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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Does Brain Science Contradict Free Will?
Message-ID: <980@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Aug-83 20:52:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.980
Posted: Wed Aug 31 20:52:47 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Sep-83 06:11:24 EDT
References: <2388@teklabs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 38

Can I get another word in? I have no idea about an eternal Is, but I
do know that there are a lot of funny things that happen in the brain
and big problems with any theory that tries to explain what consciousness
is.

Qualifications: This is not my field. It is, however, my fathers. I will
	relay all comments to him to see if he wants to say anything. He
	may not, however, since he personally does not think that religion
	should be provable, and therefore avoids such arguments generally.

1: You can not talk about a physical model of consciousness without 
   getting into the nitty gritty details of the chemistry of the brain.

2: Some chemicals in the brain produce very noticable results in very
   small quantities.

3: The motions of the molecules of the chemicals in the brain as they attain
   chemical equalibrium can only be described in terms of probabilities.

4: Thus, unless our understanding of chemistry, or probabilities change
   (possible, I guess, but highly unlikely at this date) one can only talk
   about the probability of neuron X being stimulated.

5: Thus, you can not build an entirely deterministic model of consciousness
   even if you could map the value of the firings (and the intensity of
   the firings) of certain neurons into their results.
   (this is an oversimplification of what one would actually have to do)

As far as I can see, the determinists have had it. This does not mean that
the free will people have emerged victorious, but I personally have trouble
thinking of a middle ground between 'free will' and 'determinism'.
Entirely random behavior would be one, but THAT doesn't correspond to
the world I recognise. Perhaps at some level things are deterministic
but at a lower level it is random. I find the boundary condition very
hard to think about, however...

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura