower level 1-
p awareness and higher level 1-p semantic environmental influences,
like cultural ideas, family traditions, etc.
But that is entirely untestable since we have no access to those 1-p consciousnesses.
Cultural ideas, family traditions are 3-p observables.
It is not predictable
from 3-p appearances alone, but not because it breaks the laws of
physics. Physics has nothing to say about what particular patterns
occur in the brain as a whole.
Sure it does - unless magic happens.
There is no relevant biochemical
difference between a one thought and another that could make it
impossible physically,
So you say. But I think there is. If you think of an elephant there is something
biochemical happening that makes it not a thought about a giraffe. So when you read
"elephant" it is impossible to think of a giraffe at that moment.
just as there is no sequence of illuminated
pixels that is preferred by a TV screen, or electronics, or physics.
Of course this violation maybe hard to detect in something very complicated
like a brain;
but Craig's theory doesn't seem to assume the brain is special in that respect
and even a
single electron supposedly has these extra, unobservable variables, i.e. a mind
of its
own.
No. I have never said that a particle has a mind of it's own, I only
say that it may have a sensorimotive quality which is primitive like
charge or spin, but that this quality scales up in a different way
than quantitative properties.
Scales up how? How is this sensormotive quality detected or measured? What's its
operational definition? How is it different from connective complexity of processes -
which is the quality that most people think gives a brain its special quality.
The brain is very special *to us* and I
suspect that it is pretty special relatively speaking as far as
processes in the Cosmos. It's not special because it has awareness
though, it's just the degree to which that awareness is elaborated and
concentrated.
The problem with electrons or other simple systems is that while we have
complete
access to their 3-p variables, we don't have access to their hypothetical other
variables;
the ones we call 1-p when referring to humans. So when all the silver atoms in
a
Stern-Gerlach do just as we predict, it can be claimed that they all had the
same 1-p
variables and that's why the 3-p variables were sufficient to predict their
behavior.
Why is that a problem?
It's a problem because it makes your theory untestable for anything except a
human brain.
So the only way I see to test this theory, even in principle, would be to
observe Craig's
brain at a very low level while having him report his experiences (at least to
himself)
and show that his experiences and his brain states were not one-to-one.
No, I'm not saying that 1-p and 3-p are not synchronized, they are
synchronized, but that doesn't mean that voluntary choices supervene
on default neurological processes. Look at how our diaphragm works. We
can voluntarily control our breathing to a certain extent, but there
are involuntary default behaviors as well. This does not mean that we
can't decide to hold our breath or that it can only be our body which
is doing the deciding. How do you explain the appearance of voluntary
control of our body?
I appears voluntary because we can't perceive the brain processes that produce the
action. So when the action comports with the brains usual pathways we feel "we did it
*voluntarily". Which is the point of David Eagleman's experiment with shifting a person's
time calibration. If he shifted it so that the result appeared earlier (in subjective
time) than the voluntary act then the person no long felt that they had done it. It
happened without them.
Of course this is
probably impossible with current technology. Observing the brain at a coarse
grained
level leaves open the possibility that one is just missing the 3-p variables
that you show
the relationship to be one-to-one.
So I'd say that until someone thinks of an empirical test for this "soul
theory",
discussing it is a waste of bandwidth.
Way to argue from authority. "Your thoughts are a waste of everyone's
time unless I think that they can be proved to my satisfaction".
I didn't say anything about which outcome would satisfy me. I said it's a waste of time
to argue a theory that cannot be tested.
Brent
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