Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu
From: cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Making fires and making minds - the laws of physics prevail
Message-ID: <3018@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 1 May 89 17:51:48 GMT
Sender: news@tank.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
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>In article <2792@tank.uchicago.edu> cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:
> 
>>The interesting question, to my thinking, is that if choice really is an 
>>illusion, what is the point of this illusion's having evolved in the first
>>place?
> 
>     It's a useful hack that serves until something better comes along,
>just like Newton's laws of motion, geocentric astronomy, the ether theory
>of space, alchemy, and other notions too numerous to mention.
> 

I tend to agree that the belief in freewill exists because it is useful, 
but you should realize that almost any biological trait we possess can be 
characterized in the same way, so I would hesitate to call it a 'hack'.
Your comparison with Newton's laws, etc., is somewhat strained. That is,
I see an individual's belief in his own freedom of will as something quite
different from his belief that the world is flat. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the
former seems to me to be somehow related to the individual's cognitive
functioning, while the latter is not. There is a higher level debate, such as
we're seeing now, about whether free will exists. This is more or less on
the same cognitive level as a belief in Newtonian (or any other physics).
To clarify, I'm sure that even B.F.Skinner suffers from the unfortunate
illusion of 'free choice'. He may, at some higher level, 'know' that his
choices are not free, but his day to day experience is that same as anyone
else's.

>     Punishment, responsibility, rights, and other notions that in
>operation help society survive require the notion of free will to justify
>them.  

This argument is interesting in that it claims that a belief in choice is
a necessary condition for *society* to exist. This is 100% consistent with
the radical thesis of Julian Jaynes, that consciousness as we know it has
developed within the last three to four thousand years, and that before that
time, men were basically automata who instead of making choices, received
instructions from 'Gods' located in the region of the right hemisphere of
of the brain which corresponds to Wernicke's area in the left hemisphere.

>More recently, there have grown other ways of looking at these
>issues that are as or more effective in practice than those based on free
>will.
> 

I assume that you're talking about behavioral modification, which was never
intended to supplant an individual's fear of punishment, for example. Certainly
there are Utopian visions of a society based upon Skinnerian behaviorism,
but as far as I'm concerned, they are pie in the sky. Behavioral therapy
is more or less as effective now as hypnotism was in the latter part
of the last century. We see some results, but there are generally problems.
Very, very few therapists still cling to the Skinnerian dogma. Analysis 
is important, if only to arrive at the proper behavioral therapy. Simply
treating the symptom generally does not make the problem go away.

> 
>>>     But if you say that the laws of physics cannot even in _theory_
>>>explain these macro-level phenomena, then I must disagree with you.
>>>[...] The fact that we don't have the computational resources to
>>>actually make the prediction doesn't matter; that's a logistical problem,
>>>not a theoretical one.
>>
>>There are two problems here. First, modern physics have given up as
>>hopelessly flawed the Newtonian belief that if one knows the complete
>>state of the Universe at one instant, he should then be able to predict
>>all the future states of the Universe, should he only know the appropriate
>>physical laws.
> 
>     Well, yeah.  The difference now is that instead of a single state, one
>has to compute an entire wavefront of possibilities, which collapses to a
>single point at the moment of measurement.
> 

Wait a minute. there is a huge difference between the causal determinism
you've been suggesting and 'an entire wavefront of possibilities'. Physicists
treat quantum events as though they are truly random events that follow a
known probability distribution. The so-called 'collapse' of the wave function
is the actual position at the time of measurement. It cannot be predicted,
only observed.

>     So although it is not possible to predict the _precise_ state of the
>system, it is possible to predict the possible _range_ of states.  

Your computation instantly becomes intractable and hence *theorectically* 
impossible. And that is IFF you somehow, magically 'know' the precise state
of the Universe at a given point of time. Otherwise, recent theories of
chaos suggest that as time goes on, your margin of error will increase
exponentially. Not quite what I'd call predictability.

You're not suggesting that we predict the range of states of
an electron as it orbits a nucleus. You're suggesting that we can reasonably
predict the range of states of all of the particles within an individual
human being and all of the environment which may affect his choice. There
is no way they can be more predictable than the position of a single 
particle, which is to say, they can NEVER be known exactly. Moreover, 
the level of certainty can only decrease as the system gets larger.

>The direction of collapse of the function, as far as we know, has nothing to do
>with consciousness; rather, it follows the probabilities.  Indeterminancy
>which you do not control does not give you free will, any more than making
>all your decisions by flipping a coin would.

Nothing 'follows' the probabilites. You're implying a causation here that
doesn't exist. Face it. Modern physics believes that God does play dice
with the Universe. I am not arguing for the existence of free will. I am
arguing against your Eighteenth century determinism, which you have tried
to couch in modern terms.

> 
>     I omitted discussion of the random nature of wave function collapse
>because I didn't think it affected the point being made, either in a
>positive or negative way.
> 

I think you're somewhat missing the point. Quantum mechanics is founded on
the uncertainty principle, which basically states that yeah, well even though
in 'theory' a particle may exists with a given momentum at a particular point
in time-space, we can never measure both the momentum and the position,
so we may as well throw out the whole theory. Similarly, it seems
to me that even though 'in theory' we may be able to predict an individual's
behavior, in practice this is, and probably always will be, impossible.
So why not follow the lead of modern physics? Rather than argue about
whether or not free will actually exists, I'd say that over time, we may
be able to better predict an individuals behavior, but there will *always*
be some level of unpredictabilty. Whether this is due to actual 'freedom of the 
will' is irrelevant. One person can call it free will, another person can call
it delta. Total predictability is IMPOSSIBLE.

> 
>That which we define as Mind is an
>observable information behavioral phenomenon.  That is to say, there is
>some set of behaviors sharing certain characteristics that we label as
>Mind.
>
               
That is not what I define as Mind. Who are 'we'? As far as I can tell, the
whole problem that Science has with Mind is that it insists on reducing it
to something it can observe.
 
>     In order to have knowledge of something, one must observe it or infer
>it from observable phenomena. 

Or, we could _experience_ it.

>>question. I think it was either Stephen Hawkins or Heinz Pagels who refer
> 
>     If you're going to use the respectability of some famous person to
>back up your position, you could at least spell his name correctly.  And
>just because Stephen Hawking says something doesn't make it true (although
>it raises the probability).  I do agree in this case;  you can't predict
>the exact position of all the particles.  They're too smeared around.  You
>can, however, compute the range of positions.
> 


Go ahead, pick on my spelling. And while you're at it, go ahead and omit the
latter part of my statement: I think it was either Stephen HawkING or
Heinz Pagels who refer to your position as THE NEWTONIAN DREAM. (And,
for all that I can remember, it's spelled PAGEL, not Pagels. So what?)
In this case, I don't think anyone cares whether your position really
is the Newtonain dream, whether you agree that it is or not. I wasn't
really trying to rely on the credibility of the individual's cited, I
think the 'A or B said' form of the quotation is sufficient proof of that,
but I did think it useful to point out that knowledgable, modern physicists
have given up thinking like you do.

I, for one, have no reason to believe that the human mind transcends physical
law. For those of you who feel that this implies that there is no thing as
free will, I suppose that we can leave it at that. My gripe here is with
a particular defense of the 'the will is not free' position.