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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 26, 2015 - 07:47pm PT
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And "report back".
So far endless talking; no reporting...
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crankster
Trad climber
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Jan 26, 2015 - 07:49pm PT
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Perfect.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 26, 2015 - 07:49pm PT
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After further reflection, the whole uncertainty principle premise of this "pro" free will position is based on quantum mechanics applying at the level of brain function. This is a BIG assumption. Quantum mechanics has it's place -- it applies to the sub-atomic scale, just like relativity works at cosmological scales. The big question is do quantum mechanical principles work at the neurological chemical scale. I need to bone up on this subject.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:19pm PT
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the most important quantum effect in biology leads to the stability of the macromolecules DNA, RNA, etc... by taming fluctuations, not inducing them... that's Schrodinger, whose explanation anticipated the discovery of DNA...
the problem with presuming that quantum entanglement is an important factor in explaining the mind is the fact that the physical state has to be preserved without perturbation from other interactions...
when experimentalists cool a particular system down to very low temperature, they do so by completely isolating that system, and once done, they can investigate the quantum properties of that system... the mind/brain is not isolated, in some ways it's maximally connected, there is credible scenario that both connects the brain/mind to the outside and isolates it so that the delicate quantum coherence is preserved...
deterministic systems may not be predictive if the initial conditions of the system must be known to arbitrary precision. this is an old result, probably first framed by Poincare in his considerations of celestial mechanics. systems exhibiting this sensitivity to initial conditions are often categorized as chaotic systems, but even they have predictive behaviors even if not in detail.
I don't think that your "free will" can be found in an appeal to either quantum mechanic or to chaotic dynamics
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:22pm PT
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Free will will be found when one is free from all material bondage and entanglements ......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:23pm PT
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I think it's fairly clear we all permanently entangled until we shuffle off this mortal coil.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:25pm PT
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Wrong .... that's nihilism
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:34pm PT
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You google a photo of a beautiful woman and the image appears on your screen. You can take the computer apart study its workings and the theory of its operation, learn how pixels achieve the same image. The computer has not seen the image... nobody has seen the image until a sentient being takes a look and realizes what it is and in that realization is something beyond the product of its appearance. Where specifically in the brain is the "realizer" the entity that can understand, that holds knowledge rather than unrealized information, the observing entitiy that stands apart from its emotions with an understanding of its experience? Back in the day such a thing was called a "soul."
What a mystery. The engine of art and poetry and finally wisdom.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:37pm PT
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eeyokee said "So, the very thing that Largo holds so sacred is suggested to be nothing more than the mind fooling itself. Can't help but see the irony in this."
Interesting comment for largo to respond to; that being said the Avatamsaka sutra (buddhist text) says " if you wish to fully understand all the buddhas of past ,present and future you should view the nature of the whole universe as being created by the mind alone"
Even the mind making the mind!?
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:42pm PT
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I don't think that your "free will" can be found in an appeal to either quantum mechanic or to chaotic dynamics
Thanks for rescuing us from quantum flapdoodle.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 26, 2015 - 08:49pm PT
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You are more of a missionary. One who underestimates the meditative history of your intended converts.
is he? i would hope he is learning things here too.
i thinke he is more jus rastling with urminds?
can you only imagine him and bridwell row-sham-bowing for leads on the nose?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jan 26, 2015 - 09:50pm PT
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Meanwhile fructose, thanks for the reference to the salon article on science and religion. I'm making that an optional reading for my biological anthropology course.That's the second one you've recommended that I've posted to the course. As DMT would say, "Who'd a thunk it?"
As for the suggestion of a new thread I'd be up for science and belief - leave religion out of it. It's just one belief system of many.
One problem I have with this new thread is that having all the videos posted in the beginning makes it slow to load.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 26, 2015 - 10:10pm PT
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The engine of art and poetry and finally wisdom.
yeah, compared to all the information. isn't it sad!
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 26, 2015 - 10:47pm PT
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the most important quantum effect in biology leads to the stability of the macromolecules DNA, RNA, etc... by taming fluctuations, not inducing them...
what the; hows the; Hmmm. is he saying meat is not as stable as it seems to be seen??
i understand DNA changes between each interlude. But between those, isnt it pretty bomber?
Or is the gem of quantum effect is that its holding everything together?
maybe like water in a fish bowl allowing the goldfish to swim?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 26, 2015 - 11:18pm PT
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I don't think that your "free will" can be found in an appeal to either quantum mechanic or to chaotic dynamics
Thanks for rescuing us from quantum flapdoodle. |
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jan 27, 2015 - 12:28am PT
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eeeeyonkeeee, the discursive mind will always strive to make raw awareness a "thing," or in our example, a function "created" by a system. Of course by trying to objectify awarenss like this you have ofcourse defaulted back into objective functioning - we can easily see why.
The double-talk about the mind fooling itself is once more a matter of the discursive fooling itself into believing that awareness is a thing, in this case an illusion - till we reason this through and realize that lest we were aware of the illusion, there would be no discussion. Simply put, you cannot get behind awareness nor yet outside of it to objectify its nature from outside. Because there is no outside. Human life is all an inside job.
The illusion of awareness is that it is "out there," and it never is.
This issue of free will is always tackled here from the perspective of brain output, or reverse engineering a decision to prior brain conditions. If we assert that a decision or action or insight didn't come from or was never sourced from prior reducible conditions and factors, then where did it come from, since the discursive can only grok onto actions and insights and decisions in terms of them being birthed and sourced/determined by prior, mechanistic factors - including random and chaotic influences, which preclude predicting in some cases but which nonetheless are possible to reverse engineer to mechanical "causes" once said causes are known. So from the discursive POV, free will is strictly impossible. This is the man is a machine model of consciousness. Once the machine is known, the belief runs, then AI sentience becomes a fact. Ask around.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 27, 2015 - 12:58am PT
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You have to stop with the computer / AI thing; you're just hopelessly out of your depth. How about just some of the simple "reporting back" you keep proposing for others instead of endless words from outside the 'box'. Can't say I've ever before encountered anyone so awash in words yet never able to succinctly state their case.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 27, 2015 - 06:33am PT
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Hey, thanks for the links healyje. Glad to hear your take on this, Ed. After sleeping on it, I'm sticking to the free will is an illusion position. For one thing, understanding all of that quantum mechanics stuff as it applies to biological systems is going to be one tough slog. One of my own prejudices is that simpler explanations are better than complex ones.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 27, 2015 - 09:59am PT
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eeyonkee: I'm sticking to the free will is an illusion position.
Sticking with anything constitutes an error.
But you have to be safe, to have ground under your feet, to have the illusion—otherwise where would you be? It’s essentially the issue I posed that no one apparently wanted to answer: “Why MUST we act as through there were free will?” Why must we hold dear an illusion?
I suggest to you that illusion is all you have beyond the awareness of consciousness. “Your consciousness” is not even yours. If you were to take the time and devote some discipline to experiencing awareness (e.g., through meditation), you’d come to realize that YOU are not awareness. “You” are IN awareness. Instead of being this little conscious “you” in a great big universe, the great big universe is in your consciousness, and consciousness arises out of awareness.
Of course, all of that (consciousness, awareness) includes whatever illusion there is. A paradox is that the illusion is no different at all from raw, pristine awareness. Illusion IS awareness just as much as a quantum or neurobiological “this” or “that.” There is no difference between awareness and illusion, even though those manifestations of illusion appear to be different or varied.
Very little of this is obvious to folks. One has to sit quietly and open up all the channels and simply observe (almost nothing) as the mind quiets itself. Little by little, awareness appears to highlight consciousness as a thing (which is itself also an illusion).
After a long while, a person invests less in and trusts far less any ideas at all (interpretations, things, theories, etc.). In turn, one starts to simply go with the flow of events around themselves. One purportedly awakened person has said that “things” and “events” take on a kind of translucent quality: they certainly appear / manifest, they certainly seem to have impacts (e.g., emotionally), but they are not quite real (as people think naively). Every “thing” and “event” gets lighter, less concrete, and less serious. It’s a bit like watching a movie. However, get hooked on any thing emotionally, idealistically (in a Hegelian sense), or conceptually, and viola! Reality turns rigid, important, and controllable. But reality is not like that. Reality is infinite, fluid, indescribable, etc. but knowable at each and every moment in experience AS raw experience.
But instead, in milliseconds, we get hooked and fall into the games, the dramas, the many rides in an amusement park that we call our lives and the world. For example, look at what we claim we believe: we believe that the table I’m typing this on is almost completely empty space with these tiny little particles and electrical charges in clouds about them. But is that how we perceive and act?
Blame “the mind” for all of this. It would make real sense to do if any of us had one.
This is a “report-out” for those who wanted to hear one.
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