Wrong ! We don't know what "existence" or "reality" are ! See for example Einstein's quote on "reality" or a recent thread here on the possible equivalence of "information" and "reality".
But even if the reductionist argument about the illusion of free will is built on philosophical "naive realism" there may still be grounds for delimiting the concept to the status of "sociological functionality" rather than assigning it some theistic origin. In other words the concept fills the general need for "culpability" within a legal system subject of course to the counter arguments of "mitigating circumstances" within specific social microcosms.
Maybe. It is possible that the mind (I mean the non-material sense of self that is generated when the brain is activated) can take all of the information that it has available, consider its options and their effects, and make the optimal choice in spite of its own penchant for making a different one.
The mind uses neural networks that are probably more like chaotic systems than deterministic computer circuits,
fresco:
Quote:Wrong ! We don't know what "existence" or "reality" are ! See for example Einstein's quote on "reality" or a recent thread here on the possible equivalence of "information" and "reality".
the situation.
This is what I took for granted when I posed the question, in fact. But if the brain is carefully considering the state of a situation and all its factors and emotions etc...the physical processes that allow this in-the-moment decision to be made are still adherent to the laws of physics, and therefore, your decisions are STILL deterministic.
The only way to breach this gap is if your thoughts are either not subject to the laws of physics which everything else we observe is, or if there are more fundamental laws behind the laws of quantum mechanics that allow for non-probabilistic, non-deterministic, "options."
Quote:The mind uses neural networks that are probably more like chaotic systems than deterministic computer circuits,
False. The neural networks in our brains are highly deterministic and highly organized systems. Neural networks are special in that they can be configured to perform nearly any kind of operation given the same basic architecture...much like a computer can be configured to perform many different operations given the same binary architecture.
Neural networks work by simply propagating action potentials which are "electrical" signals (ions of positive and negative charge propagate diffusion through lipid membranes)...these signals travel from neuron to neuron via the synapses in dendritic trees, and the organization of these trees is not random at all.
There are many millions of neurons and you might think that practical functions only emerge out of the aggregate body, but this is actually false...even on the scale of individual neurons, their purposes are well-defined.
For instance, the retina is also composed of a neural network that is well understood:
photoreceptive neurons such as rods and cones are stimulated by the light focused onto them, then these signals are propagated to on-center retinal ganglion cells that collect localized signals in order to get a more reliable matrix of light and dark patterns...this in turn passes through the optic tract into the striate visual cortex where low-level vision processing occurs, whereby individual neurons are specifically wired to detect oriented lines of ganglion cell outputs.
Each individual synaptic weight in this process is important!
When you look at the seemingly random tree pattern of dendrites growing out of an axon you might be inclined to think that they just connect randomly to other neurons...what I am trying to illustrate is that is from from the case, every synaptic connection exists for a reason in order to carry out functions.
New
Computer models can successfully model the low-level interaction of neurons via action potentials, and it is clear that there is no room for alternate results to come out of the neural network given a certain set of inputs.
However...what if consciousness is not part of the network? For example, and just for example, what if there was another dimension where the laws of physics did not apply, and our consciousness was simply achieved through a link to this other dimension!
John Jones,
"Can our brains make decisions that are non-deterministic?"
edit: please do not quote large bodies of text if you aren't going to use the quoted text in detail, because you only make the thread more difficult to read.
If you go down to a small enough scale, nothing can be predicted exactly...the laws are all probabilistic rather than deterministic...at least that is the predominant theory. I'll be honest, I don't believe in probabilistic laws...I believe in all the math, and that they work, but these laws were derived via experimentation and adopted because they worked...which could certainly be the case if there were further, extremely complicated and seemingly "random" deterministic laws that resulted in the appearance of probabilistic nature of things. Anyways, I'm going off on a tangent...whether you believe that the laws on a small scale are probabilistic or not doesn't really matter. There are still laws one way or the other.
You and Ray seem perfectly happy to go along with a different definition of choice, saying that a choice is simply an action chosen by the brain -- the critical difference between these definitions being that in your definition, there is only one physically possible action that will be chosen by the brain from any particular state.
Your definition is perfectly acceptable, and perfectly logical. However, it makes our brains fundamentally equivalent to calculators!
Einherjar, your explanation is quite clear...and the point you bring up is one that I have been considering.
I believe that the intuitive, and perhaps naive, definition of a choice would be a situation where there are multiple actions possible, and that your conscious mind is capable of choosing any one of those actions.
You and Ray seem perfectly happy to go along with a different definition of choice, saying that a choice is simply an action chosen by the brain -- the critical difference between these definitions being that in your definition, there is only one physically possible action that will be chosen by the brain from any particular state.
Your definition is perfectly acceptable, and perfectly logical. However, it makes our brains fundamentally equivalent to calculators!
This implication is difficult to accept for one simple reason: unlike calculators, we are self aware. Perhaps something about this mysterious self awareness actually allows the inner workings of our mind/consciousness to transcend the limitations of the laws of physics?
It sounds kind of ridiculous...but I think the thought also has a somewhat compelling ring of truth to it. Remember that the laws of physics which we are so adherent to are merely the results of our measurements in experiments, and there are enough unanswered questions on the small scale that we don't know WHY these laws exist or HOW they really work, we simply know that they appear to work.
It kind of seem like, to me at least, that your definition is the one that is making our brain more like calculators.
I see that your argument lies in the assumption that for one, we could predict the outcome of any events or choices if we were to know the information, but the paradox is, in my opinion, that something within a system observing itself can not really determine the exact future of every event, for the observation made itself alters the course of events
It has also been mentioned that randomness may also be a part of the universe, on the ground that quantum mechanics is... well... what can I say. It is possible, and I certainly would not leave it out of the realm of probable possibility.
Biolgical, and sociological phenomena cannot be reduced to mechanistic causality...
And employing a black box model of the brain that would be an aplicable definition.
Or perhaps calculators can be self aware
I think you need to present a proper definition of self awareness before you try to argue that it is incompatible with determinism.
As they do indeed appear to work, consistently, I need a compelling argument to support the contention that they are suspended by self awareness, or that they need to be suspended in order to facilitate it.
Quote:And employing a black box model of the brain that would be an applicable definition.
I'm very familiar with the black box concept, but I'm not sure what your point is about it.
Perhaps a calculator can be made to be self aware, but certainly they are not self aware now. A calculator does simply what it is programmed to do, and it is not programmed to be self aware. There is no fundamental difference between a calculator and a gear in a watch. There is critical step here that would elevate it from "inanimate" to "animate".
I use consciousness interchangeably with self awareness. This is always a difficult term to define but I think everyone agrees on what it is already! Consciousness is separate from the mind, it can be turned off while the mind continues to function somewhat a person is really their consciousness, because without it they are just a body.
Quote:As they [the laws of physics] do indeed appear to work, consistently, I need a compelling argument to support the contention that they are suspended by self awareness, or that they need to be suspended in order to facilitate it.
1) You think that our brains appear to work consistently?
Here I disagree it is not possible for people to predict the precise behaviours of other people. I think all the evidence, and intuition, imply that our brains do not work in a consistent and predictable fashion which is why the concept that our brains MUST act this way due to physical laws is a difficult one to grasp!
2) Certainly, humans do not REQUIRE consciousness in order to function reasonably well. A computer can be programmed to function under many complex tasks simply be making very thorough condition checks in the code for every possible circumstance. A computer like this could be made to control humans. However, if there were a consciousness, the complexity of the code required would drop significantly. For instance, if a computer is programmed to not want to crash, and it has a consciousness that is able to perceive what is going on, the programmer would not have to worry about accounting for all the millions of conditions where crashing might occur he could simply write this off to the computer making sure it doesn't do anything "stupid." In the same way, consciousness in a human mind would allow for the same behaviour as a mind without consciousness with perhaps a million times less complexity of code. So, I think that although consciousness may not be required for functional operation of a human, it may be that it is the simplest way for complex functional operation to be encoded.
Additionally, consciousness very well may allow for behaviour that is not possible through non-conscious programming by allowing the agent to perform tasks which it has not specifically been programmed for, in effect meaning that it is comparable to a program of infinite complexity.
I propose that this distinction is artificial, or alt least subjective.
We puny humans would not recognise "self-awareness" in binary code even if it was presented to us with labelling.
We may have a certain sense of what is meant by the word consciousness, but only as a subjective experience from the point of view of that which is conscious, and as an exercise of empathic projection. We need an objective minimalistic definition which can be applied by second and third parties.
I was referring to the laws of physics, which you are suggesting needs to be suspended in order for self awareness to be possible.
Hmm, I'm grasping it just fine. If you believe (as you have said you do) that the seemingly random behaviour of particles studied in quantum physics can be the product of complex deterministic functions, why can you not apply the same reasoning to the brain?
Modern day robots do this already. They extrapolate current movement a couple of seconds forwards, and change direction if the extrapolation results in a prediction of impact. It isn't even advanced code. The only hard part is image processing, if cameras are to be used to map three dimensional space, the rest I could write myself.
Still, I'm sure you won't consider my simple java programmes conscious, so what is the actual definition of consciousness? If it is defined by its functions and all its functions can be reproduced in a computer, then that computer is according to that definition conscious.
Done already as well, watch a documentary about artificial intelligence and you'll se.
The state of an electrical circuit is defined by the precise locations of electrons within the circuit. This information can be abstracted in terms of voltage at each node and current between each node. In the same fashion, the precise locations of ions in the brain, or the voltage or current across synapses, can be used to define the state of the brain.
. You assume a causal relationship between mind and matter.
The neural network part of our brain is functionally the same as a calculator. I think the question is, does consciousness simply come out of this or does it come out of something else.
Feedback loops cannot possibly turn a deterministic problem into a non-deterministic one. Feedback loops are used extensively in Hopfield neural networks for example. In computers this is similar to race conditions, where we say we don't know what the result will be because it depends on which electrical signal gets there first but if we know more specific details, we could always determine which one would get their first.
John, I'm sorry but it appears that this entire discussion is just over your head...
