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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 23, 2015 - 05:45pm PT
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How would the human brain harness this randomness to achieve free will agency?
we're talking machines here?
see http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2515755&msg=2561742#msg2561742
Thus, a conceptual organization has been proposed in which the secondary olfactory pathway bifurcates to transform odour information into stereotyped and random representations, features suited for directing innate and learned behaviours, respectively12,13. However, it is not entirely clear how projections of individual output neurons to multiple brain areas are organized, because each of these studies in mice analysed only a small fraction of mitral cells and/or a restricted subset of its target areas.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 23, 2015 - 05:51pm PT
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You know, Ed, a couple of your posts have addressed this, and my first pass got me intrigued. I'm planning on getting back to them. I am skeptical, however. I think deterministic agency is all you need. I don't think that there is anything it doesn't account for.
Maybe we should call deterministic agency -- instinct. I'm putting my lot with the cats. And just to make it clear, I'm saying that instinct is all we got.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jan 23, 2015 - 06:32pm PT
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MH2, get your ass on Pipeline
Haha. I feel free to not do so, for now.
Is there a difference between a free choice and Free Will? How does Will come into it?
When I Google for 'free will definition' I see:
the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion
I am not sure what fate is, but otherwise free will seems pretty clear and I have it but don't always exercise it.
Figuring out how difficult decisions are made is probably beyond our grasp, for now.
It is also safe to say that no one will ever understand a cat.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 23, 2015 - 06:48pm PT
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Fate is your destiny in this present life time.
"I have it but don't always exercise it."
Yes every human being has it but to actually exercise it one needs divine interaction.
We are not and never fully independent.
The gross materialists will remain bewildered by this ......
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 23, 2015 - 06:50pm PT
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That was a good one Fruity
The whole shebang. Chaotic as hell. Turbulent as hell. And yet... All of it unfolding in strict accordance with underlying cosmic rules. All of it happening long before there were any minds around to do science, to assemble laws, to collect "facts or figures" lol, and last but not least, or to try to predict tomorrow's weather.
so somewhere between the weather and humanoids, mechanicalistic gave birth to choice. The choice to choose. Is it a choice that flowers open the sun rises? Prolly not. Is it a choice for animals that eat meat to murder? Prolly not. But we human's do have a choice. To be pretty or not. to kill or not. To get UP in the morning, or not.
i think free-choice is a better narrative than free-will.Which comes from the bible,BTW.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 23, 2015 - 07:25pm PT
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from Ed's 4:51 link;
Relevant findings include the pioneering study by Benjamin Libet and its subsequent redesigns; these studies were able to detect activity related to a decision to move, and the activity appears to be occurring briefly before people become conscious of it.[4] Other studies try to predict a human action several seconds early.[5] Taken together, these various findings show that at least some actions - like moving a finger - are initiated unconsciously at first, and enter consciousness afterward.[6]
this pioneering study is just watching blood flow. Which comes after the electrical and chemical reductions. Just like when they look at the sun, their looking at the past. Or anywhere in the universe.
just like while they can't tell WHY i raised the middle finger. Because my emotions picked the middle one to convey a thought. NOT a move! Their findings are of no consequence to me.
i did learn off WiKi, that The StoneMasters invented Basejumping though.
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Bushman
Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
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Jan 23, 2015 - 08:03pm PT
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It occurs to me that while dreaming I am obviously not exercising free will. I am just going along for the ride. Am I experiencing whatever thoughts my unconscious mind is 'chosing' to mull over, contemplate, or stress about? Or are random thoughts from past experience firing through my brain in such a way that my semi-conscious thoughts grab onto some of them and weave them into a story or theme? I don't believe dreams are a kind of portent because some of my dreams have been so completely bizarre that I have to discredit them out of hand as having not any meaning whatsoever.
If I am not exercising free wiil during a dream would not the contrasting experience of day to day decision making and thoughtful deliberation of my conscious reality constitute the opposite? That while I am awake I am practicing free will?
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Bushman
Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
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Jan 23, 2015 - 08:26pm PT
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"I think, therefore I am."
-René Descartes.
"I dream, therefore I am not"
-bushman
Or...
"I'm so old that when I talk out my ass it's also boring."
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Bushman
Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
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Jan 23, 2015 - 08:41pm PT
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Or am I just putting Descartes before my arse?
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jan 23, 2015 - 08:52pm PT
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Jgill, perhaps you meant to type "can-do ability" in lieu of "can-do spirit"? in regards to volition or will?
Yes, I was a bit sloppy. Sorry. Free will might appear to be an instance of volition to take a certain action, and I might be bolstered to do so by my can-do spirit, but fall short due to absence of can-do ability.
Seems like I went through this process on more than a few boulder problems!
Whether free will exists in the form most commonly held is not even subject to mathematical probabilities, hence my comment about assigning it a fuzzy set index of about .3 (on a scale of zero to one).
I recall that a few of us in the mind thread concluded that for all intents and purposes free will exists, even though the brain is subject to the various scientific laws and principles.
The math article Ed linked is interesting to mathematicians and philosophers who are drawn to mathematical logic, an esoteric subject those of us in a graduate course fifty year ago were advised to avoid.
Unless, of course, you found the ideas fascinating. Few of us did. The notion of mathematical language is a technical one, but mathematicians frequently appropriate words from the English and other everyday languages to explore and identify new concepts. For instance, I recently appropriated the word Siamese to describe the situation where a number of vector or force fields are superimposed upon one another and originating from a specific point common to them all one defines a set of finite contours, one in each vector field.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jan 23, 2015 - 09:05pm PT
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even though the brain is subject to the various scientific laws and principles.
Part of the reason I missed the point of this convoluted discussion is that I assumed we had already agreed on this and that it was no particular revelation.
Then again, fructose uses it one more time as one more way to bash Abrahamic religions by posing that against what he perceives as their false presumptions.
I simply wanted to make the point that we have choices at every level from what we eat or drink or smoke affecting our brain chemistry, to the choice of cultures we emulate (that was on my mind having just spent a weekend with Sherpa friends).
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 23, 2015 - 09:07pm PT
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It occurs to me that while dreaming I am obviously not exercising free will.
maybe not in the sense that you can ask for them? i know around xmas time when i was thinking alot about xmas. i had xmas dreams! And haven't you ever had reacquiring dreams? i had the same one over and over about my X's boyfriend. Drove me crazy. Finally, during the daytime i made a conscious endeavor to put my arm around him in the next dream. Then i watched myself do it, in a dream (free-will?) Two months later, unbenoughsted we ended up at a campfire together. Not dreaming, he came up to me and gave me a hug. i think we would be friends if it weren't for her.
seek and ye shall find. maybe part of the can-do spirit?!
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jan 23, 2015 - 09:49pm PT
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The conscious mind can exert a great deal more control over the unconscious mind than generally understood. To get to that point you have to learn something about your unconscious mind however. You can't just suppress it.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 23, 2015 - 10:13pm PT
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You can't just suppress it.
^^^that could very well be free-will/free-choice? or the meaning thereof.
i hear an indication of subconsciousness being confused with the cause in causation.
saying the subconscious raises our heartbeat in order for stress to arise in our conscious, well that's just silly
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 23, 2015 - 10:34pm PT
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does the can-do Ability require an atmosphere that allows water to be free to form in any of its three states, ie, fluid, ice, steam?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jan 24, 2015 - 12:23am PT
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The conscious mind can exert a great deal more control over the unconscious mind than generally understood.to get to that point you have to learn something about your unconscious mind however. You can't just suppress it.
One may not want to exert control over the unconscious mind. Such control may run counter to the delicate way the human brain is configured to function in the natural world. Besides, the brain may be hard wired to process critical information in an antecedent way by the unconscious -- in order to bypass the normally slow lag time associated with conscious deliberation. Hence all these neuro scientific experiments of late that show indications, derived from real time brain scans ,of neural activity antecedent to conscious action and awareness. A sort of pump-priming response network is indicated in the prefrontal lobe.
Perhaps this can be illustrated by the proverbial caveman who senses the tiger lurking in the undergrowth by smell, by movement , by sound---all this data impinges on his brain well beneath the threshold of conscious awareness-- but it is nevertheless through complex signaling networks preparing the caveman's CNS and biochemical responses into a pre-conditioning standby mode several seconds before he actually consciously decides to act. Hundreds of thousands of years later the distant offspring of this caveman is indicating essentially the same response in brain scans of neural activity several seconds before a button is consciously pressed.
It could be that such a schema was clearly favored in human evolution ---ironically as a sort of safeguard against an otherwise large brain. Survival in tooth and claw more often demands instant action and reaction and not categorical deliberations--- hence many of our 'motor' decisions are formulated pre-consciously ,as it were,to save us from overthinking when danger is imminent and rapid action is required. But I'm guessing here, and this is most assuredly a partial explanation.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 24, 2015 - 06:57am PT
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"fructose uses it one more time as one more way to bash Abrahamic religions..." -jan
...a compliment, I'll assume. :)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 24, 2015 - 08:15am PT
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Don't those terms mean a lot of different things to different folks, Dingus? So right off the bat, you pose a challenging question just language-wise.
(as no doubt you know already, lol).
Working off your eg though, how about this as a thought experiment...
You can have any color you want in regard to choosing... but realize your "want" is a product of your brain and body makeup and metabolic system state - and that your "want" is fully-caused, fully-mechanistic.
But sure, I'll go black (double diamond) this time. (See you at the bottom.) :)
As I said before I think the term "free will" is a terrible misnomer (a left over from times past that academic philosophers and lawyers in their brilliance (sarc) otherwise rush to defend theism (incl its ghost-in-the-body dogma) picked up on as an expedient term) that today causes more confusion than clarity on these related topics.
That said, as far as confusing misnomers go, history might've supplied us with "free want" too - in addition to "free will". Maybe that term would be less confusing in some cases? more easy to see through, or use as a stepping stone in conjunction w the other? on the way to better understanding?
Time to go choose the "black" now!
(Hey I'm about to choose black!!1)
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