King's Indian

Hi, Kip.

No real time to reply in depth (I'll have more time tomorrow), so I'll just cherry-pick for now That makes sense: can you imagine the rigorous synthesis of all our scientific laws into one continuous and satisfying GUT, and what it may look like? It might be like having a map as big as the area of land it described.The ones I like seem to be related to (1): the redundancy that can be found in living systems (and yes, I am thinking of the panda's "second thumb", or enlarged radial sesamoid).I know what you mean, but I'm not sure...the organisms will just grow, but the activities (physical and mental) of the engineers will have played a crucial role beforehand. It reminds me of the programmers' saying: "You can programme a computer in a month to do in a hour what it takes a human to do in a week". By the time the engineers light the touch-paper and step back, who knows how many years of thought and work went into what seems a natural process? I grant you that the question of the engineers' importance becomes more complicated when these organisms start to evolve without any more outside interference.
Wow. How many people go toe-to-toe with Ernst Mayr and come off the better? You're absolutely right*. In fact, your idea can be extended to all the plastic arts in its creative aspect. The only two counter-arguments I can think of can be refuted by your point, if my extension of it works.

1) Not all sculpture is working on marble blocks. Rodin, for example, did his by moulding clay maquettes (models about 6 inches to a foot high) and then getting other people to scale them up into bronze.
2) Drawing from life seems positively creative: you start with a blank piece of paper, and then add marks until you get (say) a landscape.

Poppycock. When I sketch, it feels to me like this: I'm parked on my stool, looking at a coppice by a winding stream. The blank paper isn't just blank to me: it represents a state of the fullest possible potential. All the marks I make, whether describing the outline of a tree, or representing the ripples on the surface of the brook, remove possibilities that I could've made. I don't think I've made a line, but selected one from any number of possibilities. On any drawing you see, every mark stands in for the uncountable numbers of other marks the draughtsman decided not to do, and the creative process in this case is one of selected removal of options, until you reach one: the finished drawing. I don't know if you get what I mean, but trust me: I've felt it, and any draughtsman to whom I've spoken agrees. Perhaps you like to whip out an A4 pad and do a bit yourself. I'll stop, before I go into my well-rehearsed rant about how everyone should throw away their cameras and start sketching instead. It's a bit off-topic. It's the same with sculpture, as I have confirmed with students fo my axquaintance: selected removal of options (along with the marble, in some cases).
I don't see why evolution doesn't share some aspects of that: the more a limb evolves, the potential for further evolutionary change is restricted.
Wow. Ernst Mayr...
Will you look at the time? I'll just swing by the other threads, but I'll have to leave it here.
Take care,
KI.

*Something I can actually own up to as knowing something about. The British taxpayer helped me to become quite a competent draughtsman. Thanks, guys.

King's Indian

Hi, Kip.

No real time to reply in depth (I'll have more time tomorrow), so I'll just cherry-pick for now That makes sense: can you imagine the rigorous synthesis of all our scientific laws into one continuous and satisfying GUT, and what it may look like? It might be like having a map as big as the area of land it described.The ones I like seem to be related to (1): the redundancy that can be found in living systems (and yes, I am thinking of the panda's "second thumb", or enlarged radial sesamoid).I know what you mean, but I'm not sure...the organisms will just grow, but the activities (physical and mental) of the engineers will have played a crucial role beforehand. It reminds me of the programmers' saying: "You can programme a computer in a month to do in a hour what it takes a human to do in a week". By the time the engineers light the touch-paper and step back, who knows how many years of thought and work went into what seems a natural process? I grant you that the question of the engineers' importance becomes more complicated when these organisms start to evolve without any more outside interference.
Wow. How many people go toe-to-toe with Ernst Mayr and come off the better? You're absolutely right*. In fact, your idea can be extended to all the plastic arts in its creative aspect. The only two counter-arguments I can think of can be refuted by your point, if my extension of it works
.
1) Not all sculpture is working on marble blocks. Rodin, for example, did his by moulding clay maquettes (models about 6 inches to a foot high) and then getting other people to scale them up into bronze.
2) Drawing from life seems positively creative: you start with a blank piece of paper, and then add marks until you get (say) a landscape.

Poppycock. When I sketch, it feels to me like this: I'm parked on my stool, looking at a coppice by a winding stream. The blank paper isn't just blank to me: it represents a state of the fullest possible potential. All the marks I make, whether describing the outline of the tree, or representing the ripples on the surface of the brook, remove possibilities that I could've made. I don’t feel that I’ve made a line, but selected one from any number of possibilities. On any drawing you see, every mark stands in for the uncountable numbers of other marks the draughtsman decided not to do, and the creative process in this case is one of selected removal of options, until you reach one: the finished drawing. I don't know if you get what I mean, but trust me: I've felt it, and any draughtsman to whom I've spoken agrees. Perhaps you like to whip out an A4 pad and do a bit yourself? I'll stop, before I go into my well-rehearsed rant about how everyone should throw away their cameras and start sketching instead. It's a bit off-topic. It's the same with sculpture, as I have confirmed with students of my acquaintance: selected removal of options (along with the marble, as you say).
I don't see why evolution doesn't share some aspects of that: the more a limb evolves, the potential for further evolutionary change is restricted.
Wow. Ernst Mayr...
Will you look at the time? I'll just swing by the other threads, but I'll have to leave it here.
Take care,
KI.

*Something I can actually own up to as knowing something about. The British taxpayer helped me to become quite a competent draughtsman. Thanks, guys.

DRFseven

But how could someone will something "freely" without thinking? Something would have to occur to you (therefore it wouldn't be free) or there would be nothing to will, and you'd have to think about it because you'd have no choice. And, anyway, I thought we were talking about thinking; whether it was determined or not.

But pure sensation without meaning is not thought. It's what happens when you talk to some types of vegetative persons. The sensations never reach the cognitive areas.

Quote:

I'm not sure I can call happenstance a "determining" event.

Well, if you happened to have a flat tire, this event would determine that you would not get to work on time or whatever. You were not thinking of deterministic as meaning "planned" were you?

Do you mean it might be better if we pretended things weren't determined? You don't see any market for that knowledge? Look at medications like dopamine that are given to people with conditions that affect their ability to form motor intent. That is just one tiny thing. And why shouldn't we want to know how our cognitive system works? It seems odd to me that you don't see the use of it.

Quote:

Assuming the outcome of the happenstance event, sure, everything after could be determined. But overall, it wouldn't be a deterministic system, because there would be happenstance events. To me, "unpredictability" means the same thing as "undeterminability". Doesn't it?

Not at all. Think about this: You flip a quarter and can't predict heads or tails. Still, there are things that determine how it lands, aren't there? Spin, muscular movements, air currents.

Well, then, that would be a reason. It would be determined by the neural activity, which was determined by other connected groups of neurons representing memories you have of ice-cream, taste, and feelings.

the_cave

I'm not arguing for a traditional idea of freedom. I'm saying that it's possible that things could, indeed, just "occur" to us, and that would be in part equivalent to freedom for us. However, those things would not be determined events--they could indeed, just "occur", like quantum events occur. This is a hypothesis, but if it's true, it would in my opinion preserve a kind of "free will".

We're talking about will. Sometimes will is decided by thinking; but sometimes it seems to me it's decided by feeling. I am treating the two things as separate; sorry if that wasn't clear.

I'm going to have to define some terms here. When I speak of "pure sensation", what I really mean is "the cognitive experience of sensation, without higher processing". I claim I can experience something consciously without thinking about it--that is, without pondering on it further, other than to register the fact that I felt it.

Sure--but does that mean the flat tire itself was determined?

But I don't think that everything is determined--that's what I'm arguing for! That's my position. I don't think we need to pretend anything. I think happenstance is real, and it preserves a form of freedom for us.

Oh yeah, I think Dennett uses this example in his latest book (which I haven't really read very closely.) Two points:

1) I agree that ignorance--our lack of knowledge--provides us personally with an appearance of "freedom". This underlies a lot of what we call freedom; we don't know how things are going to turn out, or why they happen, so they appear to be undetermined.

2) But I'm arguing for even more than that--I'm arguing that there are also indeterminate events, at any measurable scale.

So, in the case of the penny, no, I can't predict the outcome. But it might be determined anyway, by spin, air currents, etc. However, there could also be events which just plain aren't determined, period. It's the existence of those kinds of events that I'm arguing for (and which do appear to exist on the quantum level, though this is still only one interpretation.)

But like the flat tire, the path the ion takes wouldn't itself be determined (so I'm arguing. Again, it's a somewhat speculative point.)

King's Indian

First of all, an attempt at a definition, so you can see if and where I have missed something out.

We may imagine a procedure of shading squares on a page of graph paper defined by two cellular automata rules and one starting, and one ending condition. There is only one square already shaded: the top middle one. This is invariant. We shall take each square within the grid at random, and only stop when the top and bottom of the grid are connected by shaded squares.
Squares may only be shaded if one of the three “touching” squares above is also shaded (rule A), and that it is also not touching a shaded square horizontally (rule B).
We can reduce these rules to a more simple set of guidelines: make an unbroken line of squares from top to bottom, using the least amount of squares possible (SoG. C).
We have thus “reduced” the automata rules into practical guidelines for behaviour, which are identical in the sense that the set of “all possible patterns generated by (A) & (B)” is equal to “all possible patterns generated by (C)”. SoG. C is more useful to us, as we do not have to consider all possible squares, only the ones that are touching the shaded line at a particular moment in time.

And now, some stuff:

In talking about human behaviour, We make the following assumptions.
Assumption 1: All behaviour is a response to its environment (which will include cultural environment in our case, as we are social animals). Furthermore, all such behaviour is solely determined by regulated but unconscious processes, such as hormone release by stimulation of glands, or neural firing patterns etc. Again, such examples of deterministic behaviour increases numerically in animals solely in direct proportion to mental storage power (more crudely, “brain size”). The point relating to deterministic behaviour can be demonstrated by such simple animals as C. Elegans. These “decide” whether there is enough food in the immediate environment by sensing a chemical that represents a certain density of other flatworms in its proximity, and has the option of stasis or feeding, but not much more. Or, in our case, something that we perceive as directly threatening is dealt with by involuntary responses such as withdrawing one’s hand from excessive heat. Alternatively, where we perceive no danger, other chemical responses may change one’s body into a state of relaxation. We may see these are the simplest of our behaviours, but anything more complicated is due to a difference of degree only, for the sake of argument. (I’ll try and address “excitement”, or “interest”, below). In all cases above, the response to stimulus has its analogous mental patterns.
As well as being involuntary, the mental activity of such responses can be categorized and stored. They may then be retrieved, with the appropriate external stimuli. They may not be seen as “creative processes”, as only very similar stimuli will trigger a remembered pattern of response. We may classify them as memories, or stored patterns of response. In any similar recurrence of events, such patterns of response may modify behaviour, in a restricted way.

Assumption 2: Humans have, in addition, a “module” that applies “reducibility” to perceptions of our reality, and has the power to draw patterns from reality that can be treated practically. This module may be a localized area of the brain, or be represented by specific neuron-firing “networks”, but for now the important point is its independent development from other mental activities. For now, we will assume that the module “creates” patterns by analogy to natural selection: a spontaneous process that tries to compare mental networks of all types, and a reductive sorting process that determines how good a correspondence is produced. This may have evolved by natural selection, because its advantages are clear in terms of reproductive success. Sometimes the outside world has an overwhelming and contradictory level of stimuli, and those animals best equipped to survive will be the ones who extract the information that has the most immediate priority. We assume at all times that the module itself works unconsciously.

Assumption 3: In some way, the patterns generated by our module can be represented, stored, and perceived, in ways that are analogous to our perception of the outside world. Our “perception” of the concept “tree” is not the same as seeing a real tree, because all we are really “perceiving” is an abstracted “pattern of reducibility”. Both of these cases differ from the memory of a tree: a stored pattern of direct perception. For clarity, we will analogize perceived modular patterns to “memories”, only insofar as they are stored patterns of indirect perception. Once so stored in the form of “mental networks”, such patterns may be subject to comparisons with patterns of direct perception, to form novel patterns that have no direct real-world comparisons. And of course these novel patterns may be stored, retrieved and compared…and so on.

Assumption 4: [added after posting] The universe in its entirety is composed of cellular automata (to be determined), and our module is the only way we have of applying them, and their rules, in practical ways.

Assumption 5: By biological means (eg scent) we recognize members of our own species.

Some thoughts:

A) As social creatures:
If we can reduce complex behaviour to patterns, we recognize that some entities exhibit more complexity than others. If we consider various events comprising of the movement of objects, we can soon generalize in the simplest terms that objects are far more likely to move from high to low than otherwise. Therefore a pattern of “gravity” can be practically applied, without necessarily having to extend its universality, or consider inverse-square laws, etc.
We may further recognize that other humans exhibit an astonishing variety of behaviour, as responses to a wide range of differing situations, but also within very similar situations. We also perceive that, in terms of repertoire, we may put ourselves right at the top end of any scale of complex behaviour. I propose that when we see such biological entities as members of our own species exhibit a vast range of behaviour within and between situations, the only practical pattern that may be achieved by reduction is that such biological entities are able to exercise “free will”.
Here, then, “free will” is a model generated by our module that answers practically to a wide range of human behaviour. If we are in competition with members of our own species in terms of resources, or reproductive success, etc., it may be less of a disadvantage to model our competitors’ behaviour as “free, in the sense of perfectly rational”, then as too restricted or utterly random. This being in the same way that over-estimating opponents inspires a caution that leads to withdrawal until a more favourable occasion, and under-estimating them inspires a rashness that may lead to defeat.

B) A note about “interest”:
If extraction of patterns is evolutionarily useful, then we may evolve a set of neurological stimuli in response to the formation of a pattern that is successful by comparing it to real world events (or to another pattern that is well-matched, with correspondingly less intense stimuli). One may be the release of “pleasure” stimuli, perhaps somewhat like our “free from danger” one. Another may be a hormone that further stimulates the “reducibility module”. This may be the mechanism when we find something to be “interesting”. It may also explain when we find something too interesting, ie when we find patterns that connect things in ways not really applicable to the real world (let’s say for example, oh I don’t know, Christianity).

C) Applying A) & B) to our own perceived behaviour.
Given the above, we recognize that we belong to the same species, and we have assumed that other members' literally bewildering variety of (deterministic) actions are most pragmatically reduced to, and explained by, “free will”. Given the success of such a model, it may only be inevitable that we apply “free will” to ourselves. In perceiving that our own degree of complexity is analogous to our competitors (who, after all, we may have overcome), and that we are rewarded by such pattern-forming in general, then self-application of the “competitors’ free will” model seems logical. If so, the terms we give to our own stored mental patterns as practically interpreted within that model will be those such as “desire”, “need”, “intention”, etc.
Notice that the model, as applied to ourselves or competitors, is not true. Both our sets of behaviour are as deterministic as the flatworm, although much larger. But in situations where we have to react within a certain time (most of our everyday life), the free-will model will be statistically more reliable, in ways that are selectable by evolution. To go back to our practical “gravity” model. This will still be useful to us, even if we over-ambitiously find patterns that join “the surface of the Earth” to “things that suck*”.

D) A quick note on creativity
One thing that anybody wonders when they’ve done something creative, and they quite like it, is: “where did that come from?”. A modular explanation may be sought in these terms: however one may define creativity, it relates to pattern-formation. The experience in making a sculpture can be stored, and compared to networks that combine “the natural object”, “aesthetics” etc in ways that may stimulate the hormonal response posited in (B).

E) An Evolutionary model of expansion.
Simply put: the Reducibility Module, in evolutionary terms, may stimulate brain size. I have been talking so far of our present state where our brain size is already well-developed. If we say, for the sake of argument, that animals who compete by range of deterministic responses will have a better chance if their storage-retrieval system is bigger: then there is already selective pressure for bigger brains without our module. However, if animals (such as early hominids, who had quite sizeable brains without much evidence of tool-making ability) suddenly, in evolutionary terms, developed such a module, then the following may have happened. Say Hominid A (module, large repertoire of behaviour) is in competition with Hominid B (no module, but bigger repertoire): also, suppose Hominid A’s module is in a less evolved state than our own, so it is only applied in direct competitive activity.
“A” may characterize his opponent’s behaviour as “rational”. Without applying the same “rationality” to himself, “A” will need to find a deterministic strategy that will see him victorious. In perceiving the opponent’s range of freedom, “A” will, by processes proposed above, endlessly generate new strategies unconsciously by re-iterated combination, and reduction to practicality, of mental events, including memories of past victories. Such a strategy of forecasting outcomes may give him an edge that his larger brained opponent will not have access to.
As the module spreads through the population by reproductive success, hominids both equipped with modules will compete. In this case, what may decide the victor is the storage capacity for newly generated ideas. In this way, more efficient modules are roped to larger brains like mountaineers, as they co-operate in evolution.
The only prediction the “reducibility module” makes is to compare brain sizes throughout hominid development. One might expect to see them growing quite large, and then maintaining their size, with no advanced tool-making ability in evidence. Then, after a period of being the same size, another period of expansion, this time accompanied by sophisticated tools, cave-painting etc, to the present day.

F) A modular definition of philosophy
(Only joking)**

I’ll leave it there. There are some other things kicking around, like “language”, that I will want to look at. It will probably turn out that the above is I[]too[/I] applicable for its own good, or that these sorts of ideas are old news to real determinists, or again, that there’s a glaring flaw. I welcome your comments in any event.
And anyway, it was fun to do.

Take care,
KI

*Like fundamentalists.
*…or am I?

John Page

Noble Savage:

IMO the reduction of sense data is the modus operandi of the brain and as the patterns of reality persist they take hold within ourconsciousness and we develop language for them....

Patterns of Eternity

Cheers, John

Kip

KI,

Fascinating post. I might only question these:

"Furthermore, all such behaviour is solely determined by regulated but unconscious processes"

" [added after posting] The universe in its entirety is composed of cellular automata (to be determined), and our module is the only way we have of applying them, and their rules, in practical ways."

These are all conroversial assumptions. Indeed, the universe may be like a cellular automata in the sense that laws dictate how the fundamental particles alter postions from one moment to the next - but may not be a CA in the strict sense that these laws are only functions of local (neighbor) cells. Perhaps cells across the galaxy affect how my hands will move.

Your comments are reducibility are interesting. The question I keep asking myself is "reducibility == intelligence?". I think our moral maxims also reduce to "propagate genes".

The brain module you mention may very well be the cortex. And I strongly agree with the method of discovering reductions - random canditates and natural selection - you hypothesize. I have thought the same even before this discussion - intelligence must work through an evolutionary mechanism.

Regarding your comments - you seem to say that as complexity increases - eventually human behavior can only be understood as "free will". My responses to this are:

1. the majority of human behavior IS predictable - especially at the macro scale
2. we know that the behavior we cannot predict is just as mechanical and determined as the beahvior we can - only more subtle/complex (is free will a function of predictability - this is the position Wolfram adopts but I think this abuses language)
3. in this case - free will would only be a function of ignorance. We may as well say that the system of flipping coins has free will.

Kip

King's Indian

Hello, Kip.

I’ll just address your latest, before I bang on (“language” almost ready, and mercifully concise, for me):

1) I consider my assumptions to be over-generalized: When I state the unconscious nature of behaviour, or the universality of cellular automata, I’m adopting these assumptions pragmatically, and only for the time being. In the first case, I want to try and see how far reducibility may suggest ways for explaining the most complex human behaviours without free will, and in the latter I want to keep away from all but the most local interactions. Points noted, and will be applied when we’ve knocked the idea into a bit more shape.
2) Yes, I’m wondering about the correspondence of reducibility with intelligence, too. It’s quite fun. I may be even more interested when our module lets us down. By this I mean the patterns of judgment we apply to our lives that harm ourselves; or even others, not something that does members of a social species any real good in the long-term. I think religion is such a destructive pattern, along the lines of the saying “A bad man may do bad things, but it takes religion to make a good man do bad things”. Can’t remember who said it, though.
As for morality: I would like to try and explain how such a concept may override even such evolutionary behaviours as kin-selection, reciprocal altruism and the like. In the case of the former, it seems quite difficult to reach any rigorous way of deciding. After all, morality may be a way of sacrificing ourselves for strangers on the assumption that we may share a (vanishingly small) set of genetic material. Unfortunately, another morality might dictate the killing of strangers, in the form of a “morally-just war”; strangers whose genetic material may have many points of similarity.
3) The cortex? Tell me more…
4) “The majority of human behaviour is predictable, esp. at the macro-scale”. Well, yes. But I wouldn’t want to bet my life on such predictability. And remember, in the examples of our old friends Hominids A and B, this is what it comes down to. I still like the idea that it makes evolutionary sense to over-, rather than underestimate a competitor for resources, and a modular interpretation of “free will” is a practical way of modelling another’s “modular creativity”.
As a practical survival strategy, it has more going for it than laboriously applying a modular model to a competitor’s behaviour: by the time one has rigorously explained such behaviour, the bugger may have made off with the food and the women. I don’t see any fundamental difficulty why a module such as ours can’t explain itself though, using only the “creativity” we have assigned to it.
I tend to side with you against Wolfram, too. I would say that badly understood behaviour is no more than that: badly understood. Such behaviour doesn’t need to be particularly subtle, even (The point of Nixon’s “Madman Theory”, I believe)

Free will is a function of ignorance, in the sense that it isn’t a full explanation: I think this goes back to Dawkin’s “What good is half an eye?”; what good is half an explanation for a competitor’s behaviour, in evolutionary terms? Better than a quarter-explanation, if the full explanation isn’t to hand.
In a way, I agree with the “flipping coins” analogy: given the assumption that there wouldn’t be just two outcomes, but innumerable ones; any one of which would lead to our disadvantage.
Good post all round, I think: keep ‘em coming.

Take care,

KI

John Page

Mahatma:

Yes, advantage through either:

a) being able to behave in a way that is unpredictable to the competition and/or
b) gues the competition's moves.

The point you bring out, then, is having recognized this pattern we can proceed with algorithms for estimating predictability to form opinions like "He's a boring old fart, he'll never eat foreign food", "Yep, so far off the wall you don't know what's coming next".

This then draws us to experience the unpredictable (as a beneficial evolutionary trait) in order that we can figure it out.

Do I have any evidence for this view? No. (Other than dterminism ).

Cheers, John

King's Indian

Hi, John!

That's about the size of it. The module will go on shaking its creativity-maker at an unaccessible "algorithmic level", and it will feel to us that we're having ideas (of a rather personal nature, to cite your first example; but far be it from me to cast aspersions on your module). As for unpredictability, we will already have formed a pattern resulting from a previous failure to form a corresponding pattern that links thermostats and other people (probably when we started trying to fiddle with their knobs).

That seems a little unclear: better to say that my module has interpreted the patterns formed by your module that found associations in my module's hypothesis concerning hominid A's hypothetical hypothesis of (no less hypothetical) hominid B's behaviour.
You're welcome.

Evidence? I think the idea of a modular process that indiscriminately tries to jam stored mental patterns together to make them fit, and then belatedly applying their usefulness to real-world situations is a pretty parsimonious explanation of Camille Paglia. It certainly satisfies me.
Oh, go on, then: I don't know. How could we differentiate all our "modular patterns" experimentally, when our module seems to treat them fairly liberally? I shall stop here, because I have set myself the limit of one gaping hole in my argument per post.

Take care,

KI.

* I assume, of course, that our shared cultural horizon includes Boney M.