Materialism and Consciousness.

[Perfection]

Which is just as fatal to any belief in free will.

Fair enough (I don't believe free will truely exists), but the distinction stands.

 

[El_Machinae]

By observing something, you force it to conform to your choice. It's hard to explain better than that. QM theory really helps.

 

[cgannon64]

I had a feeling that you'd be honest enough to say that.

Tell me, how do you function? Why do you beleive in democracy, personal liberty, responsability... the list goes on.

By observing something, you force it to conform to your choice. It's hard to explain better than that. QM theory really helps.

I don't follow. I assume you're making reference to the quantum ideas about the effect of observation on things being observed, but I don't see how they relate.

I don't see how you can even use the word 'choice'. According to materialism, your brain is a system that runs according to rules, invariably. Anything you do is a result of these rules. That these rules are aware of themselves complicates the process immensely and results the illusion of free will: But how can a "being" arise from a set of rules, a being that has "choice"?

 

[Perfection]

I had a feeling that you'd be honest enough to say that.

Tell me, how do you function?

Electrical impulses, psychology all that jazz.

Why do you beleive in democracy, personal liberty, responsability... the list goes on.

Because they help meet my desires.

 

[cgannon64]

Because they help meet my desires.

Don't you feel the words 'my' and 'desires' are inaccurate?

 

[El_Machinae]

Notice how life can modify its environment to continue living?

Similarly, consciousness can modify its environment to continue consciousness. Once we can modify the environment, we continue to do such in a way that we can continue to modify it.

 

[cgannon64]

I'm going to transcribe a passage from the book, hold on a minute. It's pretty much exactly what we're talking about. EDIT: It's a bit longer than I expected, so... Just wait.

Think of chess. Clearly the rules stay the same, just the board position changes on each move. But let's invent a variation in which, on your turn, you can either make a move or change the rules. But how? At liberty? Can you turn it into checkers? Clearly such anarchy would be pointless. There must be some restraints...

Now we have two layers of rules: those which tell how to move pieces, and those which tell how to change the rules. So we have rules and metarules. The next step is obvious; introduce metametarules by which we can change the metarules. It is not so obvious how to do this. The reason it is easy to formulate rules for movign pieces is that pieces move in a formalized space: the checkerboard. If you can devise a simple formal notation for expressing rules and metarules, then to manipulate them...[will be] like manipulating chess pieces. To carry things to their logical extreme, you could even express rules and metarules as positions on auxiliary chess baords...

Now we can have any number of adjacent chess boards: one for the game, one for the rules, one for the metarules, and so on, as far as care to carry it. On your turn, you may make a move on any one of the chess boards except the top level one, using the rules which apply (they come from the next chess board up in the hierarchy). Undoubtedly both players would get quite disoriented by the fact that almost anything - though not everything! - can change. By definition, the top-level chess board can't be changed, because you don't ahve ruels telling you how to change it. It is inviolate. There is more that is inviolate: the conventions by which the different boards are interpreted, the agreement to take turns, the agreement that each person may change one chess board each turn - and you will find mroe if you examine the idea carefully.

Now it is possible to go considerably further in removing the pillars by which orientation is acheived. One step at a time we begin collapsing the whole array of boards into a single board. What is meant by this? There will be two ways of interpreting the board: (1) as peices to be moved; (2) as rules for moving the pieces. On your turn, you mvoe pieces - and perforce, you change rules! Thus, the rules constantly change themselves. Shades of Typogenetics - or, for that matter, of real genetics. The distinction between game, rules, metarules, metametarules, has been lost. What was once a nice clean hierarchal setup has become a Strange Loop, or Tangled Hierarchy. The moves change the rules, the rules determine the moves, round and round the mulberry bush... There are still different levels, but the distinction between "lower" and "higher" has been wiped out.

Now, part of what was inviolate has been made changable. But there is still plenty that is inviolate. Just as before, there are conventions between you and your opponent by which you interpret the board as a collection of rules. There is the agreement to take turns - and probably other implicit conventions as well. Notice, therefore, that the notion of different levels has survived, in an unexpected way. There is an inviolate level - let's call it the I-level - on which the interpretation conventions reside; there is also the tangled level - the T-level - on which the Tangled Hierarchy resides. So these two levels are still hierarchical: the I-level governs what happens on the T-level, but the T-level does not and cannot affect the I-level. No matter that the T-level is a Tangled Hierarchy - it is still governend by a set of conventions outside of itself. And that is the important point.

Just so you know, Typogenetics is a system he made up that imitated real genetics. I deleted all the references to number theory, as they are essentially extraneous and they would take too long to explain to those unfamiliar

(The author is really good at making up words: the best one in the book was arithmoquinification. )

 

[Perfection]

Don't you feel the words 'my' and 'desires' are inaccurate?

No, why would they be?

Just because I am formed of the relationship between particles doesn't mean I don't exist.

 

[cgannon64]

How could you have desires?

 

[El_Machinae]

A desire to continue consciousness? It seems consistent with the way life works.

 

[Perfection]

How could you have desires?

I have little chemical pathways in my mind that have wired me to seek out certain things.

 

[cgannon64]

I sense that some doubletalk is going on here. To me, you're forthright about exactly what all of these terms mean - but are you telling me you think these things in your internal monologue? When you think, "Man I want to get a 90 in this course," you realize that you don't want that, in the sense that you didn't choose that desire - that you actually approach your daily life so impersonally?

(You may disagree with the word 'impersonally', but I think it's accurate.)

 

[Gothmog]

cg wrote:

I can take things on faith, but I cannot take things on faith that I know to be untrue.

What is it that you know to be untrue?

Search for truth, if you find it you will be the first. Subjective truth perhaps, revelation at best, but not more.

One subjective truth I've received is that humans wouldn't know truth if they found it, similarly the illusion of free will is subjectively indistinguishable from the real thing.

You exist with it or without it, or at least I do.

In fact, love is rather one of the smaller things that would be overthrown by the nonexistence of free will and the self.

Heh, one of the smaller things? I thought love was at the core of your whole religious belief system.

How would love be overthrown, love is an experience. If I feel it, it exists for me. What more is there to it?

If there is one thing we all must take apriori it is that the self exists. I don't see how free will follows from that. Perhaps you could expand on what exactly you mean by free will in that you can't have self without it.

Strive for truth, that does not guarantee it exists. Is there a story you know of someone who found the truth? Someone who was not god on earth? It is our lot to strive but not to find. There's subjectivity and acumulated scientific knowledge, as far as I know that's it.

I do, if you beleive a person's goal in life is happiness, at any cost; I beleive it is truth, at any cost.

Hmm, that's a bit of a contradiction 'at any cost', the only cost is knowledge of self. For a long time I found happiness mostly in study, in knowledge, and in carnal pleasures. That's a symptom of a certain stage of life.

Well, how do you derive purpose from your life at the moment? Losing free will would probably suck the purpose out of what you do...

Again we need to agree on a definition here, but I'll say that purpose is subjective. If I feel like I have it then I do, no more no less. The thing is that I've accepted that I will never know the truth, or if I do I'll never know that I know it.

That's not quite right. The word "find" implies a subject. But there is no subject, there is no 'I', there is nothing. If you are happy, you did not find it; if you are in love, you did nothing to bring it about; anything you do is irrelevent, because 'you' don't exist in that sense.

As I suggest above, the one thing we must take apriori, is 'I'. I am the sum of my experiences and the physical stuff that makes up my body. I don't see why there has to be more than that.

Sorry if that doesn't make you feel powerful enough, or special enough. That's another symptom of a certain stage of life. There is no one to blame. Except perhaps God.

God, with all the problems he causes, all the mystery, and all the uncertainty, is incomparably better than the non-existence of free will.

Heh, that's your subjective opinion and one I do not share. In some ways it is worse if there is a God, and it refuses to let us in on the cosmic joke that is the truth.

To have free will is to have a self that is capable of controlling or affecting other things, including itself, according to whim

So free will is the ability to act on a whim? To not take into account your history, or physical nature? That doesn't sound so important to me. Does this act have to be random? That is not based on previous experience or physically based preferences?

Why must you be more than your physical body and the sum of your experiences?

 

[Perfection]

I sense that some doubletalk is going on here. To me, you're forthright about exactly what all of these terms mean - but are you telling me you think these things in your internal monologue? When you think, "Man I want to get a 90 in this course," you realize that you don't want that, in the sense that you didn't choose that desire - that you actually approach your daily life so impersonally?

Of course not. I don't need to address the roots of my desires to make plans and act upon them. Is that an issue?

Although in the previous case, getting a 90 on a course would probobly be a goal I set to help achieve my desires.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Back to Free will again huh. BE addressed it well some time ago. I put it in my sig.

The illusion of free will is so complete, that it may as well be real.

Back to consciousness for a moment. Which of these is not self aware enough to be granted consciousness?

• Chimp
• Dog
• Fish
• Spider
• Fly larva
• Tape worm
• Paramicium

 

[cgannon64]

What is it that you know to be untrue?

Well, nothing yet. But you were asking me why, if I decided that the materialist viewpoint is true, I wouldn't just keep on believing in free will anyway. Under those circumstances, I couldn't, cuz free will would be contradictory to my belief system.

Heh, one of the smaller things? I thought love was at the core of your whole religious belief system.

I was exaggerating a bit, trying to point out that the abandonment of free will means the abandonment of just about everything involved in the human experience.

How would love be overthrown, love is an experience. If I feel it, it exists for me. What more is there to it?

Well, any sense of "deeper connection" involved in love would only be an illusion. Also, there would be no self-produced - i.e., freely chosen - drive to love everyone, as Christianity suggests.

If there is one thing we all must take apriori it is that the self exists. I don't see how free will follows from that. Perhaps you could expand on what exactly you mean by free will in that you can't have self without it.

As I said before, without free will, consciousness is just a window on the universe, and nothing more. There shouldn't really be any particular attachment to the self, because it isn't anything I produced or created or control - it's nothing more than the size and shape of the window.

Hmm, that's a bit of a contradiction 'at any cost', the only cost is knowledge of self. For a long time I found happiness mostly in study, in knowledge, and in carnal pleasures. That's a symptom of a certain stage of life.

What I mean is, I would trade happiness for truth in a heartbeat. That is the cost.

As I suggest above, the one thing we must take apriori, is 'I'. I am the sum of my experiences and the physical stuff that makes up my body. I don't see why there has to be more than that.

Sorry if that doesn't make you feel powerful enough, or special enough. That's another symptom of a certain stage of life. There is no one to blame. Except perhaps God.

You don't see why there has to be more than that? We seem to be quite different people, then. I can't say, "Well, I exist," and settle that as all I want to know from philosophy. Not at all.

Heh, that's your subjective opinion and one I do not share. In some ways it is worse if there is a God, and it refuses to let us in on the cosmic joke that is the truth.

Of course not. It offers that later. I'd much rather have the truth exist and be withheld from me temporarily than not have it exist at all - but again, I suppose, subjective opinion.

So free will is the ability to act on a whim? To not take into account your history, or physical nature? That doesn't sound so important to me. Does this act have to be random? That is not based on previous experience or physically based preferences?

I did not say "to not take into account your history or physical nature." I said, these are all taken into account, but they do not fully explain the actions of a being with free will - there is still the grain of will that is not random, nor predetermined, but chosen.

Why must you be more than your physical body and the sum of your experiences?

Because there isn't much of a reason to do anything if I'm a body and a sum of experiences without control over itself. Hell, that isn't even an accurate statement: nothing can be done in that scenario.

Of course not. I don't need to address the roots of my desires to make plans and act upon them. Is that an issue?

Your very language seems to make it clear that, on some level, you still act under the delusion of free will. For example, you say that "you" don't need to "address" things for "you" to "act" on them.

But anyway, to address the content of your post: Are you saying that you are perfectly happy to act on your desires without understanding their source? That seems willfully (oh!) ignorant.

Back to Free will again huh. BE addressed it well some time ago. I put it in my sig.

I'm sorry to you and BE, but I hate that. There is a very, very sharp line between illusion and reality. We might not be able to see it, but we shouldn't disrespect its existence by saying things "might as well" be real.

Back to consciousness for a moment. Which of these is not self aware enough to be granted consciousness?

All of them are conscious by degress, which do you mean? If you mean aware of its own existence, I'd say the chimp. If you mean aware of its own thoughts, I'd say none. (But the entrance of animals into these debates is pretty problematic, as we have seen, and unnecessarily complicating. )

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm sorry to you and BE, but I hate that. There is a very, very sharp line between illusion and reality. We might not be able to see it, but we shouldn't disrespect its existence by saying things "might as well" be real.

If you cannot see it, how do you know when you have crossed it? I'm not sure such a line exists at all. We will get mired unless things get defined: illusion=?, reality=?.

All of them are conscious by degress, which do you mean? If you mean aware of its own existence, I'd say the chimp. If you mean aware of its own thoughts, I'd say none. (But the entrance of animals into these debates is pretty problematic, as we have seen, and unnecessarily complicating. )

And what makes you think I will stop with animals. Actualy it simplifies things enormously once you grasp the idea that consciousness begins at the sub atomic level and expands to higher levels of awareness as complexity increases. But I will leave it alone since this is your thread.

 

[aneeshm]

Yes, but any border to the system is completely arbitrary. Why is my foot part of a "conscious being"? Because my consciousness can control it. Sure, but in reality that's not saying much. I can control the spoon in my hand also, but to a different degree than my foot, according to a slightly different set of rules. And there are parts of my body which I have even less control over than I would any outside object - I can't move my kidneys, for example, and I can't turn them on or off or make it work harder. So why are my kidneys part of my "conscious system"? (Also, a digression: How much truth is there to the talk of Buddhist monks being able to have extreme control over their bodily functions?)

I am of the opinion that , given enough training , we can control our bodily functions . For example - I have a very , very small degree of control over my heartbeat . This small control was developed my meditation and concentration . There have been recorded cases of yogis who have managed to go into hibernation for years together . The discovery channel ( or some other channel - I don't remember which one ) did a program on Buddhist monks in the Himalayas . These monks were able to sleep , near naked , on snow , in sub-zero temperatures , whereas the channel's team of reporters had to wear a lot of warm clothing just to stay alive .

 

[Perfection]

Your very language seems to make it clear that, on some level, you still act under the delusion of free will. For example, you say that "you" don't need to "address" things for "you" to "act" on them.

How does that require free will?

But anyway, to address the content of your post: Are you saying that you are perfectly happy to act on your desires without understanding their source? That seems willfully (oh!) ignorant.

It's not that I can't or refuse to understand the origin of my desires or I explore them. It's just that there seems not to be an objective reason to believe that my morality is anything more than a set of values that I seek to satisfy.

 

[aneeshm]

Hey, cg was asking about materialism and that viewpoint. I think he already agrees that there is a soul, and accepts the ramifications of that belief (cg correct me if I'm wrong).

We feel that consciousness is special because it defines our self image. But it doesn't have to be special.

The experience of a thing is not the thing. Most people don't assign objective existence to Love, love is an experience. It seems that the conscious state love can be explained through biochemistry, most people agree with that. If you don't like love as an example here, try pain.

This explanation doesn't change the experience one bit, love still feels like love, and pain feels like pain.

So why must we assign material existence to consciousness, but not love or pain?

We can assign material existence to pain and pleasure because these are qualia - things that we perceive . Who or what , however , is that thing that is perceiving them ? Something is perceived . Who perceives it ?