Materialism and Consciousness.

[Gothmog]

cg wrote

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.

While I agree, that's my point of view. There are self consistent points of view combining materialism and free will. Mind body dualism, jungianism, etc. The key there is that consciousness is a manifestation of our neural net (or collecive unconscious etc.) and that enables free will. Personally, I don't see the need for free will of the type you seem to be talking about, but many other wise men did.

trying to point out that the abandonment of free will means the abandonment of just about everything involved in the human experience.

Again B does not follow from A here. Nothing must be abandoned on the alter of free will, consider our subjective nature.

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.

Depends on what you mean by deeper connection, I know love and it is a very deep connection. It could not be deeper. There is a drive to love everyone, regardless of Christianity or free will. There are other drives too of course.

There shouldn't really be any particular attachment to the self, because it isn't anything I produced or created or control

Again, this is a belief in ones self as special and powerful. There is attachment to the self, its a basic human trait (and all life as far as I know). Love is not about creation or control, and yet is among the most powerful of human experiences.

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

We again enter the semantic world here. I would argue that you feel that knowledge of truth would make you happy, or you would not want it. Many people find happiness through self depravation, or even masochism. The quest of knowledge always involves some of that.

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.

We are different, no doubt. But I can't see where you think that's all I've gotten from philosophy. One thing I've gleaned is that there doesn't have to be more than that. It would make zero difference either way.

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.

That's the part I don't see any need for. It may be, or it may not. It would be nice to know, but it wouldn't change my actions either way.

aneeshm wrote:

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 ?

I was trying to say that we accept pleasure and pain as a manefistation of our being, and likely simply biochemical in nature. Why not consciousness or free will?

Sidhe wrote:

Quantum mechanics=free will.

actually Quantum mechanics = probabilistic outcomes, not free will. A type of randomness, but not the kernal of will that cg is speaking of.

It is possible that free will is a consequence of quantum entanglement, but the one does not follow from the other.

There's a great experiment where it has been shown that you can predict simple things (like when a person will reach for a glass of water) before the person knows he/she will do that thing. The impulse in the brain preceed the knowledge of the impulse. I know I posted a link in another thread sometime ago.

 

[Sidhe]

There's a great experiment where it has been shown that you can predict simple things (like when a person will reach for a glass of water) before the person knows he/she will do that thing. The impulse in the brain preceed the knowledge of the impulse. I know I posted a link in another thread sometime ago.

Derren Brown has based an entire career on the fact that he can read and know what people are going to do from body language alone.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Sinc NASA and 3 eminent bioligists have produced a paper which states that they have seen evidence of DNA behaving accordin to quantum pronciple at the very small nanoscopic/microscopic level? If that's the case then you are really not arguing about biology any more but semantics surely?

Any links to this?

 

[Sidhe]

Sorry as is so often the case papers like this have to be payed for. I read about it in a science magazine so since that is not what you require there's probably not much use in putting up the link. I'm afraid if you're not a scientist they don't just let you have access to Professors papers. However if you want to find out what NASA are doing in the field of nanotechnology, try browsing the internet. I found a story on how they use DNA sequences to solve mathematical problems that we're impossible by hand, interesting but OT.

 

[Perfection]

Since DNA has been proven to use quantum principles to more efficiently process and store proteins I'd be carefull what you say QM affects precisely, obviously the bizarre effects of the quantum effect the nano world of tiny atoms and it is wise therefore for DNA to use this strange behaviour to improve it's own efficiency: NASA and 3 eminent bioligists have produced a paper which states that they have seen evidence of DNA behaving accordin to quantum pronciple at the very small nanoscopic/microscopic level? If that's the case then you are really not arguing about biology any more but semantics surely?

DNA isn't how you think.

 

[Sidhe]

i don't think anyone said that, but since instincts are encoded in DNA how you think can effect DNA and no doubt vice a versa all I'm saying is that anything at the nano level is effected by the quantum that's why theres a newish field called nanobiology.

 

[Perfection]

i don't think anyone said that, but since instincts are encoded in DNA how you think can effect DNA and no doubt vice a versa all I'm saying is that anything at the nano level is effected by the quantum that's why theres a newish field called nanobiology.

Yeah, but who cares, this is about conciousness not when we apply quantum principles.

 

[El_Machinae]

Sorry as is so often the case papers like this have to be payed for. I read about it in a science magazine so since that is not what you require there's probably not much use in putting up the link. I'm afraid if you're not a scientist they don't just let you have access to Professors papers. However if you want to find out what NASA are doing in the field of nanotechnology, try browsing the internet. I found a story on how they use DNA sequences to solve mathematical problems that we're impossible by hand, interesting but OT.

An abstract would go a long way. Or an article about the papers.

 

[Sidhe]

Sicne I read the article in New scientist and I no longer have acces to the database I can't do that either.

 

[Sidhe]

Yeah, but who cares, this is about conciousness not when we apply quantum principles.

But since quantum principles apply to conciousness as well then everything is about it? Have you not been reading? I suggest you too start doing some background reading starting with that paper I posted and moving ont the links. Since at a fundemental level anything at the nanoscale is directly effected by the quantum and the brain operates at the nanoscale then everything is effected by the quantum at some fundemental level. If you want to argue against that I suggest you go get a bucket of sand and bury your head in it.

No, but you choose which quantum effects to observe. Free Will and Life are quirks of physics - they occur when certain chemicals are brought together in an arrangement. However, once they exist, they take active steps to continue their existence. The brain specifically chooses to notice itself (seemingly in a feedback loop) and thus maintain consciousness. Other parts of the brain are devoted to maintaining the life of the whole.

I'm quite sure that Life came first, and then came Free Will - but once they're there, they're there (because they modify their environment to maintain their existence).

As well, I also think that QM effects are important in neurons. In neurons, the order of firing is quite important (if only in little ways). And so, when you have a few hundred chemicals trying to activate two different neurons, which neuron fires first is subjected to quantum effects. Neurons may be large and discrete objects, but they're amazingly intertangled, with billions of possible actions. And when billions of possible actions are dictated by the jumping of a few hundred electrons (over billions of neurons) - the small number start to matter.

edit: but in the wash, QM effects only matter once in awhile, and only in little ways, since the brain is so redundant.

 

[CartesianFart]

newish field called nanobiology.

Hmm...I wonder what philosophers have to say on this new theoretical knowledge?How can this affect the human sciences?

 

[El_Machinae]

You'd be surprised how funny it is to listen to philosophers talk about these areas (when they know nothing about them). A Master's student in philosophy will walk around thinking they have 'proven' something about the brain, and be totally wrong.

They're almost as scary as Master's students in economics, who think their system is ideal for moulding an economy.

 

[Sidhe]

Alot of it isn't theoretical try typing nanotech into google. there is a huge amnount of research both practicle and theoretical, it just goes to show how ingorant of science in other fields some scientists are if anything philosophers are more aware of them than say biologists sometimes.

 

[Perfection]

The brain doesn't operate at the nanoscale that QM does. The brain operates on the big nanonscale, were talking hundreds of nanometers for that stuff. Quantum effects are by and large gone at that level. Quantum effects in molecules occur in about the single nanometer range and lower.

 

[Sidhe]

So contrary to what Nasa and most naontech specialists think there are no quantum effects at this scale? And you base this on what exactly your own ignorance. Like I said go look into the field and then come back.

 

[El_Machinae]

Dude, the burden of proof is totally on you right now to provide a link, article, or something ...

 

[Sidhe]

Like I said I can provide a million links to nanotech but none to that paper, unfortuantely I don't have the cash or the access to retrieve it so you can either say I'm lying or you can accept that there was a paper, I don't really care which to be honest.

http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html

Here's a link, since no one actually read any of the links I put up though I wouldn't expect anyone to take much notice to be honest

When we get to the very, very small world---say circuits of seven atoms---we have a lot of new things that would happen that represent completely new opportunities for design. Atoms on a small scale behave like nothing on a large scale, for they satisfy the laws of quantum mechanics. So, as we go down and fiddle around with the atoms down there, we are working with different laws, and we can expect to do different things. We can manufacture in different ways. We can use, not just circuits, but some system involving the quantized energy levels, or the interactions of quantized spins, etc.

Another thing we will notice is that, if we go down far enough, all of our devices can be mass produced so that they are absolutely perfect copies of one another. We cannot build two large machines so that the dimensions are exactly the same. But if your machine is only 100 atoms high, you only have to get it correct to one-half of one percent to make sure the other machine is exactly the same size---namely, 100 atoms high!

At the atomic level, we have new kinds of forces and new kinds of possibilities, new kinds of effects. The problems of manufacture and reproduction of materials will be quite different. I am, as I said, inspired by the biological phenomena in which chemical forces are used in repetitious fashion to produce all kinds of weird effects (one of which is the author).

The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big.

Ultimately, we can do chemical synthesis. A chemist comes to us and says, ``Look, I want a molecule that has the atoms arranged thus and so; make me that molecule.'' The chemist does a mysterious thing when he wants to make a molecule. He sees that it has got that ring, so he mixes this and that, and he shakes it, and he fiddles around. And, at the end of a difficult process, he usually does succeed in synthesizing what he wants. By the time I get my devices working, so that we can do it by physics, he will have figured out how to synthesize absolutely anything, so that this will really be useless.

But it is interesting that it would be, in principle, possible (I think) for a physicist to synthesize any chemical substance that the chemist writes down. Give the orders and the physicist synthesizes it. How? Put the atoms down where the chemist says, and so you make the substance. The problems of chemistry and biology can be greatly helped if our ability to see what we are doing, and to do things on an atomic level, is ultimately developed---a development which I think cannot be avoided.

Now, you might say, ``Who should do this and why should they do it?'' Well, I pointed out a few of the economic applications, but I know that the reason that you would do it might be just for fun. But have some fun! Let's have a competition between laboratories. Let one laboratory make a tiny motor which it sends to another lab which sends it back with a thing that fits inside the shaft of the first motor.

For the lazy poster here's an extract

 

[CartesianFart]

You'd be surprised how funny it is to listen to philosophers talk about these areas (when they know nothing about them).

Maybe you are a victim of seeing only bad ones.

 

[El_Machinae]

Clearly!

Sidhe, the abstract should be free, if the paper was online.

 

[punkbass2000]

no really and I suggest you read that post again, In philosophy we have 1 and 0 ok on this discussion, and the reasons for this are already established you can bang on about electrons as long as you like but it doesn't change the fact that if predeterminism is dead then we have free will. I suggest you go look up the debate on the internet. Then you will see that one cannot exist with the other they are mutally exclusive by both defenition and logic.

To me, this is an argument showing how neither exist.