Proof of nonexistence of free will

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Yes it does, because it posits that the brain belongs to a person who's "dead for most purposes". For medical and legal purposes, death is defined as irreversible loss of all brain function.

The definition of "brain death" is the product of empirical findings. In other words, people have come up with the definition because that's what they come to expect death to look like, based upon accumulated observations. That's not comparable to, for instance, the definition of "triangle," which is not based on observations of triangles but is, instead, a logical construct. The definition of "brain death," in sum, is just as empirical as the fact that dogs don't talk. Indeed, we could define "dog" to include "an animal that is unable to talk" just as we define "brain death" as "irreversible brain function" -- that's not a logical necessity, that's an empirical conclusion.

Adopting the medical or legal definition of "brain death," then, doesn't avoid the problem. You've just converted an empirical observation into a purported logical construct, so you're still interposing an empirical objection to a hypothetical. It's a feeble semantic dodge, but if that's what you want to rely on, I certainly won't stop you.

Thomas wrote:

It is true that in Galvani's experiment, the frog's loss of "leg function" wasn't reversed. But that's because the "leg function" was never lost in the first place. To the contrary: it was the functioning legs that lost the frog. Accordingly, when Galvani's electrodes crudely substituted for the rest of the frog, leg function wasn't restored; it continued to work as it always had. So if you insist that the brain in your hypothetical works analogously to the legs in Galvani's experiment, the allegedly-dead person's brain function wasn't lost in the first place, let alone irreversibly. By the medical and legal definition of "death", then, the brain's owner never died.

Interesting, but ultimately irrelevant. The hypothetical doesn't really depend on whether the brain has any residual function. It's inside a cadaver, which is the only important point. If you want to make it a highly functioning corpse, be my guest.

Thomas wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:
Wait a minute. The thought is occurring inside the electrical device? Are you sure that's what you meant to say?

Yes I am, and yes I did. If an electrical device can simulate and drive a human brain on the level of specificity you suggest, it can think and have migraines in the same sense that humans can.

The device doesn't simulate anything. It merely causes neurons to fire in a certain sequence. Galvani's electrodes didn't kick, did they?

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@joefromchicago,

Doesn't the argument between you simply boil down to what is meant by "function" ?

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

The definition of "brain death" is the product of empirical findings. In other words, people have come up with the definition because that's what they come to expect death to look like, based upon accumulated observations.

That's true, but it only undermines the distinction you are trying to draw between "empirical" and "definitional" objections. When a term, like "death", describes something about the real world, its definition inevitably draws on some kind of empirical observation. So your attempted distinction doesn't work.

What definition of "death" are you suggesting?

joefromchicago wrote:

The device doesn't simulate anything. It merely causes neurons to fire in a certain sequence. Galvani's electrodes didn't kick, did they?

No. But unlike you, I'm not saying that electrical signals cause the brain to think. I'm saying these signals are what thoughts are made of. I'm not saying that signals are what kicks are made of. So the parallel between brains and legs breaks down for me here.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Thanks for your first assessment of Capra (et al).

You're welcome. My second assessment, based on looking up Capra on Wikipedia, is that his apparent whackiness is more likely a result of inept popularization than of outright quackery. Maybe I should take a look at his academic work on the subject sometime.

fresco wrote:

I do urge you to follow up with an open mind. The key issue is that "natural systems" have no "controller" per se unless you want to invent a God.

Fair enough. If souls and free will are emergent phenomena that arise from neural firing patterns through self-organization, I have no problem with them.

fresco wrote:

BTW, since you are citing your own training, I can tell you, as a former published psychologist, that what is "known" about "brain circuitry" can be written on the back of an envelope.

That only goes to show just how Freudian you psychologists still are. Evidently your envelopes are bigger than mine---by orders of magnitude.

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@Thomas,

No, the envelope is quite small !
I am not talking about speculative simulation of "brain processes" using simplified neural networks, which fills volumes. Such "processes" tend to be reductionist with little regard to the general life process. To take just one example, the same neural network could be viewed with respect to "language" as either a binary logical processor, or a "finite state machine" capable of generating linguistic strings. In short, the level of "analysis" and "synthesis", i.e. the explanatory model, lies entirely in the hands of the speculator. AI may have little to do with "biological intelligence".

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@fresco,

....little, except of course significantly that the first is a product of the second !

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

That's true, but it only undermines the distinction you are trying to draw between "empirical" and "definitional" objections. When a term, like "death", describes something about the real world, its definition inevitably draws on some kind of empirical observation. So your attempted distinction doesn't work.

My distinction works just fine, since I'm not denying that the definition of "death" draws on empirical observation. Indeed, that was my point. I'm not sure who you're disagreeing with here.

Thomas wrote:

What definition of "death" are you suggesting?

I'm not suggesting any. My hypothetical doesn't rest on a definition of "death." For some reason your answer does, but then that's not my problem.

Thomas wrote:

No. But unlike you, I'm not saying that electrical signals cause the brain to think. I'm saying these signals are what thoughts are made of. I'm not saying that signals are what kicks are made of. So the parallel between brains and legs breaks down for me here.

Well, since you think that the signals are what thoughts are made of, it's not surprising you conclude that a cadaver can think. That was the whole point of the hypothetical.

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As I understand it "brain death" is defined at whatever point the patient ceases to have any futher value to those defining it. With a tramp found collapsed in the gutter and costing the hospital 20 grand a week, it would be at an earlier point in time, there is a recession on after all, than someone who had assets enough and recoverable to fund a lengthier process or it might be at an earlier time than that of the unknown tramp. Two reasons might contribute to that. In the one the hospital might delay the decision on the tramp in order to demonstrate that they are not class conscious and in the other the beneficiaries of the patient's estate might encourage a fairly quick decision, for reasons too obvious to discuss before people who sit up and beg for money, and possibly meeting opposition from the beneficiaries of the 20 grand a week.

D.J.Aidley's book The Physiology of Excitable Cells provides a technical explanation but it doesn't discuss the philosophical aspects of time as an irreversibilty concept at the moment of the becoming in which our hypothetical patient so sadly seems to be. It can be used to provide the big words with which to present the reasons for whatever point was chosen.

At the point in time we are all at now brain death has already set in. With me it began when I started work and could thus only do part-time goofing off. It is easy to notice what a wide berth the upper classes give work. And they say that the credit crunch is the worker's fault. So it's the worker's belt that's up for tightening.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I'm not suggesting any [of death]. My hypothetical doesn't rest on a definition of "death."

Well, if you decline to define the term "death", then the word "corpse" in your thought experiment can mean anything you want to. I certainly agree there's no limit to what a "corpse" can do if you get to define arbitrarily what a corpse is. In particular, there's no limits to its thinking power. If that's all you intend to say with your thought experiment, I have no problem with it---except that it doesn't mean anything.

joefromchicago wrote:

Well, since you think that the signals are what thoughts are made of, it's not surprising you conclude that a cadaver can think.

That's not what I'm concluding. I'm concluding that, contrary to your assumption, what you call a cadaver is actually alive.

Why is my simple yet general point not getting through to you? You claim to be conducting a thought experiment about electrical devices, biological bodies, and a particular physiological state. That means you have to play by the rules of electronics, biology, and physiology. Specifically, you have to play by these rules as they are---you don't get to set them, too. The rules of physiology, such as they are, say that a body doesn't qualify as a corpse unless it has irreversibly lost its ability to carry brainwaves. If you don't want to be constrained by those rules---fine. Go ahead and talk about corpses whose brains carry brainwaves because an electrical device is making them to. But the price you pay for that is that you're no longer running an intellectually honest thought experiment. You're just making stuff up.

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@litewave,

I have to strongly disagree, psycotic people usually put themselves above group think, flok instinct ..etc, and therefore have free will.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Well, if you decline to define the term "death", then the word "corpse" in your thought experiment can mean anything you want to. I certainly agree there's no limit to what a "corpse" can do if you get to define arbitrarily what a corpse is. In particular, there's no limits to its thinking power. If that's all you intend to say with your thought experiment, I have no problem with it---except that it doesn't mean anything.

All of the words in my hypothetical mean what they mean. I am neither using words in a lax manner to mean anything I want nor using words in a hypertechnical sense to mean anything you want. If you have any objections, then I'm sure you can use those objections to dodge the hypothetical.

Thomas wrote:

Why is my simple yet general point not getting through to you? You claim to be conducting a thought experiment about electrical devices, biological bodies, and a particular physiological state. That means you have to play by the rules of electronics, biology, and physiology. Specifically, you have to play by these rules as they are---you don't get to set them, too.

On the contrary, I do get to set them. After all, it's my hypothetical. Einstein, as a thought experiment, imagined travelling on a trolley car going the speed of light. Would you tell him "sorry, Al, you can't do that. Trolley cars can't go that fast." If I want a corpse whose neurons can be stimulated by electrical impulses or a talking dog or a trolley that can go the speed of light, then I can do that, and any objections that "you can't do that" are irrelevant.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

All of the words in my hypothetical mean what they mean.

Quite true. They mean what they mean, which is nothing---because you didn't define them. You might as well start a thought experiment by assuming that "'twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe". And then you might conclude: "Hey! In a scenario like that, it would follow that all mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe. Ain't that remarkable?" No it's not, it's meaningless. It's meaningless in the same way as when you use the words "corpse", "electrical device", and "think" without any definition that anchors them in reality.

joefromchicago wrote:

Einstein, as a thought experiment, imagined travelling on a trolley car going the speed of light.

I would be stunned to catch Einstein play that fast and loose with the laws of physics. Maybe he imagined the trolley car going at some fast and accelerating speed, asymptotically approaching light speed. But literally going at light speed? Can you show me an actual citation where he says that?

joefromchicago wrote:

Would you tell him "sorry, Al, you can't do that. Trolley cars can't go that fast."

1) If Einstein's point had been about the mechanical capabilities of trolley cars, rather than the algebra of relativistic speeds, yes.

2) On the algebra of relativistic speeds, I'm pretty sure he'd be the one telling me that trolley cars can't do light speed. In fact, he might well use the very-fast-trolley-car thought experiment to demonstrate it.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

If I want a corpse whose neurons can be stimulated by electrical impulses or a talking dog or a trolley that can go the speed of light, then I can do that, and any objections that "you can't do that" are irrelevant.

To restate the problem with your argument in yet another way: Yes you can thought-experiment on a talking dog if you want to. But if you do, you don't get to exclaim: "Now if we had talking dogs, then presumably they could have conversations with us if we met them at a party. And that's just preposterous!" No, it isn't. It's no more and no less preposterous than the assumption you made in the first place.

Likewise, if you assume you can induce brainwaves in a corps through some electronic device, that's okay""unless you conclude: "But then the corpse would be capable of thinking. And that's just preposterous!" In analogy to the talking dog, whatever preposterosity there is in your conclusion comes straight out of your assumption. The rest of the thought experiment does not affect it either way.

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@joefromchicago,

And to restate it in the (n+1)th way, your thought experiment is of the same form as if I said: "Let's say pigs fly. I bet that the day after that happens, Rush Limbaugh will change his voter registration to become a Socialist". As a point of logic, this statement is true: In Boolean algebra, the statement "if (A) then (B)" is equivalent to "not (A) or (B)". Here, "not (A)" is true: pigs don't, and won't, fly. But once "not (A)" is true, it doesn't matter if (B) true or not, i.e., whether Limbaugh will become a Socialist or not.

With this point of logic in mind, I'm prepared to admit that your conditional statement underlying your thought-experiment is logically true: If you can induce brainwaves in a corpse, then corpses can think. But this conclusion doesn't tell us anything about the nature of thinking (or corpses): All statements are true if they're of the form "if (premise) then (conclusion)", and the premise is false. But once that happens, the statement doesn't tell us anything about the truth of the conclusion anymore. Consequently, your thought experiment tells us nothing about any thoughts that might occur in properly prodded corpses.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Quite true. They mean what they mean, which is nothing---because you didn't define them. You might as well start a thought experiment by assuming that "'twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe". And then you might conclude: "Hey! In a scenario like that, it would follow that all mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe. Ain't that remarkable?" No it's not, it's meaningless. It's meaningless in the same way as when you use the words "corpse", "electrical device", and "think" without any definition that anchors them in reality.

I don't feel obliged to define the words that I use in normal circumstances -- no more so than you do. Indeed, where the definitions don't really matter, I can't imagine why I'd feel the need to define those terms. That you find yourself compelled to quibble over the definitions of the words I use is your problem, not mine. Furthermore, since you've already given your answer, I'm not sure why you want to double-back and criticize my use of the words in that hypothetical.

Thomas wrote:

I would be stunned to catch Einstein play that fast and loose with the laws of physics. Maybe he imagined the trolley car going at some fast and accelerating speed, asymptotically approaching light speed. But literally going at light speed? Can you show me an actual citation where he says that?

I remember that from some television program. I may have recalled it incorrectly, but then why is it less implausible for Einstein to have imagined travelling on a trolley that approached the speed of light? Einstein, after all, imagined chasing a light beam and catching up to it, which necessarily involved him moving at the speed of light. Are you suggesting that Einstein was faster than a trolley?

Thomas wrote:

1) If Einstein's point had been about the mechanical capabilities of trolley cars, rather than the algebra of relativistic speeds, yes.

2) On the algebra of relativistic speeds, I'm pretty sure he'd be the one telling me that trolley cars can't do light speed. In fact, he might well use the very-fast-trolley-car thought experiment to demonstrate it.

I'm not sure why the sentient corpse is less plausible than the almost-light-speed trolley, but I've lost all interest in what has become a thought experiment on how far you're willing to accept thought experiments.

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@joefromchicago,

Maybe you meant to say "train" instead of "trolley":

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I'm not sure why the sentient corpse is less plausible than the almost-light-speed trolley

Because the almost-light-speed trolley isn't about trolleys. It's about the algebra of speeds. The thought experiment doesn't change if you make it about almost-light-speed rockets, or almost-light-speed muons, or almost-light-speed anythings.

Your thinking corpse, by contrast, is very much about corpses. The outcome is very different if you use a live body or a dead stone instead. (Though personally I agree the stone would be thinking in the same way the corpse would.) Therefore, the physiology of death matters to your thought experiment, in a way that the engineering constraints of trolleys don't matter to Einstein's.

joefromchicago wrote:

but I've lost all interest in what has become a thought experiment on how far you're willing to accept thought experiments.

Fair enough. I'll stop bugging you about it.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

And to restate it in the (n+1)th way, your thought experiment is of the same form as if I said: "Let's say pigs fly. I bet that the day after that happens, Rush Limbaugh will change his voter registration to become a Socialist". As a point of logic, this statement is true: In Boolean algebra, the statement "if (A) then (B)" is equivalent to "not (A) or (B)". Here, "not (A)" is true: pigs don't, and won't, fly. But once "not (A)" is true, it doesn't matter if (B) true or not, i.e., whether Limbaugh will become a Socialist or not.

"If A then B" is not equivalent to "not A or B," at least not in any logic that I'm familiar with. That doesn't even make any sense. "If A then B" is equivalent to "If not-B then not-A."

Thomas wrote:

With this point of logic in mind, I'm prepared to admit that your conditional statement underlying your thought-experiment is logically true: If you can induce brainwaves in a corpse, then corpses can think. But this conclusion doesn't tell us anything about the nature of thinking (or corpses):

Actually, it's designed to test the validity of materialism.

Thomas wrote:

All statements are true if they're of the form "if (premise) then (conclusion)", and the premise is false.

A proposition in the form of "if A then B" isn't true or false -- it has no truth value at all. It's not a complete syllogism.

Thomas wrote:

But once that happens, the statement doesn't tell us anything about the truth of the conclusion anymore. Consequently, your thought experiment tells us nothing about any thoughts that might occur in properly prodded corpses.

But it has told me quite enough about you.

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@joefromchicago,

jofromchicago wrote:

"If A then B" is not equivalent to "not A or B," at least not in any logic that I'm familiar with.

Then perhaps you are not familiar enough with Boolean logic. I know it's counter-intuitive, and I didn't believe it the first time I heard it. But look at the truth-tables for both propositions. They really are identical.

Consider testing the truth of propositions C and D, where C equals "if A then B", and D equals "(not A) or B". You test them by looking whether A is true and whether B is true.

If A is true and B is true, that's consistent with C and D
If A is true and B is false, that's inconsistent with C and D
If A is false and B is true, that's consistent with C and D
If A is false and B is false, that's consistent with C and D

Therefore C ("if A then B") and D ("(not A) or B") are equivalent by the rules of Boolean logic.

joefromchicago wrote:

But it has told me quite enough about you.

None of us likes it when their brainchildren get harmed. But there's no need to get testy about it. It's not personal.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

But look at the truth-tables for both propositions. They really are identical.

Since I figure you won't accept me as an authority on Boolean logic and truth tables, here is a source you might find less objectionable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_table

The table you want is labeled "Truth table for most commonly used logical operators". Refer to column "P-->Q". Also refer to the table just above it, under "¬p ∨ q"

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Proof of nonexistence of free will

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