Epos Nix on 18/4/2008 at 04:07
Quote:
It seems to me that the experiment with a mirror is less a qualification of internal self and more one of external self recognition.
There can't be an internal self before an external self. The term 'self' implies knowledge that you are an individual. A newborn knows nothing of the outside world and hence nothing about being an individual. To the newborn, everything just
is.
Now naturally you can make the claim that newborns are sentient beings but sentience and sense of self are two different ideas, even if we tend to tie them together when describing humanity. Sentience is merely the act of perceiving reality. One does not need to have a sense of self to be sentient but sense of self
does rely on sentience.
Tocky on 18/4/2008 at 05:29
So when you don't know other you can't have self because self is completely defined by other? Feeling the walls of the womb give no sense of other even though your neural ganglia don't extend there to feel back the fingers which touch there? Kicking isn't an expression of the need for more room for self? It would seem to me the first thing we know is self. Even when we don't know what others or self looks like we have tactile.
Morte on 18/4/2008 at 06:43
Quote Posted by Nicker
But our awareness is not merely the result of biochemical interactions - it is something far more subtle and complex. Not apart from the biochemical and mechanical but overlaying it or infused within it. Our awareness is at least one order of magnitude greater in complexity than the information processing capability of our brain and body.
Consider this - going on a road trip is an interaction fuel and engine, rubber and asphalt - and the sights and sounds are a result of the interaction of electromagnetic, chemical and mechanical energies being interpreted by the biochemistry of our brains. All seeming very deterministic.
But if, as the car rounds a curve, the light through the clouds over the mountains stirs a childhood memory, the voice of your companion evokes a poem long forgotten, the smell of pine air suggests a brilliant colour - and you are inspired to paint that, or sing it or dance it - can you really say that this sort of creative abstraction is purely mechanistic and predetermined?
I don't see why not? All this amounts to is an (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance#Argument_from_personal_incredulity) argument from personal incredulity. I not aware of anything that suggests that consciousness is not purely a function of the physical brain, and if that's the case it would seem to follow that all all artifacts of consciousness are mechanistic as well.
Muzman on 18/4/2008 at 09:30
Not that I disagree per se, but I think you'll find the get out there is that the closer they look the more body function, and therefore consciousness, appears to involve processes which are in the area of microphysics (if that's the word). At that level things defy conventional notions of 'mechanistic' and 'causation'.
(the whole determinism/non determinism debate kinda bugs me actually, and seems little more than an amusing thought exercise not unlike how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The real lesson from knowledge as it is developing today is not to grab every new turn up and then extrapolate grand logical conclusions from them, but to go one step at a time appropriate to the scale of reality youre working on, as the next step into the fog will probably screw your grand theory by what it finds or isn't really applicable to every other level of reality you can think of.)
BEAR on 18/4/2008 at 13:00
Quote Posted by Epos Nix
I'm not sure that lack of facts ever stopped you from posting in this thread before. :angel:
Perhaps, but I avoid saying things like "conciousness is" and "this is what free will is". I say it more like "conciousness could be..." and "free will might just be...". There was more basis for the crap I was spouting, this just sounds like people trying to impress eachother by seeing how often they can say "determinism" and "materialism".
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Oh good god. Are you implying that a cat smearing paint on a wall is the same as a Picasso, a Michelangelo, a Matisse, or any of the other famous old masters? I hope you're not that dense. Please tell me you're not that dense.
I'm not but you obviously are for reading that much into it. Saying that Art proves free will is an incredibly general unproven stupid thing, it feels good (and even right maybe) but it has no basis whatsoever. There is no concrete definitions for what art or free will really is independent of our own emotions and feelings, so broad statements like that piss me off.
Basically, judging from the large amount of response to my cat picture, I think I can safely say you guys read too much into things.
How by the way did you get your panties in such a was from a post that was just an image? Just further proof that you people are creating half your arguments in your head just so you'll have something to post.
Quote Posted by Nicker
So you are saying that only humans have self awareness and will (free or otherwise)?
I was speaking of human art but it matters not to me what creature created it. I think you have roundly misunderstood and misrepresented my points but you're "free" to do so - right?
The question of free-will and awareness is not entirely the realm of facts, certainly not of the binary kind.
If I had said what was logically to be thought from my single image post with no words you would still be exactly wrong. If you think I dont know what you mean and you show you have absolutly no idea what I meant (assuming I had some deep meaning in my image post with a cat), what does that say?
Facts are always getting in the way of high quality existentialist bullshit. It depends on what your goals are. If your goal is just to say things that sound good that nobody can prove at all with no other basis than that you thought them, then yes free will isnt just about facts and knowing things. Its also a completly pointless conversation in which nothing whatsoever will be decided, my experience is people dont even listen to what other people thinks in these types of conversation as they are essentially masterbatory anyways.
jay pettitt on 18/4/2008 at 15:23
In order to prove my free will and self determinisimynism I'm going to have to not masturbate for the rest of today. It's Friday as well - damn you.
Epos Nix on 18/4/2008 at 15:55
Quote:
Just further proof that you people are creating half your arguments in your head just so you'll have something to post.
It would be really nice if you'd quit pointing fingers, accusing people of things you yourself are also at fault for several times throughout this thread, BEAR. I highly doubt anyone here is trying to impress anyone else (at least I'm not), but simply trying to have a decent conversation about things that Might Be. If you can't follow, don't point fingers and accuse us of grand standing, just stop reading.
demagogue on 18/4/2008 at 19:17
I would love to contribute to this discussion from my experience in philosophy of mind and cognitive science ... I've been esp interested in volition and decisionmaking. The problem is, to give it justice would take a huge post, which I don't want.
I'll just throw out this for now:
I think some of you should make some basic distinctions to start off, to figure out what you're really talking about.
E.g., the "physical determinism" problem is actually pretty easy to resolve, IMO, with basic functionalism, the physical level and functional level of patterns in nature are on separate, non-communicating levels that just share the same topography, like two separate messages encoded in the same recording (this is pattern theory and topos logic, cf Dennet on the philosophy side and e.g. Glimcher on the science side). The case-study is the hawk/dove game in field zoology: a lot of animal/human behavior actually is non-deterministic on the per-turn level, with the math/economic models to show it (this is Nash), a lot of birds would quickly starve to death if it weren't. It's only limited by the course-grainness of the topography (i.e., the rules of physics) to carry the pattern, but even then it's a miniscule bias, if you could ever even sense it, and is functionally irrelevant. It doesn't really "exist" as part of the pattern itself.
As for the "functional determinism" problem (i.e., the functional architecture of behavior determines its behavior), the resolution to that is easy too, IMO. This isn't really a problem of "freedom" but a problem of "identity". Of course "your" decisions absolutely determine your behavior! The real question is if you can fairly say that the architecture running "you" is really you and not someone/thing else. (By the way, notice how this is separate from the topography question; it doesn't matter if the architecture is made of "physical" or "spirit" stuff; it'd be the same question. It really doesn't matter what it's made of, but what it does.)
And finding "you" in there is a matter of 1. finding real "agency" in the architecture, and 2. finding what is "recognizably" you within that agency, according to the core narrative that makes you you. The argument here would take a while to get out fairly, but I could say the mind goes to a lot of trouble to ensure exactly these two things are in place, although it breaks down sometimes.
...........................................
Well, a little bit:
I tend to agree with the theory (D'Amasio's among others) that says our minds tend to be (or acts) two-level, with a lower emotive (creature) consciousness centered in the mid-brain and limbic system that gives us basic sentience (it's what coma patients are lacking), which coat-tails on our emotional/mood system originally developed to summerize the "state of the being". And a second-layer "autobiographical" aspect spread across the cortex that puts "me" and the "world" I know into that experience (what epileptics are lacking after a cortex-seizure). A related distinction is between the "feeling" of cns and "access" and use of its contents. This is also part of the more general point that the mind is (or acts) very functionally modal, with different parts doing their independent things, with a lot of cross-talk, that clever experiments/ cases can tease apart (e.g., some "seeing" people claim to be blind, they can accurately describe the room but can't "see" it; and some blind people claim to see a room just fine and don't realize they're blind, but they are. Lots of other examples.).
So with decision-making, there's a system for the "feeling" of volition, and then there's the mechanics of a decision-performance itself ... and while they often work together, they aren't the same thing and sometimes work separately. (The slide-show experiment teases them apart: we all feel volition after the command has already been sent to the muscles. You can actually put a wire on the brain, intercept the command to push a slide-advance button with your thumb, and advance the slide before you feel the volition to push, but you can't take the command back, making it inadvertantly advance twice.) And then there seems to be a different dual-systems like this for different kinds of decision-performance we make (e.g., opportunity cost vs. real cost decisions; even if you worded the same question a different way, it's cognized totally differently. Lots of other examples) So when talking about the "freedom" you have in making some decision, you want to distinguish just what you're talking about: the "feeling" of volition or the mechanics of the decision itself, and then what kind of subject-matter is it for, etc. They all need separate treatment. It's only then that you want to talk about what sort of preemptory control a top-level control-station (the "conscious self") might have, that checks the decision against narratives of important considerations to the "agent". The punchline is there really is a mechanism to it. You need to take it step by step. But, if you follow it through, I'd argue you see real freedom emerge; everything we feel as a free agent is in there if we look for it.
There's more I want to add, but that's good for now. I cut my "big picture" punchline that gets more to the root of the debate and what's IMO at the core of all of this, although it's important; maybe I'll make a new post later.
Ok, not a huge post, but still pretty long... Ok, maybe huge. Sorry about that. And it still didn't respond to all the comments I read. The topic just doesn't jive well with half-answers.
Ben Gunn on 18/4/2008 at 21:57
I don't mind long posts- there are only a few other things I find more interesting than the topics at hand- and they warrant such length.
Your post looks interesting but I can't say I understood much. You need to clarify your thoughts or maybe I need a second read. You claimed some very big claims there and I really want to get to the bottom of the thought behind them.
So, as far as Im concerened, spare no words but strive for clarity. (if you ever thought of teaching or lecturing what youv'e learned- consider this thread your practice ground)
Epos Nix on 18/4/2008 at 22:11
Incidentally, if you cheat in the Sims 2 and max out your sim's Needs, they will stand in one place until they die of old age.
I think this is pertinent to the discussion, just not exactly sure how... :erg:
