Free will
in [Lisp]
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From: Nicolas Neuss on 18 May 2010 15:25 RG <rNOSPAMon(a)flownet.com> writes: > You may find this interesting and relevant: > > http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html > > rg This is really Very stimulating and amusing! Thank you, Nicolas
From: RG on 18 May 2010 15:50 In article <hsupc7$tvp$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-05-18 12:33:08 -0400, RG said: > > > Not at all. Torture is just one extreme of a continuum. > > You can't seriously consider the subjective state of a torture victim > and that of one of the subjects of the magnet experiment to be > comparable. That's the second time you've told me I can't do something that I can in fact easily do. > Again, the whole point of the magnet experiment is that the subjects > felt that their choices were just as free with and without the magnetic > field. No victim of torture feels that his choice is just as free with > and without being tortured. Yes, two extremes of a continuum. At one extreme there is (almost) complete coercion, at the other extreme there is none, or at least none that the subject is consciously aware of. In between there is every imaginable intermediate state, including ones where the subject thinks the choice is uncoerced but an external observer knows it's not. James Clavel has a wonderful (in a horrific sort of way) example in one of his novels. (Warning: this description gets rather gruesome. Skip the rest of this paragraph if you have a weak stomach. I'm serious.) It's the story of an ancient Japanese (or maybe it was Chinese, I forget) warlord who would play the following sick psychological game with his prisoners: he would offer then the choice of either being put to death or having one of their limbs amputated. Before the prisoner made the choice the warlord would arrange to have a false message delivered to the prisoner that his compatriots were planning a raid on the prison and that rescue was imminent. The prisoner would thus "choose" to have a limb amputated in order to stay alive hoping for a rescue that would never come. The prisoner believes that he has made a free choice (admittedly from among two very bad alternatives, but free nonetheless) but an external observer knows that the choice was in fact coerced. The only difference between this story and your magnets is that the mechanism by which the coercion is happening is more transparent. For a slightly less gruesome example, see the movie "The Sting." That it is possible to coerce a choice without the subject being aware of the coercion does not in any way prove that it is impossible for someone to make an uncoerced choice. > The whole reason these experiments are interesting is that they show > that our *subjective* evaluation of what is causing our choices is > unreliable in the extreme. No. At best it shows that it is unreliable *AT* the extremes, which is not the same thing. rg
From: RG on 18 May 2010 16:07 In article <hsupji$h7$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-05-18 12:45:47 -0400, RG said: > > > Here, I'll make it more nuanced for you: a split brain patient is > > essentially two independent brains occupying one body. That is a > > situation that is so far removed from the circumstances under which > > brains evolved to operate in that it is not at all clear that any > > extrapolation to a normal brain can be drawn at all, let alone from a > > single data point. > > And yet neuroscientists do just that. Indeed. And they sometimes get things wrong as a result. > The point of these experiments is > not that split brain patients have normal cognition, but to delineate > how our verbal, conscious selves makes sense of our experience. What we > *say* or subjectively perceive is going on in our brains is not a > reliable indicator of what is actually taking place. > > It would be one thing if they were merely mystified as to their > choices, but they frequently concoct some story to justify them, and > believe these post-hoc accommodative stories to be the real reason for > their choice. I'm saying that our subjective perception of free will is > just such a post-hoc accommodative argument; it seems true to us > subjectively, but it's really just a false perception concocted to make > sense of our experience. FWIW, I believe that to be true. Where we differ is in our interpretation of the consequences. My position is that this post-hoc illusion of free will acts for all intents and purposes as if it were "real" free will in everyday situations, and so "real" free will is perfectly adequate as an operational assumption for the conduct of everyday life. You seem to disagree with that, but you have not yet offered any actual reason for your disagreement other than "it's just not true." And so I keep coming back to the fact that our mere existence as classical physical entities is also a post-hoc illusion, and the proposition that you and I exist is also just-not-true. So why are you so apparently willing to accept the approximation of your classical physical existence but not the equally high fidelity approximation of "actual" free will? > BTW, this is not a single data point; There are many such trials with > multiple patients, and the results are consistent; the subject doesn't > know why s/he is doing what s/he's doing, though it's obvious to any > outside observer. No. The only thing that is obvious to an outside observer is that the subject SAYS she knows. What the subject's actual internal mental state is is not at all clear. There are known conditions where a subject's reported mental state can differ drastically from what is subsequently determined to be (apparently) their actual mental state, e.g. (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking) and also thought experiments which could well be applicable to people who happen to have two separate brains inside their skulls (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat, http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/WhereAmI.html). Mind you, my position does not rely on refuting these experiments. In fact, I actually believe (as I've indicated above) that what these experiments appear to indicate is actually the case. But the experiments themselves are not conclusive. rg
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 18 May 2010 16:08 On 2010-05-18 15:50:17 -0400, RG said: > The prisoner believes that he has made a > free choice (admittedly from among two very bad alternatives, but free > nonetheless) but an external observer knows that the choice was in fact > coerced. The only difference between this story and your magnets is > that the mechanism by which the coercion is happening is more > transparent. If you seriously think that there's no difference in coercion between a prisoner threatened with death or amputation on the one hand, and someone unknowingly subjected to a magnetic field on the other while pressing one of two buttons with no consequence, then you clearly don't know what coercion means. Again, this is all about our subjective perceptions. The prisoner perceives himself to be strongly coerced - he would not choose either amputation or death except for the fact that he is under duress, regardless of any fictional tale about a supposed rescue. The subject of the magnet experiment does not feel himself to be in any way coerced. The magnet subject's perception is broken, because his choice is in fact being strongly constrained - he just isn't a reliable evaluator of what is actually causing his actions. This and other experiments show that none of us are. warmest regards Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 18 May 2010 16:38
RG <rNOSPAMon(a)flownet.com> writes: > In article <hsupc7$tvp$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > Raffael Cavallaro > <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > >> On 2010-05-18 12:33:08 -0400, RG said: >> >> > Not at all. Torture is just one extreme of a continuum. >> >> You can't seriously consider the subjective state of a torture victim >> and that of one of the subjects of the magnet experiment to be >> comparable. > > That's the second time you've told me I can't do something that I can in > fact easily do. > >> Again, the whole point of the magnet experiment is that the subjects >> felt that their choices were just as free with and without the magnetic >> field. No victim of torture feels that his choice is just as free with >> and without being tortured. > > Yes, two extremes of a continuum. At one extreme there is (almost) > complete coercion, at the other extreme there is none, or at least none > that the subject is consciously aware of. In between there is every > imaginable intermediate state, including ones where the subject thinks > the choice is uncoerced but an external observer knows it's not. > > James Clavel has a wonderful (in a horrific sort of way) example in one > of his novels. (Warning: this description gets rather gruesome. Skip > the rest of this paragraph if you have a weak stomach. I'm serious.) > It's the story of an ancient Japanese (or maybe it was Chinese, I > forget) warlord who would play the following sick psychological game > with his prisoners: he would offer then the choice of either being put > to death or having one of their limbs amputated. Before the prisoner > made the choice the warlord would arrange to have a false message > delivered to the prisoner that his compatriots were planning a raid on > the prison and that rescue was imminent. The prisoner would thus > "choose" to have a limb amputated in order to stay alive hoping for a > rescue that would never come. The prisoner believes that he has made a > free choice (admittedly from among two very bad alternatives, but free > nonetheless) but an external observer knows that the choice was in fact > coerced. The only difference between this story and your magnets is > that the mechanism by which the coercion is happening is more > transparent. Free will of the prisoner is preserved, even if the probabilities to get the "wanted" answers are greatly increased by providing him with false information (or is it false? How can the warlord know that no enemy is planning an attack for that night?) This case is similar to running a program with a test case. You get one result or another, depending on the test data input. Free will is preserved, because you don't mess with the internal working of the entity. It would be different if you started to debug the program and change a few variable here, call a little function there. Thus you could get a different result than what the program would have choosen with its free will. Similarly if you mess with the brain of the subject surgically, electromagnetically, chemically, or in any other way. Again, notice that for the subject it doesn't really make a difference. Free will is a property of the experiment set up by the creator or Creator, not something that you find in the entities themselves. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ |