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On July 06 2013 07:34 LuckyFool wrote:
If we can't explain it's complexity, isn't it ignorant to believe it's all just chemical and electricity?
We can explain the complexity. It just takes time to do everything you are talking about. The same way that if I give you an USB stick and ask you to build from zero a computer to read it (without any help obviously), you won't be able to do it in your life-time. Does this make the USB stick less real ?
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I can easily make the leap regarding devices like computers and a USB stick. I don't need to know all of the workings of a USB stick personally to know what it is. These are devices that humans have made and we know what raw materials went into making them, we know these things can be explained because we've built them. I don't have any problems accepting the complexity of these devices.
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me.
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On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
I can easily make the leap regarding devices like the human brain. I don't need to know all of the workings of a human brain personally to know what it is. These are devices that human cells have made out of raw materials, we know these things can be explained because we've built them. I don't have any problems accepting the complexity of these devices.
This would be just as valid.
The instructions for making a human brain exist within the human genome. Just because you don't understand all of its intricacies doesn't mean they can't be explained.
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On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
I can easily make the leap regarding devices like computers and a USB stick. I don't need to know all of the workings of a USB stick personally to know what it is. These are devices that humans have made and we know what raw materials went into making them, we know these things can be explained because we've built them. I don't have any problems accepting the complexity of these devices.
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me.
Actually, by all current evidence we have, they ARE. They're just created through a long and complicated process that we do not actually fully understand. We don't really even understand the final product, either.
In terms of matter you can break down almost anything in the universe, including humans, to basic (sub)atomic building blocks. The human brain and its periphery is no different.
What you are suggesting is that, because we don't fully understand the brain/human mind, it's possible for there to be something supernatural (if it's not composed of matter, then it has to be supernatural!) involved. The onus is then on you. You've made this claim-now show evidence for it.
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On July 06 2013 06:29 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 05:46 Rassy wrote:
The original hypothesis of the kind of objection you issue, that of a physical universe governed by an in-determinism of micro-deviations pre-dates modern physics by over two millennia, it was originally postulated by the Epicureans, whose debates against the Atomists can be read alongside this thread to reveal the awful truism that nobody ever has anything really original to say.
Why use such difficult sentences, it can be said also in simpler words and then i would not have to read it twice and think 5 minutes before i understand it lol, But then again its your birthday and i have to admit beeing well spoken has its charm.
I dont agree with notion that nobody ever has annything realy original to say, if that was the case then science would have made no progress at all. I do agree though that manny ideas seem to return throughout history.
Since i see no objection to my points i asume you agree with them? I think my default position is so nauseatingly Aristotelian-Thomistic, that I would cut quite a poor figure alongside all you Doctors of Metaphysical Speculation. I don't believe in physical determinism either, but I don't think that the the world at large is unnecessarily skewed in its favour. Maybe a disproportionate number of highly-visible tl.net members are disciples of scientific realism, but in my experience, the real world is quite a different thing, especially if you enjoy talking to women...  Show nested quote +For me free will means the freedom of choise, this for me implies that the world can not be deterministic.(sry if this sounds realy dumb lol but to me this is as evident as 1+1=2) In Plato, the essence of Freedom is not elective capacity, but the harmony of the Will with the Rational Good. This seems counter-intuitive, almost a reversal of modern commonsensical definitions of Free Will, but if you ground the concepts down to their fundamental principles, it becomes easy to see why the inquiry had to begin with such assumptions. Grammatically, the statement that "I chose X" implies a greater degree of freedom than the statement that "I chose X because of Y." In reality, their relative degrees of freedom are reversed. In the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, Freedom involved a set of progressive hierarchies, arranged in order of their capacity to approach the perfect Truth. Thus a blade of grass was more free than a rock, because its actions were informed by vegetative will, whereas an animal was freer than a blade of grass, due to the capacity of their appetitive will to overrule the vegetative, whereas the human capacity for accessing rational will implies a greater degree of freedom still. In both traditions, freedom is not given the definition of possessing chaotic qualities, since such a degree of absolute freedom negates choice as much as absolute predestination. Rather, the tendency of the Will to select actions predicated by the extent and limitations of its knowledge of the Good supplies every action with a teleological purpose. In our ancient traditions, the conception of Free Will has always been that of a Directed Will. Some stumbling blocks along the road of that tradition: whether the imperfect intelligence as incarnated in human beings produces a system of a synthetic Good, or competing Goods. In the latter argument embraced by Aristotelian ethics, the flawed nature of our knowledge produces an ethical system where the subject is driven by contingency, circumstance, or experience to select from a spectrum of competing Goods, none of which, however, once selected, can ever fully satisfy our ethical impulses. Every decision to elevate a certain Good comes at the expense or neglect of other Goods, and it's task of ethics to place these competing Goods in their proper relations. The other question is whether the realised Good is a necessary or merely affinitive influence upon the Will. i.e. Whether characters such as Shakespeare's Iago, whose evil is not the consequence of a misallocated hierarchy of virtues, but who seems to have the capacity reject any impulse towards all things Good and True psychologically.
From phylosophy i dont know much, i am a physicus. This thread somehow inspired me to find the missing link i have been searching for for over 10 years.
For this i am thankfull, and because of that i will share with you what the universe and all its particles and forces are made of.
The whole universe and more,and all its particles and elemental forces inside it can be described as a space of infinite dimensions wich is filled with a huge amount of 1-dimensional probabilitys.
I hope to release a paper on this within 5 years.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On July 06 2013 03:25 xM(Z wrote:
@ doubleupgradeobbies!
you and your computer!
your computer has a maker, who is your maker?
Depends how exactly you define maker, and also how you define me.
In a rather facile sense, my parents are my makers. They provided the starting material and information to initiate the process of 'making me'. Of course a computer is made, in this sense, in a more concious process than I am, so it's unsurprising that the computer is far more optimised for it's purpose than I seem to be for whatever 'purpose' I have.
But with even a little more strict definition of me, then my parents certainly haven't shaped, consciously or unconsciously, all the parts of me as an individual, the parts they are responsible, while fundamental may only be a small part of 'me', no doubt social factors, past experiences, exposure to ideas and other factors have played a major role in making me who I am. In which case it would be fair to say, in this definition of maker, the universe at large is both the maker of myself as well as the computer.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On July 06 2013 11:49 Rassy wrote:
The whole universe and more,and all its particles and elemental forces inside it can be described as a space of infinite dimensions wich is filled with a huge amount of 1-dimensional probabilitys.
I hope to release a paper on this within 5 years.
I don't mean to come across as a jerk, but a 'space of infinite dimensions', literally just means infinite degrees of freedom. Since a dimension in the physics sense is just a spatial degree of freedom. And in Mathematics just a degree of freedom in general.
Everything can be described as a system with infinite (you only need arbitrarily many, but having more never hurts) degrees of freedom. Because any space is a subspace of a system with infinite degrees of freedom.
Most of science, if not all learning is essentially an attempt to minimise the required degrees of freedom to keep computational difficulty bounded. Proposing infinite degrees of freedom would not only be unnecessarily complicated, but it would be an unfalsible claim and be incompatible with the scientific method.
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On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me.
I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming.
We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model.
Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it?
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On July 06 2013 14:50 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 03:25 xM(Z wrote:
@ doubleupgradeobbies!
you and your computer!
your computer has a maker, who is your maker? Depends how exactly you define maker, and also how you define me. In a rather facile sense, my parents are my makers. They provided the starting material and information to initiate the process of 'making me'. Of course a computer is made, in this sense, in a more concious process than I am, so it's unsurprising that the computer is far more optimised for it's purpose than I seem to be for whatever 'purpose' I have. But with even a little more strict definition of me, then my parents certainly haven't shaped, consciously or unconsciously, all the parts of me as an individual, the parts they are responsible, while fundamental may only be a small part of 'me', no doubt social factors, past experiences, exposure to ideas and other factors have played a major role in making me who I am. In which case it would be fair to say, in this definition of maker, the universe at large is both the maker of myself as well as the computer.
fair enough but even so, for your analogy to make sense we have to have the computer here spewing out his thoughts about itself or, OR, bring the universe here and have it talk about you. 
your computer analogies just abuse the lack of other perspectives that would be given by those other participants to discussion.
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On July 06 2013 09:50 wherebugsgo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
I can easily make the leap regarding devices like computers and a USB stick. I don't need to know all of the workings of a USB stick personally to know what it is. These are devices that humans have made and we know what raw materials went into making them, we know these things can be explained because we've built them. I don't have any problems accepting the complexity of these devices.
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. Actually, by all current evidence we have, they ARE. They're just created through a long and complicated process that we do not actually fully understand. We don't really even understand the final product, either. In terms of matter you can break down almost anything in the universe, including humans, to basic (sub)atomic building blocks. The human brain and its periphery is no different. What you are suggesting is that, because we don't fully understand the brain/human mind, it's possible for there to be something supernatural (if it's not composed of matter, then it has to be supernatural!) involved. The onus is then on you. You've made this claim-now show evidence for it.
We don't build human brains. They come to be through an evolutionarily process that we still are very far from fully understanding. Even with stem and embryonic cell research we can only essentially "grow" a brain, not assemble one in a liner fashion the way we assemble a motherboard or a USB stick.
I don't think I have to prove my viewpoint either. I'm just saying I'm not comfortable with saying something like a brain is only made up of matter when we are so far from fully understanding how it works or comes to be.
We can break a brain down piece by piece and determine what sort of matter it's made out of, the same way we can break a cake down and tell you exactly what physical elements comprise the cake. What we can't do is break a brain down and figure out why a person baked that cake. And that is wherein the mystery lies which I would like answered before we should say matter is all there is. If matter is all there is in the brain, we best start answering some real questions, such as why person A chooses to go left, and why person B chooses to go right or why someone baked a cake.
If matter is all there is why can't we reassemble or reconstruct a brain the same way we can take a motherboard apart in a manufacturing plant and put it back together piece by piece, bit by bit? If it's too complicated to do something like this today, why should we assume a brain is as simple as pure chemicals and electricity? I just feel like it's taking a leap of faith to some degree which I find ignorant.
I prefer not to restrict things that we don't fully understand. Science has gotten very good at explaining things, but I find people fall into a trap lately where we overstep what we really know, to a point where it could be detrimental to the advancement of some areas. Keep in mind the current president of the NIH and one of the leading researchers on the human genome project is a former atheist converted to Christianity. (Francis Collins, feel free to look him up, he's written some very interesting books on the topic as well) There is a complexity to the brain we aren't even close to understanding, to deny that and think we know better already I just view as an ignorant stance that I would rather not take.
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Does this unit have a soul?
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On July 06 2013 16:44 LuckyFool wrote:
If matter is all there is why can't we reassemble or reconstruct a brain the same way we can take a motherboard apart in a manufacturing plant and put it back together piece by piece, bit by bit? If it's too complicated to do something like this today, why should we assume a brain is as simple as pure chemicals and electricity? I just feel like it's taking a leap of faith to some degree which I find ignorant.
Because we can see the finished cake, we can see the person making the cake, we can see what ingredients go into the cake...
but we don't know how to use an egg whisk, or an oven, or how to crack an egg, or how to mix flour into the cake. We're learning, but it's not an instantaneous process.
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On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it?
I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint)
A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream.
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On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream.
The basis of scientific understanding is the ability to accurately predict future outcomes. This is one of the main ways a theory is tested. A theory is considered valid if it can accurately predict the outcome of experiments. A theory is considered flawed if its predictions do not agree with experimental observations.
The only reason we're able to look back and explain the reasons behind the weather after the fact is because we understand the fundamental factors that govern it. We can see what actually happened and we know the few things that tend to lead to that weather event, so we can work backwards and look at radar maps and other data to find out what the cause was.
We do not understand the fundamental factors that govern how the brain operates. We know it's made of chemicals and works by sending action potentials down nerve fibers and across synapses. We do not know how the brain processes these electrical impulses.
Think of the brain as a computer. We know the basic parts that it's made of, but we don't know anything about the operating system or its programming language. We don't even really understand how electricity flows through the brain, let alone how it's processed.
We won't be able to make predictions or rationalizations about a brain's behaviour until we understand the underlying factors that govern said behaviour.
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On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream.
The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument.
We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that.
Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced.
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On July 06 2013 06:28 sc2superfan101 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 03:50 Tobberoth wrote:On July 06 2013 03:37 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 06 2013 03:29 Tobberoth wrote:On July 06 2013 03:24 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 06 2013 03:20 Tobberoth wrote:On July 06 2013 03:16 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 06 2013 03:14 Tobberoth wrote:On July 06 2013 03:13 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 06 2013 03:06 Tobberoth wrote:
[quote]
How doesn't it? I've already explained in a hundred posts how you make choices even if the actual choice you make is predetermined. You calling it an illusion of choice doesn't change that it fits with every single definition of the word. We're not talking about determinism... I think I've said that like... 10,000 times. Doesn't matter what you're talking about. The point is that the meaning of choice is inherently different if you believe in free will or not, without changing the definition because everything the definition depends on is already defined by your perspective on free will. If you're not interested in the subject, I don't understand why you're continuing to argue about it, and I don't understand what the point is of your posts in the topic. You haven't shown how definitions are subjective. I have shown you over and over again that you and I obviously have different opinions on what choice means, even though the definitions support both. Your apparent lack of understanding at this point is something I have little control over, unfortunately. I also find it hilarious how you keep arguing concepts concerning determinism, while vehemently claiming that's not what you're discussing. You haven't shown once how the definition given supports your interpretation of it. You've just said that it does and posted the definition. Stating an opinion is not synonymous with supporting said opinion with reasoning. The concepts of determinism and physicalism often intersect, because physicalism almost always (in my opinion always) implies determinism. But I am not discussing determinism, I am discussing physicalism. And I asked you how it doesn't. The fact that you can't show how it doesn't, proves that it fits. It's that simple. lol. Are you being serious right now? Hmm, still no attempt at showing how the definitions doesn't fit to my concept. Too bad, I expected more. Oh well, mcc understood what I meant, hopefully others did too. My attempts at explaining it to you, have failed. Understood what, exactly? I understand the idea, I think, but I'm not sure as you never provided an argument, you just said that it was so. Then you said that if I could not provide how it doesn't, it must be presumed to be true... I don't think that's the way things usually go, however. Usually the one making the claim needs to support his position. Show nested quote +Safe to say, you will find no dictionary showing that my interpretation of choice is incorrect, unless you find a definition which specifically mentions free will. Good luck. The fact that no dictionary shows any indication whatsoever that your interpretation is even considered is pretty good evidence that it's not.
How did I not provide an argument. I said, this is what choice means. You said I was wrong. I provided 5-6 definitions from different dictionaries, showing how I was right. You simply said I didn't show anything, and stopped at that. See, I have already supported my position, while you've done nothing. The definitions show I'm correct. If you disagree with that, you simply have to provide some basis, I can't make an argument against something you're refusing to provide.
No dictionary shows that my interpretation is considered? Are you joking, I've posted several definitions, all of them fit perfectly.
To put it really simply for you: In your opinion, making a selection between options based on free will, and making a selection between options without free will (so it can be predicted) are two different concepts. The definitions in the dictionary does not make this distinction.
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LuckyFool, presuming something magical or supernatural must be the explanation for something simply because we don't understand how it works well enough to replicate it is 1000^1000 times more stupid than believing it's just chemicals, electricity etc
I don't think I have to prove my viewpoint either, because it's incredibly obvious, however DertoQq has done a great job of explaining it!
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^ So now a concept of free will is considered as something supernatural and magical? You are really going for that poor guy arent you.
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Ants arguing about satellites ^_^
Throughout history, the vast majority of great minds - the precious few honest politicians, all the artists, all the altruists and seekers of knowledge before the advent of the scientific method, ironically even the majority of phenomenal modern day scientists (apart from those two crabby crusaders Dawkins and Hitchens who quite obviously have suffered some sort of severe psychological trauma at the hands of religious institutions) - believe(d) there is far more to existence than simple coincidences and biological machinery, and that the true nature of reality is something the rational mind with its pathetically self-limiting instruments will never be able to grasp. Just because.
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EPT
