Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Goober · 06-11-2003, 09:09 PM

Yguy,

Evidence that the brain makes decisions:" areas of the brain lighting up in MRI images when a person is asked to make decisions about something, and brain damage leading to poor decision making. "

There is no evidence that some outside influences shape the decisions made by the brain other than the information coming into the brain, so we should conclude that the brain is free to make it's own decisions until evidence arises that the brain is influenced by external forces and hence not free to makes it's own decisions.

Hence the statement: "The brain takes in information and makes decisions based on that information. It is free to make any decisions it wants to based on the information it has. Sounds like free fucking will to me!!!"

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I don't need to prove anything for which I have not accepted such a burden; which I almost never do, seeing how proving anything of this nature is virtually impossible, especially on the net.

:banghead:
I cannot prove a negative. You make a positive statement, you provide evidence for it if I require it. If I ask for proof, give it or retract the statement. Don't shift the burden of proof onto me. I will not debate with you if you do not accept that this is your responsibility.

yguy · 06-11-2003, 10:13 PM

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Originally posted by Goober
Yguy,

Evidence that the brain makes decisions:" areas of the brain lighting up in MRI images when a person is asked to make decisions about something,

That is not evidence of decision making. It is evidence that during the processing of information on which a decision is based, there is increased neural activity in those areas. That presumably means that information processing is occuring in those areas, but that is obviously not equivalent to decision-making.

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and brain damage leading to poor decision making."

What we're looking for is brain damage which leads to the LACK of decision making. Poor decision making is practiced by intelligent people every day.

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:banghead:
I cannot prove a negative. You make a positive statement, you provide evidence for it if I require it. If I ask for proof, give it or retract the statement. Don't shift the burden of proof onto me.

Geez, calm down, dude. Am I holding a gun to your head? If you don't want to accept the burden of proof, then don't.

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I will not debate with you if you do not accept that this is your responsibility.

Up to you.

Jesse · 06-11-2003, 10:24 PM

Does this have any bearing on neuroscience and free will?

The Precognitive Carousel Experiment

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Precognitive Carousel

A regular slide projecting carousel, the type that have a rotating cartridge for color photographic slides, with a button to advance to the next slide was used. Pictures of nice scenery and landscapes made up the contents. However, the carousel used by Walter had an interesting adaptation. The button did not actually advance the slides. Instead, a second cable was led from the machine to a test subject, who conveniently enough, had an electrode placed inside their brain. Now it seems that Walter had a ready supply of test subjects with electrodes already in certain areas of their brain, apparently left there after necessary invasive brain operations, for various conditions, unrelated to the experiment. (For anyone in doubt, this is the part that is morally wrong.) The test subject was asked to look at the pretty pictures, and when they were finished looking at one, they should simply push the (dummy) button to advance to the next picture.

Results

The results were unexpected. The subjects reported that just as they were about to change the picture, it changed before they pushed the button. Also many said that they had not yet decided to change the picture, but were just about to make that decision. These findings were replicated by German researchers, who found the time delay between the brain trigger and subject awareness that a decision had been made, to be between 0.5 to 1.0 seconds. In typical German, lump a lot of words together style, they called it Bereitsschaftpotential (Readiness Potential).

Implications

The implications that can be drawn from the results are what really constitute the experiment's freakiness. It is widely accepted that the brain uses parallel processing, but contemporary wisdom dictates that "consciousness / self-awareness / you" are involved in the decision's your mind makes. The results here however, indicate that the self-aware part of thought is only informed of a decision after it has actually been made by unconscious processes. Your mind has made a decision before it lets you know what it is, (the precognitive carousel manages to bypass the inbuilt delay necessary to maintain the illusion of free will).

yguy · 06-11-2003, 10:41 PM

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Originally posted by Jesse
Your mind has made a decision before it lets you know what it is,

I see nothing noteworthy here. It's like an employee in the State Department (the brain) bypassing Colin Powell (the person's will) to get information to the Rumsfeld (the projector) which causes him to take some action unbeknownst to Powell.

All it really demonstrates is that our thoughts are largely out of our control. That does not address whether we consent to their being out of control.

Jesse · 06-11-2003, 11:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by yguy
I see nothing noteworthy here. It's like an employee in the State Department (the brain) bypassing Colin Powell (the person's will) to get information to the Rumsfeld (the projector) which causes him to take some action unbeknownst to Powell.

Does that mean you'd predict that if one did a similar experiment, except that the brain activity was just passively recorded and the person really did control the slide projector with their finger, then we'd see that the person's choice to push the button would not always match the brain activity? Do you think we'd sometimes see people choosing to push the button with no anticipatory brain activity, or people failing to push the button even when their brain had already lit up in anticipation?

Wounded King · 06-12-2003, 01:43 AM

Dear Normal,

The passive shizophrenics do not feel as if they are in control which is just as good as your feeling that you are. The point is that feeling one way or another about your own volition in relation to an action does not neccessarily reflect the true relationship. Are you suggesting that conscious experience is not relevant to free will, that our free will decisions are made below the level of or outside of our conscious mind? If so then your experience of free will would certainly be illusional and if not then what is the soul other than the decision making process of the conscious mind?

For missatributions of volition in normal brains see

Farrer C, Franck N, Georgieff N, Frith CD, Decety J, Jeannerod M.
Modulating the experience of agency: a positron emission tomography study.
Neuroimage. 2003 Feb;18(2):324-33.

You now seem to be in the position of saying you have no idea if free will exists, other than your subjective experience, or how it operates but that it requires the soul and therefore you have proved the soul exists, by your definition.

TTFN,

Wounded

Normal · 06-12-2003, 06:39 AM

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Originally posted by Jesse
But what you're talking about is trying to build an A.I. with various cognitive abilities completely from scratch--to do that you need a lot of high-level understanding of how these functions actually work. Uploading is based on the idea that you just need the ability to map out an existing human brain at the synaptic level, and knowledge of the way individual neurons influence their nearest neighbors, so you can accurately simulate neurons on a computer. Assuming the reductionist idea is true and that high-level intelligence emerges out of some arrangement of lots of neurons interacting according to much simpler rules, a high-resolution simulation of a brain should behave pretty much like the original. Slavishly copying an existing brain would require much less insight into how the mind works than building a mind from the ground up.

So how are we going to interact with this uploaded brain, and be sure it works, if we don't give it a functioning body? Just run computer tests? Who knows what "information" was lost in the process then.

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Originally posted by Jesse
Fundamental physics says it can't last forever (the ultimate limit is provided by the Bekenstein bound), but I suspect you're talking about the more immediate limit on our ability to shrink transistors indefinitely. It is possible that this will lead to the end of Moore's law, but there's reason for optimism, as discussed in this article by Ray Kurzweil:

Interesting article. It will be interesting to see if these "paradigm shifts" actually pan out.

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Originally posted by Jesse
A proper Turing test would not be based on a few minutes exchanging text messages with someone, but on spending years in close relationship with them. Do you think it would be easy to fool people in that version of the test? Can you imagine that any of your close friends could be unconscious automatons with no understanding of anything they say or do?

Also, remember that in the case of an upload we are not creating a generic intelligence but a specific individual with a long history before being uploaded. I think people who already knew the person would be in a good position to judge whether the upload was really the "same person" or not.

Again, although we could never totally rule out the possibility that an upload wasn't really conscious, we can never totally rule out the possibility that people of other races are unconscious (or 'soulless') either. But for any group of people that you have a good amount of first-person experience interacting with, it's going to seem pretty unthinkable that they're just zombies, and the same would be true of uploads if they did indeed act just like regular people.

I don't see why you put so much faith in the Turing test as a test for the soul. Just demonstrating a few convincing human attributes was enough to fool some people with "ELIZA", so if you make it more advanced of course more people will be fooled, but that doesn't automatically mean "ELIZA" or an uploaded human brain that demonstrates a few characteristics of human behavior does actually have a soul.

Normal · 06-12-2003, 06:53 AM

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Originally posted by Goober
I clearly said that just because you think you could turn right does not prove that you actually could turn right it you chose to turn left. Just because you think you have that option does not prove that you actually have that option. It would be easy to make a computer program that, for example, considered turning left or turning right, but always chose to turn left in the end. Before you even ran the program you would know that it would turn left, but the program itself may well consider the pros and cons of turning right, but never chose it. That program would obviously have no free will, so you cannot claim that just being able to think about it means it is possible to do it. Just because I might think I can fly does not prove that I can.

That's because you have no rational basis to believe that you could fly. There is gravity stopping you. What is stopping me from turning left or turning right?

And a computer program is a bad example for an analogy to human behavior, as it does not have any sense of free will at all, practical, or metaphysical.

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Originally posted by Goober
The point is you cannot falsify the existence of multiple choices at the end, all we can ever observe is that a single outcome occurs. If we cannot falsify it, it is just an illogical belief, as much as fairies and invisible monkeys runnning the world.

Anything that's not falsifiable is an illogical belief? "I think, therefore I am" is illogical? Maybe it's just truth.

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Originally posted by Goober
I mean 'choices' as in 'alternatives'. If there is only ever one alternative then there is no free will as you describe it.

Perhaps you should look up the definition for "alternative".

And if there is only one outcome, your statement that "the outcome is dependant on your brain" is false if there are not multiple choices that exist at the time of each choice.

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Originally posted by Goober
Who cares how linear it is? My position is often dependent on my previous state in a linear fashion, say when I'm walking in a straight line. The electron has choices, it makes a choice. Therefore it has a soul. If satisfies your definition. Your definition says nothing about things moving in a 'linear fashion' or why they should be discounted.

If something is moving in a linear fashion, that means it's dependant on it's previous state. While it's true human behavior can be thought of to be dependant on it's previous state (very very loosely), it hardly leads to predictable behavior.

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Originally posted by Goober
You have already said that free will is not a product of structure it is a product of the soul. Complexity is a matter of structure, so complexity has nothing to do with free will according to you, so there is no reason why an electron does not have a soul.

I don't mean complexity as in "structured", I mean complexity as in "unknowns". There's only ever one thing we don't know about an electron: it's momentum, or it's position.

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Originally posted by Goober
These are just an ad hoc rationalisations to try and avoid the holes in your faulty definition.

I see very few holes.

Normal · 06-12-2003, 07:01 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Wounded King
Dear Normal,

The passive shizophrenics do not feel as if they are in control which is just as good as your feeling that you are. The point is that feeling one way or another about your own volition in relation to an action does not neccessarily reflect the true relationship. Are you suggesting that conscious experience is not relevant to free will, that our free will decisions are made below the level of or outside of our conscious mind? If so then your experience of free will would certainly be illusional and if not then what is the soul other than the decision making process of the conscious mind?

Again, these people have a disorder. They might not "feel" like they are in control, but then again they're paranoid?

Choices might be made outside our conscious mind, can you show me either way?

You're assuming human life is completely explainable by the brain (if the decision is not within the conscious brain, it must be illusional). I do not take this stance.

And thanks for the sources, I find these types of things interesting reads.

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Originally posted by Wounded King
You now seem to be in the position of saying you have no idea if free will exists, other than your subjective experience, or how it operates but that it requires the soul and therefore you have proved the soul exists, by your definition.

I've never claimed I have scientific proof, because none exists, so yes, my proof relies on my subjective experience.

Wyz_sub10 · 06-12-2003, 08:44 AM

Sorry this is so late, but I wanted to respond in any case...

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Originally posted by Normal
It's not insufficient if my definition of a soul is sufficent, which was my point. The demonstration of logic proves it exists. The mere act of making choices proves my definition of a soul exists.

The act of making choices does not prove a soul exists. Can you not see the difference between what you are saying the soul does and what logic "does"?

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So what's wrong with that? Do you want me say that souls are little blue men with winged feet?

You could say something, I don't really care what. You're the one claming that a force exists to cause a result.

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I don't know your "driver" anymore then you know my "driver", but if you look up the definition for pilot, you'll see that it says "Driver of airplanes", is that definition sufficient, or do you want them to describe the driver too?

The description of the driver is implied in the definition. It is not implied in your definition. I do not believe that this distinction is oblivious to you.

Are you suggesting your definition implies a description of the "driver"?

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I see. So you do want me to give a color, shape, and other physical properties to the soul. As I've been claiming all this time, it's a metaphysical concept, meaning it can't be explained in that manner.

I don't want you to ascribe any properties to it, necessarily. However, you have voluntarily attributed the property of "driver" to it, so apparently it can be described in physical terms.

And my concern, as I had stated, is not the description of soul, but your position that "soul" and "logic" are equally intangible.

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I'll explain to you why neurology is completely useless in disproving my definition of the soul.

IT DOES NOT GIVE US AN ANSWER ONE WAY OR THE OTHER WHETHER HUMANS HAVE FREE WILL OR NOT.

Neurology has NOTHING to do with free will.

Really? So undergoing a lobotomy will have no impact on free will? So no type of neurosurgery will affect you capacity to choose for yourself versus following strict conditioning, or not being able to choose at all?

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My definition of the soul has EVERYTHING to do with free will.

Because you say that's what the soul does? I think the soul only acts as the driver, but it's really not the cause of free will. It just appears that way.

Ergo, the soul has NOTHING to do with free will

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It's hard to believe Wolfram is pushing determinism while Hawkingfan is swearing free will exists in the associative cortex.

Interesting...and this has what to do with me?

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Logic is also intangible. You observe logic in action the same way you observe the soul in action, ie. you observe logic as it goes through a process, you observe the soul as you make choices. Both are equally valid "empirical" evidence if you ask me.

Okay - one last time. 'Logic' exists because it is the name we attribute to a process we can demonstrate. 'Logic' does not operate anything - we do.

'Soul' may be a name you give to some fictious process you think might be occurring, but cannot prove. 'Soul' operates something in some way you cannot explain.

So I have an admittedly abstract thing (a name) given to an agree-upon process that we can demonstrate, but takes no action on its own.

You have an unprovable force performing an unprovable task in a unprovable way that cannot be physical, yet it is a force that drives.

Seriously, you see no difference?

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Please elaborate on your problems with what I've said above then.

As above.

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I'm going to take this definition of pilot from dictionary.com, if that's ok with you:

1. One who operates or is licensed to operate an aircraft in flight.

As above - it is implied that "one" refers to a physical entity, specifically a person.

Your definition of "one" does not imply anything, unless you are telling me it is a physcial entity.

No wait...that's exactly the opposite of what you are saying! So how does this dictionary reference counter my point of "one what"?

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Yes, there are distinctions between the two. But is logic not active while in the process?

No.

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A soul is just a process in constant action.

I thought a soul was a "driver"? How about you decide what a soul is first. Is it a driver or a process or a pilot?

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Look at my above examples of the definition of pilot and how I proved the soul through free will, then tell me what's wrong with the defintion.

As above.

You did not prove the soul through free will, nor more than I have proven "ghklsa" exist because they control "skhfjgh".

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06-12-2003, 01:43 AM	#286
Wounded King Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Edinburgh Posts: 1,211	Dear Normal, The passive shizophrenics do not feel as if they are in control which is just as good as your feeling that you are. The point is that feeling one way or another about your own volition in relation to an action does not neccessarily reflect the true relationship. Are you suggesting that conscious experience is not relevant to free will, that our free will decisions are made below the level of or outside of our conscious mind? If so then your experience of free will would certainly be illusional and if not then what is the soul other than the decision making process of the conscious mind? For missatributions of volition in normal brains see Farrer C, Franck N, Georgieff N, Frith CD, Decety J, Jeannerod M. Modulating the experience of agency: a positron emission tomography study. Neuroimage. 2003 Feb;18(2):324-33. You now seem to be in the position of saying you have no idea if free will exists, other than your subjective experience, or how it operates but that it requires the soul and therefore you have proved the soul exists, by your definition. TTFN, Wounded

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