If your parents were not alcoholics, divorced, fundamentalists, if you haven't lived in extreme poverty -- then, by my standards, you have been lucky. And you advocating that one has to have will and maturity -- niiiice. But one cannot will to have will and maturity. They can not be planned.
Gendanken, Exactly. However, this might mislead one to thinking that animals are not capable of predicting behavior. This is far from the truth. In fact, many can predict quite complicated social behavior. They do have a sense of cause and effect. But, it's substantially different from our sense of 'what if'. Animals predict behavior. We predict meaning. An animal could predict a man in the sky if such a thing were led up to by sensory inputs. But, a man deals with symbols rather than the things themselves and thus it is easy to switch symbols with one another. The power of man's language is in its combinatorial properties. The gold mountain. More than elastic. Interchangeable parts. Water, I disagree. It is not so simple as just 'willing' yourself into these states. But, one can affect themselves and move towards these states willfully. Southstar, Inborn prototype? That came from left field. Interestingly enough, however, there are certain inborn prototypes. The Vervet monkey, for instance, is famously known for having distinctive alarm calls that distinguish between an eagle attack and a leopard attack. These two predators require different responses, so it makes sense that the alarm calls should be different. It has been shown that at least some of this behavior is inborn. A result of genetic assimilation of behavioral adaptations. But, there is no inborn prototype eagle or leopard, rather it appears that the alarm calls are differentiated by the direction from which the stimulus is received. The eagle attacks from above while the leopard attacks from either the same level or below. Young vervet monkeys will often give out false alarms but the alarms will always arise from stimuli coming from the proper quarters of perception. The eagle call always comes from stimuli coming from above and the leopard call always comes from stimuli on the same level or below. This idea brings to mind the story of the boy who cried wolf. See, the young monkey learns to respond properly to only the correct stimuli. He knows innately the direction but the distinction of form is left to social learning. This is actually a good thing. Consider a vervet monkey that instinctively responded 'properly' to the exact shape of an eagle or a leopard. Now, consider the leopards going extinct and a new ground predator taking place. It's relatively easy to limit variability through genetic means, but it is far more difficult to expand variability. Ask the Smilodon. (I love saying that.) Anyway, I don't recall talking about inborn prototypes. Without going back and scouring my posts, I will have to assume that you are rather referring to the Hume's Gold Mountain scenario. That is, we are not coming up with unique concepts when we make fanciful creations, but rather we combine already known concepts. Gold and Mountain to make a Gold Mountain. Then you have nothing. What you have is something which the scum in Gendanken's toilet would be proud. Keep working on it though. Maybe you'll be able to elucidate it someday. I'm afraid that with your renunciation of your Prime Mover and/or Grand Programmer you have no real theory. All you're doing is basically reiterating old news. New to you, but old nonetheless. I'd say that you're learning. Not theorizing. There is a difference. This is called confabulation and is documented very well in that split brain site I linked to earlier. Read it. There are also numerous other ways in which this trait is pointed out. Optical illusions, for one. And you trying to make sense of the world by coming up with a theory that he is unable to speak and yet is sure is true. I have a problem with this. We do interfere with it. We are able to restrain involuntary movements. This is will. And, I already know what you're going to say. "How do you restrain involuntary movements?" The point is moot. You do. Even if the will to do so doesn't begin in the consciousness, it ends there. I'll go into a bit more detail of this later when I talk about hiccups. You've linked to some papers on quantum mechanics and free will, but you realize that you haven't mentioned any of this in what you've said? Do you understand quantum mechanics? Now I'm just being nitpicky, but you're using a poor choice of terms here. Neurons aren't intelligent. Collections of neurons may exhibit what can be called intelligence. But, we are the aspect of this gathered group of neurons dedicated to communication of said intelligence. Without this communication we'd be nothing. In fact, in many ways you can consider 'us' as a consciousness to be a side effect of language. We are a communications module. A rationalization module. An extrapolation module. A pattern finding module. A story-teller module. (However, module is misleading as it seems to point to localized function within the brain that is becoming discredited more and more each day.) Also, we don't really so much perceive as receive the end results of the automatic perception analyzing modules of the brain. Handed to us on a silver platter. However, we are not completely helpless in this. We can conciously alter our perceptions. We are in a classic feedback loop. By the way, what would you call intelligence? What is your definition? So, what you are leading up to is the divulgence of all responsibility and becoming merely a passenger in your own body. Now, many neurological findings do point to much this state of affairs, but the point is that it doesn't appear to us as being so. Our consciousness does serve a purpose or it would not be there. Conscious thought is an expensive form of thought and is always sublimated as soon as possible. Sublimated or internalized thought processes are largely stereotyped and unable to change preconceived patterns. I believe that I've already mentioned this, but I'll reiterate. Think of performing a complex task. Tool-making perhaps. Whittling. When you first learn to do it, you spend a lot of conscious effort in order to learn the proper method to hold the tools and the block of wood. How to move the tools over the wood. How to do this. How to do that. The number of things that must be considered while doing this is exceedingly large and this is why learning a new complex task is difficult, to say the least. However, over time, you learn the best and most efficient ways of doing things and you no longer have to consider what it is that you are doing. You internalize it. And, in fact, if you turn your active mind to consider just what it is that you are doing, you often fuck it up. You've internalized this behavior. It's become automatic. Now, consider trying to teach someone how to perform this behavior which you've learned so well to do. Consider how you try to explain how to perform all these various actions and movements to your eager pupil. Consider how you begin to lose the thread of just what it is that you are doing when you do so because you are turning your active mind to the task which your unconscious mind has taken into itself. Consider how you finally give up trying to tell your pupil how to perform and, in the end, resort to showing him instead. Consciousness has a purpose. It is to interpret new and unpredicted stimuli. And, it also has secondary effects that were likely not selected for in evolution. For instance, the act of interpreting our environment gave us a power to instill the environment with values and thus we take control of much of our own motivation. There are others, of course, far too many to even think about making a list of them here. If consciousness was as useless as you seem to be implying then it would never have emerged. Or if it had emerged, it would have long since vanished once more as useless and inefficient. Do you know how to hold your breath? Do you know how to cause your urethra to spasm? Your testicles to release sperm? Your prostate to release its fluid? Do you know how to do these things? Yet, you can hold your breath. You can cause yourself to orgasm. (Not spontaneously. But rather through stimulation of the genitals.) The consciousness is an emergent property, but it is heir to the computations of the rest of the brain. Do you know how to masturbate? Does it matter? I understand what you're saying about all this neurological business. As I've said before, this is all old news. But, the point is that it doesn't matter. Not to ethics. Not to responsibility. Not even to action. Also, consider that the tests and their results are limited and may not be entirely accurate. Know how to cure the hiccups? Think about them. Think about the next hiccup. Think about how it's going to feel. Taste. Everything. Every perceptual nuance of the hiccup experience. Think about it with the totality of your consciousness. It'll never come. Until you stop thinking about it. And then it will occur practically instantly. Did you know that the reflex action caused by the hammer tapping your knee isn't processed by your brain at all? It goes to and from your spinal cord. That's it. But, are you saying that you can't repress the reflexive movement of your leg? Really? If you are expecting it, you can tense up your entire leg and you can repress it. Maybe not wholely, but you can limit it. Now, you're going to say that it was in fact some deeper part of the brain that decided this and I'm gonna say it doesn't matter. It was still decided. It was still enacted. Consciousness does play a part. Perhaps it comes into the game later than most would think, but that doesn't lessen its importance. Know what part of the human brain is most enlarged when compared to animal brains? The prefrontal cortex. Remember how I described the prefrontal lobe as a strait jacket? What does this say to you? By limiting what might otherwise be a constant outflowing of uncontrollable actions, the prefrontal limits and 'defines'. Precision comes from limiting. Definition by limitation. I believe that animals have varying degrees of self-consciousness and apparent free will. Some are completely locked up in ancient and preprogrammed patterns. While others are free to vary their behaviors to a certain extent. Humans are able to vary their behavior to a far greater extent than any other animal known to exist. I've already talked about the vervet monkeys. Now is the time to speak of chimpanzees, our closest relative. 'Lesser' animals, with less of a prefrontal lobe, are less able to restrain their automated movements. Jane Goodal's chimpanzees, for example, have a well-known food call. When a chimp finds food it spontaneously bursts into this food call and is unable to restrain itself from doing so. One wily chimp was observed finding a banana cache and trying to cover its mouth with its hands to prevent the food call from being heard. The chimp knew that it would be better for it if it kept the food to itself, but it was unable to prevent the call from being emitted. This is often seen in call behavior. One animal emits a danger call and it is soon picked up by other members of the troop without their conscious volition. It just happens. We can see this behavior in humans as well. Contagious laughter. Contagious yawns. Also consider smiles, grimaces, and other instinctual signs. A blind man will still smile when happy. He's never seen a smile in his life and yet he can still smile. He's never seen a grimace and yet he still grimaces. Never seen tears and yet he still cries. And these instinctual signs evoke a primal response in us who witness them. An empathy which words are not always able to express or elicit. We are not completely free from the automated instinctual actions which we are inherit to, but we are further removed from these than any other animal which we know to exist. So, to an extent, to be human is to be able to repress the bestial nature which lies within. There is, of course, much more to it than that, and it can be said that this ability to repress action and thought is a mere second order effect of different adaptations. In other words, exaptation as opposed to adaptation. Or a spandrel. So, what is the theory then? Without the shifting of responsibility to an external source which was part of your former dialogue, you seem to have no real theory to discuss.
And the cliff's notes for all the lazy people- NEXUS says, "Consciousness does play a part. Perhaps it comes into the game later than most would think, but that doesn't lessen its importance." This gives you none of the art of Nexus' post, but showing that the "seat(s) of consciousness" communicate with the muscles before they communicate with the perceptive mind does not negate their existence. This could be a necessary function for human survival. A study showing we can imagine a particular movement without any nerve activity that relates to the movement might be more useful than the type of study SOUTHSTAR was trying to use to explain will. When you distinguish willing something from imagining it, how is the body's activity different, other than the muscle movement? Does anyone have good links to info about scientists trying to test for the seat(s) of consciousness in the body?
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In my opinion, i dont believe in freewill. Thought is just a form of memory which is created by sensory input. We collect all this data throughout our lives...depending on the stimili we cross our memories change, thus our range of thoughts change. There is one choice for each decision that we actually DO make. In my opinion, everything in life is just a series of cause and effect with no room for any sort of deity. Following this theory, it isn't too difficult to consider how the mind can work so simply. It is just a part of the body where all of the nerves meet. It collects data and interprets to assure survival. We are able to consider more scenerios and react sooner and even prevent situations from happening. The consideration that we "think" is ambiguous in how one my define the term "think". Do we react to our surroundings by a contemplative method, yes. The idea of freewill is considered, but we are as free as any other plant and animal. It is thought that we COULD kill someone by our own choice, but indeed that choice is only made in our minds which is just a combination of memories (and our mind's interpretation of those memories) throughout our lives. The world is just cause and effect. Perhaps there is a great deity in the works of it all, but who am i to say if there is or isnt.
Hold your smilodons! (He he he. Heh.) There is a thing to be said about states that are essentially side-products. States like being in love, fall asleeep, also respect, wisdom, maturity, doubt etc. Will start a thread. This is why I cure hiccups by other means -- by bypass. Good example of a side-product.
Maybe I will just repeat what I said in the other thread... Besdies, we can always choose not to choose... This might clarify: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=44030
This quote from Stephen Gould on evolutionary theory would seem to at least get us to a point where we can stop chasing the concept of "truly free-will" (thanks for referring to the spandrel NEXUS) -- "The second theme is the extent to which strict adaptationism has to be compromised by considering the developmental and genetic restraints at work upon organisms, when you start considering the organism as a figure that pushes back against the force of natural selection. The best way to explain it is metaphorically. Under really strict Darwinism (Darwin is not a strict Darwinian), a population is like a billiard ball: you get a lot of variability, but the variability is random, in all directions. Natural selection is like a pool cue. Natural selection hits the ball, and the ball goes wherever selection pushes it. It's an externalist, functionalist, adaptationist theory. In the nineteenth century, Francis Galton, Darwin's cousin, developed an interesting metaphor: he said an organism is a polyhedron; it rests on one of the facets, one of the surfaces of a polyhedron. You may still need the pool cue of natural selection to hit it — it doesn't move unless there is a pushing force — but it's a polyhedron, meaning that an internal constitution shapes its form and the pathways of change are limited. There are certain pathways that are more probable, and there are certain ones that aren't accessible, even though they might be adaptively advantageous. It really behooves us to study the influence of these structural constraints upon Darwinian and functional adaptation; these are very different views." Maybe we should use a term I will borrow from a VERY circular proof of "free-will" I saw, and say "conditional will," or say something else like that. If we just say, "this happened because the thing before it happened" we are not "saying" much at all. At that point we are like someone describing a musical piece by saying, "then there is the note G# played very loudly, then there are these five notes rapidly trilled, then the note A is played softly." So what? The doctrine of meaninglessness achieves its own end for itself, removing meaning on a personal level. It was cool the first time I thought about it, it shook up my perceptions, but how does someone build a principle on it? Unless the principle is "everything is perfect as it is, let's just keep describing it."
Cole Grey: Then how do you propose to fix it, if you're sitting there doing the same thing? "I say", went Cole Grey "that the yapping on free will is the same as describing Grieg or Handel or Mozart by discussing how the notes change on the paper." You're describing all those useless metaphors with another one. Religion does the same thing. And in the end what is god? And in the end what is free will but a tea party where intellectuals can gather to exercise their linguistics? Which is why science is so beautiful yet maddening. You stick your head in an MRI and think 'love' or 'table' or just think about moving your fingers without doing it and right there on the screen either the temporal lobes or parietal lobes will light up with activity to pinpoint exactly what's responsible. Neither Hume (however brilliant) nor Kant (however tedious) could show you with all the cheeky metaphors in the world the reality of what is happening on that screen. Science seems to give all the answers but its maddening because it does not explain emergence. We are spiritual beings demanding something more from that screen, no fucking way that we're nothing but action potentials and bowel movements! Science should explain the Something More that Southstar is after. Well goddamnit should it??! Look at Helen Keller- what was she but the chair that I'm sitting on or that dog of yours when the world was closed off to her by her blindness? She became an opinionated, self-important chair or a dog as soon as she was taught language. This, to me, is the basis for the illusions of meta-consciousness and real thinking, the stuff of self and the ego. This chair I’m sitting on is a ball of matter as is your dog until you teach him to think with language, the only difference between the both of them is consciousness. Give them some language and one day in the future we'll find them both logged on to a forum debating the inanity of free will. However, that I am a selfish brain with opinions does not make me a slave to it- its true much of what goes on in there, like the ANS or this phenomenal process of my brain knowing exactly where the keys are as I type them without looking down, is closed off to me. And its true that I could simply be an illusory Gendenkan witnessing things being done by her body, and she's only conspiring with her body to touch someone else's. But like I'll say to Water: You can will anything, you're a human being not a cockroach. Biology is one thing, desire something else. I'm a strict believer in the mind being a spandrel- something Other, some byproduct made of the same thing that can transcend all the carnal impulses of the body its in charge of. And I’m as giddy to see Southtar has read V.S Ramachandran, the wittiest most interesting neurosurgeon on this planet. He writes: “For centuries philosophers have assumed that this gap between brain and mind poses a deep epistemological problem- a barrier that simply cannot be crossed. But is this really true? I agree that the barrier has not been crossed, but does it follow that it can never be crossed? I’d like to argue that there is in fact no such barrier, no great vertical divide in nature between mind and matter, substance and spirit. Indeed, I believe that this barrier is only apparent and that it arises as a result of language (gend: had palpitations when I read this). This sort of obstacle emerges when there is any translation from one language to another”- Phantoms in the Brain And its this “obstacle” that’s so useful. It makes the difference between looking up at to the moon for millennia and just looking at it for millennia And looking up to her one day and connecting her with gravity. The latter is ‘real’, kinetic thought. Invert: Aren't you being a little harsh? What's happened to him has happened to me and happened to Darwin- all thought they came up with something novel only to find its been thought before. I wonder, however, what the boy means with this: Who, pray tell, is the 'parent'? God?
Gendanken, Damn you! No. I'm not. Really. I don't mean to. Maybe it reads that way. I don't intend it as harsh at all. Merely realistic. He's learning not theorizing. Until this unspoken theory is spoken that is.
GENDANKEN, I was not calling the discussion yapping. I think some people are trying to ascribe meaning to a concept here. I think weirdoman's universe with no meaning leaves us all describing but not connecting the higher ideas. And that is what i was referencing. I wasn't saying weirdoman was yapping. I've just been hearing people advocating the machine without the ghost. Here, let me give you a metaphor I have thought up relating to this... hahahaha. Aren't the metaphors useful? Without them how would the gendanken experiments be conducted? Mental evolution - If humanity is evolving, I can't see it. It is the same problem when people say, "God doesn't exist because it doesn't make sense to me." It is just not possible for me to call this progress. We get smarter. Neat. So what? The difference between us and the apes is that THEY seldom kill each other. Oh, they would have a hard time depleting the ozone layer too. If we were going to get to the point where we would have no language barrier, no barrier between our deepest thoughts and the workshop where we cobble them together to form concepts, we would think well. If we thought well, I would say that there might not be a place for God. My opinion is that we don't have to worry about the prospect, we will suffer the fate of the dinosaurs before we have time to evolve. Never mind, let's pretend that we will evolve. Maybe a species that could think well would build the tools to find the God that people say created this universe. I know they would find our perceptions of the limits of the universe laughable. Maybe that species IS the God that built this universe and there are three individuals which share the same mind, and only speak to us in thought. But IF we are evolving, IF we survive our own hatred on this planet, which seems unlikely, more doors will open. We will multiply and so the race will have more people to explore with. That is how knowledge works, it opens doors to more questions. Philosophy 101. I have a problem with people who think they are "scientists" and don't know that. As long as we understand that the evolution of humanity could be a concept that is "mostly true" created by people who had faith in science for the future, and God could be a concept that is "mostly true" created by people who did not, there are no weapons, and we may proceed to begin "evolving." But how easy will it be for the people to become more intelligent/sympathetic than they/we are? I think God has no language, only the "Word" which holds all things together and started the universe. (This time. If you believe in cycles. I don't) God thinks far better than we do. There is no binary translation necessary for God's thought computations. God doesn't have a code through which God must translate concepts like "love." We wrestle with desire and compassion, experience, trust, fear... and that is just the short list. I don't believe that there will come a time when we don't wrestle. If there is nothing, then there is nothing. No big loss, I will cease to have existed and will lose all consciousness anyway. I won't be suffering. I won't allow the confusion I have now to force me to what I perceive is the easy way out, i.e., "there is no meaning, let's just describe everything as it goes by." The atheist's perception of this elephant of pure thought MAY be of the trunk, mine is of the tail. Whatever. We are both blind. Like Helen Keller was, so are we, without the ability to think well. If I try to use the tail as a broom, the elephant does not consent. If you try to use the trunk as a rope, the elephant will not allow it. Of science? Language? Why do we love that which hurts us so much? Let's return to eden. Oh no, it's too late... Also, Is GENDANKEN the role-player and her life just the game? Isn't that a sign of mental illness - being disaffected and flat? By the way, I would love to see what happens when the psychologists end up on the buddhist forum. (+vice versa)
So? Since we are all in this neuronal soup, the practical issues of human interaction remain. And then you get more gibber-jabber nonsense. What is there is the inference. Note that this inference is of crucial importance for the existence of human society. Uh. Why use such emotional and derogatory words such as the brain "fools" itself? It is scientifically inappropriate. Free will may be an illusion, but in terms of orientation and survival advantage, it is a very efficient illusion. If something boosts your survival chances, then it is good for you, and important; and it should be treated as such. If we are to stick to the evolution theory, that is. As far as inborn knowledge is concerned: As I said in the Gödel thread, it is not likely that we have inborn knowledge as you describe it. I don't see where the problem is. Free will may be an illusion, but it gives us orientation and survival advantage. As such, it is important. And it really does not matter how the whole thing actually works -- that is, just because it turns out that free will may be an illusion, its pragmatic use is still real. We cannot dimisss personal responsibility because it is all about "neurons firing away". Wonderful! Uh. Disciplines can interpret eachother, sure. But what is your point? One can, intuitively, conclude that we don't really have free will, or that certain modifications are needed. Yet all this does not change the psycho-sociological role of free will. Causality is inferred, anyways. On what do you base your personal responsibility? Dearest, you say this: and then you say this: Whoah. Try to *rationally* and logically explain values and preferences. If you can. * * * "Free will" is to "neurons" what "tastes good" is to the "taste buds". We live our conscious lives on the level of terms like "free will" and "tastes good"; while the whole thing is biologically happening on the level of neurons and taste buds. In out everyday lives, we don't experience ourselves as "neurons firing away" or as a "chemical soup", but as "happy", "sad", "excited", "intrigued", "guilty" etc. I wonder how many times will I have to repeat this. There is more than one reason why behaviourism is called RAT PSYCHOLOGY. * * * May God hold you in the palm of His hand, and may you never be with a bunch of those whom you look alike! * * * Witness old knitters showing you how to do a certain kind of knot. Damn. She goes slow with the needles, pointing at the actual knitting movement, and then she does the knot so fast that you can't follow. They can neither tell you how to do it, nor show it. They have internalized it so completely that they cannot analytically demonstrate it anymore. What I've been going on about on and on. Consciousness, and with it, free will, are orienatation and survival advantages. What I've been going on about on and on. Yup, that's what I did and they thought I had faulty reflexes or something. I also cannot make myself throw up by sticking a finger in my mouth -- while some people find it so easy. I can will myself to throw up though, without sticking anything into my mouth. * * * How do you scientifically explain strategic behaviour?
There you go again with that chatter about what is and what isn't 'practical'. Arbitrarily define what is 'practical' and then triumphantly declare that thing is practical. (Unless you have justification for calling something practical without referring to its circle. I would think not.) Learning that converges on itself and uses itself to support itself is absurd. And yet people do that CONSTANTLY. It wouldn't annoy me so much if they admitted that they were not being rational as they claim to be! In short, you are defending the argument from ignorance. And then you will say the inference of free will is practical. And then we will go back to the above paragraph and see that that too is circular. So we are chasing our tails and fooling ourselves into thinking we are going anywhere. When I remember what you said about 'would I rather we be robots or gods?', I will answer that better here. If we are not robots or gods, then why do we fool ourselves into thinking we are rational? The very systems of consistency in all the fields of knowledge are inconsistent with themselves; they require linearity when they themselves are circular. Science, philosophy, religion.. They constantly pray to arguments from ignorance as crutches for their inconsistency. Why is it scientifically inappropriate? Try not to be circular or arbitrary in your explanation. Now you see why I have beef with people who think they know better. How does it boost survival chances? We could have been non-conscious learning organisms all the same and that would have eliminated all the circularity. Animals who never paraded themselves as demigods with free will, masters of destiny, still survived for longer than we have. An arbitrary definition of 'likely' and 'unlikely' can do that, yes. But I felt we were referring to the same thing essentially. You continue to use this 'pragmatic' talk and yet I see no justification for why something is or is not pragmatic. Is it not because of neurons firing away that you see something as pragmatic? Can you choose to see something as impractical or do neurons do that for you? Therefore is what you just said not self defeating? Same thing as above. We see causality where there may be simple coincidence (or vice versa) because of neurons firing away. The only reason people can see sociological factors is because neurons have determined social factors. Therefore neurons rule all views on life. The only reason you didn't see my point was because your neurons didn't see my point. Even if you "wanted to", you could not see my point unless your neurons fired away. Back to the talk of 'practicality' again and you are still defending the argument from ignorance. "Even though we know the truth, let us live the lie because it is more practical." What irks me is when people insist they know truth and someone else is 'wrong'. What an absurdity! So there is nothing in the experience of acting that actually guarantees that it is causally effective. (p. 130) Causality is inferred, anyways. That should be answered separately. The keywords there were: "I revise as I go". That will be done separately when I send you the link. Patience, I say!
SOUTHSTAR says, If an organism thinks that it can control its actions and environment, it has more perceived options. Not knowing which option is correct creates doubt. The more variables, the greater the doubt. Doubt is a requirement for learning on an advanced level. Without doubt there is less perceived need for learning. Once we are taught everything we think we need to know, we can just relax. If people didn't perceive a need to do research, would there be so many resources put into it? Science would become a professional sport. Just a thought. I'm not sure I'm right. I need to work more on this. See what I mean?
Sorry. Anyway I have been dying to reply to you all of last week but didn't have the time so here goes: All very intelligent remarks. Now since you keep claiming you can, why don't you tell me how to "willfully block those thoughts". If you can't, just do it for yourself. Not at all what I was saying. I am not abandoning those concepts, I only want to change the way we look at them. From my very foreknowledge that you will be unable to answer the above request, and yet will keep praying the argument from ignorance, I know that you do not want to change the old way of looking at things. Maybe you can live with yourself if you just have an argument from ignorance, I can't. I cannot be satisfied by it. It will drive me mad. I do not deny/accept the superego, the ego or the id; I do not invoke behaviorism. I guess the rest of your spiel is quite irrelevant since I have assured you I was not invoking behaviorism but I will say this: You have utterly ignored savants. Savants have superior cognitive processes in some aspects and yet leading experts like Darrold A. Treffert agree all the same that "most savants show either little or no creativity." If you again want to plead ignorance and say that is irrelevant, go ahead. That is good for you if you are satisfied with incompleteness and Godel's theorem. You should also read this: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/TMS_NYT.html Pay close attention to what happened after stimulation. Can you do what those participants did of your own "will"? In conclusion: If you are trying to say creativity proves free will, NO. You either just like to take me out of context or simply don't understand what I'm saying. I never implied that. Sorry I don't see the relevance.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with survival. I think life did fine for quite a few million years without doubting organisms. And those that hesitated most probably died. So much for surviving.
Fancy way of saying we already know. For example, the brain mechanism used to create a prototype of a bird or whatever object was inborn. Even if you say you learned to create prototypes, whatever mechanism you used to learn that was inborn. At some point or another, the mechanism came prepackaged. So I figure it's pretty much the same as if you see a bird for the first time, your inborn prototype of a bird becomes manifest consciously. After all, before you saw a bird for the first time, you were never conscious of any 'bird' prototype. I'll have to go back to remember the context of the statement though. But always nice to learn something new. Hume's work on resemblance is probably applicable here but what he says about cause and effect is even more interesting to me. Patience. I'm checking for leaks. I've read the papers and agree with some of their conclusions but what I myself am saying has nil to do with QM. Just be patient. I should also ask you what you mean by intelligent. Consciousness is possible without language (Hellen Keller and other sensorily deprived individuals). What do you then mean by the consciousness is a side effect of language. What about animals? Do you say they are not conscious? It would probably be good to describe what you mean when you say 'conscious'. And secondly, are ("collections of") neurons conscious? And also what do you mean when you say we are a communications/rationalization/extrapolation module? I can't understand this part until I know your answer to the above question. That is a very important point you have just made and I agree. We must come back to that later. What do you mean by 'we can consciously alter our perceptions'? Sigh.. we both know intelligence can't be defined. Tricky dog. I will venture to say it is the ability to build upon and use what is already known. That implies there was a core element of knowledge built upon. A fundamental 'circle', if you followed my other post from which we grew. I wonder what it could be. I think that circle could be: "I percieve". In 'circle format' it would be: "I percieve because I percieve". There is quite a bit of presuppotionialism here. What do you mean by "you internalize it"? I concede and accept that we are conscious that the knowledge is directly apprehended but. To say that we are the ones internalizing it is a stretch, you are axiomatizing what you are trying to prove. Can you not know what you claim to know? We are also conscious after some time of whittling away that knowledge is greater but. It is again a stretch to claim that we are the ones increasing the knowledge. It is a non sequitur to claim because we are conscious of an increase in knowledge, we must be the ones increasing the knowledge. You and I accept the fact that we are aware of the learning taking place, but to do as you have done is to put the cart before the horse. Just a quick question. When you say "you", what are you referring to? Non-conscious intelligence can interpret new and unpredicted stimuli too. If conscious is an evolutionary development as you say then that renders it useless. Before consciousness "emerged" organisms would have been learning machines. They would be learning from their mistakes and new situations just like non-conscious intelligence, but they would NOT be aware of their learning. And albeit they would not be aware of the learning, they would still be learning just the same. They would not keep swimming into the rock ad nauseam. And in that case, there would be NO need for consciousness. Say for example a non-conscious artificial intelligence I spoke of was walking around and suddenly heard booming laughter. The brain would input (this is obviously oversimplification): "I am frightened" In turn, the hairs would go up, the senses would be heightened, the heart would pump faster. HOWEVER, there would be no consciousness to percieve any of these things but all the same we see that the being becomes 'frightened'. If that is the case, then consciousness should NEVER have emerged since life would have proceeded all the same with no one to be aware of it. For with no consciousness to percieve any of those things, they happened all the same. There was always some form or level of consciousness for everything that could learn about its environment. We have seen in the above example how a perception of this intelligence is of no consequence to the intelligence itself. Remember I said consciousness is the ability to percieve thoughts (I hate school, I'm feeling nervous, is there life after death, I want to raise my arm, I am full) or sensory information (My neck is turned, Ow! That hurt, my heart is beating fast). I think organisms have always been conscious in this respect to some level, no matter how small. Human beings can still exist in such a respect. If human beings had never evolved consciousness, it would still be possible for you to be typing a response to this without being aware of the action, as I have shown in the example. Therefore consciousness cannot have been an evolutionary development. If it was, then it was obviously a VERY unnecessary one. Whether or not there is anyone percieving the planet Jupiter does not mean it will not be there. In the same way, whether or not we are conscious of a will to raise our hand does not mean there can be no will to raise our hand. Basically what I have said above. You are conscious of the fact that your breath is being held. THAT, we can swear we are conscious of. But to use this as a platform to prove we are responsible for holding the breath is nefariously circular. ESPECIALLY when you are not conscious of how to hold your breath. All you have succeeded in doing is assuming as premise the conclusion you wish to reach. In other words, you are going to ignore the most damning question because you understand the implications. Just going to shrug it off. That may be satisfactory to you, maybe you can live with telling yourself "it doesn't matter". Not me. If that isn't one of the most spectacular cop-outs you have ever used to respond to me, then I don't know what is. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I don't have the hiccoughs right now, I haven't even had them in a long time, but I can still think about it and what it feels like. A better example would be writer's block. Try as hard as you can to get words on paper and it will never come. Stop trying and the stream flows again. But what would the relevance be? And I'm going to ask since you forgot to explain: how does consciousness play a part in that in something that has been predetermined? Similar to Tourettes, I think you were telling me about that too. Encopresis is also another fun one. How curious is that, the chimps have a will to curb their nature but cannot. There is no causal relationship. They expect that when they will a resultant action occurs. If we were in their shoes, we would conclude that we were not the ones causing the scream. We have a will to curb our nature and we often can. Since there appears to be a causal relation, we conclude that there is. Is the will of the chimpanzees any different from our will because of the frontal lobe? Or are there in fact separate wills for the separate actions? One to scream and one not to scream, the former stronger than the latter? Or maybe the chimps were suffering from sort of split personality where one said yes and the other said no to sharing. One personality would be unaware of the other. I am not shifting responsibility. I am questioning the premise that the consciousness has free will. You and I seem to have volition alright but it is the definition of 'you' and 'I' to be haggled over. But I have some polishing to do before show and tell. So be patient.
