RoR: Forum

Stephen Boydstun asked:

I believe you mean to use volition interchangeably with free will in this article. Do I interpret you correctly in that?

Yes. I think a distinction between free choice and free will, with volition covering both, is helpful. Free choice could mean the mental part of volition and free will could mean physically acting upon a choice. But I did not make or use this distinction in the article. Note that Rand made this sort of distinction in The Romantic Manifesto, which my article quoted. Her labels were psychological action and existential action.

Merlin, do your differences with Rand over what is the scope of volition have implications for Rand’s theory of morality?

None come to mind.

Post 41

Friday, June 23, 2006 - 11:49pm

==============
Necessity is: if A, then B, even if C.
Contingency is: if A, then B, unless C.

Necessity and contingency are complementary concepts. Each is relative to certain C.
==============

But necessity is not "relative" to C -- it is independent of C.

Is this a mistake in your reasoning?

I guess I was talking about a necessity that was necessary -- and you were talking about a necessity that wasn't.

That is what I'm getting from your silence on the matter.

Post 42

Saturday, June 24, 2006 - 11:53am

Ed,

In empirical sciences, including neuroscience, we always keep the mathematical tools we are using sorted from the physical subject matter. The necessary connections obtaining in the mathematical tool kit are of a different character than the necessary connections we are pursuing in science.

The dependent-conditional formulas I stated were for physical necessities and physical contingencies. I gave an example of a physical necessity that is absolute—that angular momentum is conserved no matter what conditions are at hand—but most of the necessities we uncover in science are of the conditional sort, such as I displayed for the orbit of the moon.

These formulas for relativizing physical necessity and contingency to conditions were arrived at by Ted Honderich in his 1988 book Mind and Brain (OUP). I adopted them for my 1994–96 essay “Volitional Synapses” (and I there also adopted his Union Theory of the psychoneural relation).

Relativized necessities and contingencies are extremely pervasive and important to learn in science and in everyday life. There is no need for a concept of relativized necessities in mathematics. In Book 1 of the Principia, when Newton invokes a theorem from Apollonius’ Conic Sections to warrant an inference in a physical, central-force problem, Newton can rely on the absolute necessity of the theorem in conics. The same is true for any logic and any set theory that we rely on (perhaps implicitly) in physical science. The necessities of these formal relations are always absolute ones, and there is no usefulness within them of a concept of relativized necessity coordinate to a relativized contingency.

[For readers wanting to learn more about the use of the formal disciplines in science, I can recommend Patrick Suppes’ Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures (2002, CSLI ).]

Honderich’s dependent-conditional formulas for explicitly relativizing physical necessities is a fairly recent innovation. But the more general idea that physical necessities and contingencies must be relative to specific physical conditions (express or implicit) is everywhere in all the science or engineering I have studied or practiced.

Post 43

Saturday, June 24, 2006 - 12:09pm

Necessity is: if A, then B, even if C.
Contingency is: if A, then B, unless C.

Necessity and contingency are complementary concepts. Each is relative to certain C.

Either I don't understand this characterization or I don't agree with it. Let's consider a concrete example:

Necessity: If I get lung cancer, then I will die, even if I get chemotherapy.
Contingency: If I get lung cancer, then I will die, unless I get chemotherapy.

In the second case, my recovery is contingent upon my getting chemotherapy. In the first case, it is not. I will die even if I do get chemotherapy. But is this difference one of contingency versus necessity? Or is it one of contingency versus non-contingency? "Necessity" simply says that something must happen; the necessity could be conditional or unconditional - contingent or non-contingent. There is, in other words, such a thing as contingent (or conditional) necessity, which is reflected in the second case. I.e., my death is necessary unless I get chemotherapy.

Thus, both cases can be construed as examples of necessity, viz:

If I get lung cancer, then my death is a necessary, even if I get chemotherapy.
If I get lung cancer, then my death is a necessary, unless I get chemotherapy.

- Bill

Post 44

Saturday, June 24, 2006 - 4:55pm

Stephen, I do understand the contextuality (the conditioning) of necessity in physical science. Water boils at 100 degrees C WHEN THE ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE is at 1 atm.

It just (and still) seemed contradictory for you to say, on the one hand, that a necessity that is independent of a given condition C, and, on the other, that this necessity is still (somehow) relative to condition it is independent from -- relativity being a concept that rests on some kind of contingency between entities, some kind of contrast that one draw from an inter-relation.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 6/24, 4:57pm)

Post 45

Sunday, June 25, 2006 - 7:13am

Ed, this usage of relative to just means with respect to. Thanks, Bill, for your reflection.

I could drop Honderich's attempted formula for a dependence-conditional necessity, which was a progeny of the tradition of trying to render causality in terms of logical conditionals. Ed, that dependence is a logical dependence. If you would like to learn more about this, Honderich does devote quite a bit of discussion to it in his 1988. I cannot restudy that at this time.

Apparently we are in substantive accord on the reality of what I call physical contingency. You two would call it contingent necessity or contextual (conditional) necessity. Leibniz would call it hypothetical necessity, as distinct from absolute (unconditional) necessity. I bet there are significant differences in our larger views on the character of the physical and on the relation of the mental to the physical and on free will v. determinism that motivate our different preferred names for what I call physical contingencies.

However, my intent to show further my past work on contingency and necessity in the realm of physical processes, and the bearing of that on free will, was in prospect of continuing my exchanges here with Mr.Català. He seems to have withdrawn or been expelled. With his interests no longer being raised here, with the apparently little interest in this thread from the readers generally, and with the apparent completion of discussion of Merlin's article, I guess we best turn to our efforts elsewhere.

Thanks again for your inputs.

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 6/25, 9:22am)

Post 46

Thursday, February 12, 2009 - 6:43am

Durations of Physical Predeterminism

Physical Contingency

Harry Binswanger – 1/28/09

“In the case of craters on the moon, as far back as you want to go, it ‘had to be’ as it was.”

“Given the obtaining conditions (and the earlier conditions as far back as you want to go), it is necessary that meteors crashed into the moon.”

“If we imagine a world in which everything is deterministic, including (per impossible) the observers of that world, there would be no use for the modal terms; they would make no contrast.”

Post 47

Thursday, February 12, 2009 - 9:15am

Stephen:

I'm glad you bumped this. I really enjoyed this old article.

"Our attention is guided by goals, whether voluntarily or not. In the case of attention being captured involuntarily, no conscious decision is made, and there is some subconscious mechanism that determines what is important enough to command our conscious awareness."

There is something in this, as well as your links, that to me, resonates with the observation, 'gradients drive everything.' That observation is sometimes made as a half-joke, but I think it is 'funny' because it rings true. Gradients do drive everything, literally.

What we might call unconscious actors -- planets, comets, chemical reactions, and simple actors -- virus, bacteria, are all observed to be 'driven' by the concept of gradient, many times over.

Complex thinking mankind with volition is more than that, but can also be that as well; seekers of advantage based on gradient. We are difference engines, not sameness engines. Our intellectual attention and curiosity is drawn by 'difference,' not 'sameness.' The 'some subconscious mechanism' referenced above may very well be some atavistic fundamental wiring of life that is driven by the concept of gradient, difference. In a universe with a massively singular beginning, evolving towards a possibly dim 3 deg K uniform future, with mankind existing in the interim transitional sweetspot, it seems almost like a natural law that life would volitionally choose to seek gradient and flee sameness, even if its precursors did the same not via choice but via wiring, that is, the wiring that resulted in successful continual existence in this universe, with its rules. (Seek gradient, survive: seek sameness, perish. For all we know, different universe with different set of rules, different set of outcomes. Moot, our universe is what it is, with us in it.)

Try to think of an exception to this seemingly silly observation in our universe. Not even complex topics like human 'love' are an exception. 'Love' is in fact an example of an extreme gradient driven process. (We typically don't love all equally, we love one more than all others; an extreme example of gradient even in a complex psychological area.)

"Economies' are another prime example. Clearly driven by gradient.

Underneath our volition is our atavistic wiring, driven by gradient. In our case, we'd like to believe that we can at least choose what gradients to value. In the case of simple actors, they have no opinion on the topic. But while we act as volitional beings, we also share the attribute 'gradient seekers' far below the surface, from our shared ancestry simple actors in this Universe.

regards,
Fred

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 2/12, 9:17am)

Post 48

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 2:57am

Fred,

Thank you for your remark here, and thank you for the related remark in the vegetative-robots thread.

I know that we routinely speak of gradients being drivers, but I don’t think that the driving should always be taken literally. If two unequal masses are placed on opposite trays of a beam balance, then the difference in mass literally drives the motion of the balance. But when we say that a temperature difference drives a flow of heat or that a gradient of chemical species drives a diffusion, I don’t think we should take ourselves so literally. The literal drivers in these cases would seem to be things like molecular collisions and electrostatic repulsions. The case of heat transfer would seem divided. The radiative mode (Steffan-Boltzman) appears literally driven by the temperature difference, but contact and convective modes not.

I am familiar with and very fond of the idea of the difference engine from Marvin Minsky et al. In my essay “Volitional Synapses” in Objectivity V2N4, I wrote:

“Water and pebble at the waterfall move and change under circumstances, but purely passively. The living thing behaves in response to certain circumstances. The living thing is a highly structured system; one capable of internally actuated responses, one poised to make efforts toward valuable states of itself. The living system has behaviors in virtue of the fact that it contains, in its constitution (in constraints of its dynamics), possible states G such that subsystems are activated by differences between G and an actual state A so as to bring A to G (Minsky 1985, 78). The gravitropic root made horizontal will make itself vertical. In contrast, falling water or pebbles do not actively pursue lower levels on the earth; they do not detect and respond to gravity.” (190)

Although the difference-engine schema is a profound characterization of distinctively living action (and of some engineered systems, which are artifacts of living systems), it would seem that the literal driver of non-conscious living systems is only their physical constitution in it’s A-state.

Stephen

Post 49

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 8:51am

Stephen,

Would it be correct to attempt to re-state this ...

Although the difference-engine schema is a profound characterization of distinctively living action (and of some engineered systems, which are artifacts of living systems), it would seem that the literal driver of non-conscious living systems is only their physical constitution in it’s A-state.

... as:

"Non-living things are driven -- in any given, initial state -- by their physical constitution to behave in certain ways. While living things are driven to behave in certain ways by something more than merely their physical constitutions.

Plants are driven by the raw physics (by which non-life is driven), but also by life-supporting -- teleological -- physical stimulus-response, feedback mechanisms (e.g. gravitropic roots). With animals driven by everything prior, but also by emotions (e.g., fear). With man driven by everything prior, but also by abstractions (e.g., love and justice and self-actualization)."?

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 2/18, 8:52am)

Post 50

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 9:41am

Ed, yes, but with a couple of caveats. In your first paragraph, before we read the second, the word physical is naturally taken to be in contrast to mental or to a mysterious something from vitalism. I mean that is how it would first be read put before the general public who did not know you.

In your second paragraph, I learn that you never meant physical in that way. You meant the physical in contrast to the physiological. There is a similar contrast between physical chemistry and organic chemistry.

The second paragraph looks fine, except we would not want to fall into the old model of drive reduction as the full and best explanation of higher animal behaviors. On this in Objectivity: V1N5 pp.19−20. On the distinct levels of tropism, orienting-response, reflex, fixed-action-pattern, etc., V2N4 pp. 199−200.

Post 51

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 9:44am

Thank you Stephen - ye beat me in pointing that out... ;-)

So abused are some words and their conceptual original, that it is hard at times to come up with just the correctist word/concept which will not foster these ambiguities...
(Edited by robert malcom on 2/18, 9:46am)

Post 52

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 12:13pm

Ed, Stephen,

Given Ed's description "With animals driven by everything prior, but also by emotions (e.g., fear). With man driven by everything prior, but also...", how would you define "emotions" in animals, in man?

Post 53

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 2:41pm

Steve,

When I spoke of emotions which animals and humans share, I meant the nonrational 'sentiments' akin to James-Lange Theory. I meant for emotions to mean the exact same thing, whether expressed in animals or humans.

Humans have an extra-special psychological continuity and experience that is not found in animals, but this has to do with our extra-special ability for forming the captivating abstractions of a "rich mental life." I didn't mean to say that animals can love, for instance -- something which requires the capacity for abstraction.

I meant the "lower" or "base" emotions, like anger and fear.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 2/18, 2:43pm)

Post 54

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 3:52pm

Ye digging a hole, Ed...

Better to just use Branden's explanation - automatic psychological responses, involving both mental and physiological features, to the subconscious appraisal of what is perceived as the beneficial or harmful relationship of some aspect of reality to the being...
(Edited by robert malcom on 2/18, 4:11pm)

Post 55

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 4:11pm

Rev',

If true, then I would appreciate (rather than fear) the opportunity to climb out of it. In other words, bring on the criticism -- if you got any.

:-)

Ed

Post 56

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 6:33pm

I'm no expert in this area at all. A dog obviously has emotions that are, as Robert and Branden point out, psychological and physiological responses to their appraisal of something's relation to them. And so does a person, but because our evolution has been such that each new level of functionality is created by a new structure that was built on top of the previous structures - so we humans have emotions that tie to an abstraction, but it is mediated by structures that could be found in the dog, and the dog will have some structures in common with, say a lizard. We, for example, could be startled by a sound, in the same way a dog could be startled, or a lizard could be startled. The dog can form a level of emotional reactions not available to the lizard, and we can form a class of emotions not available to the dog. I was just asking out of curiosity.

Post 57

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 7:37pm

Rev',

Better to just use Branden's explanation - automatic psychological responses, involving both mental and physiological features, to the subconscious appraisal of what is perceived as the beneficial or harmful relationship of some aspect of reality to the being...

But Branden's explanation was made with humans in mind, not animals. It's not necessarily "better to use" it -- as you say. Not when I'm talking about both humans and animals. "Mental features" and "subconscious appraisals" are somewhat of a stretch when talking about what it feels like to be an animal.

I guess I could say that you are digging a hole with your notion of applying Branden's explanation toward non-human animals.

:-)

Ed

Post 58

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 9:54pm

You are now saying that animals not have subconsciousness?
that the animal mind blanks when not conscious? or that there are only conscious processes involved?

Post 59

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 7:25am