Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 29, 2018 - 10:28pm PT
|
I think many philosophers of physics were physicists or trained as physicists, and became more interested in the philosophy of physics than the physics itself.
But what madbolter is arguing has to do with metaphysics, and he is busy putting his fingers into what he considers the leaking of metaphysics into physics, or rather, the appropriation of metaphysics by physics.
So when a paper like the Big Bell Test makes a claim about human free will, he quickly jumps on it with the intent of showing why it can't make any such claim. He has yet to provide some actual analysis why the test doesn't do what it claims to do:
"The results also show empirically that human agency is incompatible with causal determinism, a question formerly accessible only by metaphysics."
Perhaps madbolter can write a single (brief) paragraph laying out his criticism. I wrote a paragraph of 288 words about grand unified theories, and one of 218 words on "identity theory." Let's see if madbolter could write his criticism in less than 300 words.
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 07:58am PT
|
Perhaps madbolter can write a single (brief) paragraph laying out his criticism.
That's fair, Ed, and I'd be happy to. However, I have to call attention first to your lengthy back-edit on the previous page. I follow this thread closely, in part because I want to as quickly as possible respond to the discussion with you. When you post a short "placeholder" and then later go back and extensively fill it in, I might entirely miss it as the pages go by, and it can then appear that I "won't" or "can't" respond. Neither is the case.
Now, to the Bell-type test you reference, which, I said before, I have no problem with as it is. My "problem" is with how you appear to interpret its results to say something substantive about human free will (HFW). So, here is "the problem."
* The test was not about HFW; instead the test needed to close the "HFW Loophole." The authors could have argued that HFW doesn't exist, and so there is no "loophole" in principle. But they (a la Bell) embraced HFW and employed it to produce a high level of randomness. You then say, "...Big Bell Test makes a claim about human free will," and I ask you exactly what that claim is. I cite various relations that are possible between HFW and randomness. You say, "HFW correlates with randomness; the results of the test correlate with HFW," and various other iterations of some such idea. I say that there is so much ambiguity in such claims that I honestly have NO idea what you believe the "study shows." And there we are.
Now you ask ME to provide an analysis of what's gone wrong, and I believe that I have REPEATEDLY specified what I think has gone wrong. So, here's a one sentence summary of the above paragraph: You have not clarified terms and relations sufficiently to legitimately make any assertion about what this Bell-type test "shows" (whatever that means) about HFW.
I've asked very clear and direct questions about particular terms and relations, and you respond with your "correlates" ideas. I've said that "correlates" is a vague and very weak claim, certainly not a foundation for making a substantive statement about the existence of HFW. Indeed, the test revolved around PRESUMING the existence of HFW, so it certainly didn't "show that HFW exists," as you assert when you first cited the study. Your whole point there was to claim that philosophers have thrutched around fruitlessly on this topic, but here's a PHYSICAL, empirical test "showing" (whatever that means) that HFW exists.
Since that early assertion, I've repeated and repeated that the test "shows" no such thing. I've stated what is true: The test PRESUMES the existence of HFW and USES it to generate randomness; thus it cannot "show" its existence beyond a VERY weak assertion of "correlation." But that "correlation" is MUCH weaker than what your early assertion needs to be substantiated.
I've then gone further to make a more general claim that this exchange exemplifies: Physicists "showing" "results" that actually go FAR beyond what their experiments can in principle "show" (whatever that means).
So, I can't imagine how much more "analysis" you think I'm supposed to do. The dialectic at present is pretty straightforward, and I believe that the burden of proof is squarely on your shoulders:
* You assert that a physics test has "shown" that HFW exists, while philosophers have been unable to "show" this.
* I respond that the study "shows" no such thing and that you are smuggling in many presumptions about the relation between randomness and HFW to make such an assertion. I ask you to clarify what relation you are presuming.
* You perpetually defer (I've asked now four times), asserting only "correlation."
* I note that "correlation" is a VERY weak and tendentious "relation," particularly in this context. "Correlation" certainly doesn't "show" (whatever that means) the existence of HFW (it at most opens the logic space for it in this particular context), particularly not when the study PRESUMES the existence of HFW.
* No response on that point from you.
So, I continue to say that you have never demonstrated from this Bell-type test EITHER that HFW exists or that the study has "shown" (whatever that means) that HFW exists. All I see from your claims are both vague and ambiguous presumptions, and you seem unwilling to clarify the conceptual framework in which the discussion could proceed. Thus, you have so far failed to sustain your a*#ertion that physics has "shown" (whatever that means) something that philosophy has failed to "show" about HFW.
I'll ask one more time regarding a fundamental sticking point. Choose one of the following, and you'll have gone beyond ambiguity to actually indicate what you take "correlates with" to mean:
1) Randomness > HFW
2) HFW > randomness
3) HFW <> randomness
I'll say again that a "weak conjunctive" sense of "correlates with," when the study presumes HFW, does not get you anything with which to sustain your a*#ertion that the study "shows" something about HFW that philosophers have failed to "show." The philosophical literature abounds with discussions of that sense of "correlates with."
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 08:15am PT
|
Turn it around, and posit that quantum mechanics violates "local realism"
The experiments become a measure of the how the "knobs are set" (which is a crucial operation in measuring the inequality).
An example of this: creating random numbers. Which I cited. This seems uncontroversial to you, why?
Now replace the random number generator with humans.
From the "Methods" section of the paper:
'A very similar concept of “freedom” applies to the entangled systems measured in a Bell test. A Bell inequality violation with free choice and under strict locality conditions implies indeterminacy of the measurement outcomes, or else faster-than-light communications and thus closed time-like curves. If Bob’s measurement outcome is predictable based on information available to him before the measurement, and if it also satisfies the condition for a Bell inequality violation, namely a strong correlation with Alice’s measurement outcome that depends on his measurement choice, then Bob can influence the statistics of Alice’s measurement outcome, and in this way communicate to her despite being space-like separated from her. Considering, again, that Bob could in principle have information on any events in his backward light cone, this implies (assuming no closed time-like curves) that Bob’s measurement outcome must be statistically independent of all prior events.
In this way, we see that “freedom,” understood as behaviour statistically independent of prior conditions, appears twice in a Bell test, first as a requirement on the setting choices, and second as a conclusion about the nature of measurement outcomes on entangled systems. These two are linked, in that the second can be demonstrated if the first is present.'
and again from the Free Will article in EOP: '“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives.'
It seems to me to be relatively simple.
You have not clarified terms and relations sufficiently to legitimately make any assertion about what this Bell-type test "shows" (whatever that means) about HFW.
If the participants failed to choose with sufficient freedom, the Bell inequalities would be met, and we would conclude that those quantum mechanical systems satisfied "local realism."
This would contradict what we understand about quantum mechanics.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 08:22am PT
|
I’ll object. Requiring short explanations might be requests for clarity. Instead, I suspect that people don’t want to work at understanding arguments and might not care enough about them to dive into detail. Yet they complain. Good writing seems hard to come by, but all of the onus should not rest on writers. A dialogue is (at least) a two-party event.
Werner,
I appreciate the notion presented by the article you pointed us to. All of us appear to live in our own little bubble, and everyone comes to their own conclusions by their own method of investigation—no matter what that method of investigation is. It seems obvious to recognize that everyone makes their own decisions for themselves. Your article shows how one person has done that for themselves in a direct manner and suggests that others can do the same.
It can be surprising that some folks give greater credence to authorities than to their own intelligence and heart—as if they were to admit that they are not worthy to come to their own conclusions for their own lives (especially when it comes to such things that only they have access to: e.g., their own awareness or consciousness.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 09:09am PT
|
I’ll object.
to what?
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 09:25am PT
|
from the article:
'As noted above, a statistical condition used to derive Bell’s theorem is P(x,y,λ) = P(x,y)P(λ), where x and y are choices and λ describes the hidden variables. This statistical condition, known as the “freedom of choice assumption,” does not distinguish between three possible scenarios of influence: the condition could fail if the choices influence the hidden variables, if the hidden variables influence the choices, or if a third factor influences both choices and hidden variables.'
|
|
fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 09:26am PT
|
Someone's got to scream out checkmate soon....
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 09:32am PT
|
Ed: to what?
"Perhaps madbolter can write a single (brief) paragraph laying out his criticism."
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 10:19am PT
|
An example of this: creating random numbers. Which I cited. This seems uncontroversial to you, why?
On the contrary. I think that this is a vast subject, and you'll remember that I referred to "syntactic" and "semantic" senses of randomness. It wasn't clear to me that we'd ever get far enough to delve into such fun and frolics. It appears now that we just might.
Now replace the random number generator with humans.
I don't think that we're quite far along enough to discuss the problems inherent in this move. We may be close, though.
Bob’s measurement outcome must be statistically independent of all prior events.
This is the problematical line, although, again, I don't think that we're quite at the point of diving into it.
In this way, we see that “freedom,” understood as behaviour statistically independent of prior conditions, appears twice in a Bell test, first as a requirement on the setting choices, and second as a conclusion about the nature of measurement outcomes on entangled systems. These two are linked, in that the second can be demonstrated if the first is present.
Okay, so I don't take you (a la the testers) to be saying this:
P: Genuine freedom of choice.
P > P
I also don't take you to be saying something like this:
1) P
2) Blah
3) Blah
.
.
.
#) Therefore P.
But I don't see alternative ways of reading your sentence that I bolded above. So I'm confident that I don't understand what you mean by "The second can be demonstrated if the first is present." After all, it would be no surprise if you presume that P and then "demonstrate" that P. Indeed, far from a "demonstration," one would wonder how you couldn't "achieve" P having initially granted it to yourself.
Instead, it appears to me that what the test is actually doing is more akin to what you alluded to in your sentence: "Now replace the random number generator with humans." But that inference is very different from what you cite in your above paragraph. That inference is more like this:
P: Genuine freedom of choice (HFW).
Q: Genuine randomness.
1) P
2) Blah
3) Blah
.
.
.
#) Therefore Q.
But that "result" is just "showing" (whatever that means, because the actual inference is not deductive, as the above is) the following relation between HFW and randomness:
HFW > randomness
I kept asking you to clarify the "direction" of the relation, because "randomness > HFW" and its biconditional version are basically laughable. So, it's a relief to me that (if) you (a la the testers) are drawing the defensible relation between HFW and randomness.
But now, if we ARE agreed about this relation, we're in a position to talk about what HFW is and what randomness is.
Let's start with HFW.
from the Free Will article in EOP: '“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives.'
It seems to me to be relatively simple.
And here we see the problem with non-critically quoting a definition: This "simple" definition cannot be correct. There are many reasons, but the most pressing ones for our discussion seem to me to be these:
First, the definition includes the phrase "rational free agents," when "agency" is the thing that needs definition IN TERMS OF genuine freedom. This account of "choose" fails to explicate. This definition at best contains a deep circularity. Remember that early on I emphasized that "agency" is the crucial component of any robust account of "soul," which then led us off down this rabbit trail, when you brought in the Bell-type test to in effect assert that such a test had "shown" genuine agency.
Second, without helping itself to genuine AGENCY (which remains undefined in the definition), the definition fails to distinguish between machine "choices" and human "choices."
In other words, if "choosing a course of action from among various alternatives" is all there is to "free will," then present-day computers have "free will." Hard-AI has been achieved by definition! O frabjous day! (Oh, and we'd better start worrying NOW about what the machines are plotting while they pretend to be all 'determined.')
So, for the purposes of our discussion, let's not employ such a definition; otherwise we would be forced to head down the rabbit trail of "showing" (whatever that means) that present-day computers do NOT have anything like genuine free will. Whatever HFW is, it is not adequately captured by that "simple" definition. Perhaps we'll reach the point in this discussion in which it will be necessary to really clarify the concept of HFW, but, again, we haven't even gotten that far.
If the participants failed to choose with sufficient freedom, the Bell inequalities would be met, and we would conclude that those quantum mechanical systems satisfied "local realism."
This would contradict what we understand about quantum mechanics.
Absolutely! If you presume genuine agency, then (some sense of) randomness can be derived from it. But philosophers have known THIS from the time we started thinking about what robust HFW must include and imply. So, this is not some special "result" that only a physics experiment has "shown," while philosophers have been chasing their tails on the subject.
If anything, this "result" just "confirms" what philosophers had derived without appeal to physics. This "result" is what I was referring to when I used the phrase "first cause" and "introduce entirely new causal chains."
Now, you might think that physics has "better defined" randomness in terms of quantum events. Fine, that's debatable, but fine. But if you think, as you appear to, that physics has "shown" something about HFW that has defied philosophical analysis, my goal has been to explain why I don't buy that. And, at present, we have not yet delved into a robust, non-smuggling account of HFW or of randomness!
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 11:15am PT
|
To add a touch of clarity:
"In general, three dimensions of information can be distinguished. The 'syntactic' dimension is understood as the ordered arrangement of symbols and the relationships between them. The 'semantic' dimension includes the relationships between the symbols and also that for which they stand. Finally, the 'pragmatic' dimension includes the relationships between the symbols, that for which they stand, and also the effect that they have
upon the recipient."
(From a pdf paper from Springer)
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 11:35am PT
|
The fly in the ointment of Ed's argument per free will is foreshadowed in the following brief exchange (in reference to considering consciousness only in terms of a blind, mechanical system):
I said: "What's missing here, might you think?"
Ed replied: "Maybe nothing is missing. What leads you to assume there is something missing?"
Madbolter accused Ed of trolling. My sense of it is that Ed is locked into a perspective.
That perspective leads him to unconsciously believe that in studying the physical processes of purely mechanical objects - from bosons on up - the findings are directly and reliably applicable to human behavior. That is, the mechanical process is roughly if not exactly the same - which is Ed's version of Identity Theory.
This philosophical belief is derived not from studying human processes themselves, but Ed believes he doesn't need to since, vouchsafed from his statement above, humans are physical systems in direct proportion to the quantitative way that atoms are.
That is, in terms of behavior, and the mechanical processes Ed believes mechanically drives the behavior of both physical objects and humans, the operate functions are EXACTLY THE SAME. As I've pointed out before, this is old-school behaviorialism, which considered behavior in terms of inputs and outputs. Awareness was left out of the equation, which is what Ed is doing.
Long story short: The atom is not aware of being an atom. The conscious human IS aware, to lesser or greater degrees, of the behavioral options that are generated by his brain.
The question is: What possible causal effect does awareness have on decision making?
This question tends to get diverted to an investigation of WHAT the brain generates per behaviorial options, which at the initial level of output is entirely mechanical. Then once that first level of options vectors off awareness, a cascade of other options starts showing up that never occur in a strictly mechanical system like the light sensor in my backyard. And it gets trickier from there.
This is a beast to unpack, and I can't go into now with too many deadlines pending, but the conscious process is entirely different than the blind process that goes on at the atomic level.
Bottom line is that awareness does not itself generate content, but to a degree, it interrupts determined outputs. Ed isn't going to see this because he's only looking at the causal chain of mechanical outputs in statistical terms. When he looks at QM and the processes involved, consciousness is not a factor (save his own). In transposing this to conscious humans, awareness is likewise left out.
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 11:55am PT
|
Good points, John. I will slightly correct your summary, though. I didn't "accuse" Ed of trolling. I said that certain of his responses (when he was in a, from my perspective, snarky period) opened the question in my mind that he might be trolling.
Where we stand today, I don't think so. Of course, I'm not certain that I have hands. (Pretty dang confident, though.) At present, I believe he is arguing in earnest, which I always appreciate.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 01:07pm PT
|
The conscious human IS aware, to lesser or greater degrees, of the behavioral options that are generated by his brain.
The brain is NOT the driver and operator of the gross physical material body.
Just as the computer (artificial brain) in the car is NOT the operator of the car, the living entity the driver is (crude example).
The brain is the NOT the source of consciousness, the driver (soul, Atma) the living entity itself is.
The living entity itself operates the material body thru the mind, brain to drive the gross physical material body.
"The conscious human" this proves the soul is the living entity itself and NOT the material body.
The gross materialists always miss the most important point and thus remain ultimately in poor fund of knowledge of life itself .....
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 02:09pm PT
|
That perspective leads him to unconsciously believe
And I thought your perspective was that no one can feel another person's experience. You go even further and imply that you know another person's unconscious belief.
Congratulations.
|
|
yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 02:18pm PT
|
Hilary Putnam
There you go.
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 03:17pm PT
|
^^^ Huh? That's what I have. ???
That perspective leads him to unconsciously believe . . .
Hard to unpack.
|
|
yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 07:31pm PT
|
^^^^^^^
I just meant he is a good example of a 20th-century philosopher. A Socrates for his age. His own worst critic, he ended up rejecting much of his own attempts at systematic answers to philosophic problems, but he kept asking the hard questions, never letting go of his core belief in the possibility of some sort of objective truth and the possibility of human morality. I find his later embrace of pragmatism and acceptance of a Wittgenstein style interpretation of the role of philosophy to be particularly interesting.
Cheers, Mr. Gill!
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 10:01pm PT
|
Yanqui: [Putnam] never letting go of his core belief in the possibility of some sort of objective truth and the possibility of human morality.
Pardon me, but that might well be either an intention or a hope. (Paul should say something here.)
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 30, 2018 - 10:17pm PT
|
I’ll object.
to what?
"Perhaps madbolter can write a single (brief) paragraph laying out his criticism."
but it is unobjectionable for madbolter to ask me to write a single paragraph for each of two rather large topics.
go f*#k yourself.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!