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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Moose. Exactly right, IMO! I would just add that, one of the main differences between us and robots is that we have feelings that go along with these (automatic) responses. The fact that feelings and mind arose when evolution could have evolved a bunch of un-feeling, mindless robots is one of the tougher problems in this subject arena.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2017 - 05:44pm PT
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And this is why you get accused of religious beliefs. Fact? Real Deal? Never a hesitation to avoid the possibility that what you experience may be illusory, a trick of the mind. Oh, I forgot, millions of practitioners and 3,100 years of discipline can't be wrong.
A classical, common sense understanding of the universe and reality says that the "red" in an apple is an objective quality in the apple itself. Science tells us all the apple objectively admits is light waves in a certain frequency. Our minds provide the "red." They also provide a bunch of other qualities not inherent in the stuff "out there." And yes, as most any life scientist can tell us, that, ladies and gentleman, is a fact having nothing whatsoever to do with “religious beliefs.”
This fact was, centuries ago, part of the old Zen training in the form of a koan asking: What is the reality of the moving flag? The reality is our mind is not only moving the flag, our image of the flag is also mind, when what's out there is likely just dancing energy.
The mind is totally capable of misrepresenting what might or might not be "out there." That's why forms and our interpretations of them are always debatable.
The larger question is why we are aware of anything, "real" or imagined, and what that awareness IS.
But one wonders, when John lampoons: "Millions of practitioners and 3,100 years of discipline can't be wrong," what, exactly is the grand illusion that he believes all these millions are dupes to? Since it clearly is not the stuff or forms of the world, which are empty and impermanent, what do you suppose John is imagining is our collective "trance" or illusion? Specifically.
One thing this thread has made perfectly clear is that most have no capacity to even broach the question: What is mind? That is, what is mind itself. The question quickly gets translated into a physicalist's causal search for the believed or hoped for physical agents that "cause" or produce or source mind, and in this way, mind itself can finally be entirely be “understood.” And the subjective adventures are of no use here because they provide no data per the physical causal agents most pray will one day show that mind is nothing more than brain output. This allows one to ignore the original questions as immaterial, putting the inquiry back on a graspable form: The brain. So what is mind becomes what is brain.
Except that's not the question.
It's a little like asking, what is Sheila? And then doing a full objective break down on Shelia's parents, believing that if one knows all per who birthed Sheila, they know all about Sheila. Problem is this leaves out the very aspects of Sheila that distinguishes her from a rock, namely her subjective reality. What it's LIKE to be around her, and what it's like to be Sheila. The fall back position here is to insist that what she is like is entirely determined by physical drivers, so again, there is no need to actually meet Sheila, since we can study her brain which will tell us WHY and how she does what she does. Entirely. Again – physical causation explains all. To some ... Others say, not so fast, Eddie.
The fly in the ointment is awareness. And even this, perhaps the one aspect of reality that has no qualities, can for some only be fathomed in terms of forms, stuff, feelings, content. Or as some magical “non-thing” equal to ether or some other form we can label and argue about.
Screwy thing is that when science finally looked very closely at the physical world and QM was found, the classical descriptors and causal relations and logical factors were nowhere to be found. And yet when we move into subjectivity, many insist that a far more exotic world then quarks and bosons should and can line up and be describable in classical terms. What’s more, instead of realizing that using QM as an example is not an effort to promote woo or prove non-classical ideas in the subjective world, rather simply to point out that when serious folk look closely and discretely at both objective and subjective worlds, counterintuitive findings are the norm. QM doesn’t “prove” anything about the subjective world, it only points out that the closer we look, the more ungraspable that forms become.
And Dingus McGee, it's clear that you do not understand what Mike is actually saying and are groping around trying to cram his words into your own concepts and experiences, which are drawn from an entirely different well.
To be perfectly clear, "flow" is NOT emptiness, and insisting it is only betrays your misunderstanding. You COULD talk about flow in terms of the immersion states that occur during certain kinds of advanced meditation, but the "flow" itself is not the end game, rather to realize that the content of flow is empty, and the experiencer himself is as well. The whole damn show is dead empty, is ungraspable because there is no "thing" there to quantify, grasp, measure, mull, codify, etc. In this sense there is no doing, no achievement, no coming and going, no life or death because there was never any THING here to die in the first place. Our grief for our dead friends is no less because we realize his body was startdust, figuratively speaking. We think the tabletop is solid though it's mostly empty space (which itself is pulsing with potential energy). But it still works as a table just fine.
The question is: How do we square life and death, forms and emptiness, duality and non-duality, brain and mind, the finite and the unborn (infinite). One can construct a model of reality based on either pole much gets left out or explained away. The great irony here is that both poles are exactly the same – “exactly." That is, there are no poles.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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The question is: How do we square life and death, forms and emptiness, duality and non-duality, brain and mind, the finite and the unborn (infinite). One can construct a model of reality based on either pole much gets left out or explained away. The great irony here is that both poles are exactly the same – “exactly." That is, there are no poles.
If you could have just said this in the first place, we wouldn't be arguing.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Largo,
And Dingus McGee, it's clear that you do not understand what Mike is actually saying and are groping around trying to cram his words into your own concepts and experiences, which are drawn from an entirely different well.
To be perfectly clear, "flow" is NOT emptiness, and insisting it is only betrays your misunderstanding.
I never ever said flow was emptiness. How lame can you get? Do you have a reading comprehension deficiency?
How long did it take you to bellow out this stream of consciousness chatter [below]? It doesn't sound very peaceful to me. MOVE ON ... You are overwhelmed by the glitz of what lies ahead with unbound mind experiences. Been there, done that, so forget it or do you want to have another hang up?
Largo,
To be perfectly clear, "flow" is NOT emptiness, and insisting it is only betrays your misunderstanding. You COULD talk about flow in terms of the immersion states that occur during certain kinds of advanced meditation, but the "flow" itself is not the end game, rather to realize that the content of flow is empty, and the experiencer himself is as well. The whole damn show is dead empty, is ungraspable because there is no "thing" there to quantify, grasp, measure, mull, codify, etc. In this sense there is no doing, no achievement, no coming and going, no life or death because there was never any THING here to die in the first place. Our grief for our dead friends is no less because we realize his body was startdust, figuratively speaking. We think the tabletop is solid though it's mostly empty space (which itself is pulsing with potential energy). But it still works as a table just fine.
The question is: How do we square life and death, forms and emptiness, duality and non-duality, brain and mind, the finite and the unborn (infinite). One can construct a model of reality based on either pole much gets left out or explained away. The great irony here is that both poles are exactly the same – “exactly." That is, there are no poles.
I suppose it was great training to get your mind setup to bellow such non-sense? I never bit on that samsara. COSMIC -- but you are lacking integration.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Moose, nice illustrative example.
It's too bad more of this thread couldn't be along the lines of your post.
Maybe in time. After more people acquire a basic education in computers, information, electronics, control systems.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Largo,
which are drawn from an entirely different well.
It is interesting that you chose "which" as opposed to "that" as there is a difference in meaning between these two clause introduction methods.
see
http://www.betterwritingskills.com/tip-w022.html
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WBraun
climber
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We have an illusion of free choice,
Sure if you make yourself into drooling robot or a st00pid animal.
A human being HAS free will and choice and is NOT a st00pid drooling robot.
But many of you brainwash yourselves to believe all the horsesh!t that the fool gross materialists claim is so.
A human being even has the choice to do wrong, go against its own best interests, many do even fully knowing within their hearts they are blowing it.
The key word is "within the heart" not in the brain, neurons, mind, etc.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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QM doesn’t “prove” anything about the subjective world, it only points out that the closer we look, the more ungraspable that forms become
Well, I thought physicists were getting pretty good at grasping the rudiments of QM that yield objective results, regardless of forms. But I could be wrong, not being a physicist. Guess I'll go microwave some coffee and brood .
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Moose,
you ask about free will?
It seems that intuitively we all have some idea what this could mean. But for the sake of concurring that a type of action corresponds to an idea, we need more info on the idea of what free will could mean.
At the very minimum, which may be no more than a mere definition of free, I would say free will means we, the robot, are not in any manner forced into a decision.
Of course in any finite automata, one can argue that the robot was forced into a limited set of actions and the robot could have done better if it could create additional actions and use those creations in physically possible situations where its body could go and those new choices were better than what previously existed.
People are not thought to be exactly finite automata because they can seemingly create new choices.
MooseD, have you ever walked off a job?
Yanqui, this type of evaluation sounds right up your alley -- please add.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Yanqui, this type of evaluation sounds right up your alley...
An interesting comment. How so?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Cellular automata?
non-predictable but deterministic?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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For me, it doesn't fit the definition of free will...
I don't know why it's apparently so hard for my like-minded brethren to get whether or not volition (will) is "free" depends on context or frame of reference.
Eeyonkee, for instance, seems to insist that there is no "free" will whatsoever (based on what science says, what he's learned from science). But note this is looking at the issue entirely from a scientific perspective, frame of reference, field, etc. Well, there are other perspectives or frames of reference in play in human language and human culture (e.g., law, the street).
As I've pointed out numerous times, in the 16th century, for eg, the "field" or "frame of reference" for the consideration of "free" will wasn't science or physics or chemistry or biology at all; instead it (the consideration and interest) were theology and demonic possession.
So unless eeyonkee wants to claim he's demonically possessed he has a will that is "free" from supernatural demons; what's more, entertaining now yet another context or frame of reference, I'm pretty sure also he has a will that's "free" of any signal to his volition generator (aka will generator) informing it that a gun is pointed to his head and will shoot it through unless he picks branch A rather than branch B.
Eeyonkee, is your will possessed by a demon right now? Is a gun pointed to your head right now coercing you to choose branch A over branch B. How about a tumor pressing against your amygdala? Is your amygdala, a brain component known to influence the will, being harassed by such a tumor?
If you've answered no to these questions, then good news: You've got a free will in numerous contexts. Context matters. Language matters.
This is one of Dennett's points as well. One simply can't ignore other fields or frames of reference (e.g., law, the legal system) or (b) language (linguistics, popular usage of terms) and make the case that his analysis or position is complete, comprehensive.
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Deterministic but not predictable. That is exactly right. And yet this confuses the majority of the public, even apparently the majority of science types. Sheesh. (Where's BASE104? lol!)
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Eeyonkee, is your will possessed by a demon right now? Is a gun pointed to her head right now coercing you to choose branch A over branch B. How about a tumor pressing against your amegdala? Is your amegdala, a brain component known to influence the will, free of such a tumor? Um, no. I understand just fine that my actions are deterministic but not predictable. I'm with Sam Harris on the free will issue. I would like to embrace Dennett's view, but it has not convinced me yet.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Well, two points: (1) You misspelled amygdala. lol (2) Sam Harris is in complete agreement with ME. So there! lol
Before one can answer the question definitively one needs to know the context or frame of reference (together with the associated definition of terms and criteria).
But re Sam Harris... He needs to be schooled on the proper definition of "agency". The proper definition of "agency" in the context of science and volition (will) should be can-do power or competence by the agent (player, participant); and not some out-dated, pseudo, superstitious ghostly freedom of the will.
To use "agency" as he and a few others do - as a synonym for so-called "ghostly" "contracausal" "libertarian" free will - is quite problematic. At least for the general science public.
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So in a nutshell what is your understanding of Dennett's view? I'm sure we can clear it up.
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If your will (aka volition system) is not possessed by a demon right now, then why can you NOT concede that it is "free" in this ONE sense? (in the old 16th century sense)?
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This whole matter, by the way, is not unlike the one concerning "God." Different definitions, different concepts, different fields (religion, mythology, Einstein's university grounds and office). I am sure you have no problem conceding that there is a distinction between Yahweh (the God of Moses) and Einstein's God (the einsteinian God) and so, thusly, before a full consideration can be made, one has to ask, Which God? Obviously here in America, say the 1950s to make it easy, when people in the street like my Grandma and her sisters in Belvue KS spoke of "God" they meant the God of Moses (and certainly not Amon-Re or Quetzalcoatl or the einsteinian God). Context matters. Which "God" matters, Language matters. The culture or subculture matters. Before we can have good communications and good, common understanding. Same with so-called "free will".
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I'm in the middle of solving software problems, so I don't have much time. So have Dennett and Harris made up? Last time I checked, Dennett was a compatibilist and Harris was an incompatibilist.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Edited to add: I have revised my old views on free will. I now recognize that by learning and thinking we can make better decisions, which to many people might be the definition of free will.
Okay. Maybe.
but it does takes away the deterministic element.
No!! Not in any mechanistic, underlying, regulatory sense.
In a predictable, computable sense. Well, okay. But that's not what we're talking about. Right? Or are we?
Look at the trouble you've caused now!! lol
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Eeyonkee, I understand. Just playin' here anyhow. :)
(1) Dennett and Harris get together and talk past one another. It really is too bad. (2) It didn't help when Dennett brought up that dumb golfing anecdote either. It was sloppy. (3) It doesn't help that they have different definitions of "agency" either. (4) "Agency" derives from the Latin for "do" or "act of doing" - and it's also used in game theory (via "agent") in evolutionary context; so consequently it's a much less problematic term, yes, in my opinion, if it's used synonymously with "can-do power" or "competence" in regards to achieving an aim or objective. For example I'm sure your "agency" (can-do power or competency), as an agent (player, participant, person), is greater than mine in sending 5.11 offwidths despite the fact that neither of us have a "free" will free of underlying mechanistic physics.
Don't work too hard today. ;)
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That robot is causally deterministic (its output is "determined" "bounded" by underlying laws or rules, a ruleset) and yet it is predictively indeterministic (not determinable by human minds due to chaos, time constraint, ignorance, etc). That's it, in a nutshell.
No wonder there's so much confusion, eh? lol
And it doesn't stop here either. What does it mean to be "liberal"? to be "Left"? to be "racist"? What does it mean to have or not have a "self"? to have or not have a "soul"? So confusing!!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Eeyonkee, no where is Dennett going to say that any part (or any branch or any component) of the nervous system, human or otherwise, is floating free of its underlying system physics; that any part is "not obedient" (E.O. Wilson) to its underlying physics. So he's 100% in AGREEMENT with you and Harris. Where he is a so-called "compatibilist" and apparently Harris is not - it's because he's got no problem moving in and out of different disciplines and contexts (each with their own language and definitions) while Harris does. Harris, by purposely limiting his perspective apparently, limits his use of "free will" strictly to science (eg. neuro and psycho). What we really need is Pinker to settle this context and language conundrum. Hey, but remember that video conference a year ago that featured him - I posted it up.
He answered yes to the compatibilist position as well. And he's a language person who knows full well the role of framing - right framing - to a conversation and to communications and understanding.
I'll see if I can find it. Voila, 30 seconds!
A Battle of Wills
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://youtu.be/5YYr8311yY0?t=1h1m6s
This time stamp takes you right there to Pinker and the question.
So Pinker, like Dennett, is also a "compatibilist" choosing (freely? lol) to move in and out of different frames and different definitions - no doubt depending on usefulness.
"...we could call those processes 'free will'" -Pinker
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650&msg=2951735#msg2951735
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Thanks, HFCS. I am going to take the time to digest this. I have a lot of respect for all three of those guys.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Eeyonkee, cool. In particular, hear Pinker at 47:00 - 47:30.
"...we could call those processes 'free will'" -Pinker
(1) That's a quote. (2) Note he said "could".
And yet, don't get me wrong, I totally get Harris's preference to limit his definition of "free will" perhaps for sake of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) to the mechanistic, physical frame. So it's a real conundrum. Truth is, after all this brouhaha, I'm shy, hesitant, about even using the word "compatibilist" or "incompatibilist" anymore or in the first place. (Like the word "liberal".) Sometimes language sucks.
So, probably like bolting routes, much probably boils down to style, attitude and preference or bias for what one's favorite perspectives or povs are, if not nouns and adjectives.
So, in the end, I would just remain open - in conversation - to those scientists and others (politicians, lawyers) who CHOOSE to support, use, advocate "free will" even though, at base, they are, or might be, at bottom, as mechanist/physicalist as Harris, Dennett, Pinker and Greene. And you and me.
We're all in agreement though, I think, that contracausal libertarian free will - long supported by the church and relied on by the church - is dead. There is no casper in the machine.
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