| | Ellen,
"Determinism is the thesis that 'there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future'
Of course,
I assume that you'd consider "free will" at minimum to entail more than one physically possible future.
...
"free will" to entail a purposeful selection amongst alternatives of action, not merely an indeterminist
(due to a quantum event)
It would only give you occasional "Epicurean swerves" (a point which apparently Penrose doesn't understand).
Agreed,
You added:
Even if one holds a theory such as Penrose proposes, that quantum effects in microtubules are sufficiently amplified in the brain so as to allow for more than one possible brain state S' at t2 resulting from brain state S at t1, this still doesn't give you purposeful direction of behavior.
My understanding is it is an immense help, hence all the research into quantum computing. Solutions, such as pattern-recognition can "crystalize". Having considered how to program a computer/robot to take directions to go to a store and buy groceries, having a quantum computer to simulate reasonableness of commands (the way we would visualize doing a task, mentally practicing it) would help a lot.
No, this doesn't have much to do with volition. Does Mr. Robot buy a banana or an orange at the store? Will Ms. Robot buy that cute plastic necklace in the checkout line because it thinks its pretty?
Another property of chaotic systems (like neural nets) is high-sensitivity, an ability to integrate very weak biases.
"Chance favors the prepared mind". The phenomena of "serendipity". Two people inventing the same thing at nearly the same time.
No, I'm not proposing some spooky Platonic nether-realm but a bias, a force consequent to nothing more than conservation of energy, and our illusory arrow-of-time. The direction of time, as a physical dimension, is there already. But the instant "now" is the point our mind's volition is swimming, oscillating through, and is changing the way the universe "evolves", or should I say developes.
But in order to support the reality of purposeful selection amongst alternate possible futures, one would have to propose that the conservation laws are breached. (Where's the extra energy coming from? And the change in momentum and angular momentum?)
Or that time and causality are illusory; that the future influences the past and present - teleology. Life "evolved" because a universe with life conserves energy, reaches thermal equilibrium, faster than one without it. Today we're using chemical energy, perhaps in the future some life form will be releasing potential energy on galactic scales, making the universe a bit smaller and more compact in the process by chucking mass in black-holes.
Chance-bias (luck) is like a balloon rising. You don't expect a balloon to rise. But the atmosphere has an imperceptable pressure-gradient, and imperceptable impulses from all those gas molecules squeeze the bottom and sides more than the top, and up it goes.
I suspect the universe has a kind of pressure-gradient in the time direction, nudging molecules at the plank-scale to invent clever configurations (life) to make the universe smaller, more compact, by liberating the order trapped in mass.
I don't think I'm too far out of line proposing something as radical as a violation of "causality" as we understand it now. I'm not alone in noticing some strangeness in the nature of evolution, consciousness and time.
Scott
|
|
