Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!att!cbnewsh!mbb
From: mbb@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (martin.b.brilliant)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free will and responsibility.
Message-ID: <1704@cbnewsh.ATT.COM>
Date: 25 Jun 89 13:45:25 GMT
References: <2134@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 41

From an EXTREMELY LONG article <2134@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>,
	by brianc@daedalus (Brian Colfer):

> Where is the evidence for a link between QM and any CT effect seen in
> the behavior of the brain?  
> 
> 	1. CT has not been definitively shown to describe the behavior of
> 	   the brain.  Can you refer me to any articles which state that
> 	   CT has been shown (rather than just preliminary findings) to 
> 	   describe brain behavior.

I can't even try to respond to the whole article, but this strikes me
as perhaps overly skeptical.

In the first place, there is no hope at this time of definitively
describing the behavior of the brain at the level that we are talking
about, namely free will and responsibility.  The best we can do is try
for plausible models, and use them as working hypotheses.  Under the
circumstances, we could do well to try alternative hypotheses, with
chaos theory, but either with or without QM.

In the second place, we know that without QM we have only virtual
unpredictability, but not unpredictability in principle.  Do we know
that virtual unpredictability ("pseudo-unpredictability," to go along
with the terminology of "pseudo-random" processes) does not fit the
observations?  It seems to me that we have no objective evidence of
free will, but only a subjective feeling of free will.  Given that, I
would suppose that virtual unpredictability, based on a deterministic
chaos model, is good enough.

In the third place, we know that quantum mechanics is really with us,
and invoking a deterministic model does not make it go away.  The
question is not whether quantum mechanics affects the behavior of the
brain, but how much it does so.

M. B. Brilliant					Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520	(201) 949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733	att!hounx!marty1 or marty1@hounx.ATT.COM

Disclaimer: Opinions stated herein are mine unless and until my employer
	    explicitly claims them; then I lose all rights to them.