Physicist and author Lisa Randall was on Charlie tonight. I liked one thing she said: that science can help us realize that there is uncertainty in everything we say; that just saying something brings uncertainty with it. I may not of course agree with everything she says, but.... who knows!

The point again I was making Odin was not to discount fantasies, but that maybe the simpler explanation for the paranormal is the better one? Leaks from alternative universes really has nothing to do with it. The paranormal is part of this universe, and it does not call it into question or make it more fantastic in the least. (though I would not agree with Brian's reasons for that, of course, though he might agree with my previous sentence)

The "simpler" explanation only seems simpler to us because we are hard-wired to see the world in terms of agency, intentionality, and purpose because of our evolutionary history as hyper-social organisms.

A common and humorous example is when people yell and scream at a malfunctioning device and start accusing it of sinister intentions.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Your inverted statement of mine is no more valid that my statement, for the same reasons.

I didn't say yours was invalid, I said it wasn't saying anything.

Strictly speaking, mine was misspoken; I used "physical" as a shorthand for "the world we experience in its observed regularities," and that's what I actually meant. We observe the brain to be that which thinks. Whether we think of it as physical in a naive-realist way or spiritual/manifestation of consciousness in an idealist way, the observed reality remains the same. The soul remains an add-on to that observed reality which is not necessary to explain what we observe.

Which, by the way, is the answer to your suggestion that the "simpler" explanations for psi phenomena are the better ones. When those "simpler" explanations conflict with the whole complex of observations and models we have made for other aspects of reality, the construction of assumptions necessary to preserve both becomes far more complex in all than the more "complicated" explanations such as Odin and I have been discussing.

Originally Posted by Odin

The "simpler" explanation only seems simpler to us because we are hard-wired to see the world in terms of agency, intentionality, and purpose because of our evolutionary history as hyper-social organisms.

A common and humorous example is when people yell and scream at a malfunctioning device and start accusing it of sinister intentions.

Dead matter doesn't have agency. It does what it is told to do given the iron laws of physics.

Living things, on the other hand, tell the matter what to do depending on their own degree of agency.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

Dead matter doesn't have agency. It does what it is told to do given the iron laws of physics.

Living things, on the other hand, tell the matter what to do depending on their own degree of agency.

This may well be a misconception arising from Newtonian physics. We currently see the processes of nature as being indeterminate, which in a way implies free will. The laws of physics aren't as "iron" as they were once thought to be. The distinction in this regard between the living and the non-living is not as clear-cut as it was once thought to be.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

Dead matter doesn't have agency. It does what it is told to do given the iron laws of physics.

Living things, on the other hand, tell the matter what to do depending on their own degree of agency.

That's right.

It is a question of levels and degrees, or gradations of being, less free to more free. The old philosophers called it emanation.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Strictly speaking, mine was misspoken; I used "physical" as a shorthand for "the world we experience in its observed regularities," and that's what I actually meant. We observe the brain to be that which thinks. Whether we think of it as physical in a naive-realist way or spiritual/manifestation of consciousness in an idealist way, the observed reality remains the same. The soul remains an add-on to that observed reality which is not necessary to explain what we observe.

You give primacy to the epistemological in your description of reality. So you used "physical" (instead of an idealist term I would prefer) as a shorthand for your description of what science can observe using its method. But this method cannot understand anything but the outer surface of things; the method itself limits what it can know. The "observed" (as you define it) only means that which science can describe using its protocols.

But we don't observe thinking at all, or any other activity of free spontaneous consciousness. We do not "observe the brain to be that which thinks." Our basic disagreement again; mental states are not observed, only experienced. There is no difference on an individual or a "unitary consciousness" level; subjectivity is subjectivity, period. All observations of mental states depend on the reports by the subject of what (s)he experiences. You can't see a subject as an object, and there is no separation between them. The subject is not an "add-on;" it is necessary for any observation, because it is what observes.

Which, by the way, is the answer to your suggestion that the "simpler" explanations for psi phenomena are the better ones. When those "simpler" explanations conflict with the whole complex of observations and models we have made for other aspects of reality, the construction of assumptions necessary to preserve both becomes far more complex in all than the more "complicated" explanations such as Odin and I have been discussing.

It doesn't fit in your ballpark; the assumptions you have made. Those assumptions are what makes it complicated. Our normal language is simpler, and correct, as far as language can be correct.

Originally Posted by Odin

The "simpler" explanation only seems simpler to us because we are hard-wired to see the world in terms of agency, intentionality, and purpose because of our evolutionary history as hyper-social organisms.

A common and humorous example is when people yell and scream at a malfunctioning device and start accusing it of sinister intentions.

If you mistake a machine for a human, then that is what's funny. It is simpler just to admit that what we are is intentional agents. All the complicated, fantastic, irrelevant stuff about alternative universes are attempts to evade what we know that is basic and fundamental to just existing as spiritual beings. We are, we are aware, we act. Quite simple.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

This may well be a misconception arising from Newtonian physics. We currently see the processes of nature as being indeterminate, which in a way implies free will. The laws of physics aren't as "iron" as they were once thought to be. The distinction in this regard between the living and the non-living is not as clear-cut as it was once thought to be.

There is indeterminancy with dead matter. So there is "free will" in "dead matter", but it's not agency. I suspect that it's essentially random and ultimately bound by the geometry of space-time.

At the macro-level, it looks like determinancy.

The rock is going to do what I tell it to do when I throw it into a window.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

You give primacy to the epistemological in your description of reality. So you used "physical" (instead of an idealist term I would prefer) as a shorthand for your description of what science can observe using its method. But this method cannot understand anything but the outer surface of things; the method itself limits what it can know. The "observed" only means that which science can describe using its protocols.

It means what we observe to be true. In this particular case I'm not talking about what we can observe versus what we can't, I'm talking about accepting what we observe versus insisting that it's not true. Thus, any limitations of the method don't arise. We observe that brains think. We observe that people with damaged cerebral cortexts experience cognitive difficulties. We observe that stimulating a part of the brain electrically produces cognitive, memory, and emotional responses.

Note that I'm not talking at the moment about anything else that may be observed with any other method, merely about the fact that these things are observed in this way. And so, regardless of what else we observe, regardless of what is "beneath the surface," and regardless of what metaphysical theory we prefer to account for what the brain is in any cosmic sense, the fact remains that we observe brains thinking. That fact must remain with us regardless of what else we do.

But we don't observe thinking at all, or any other activity of free spontaneous consciousness. We do not "observe the brain to be that which thinks." Our basic disagreement again; mental states are not observed, only experienced.

We observe that when people suffer cerebral cortex damage of certain kinds, they have difficulty using language, performing mathematical calculations, and reasoning logically. All of these are normal observed concommittants of reported experienced mental states. Either you accept that they are associated with, and reliable indicators of, those mental states or you do not. If you do, then you must accept the evidence that brains think.

If you do not, then you should consider the logical consequences. It means that when you hear someone talking, this is not an indication that they are aware in any subjective way of using language. It means that when a student performs a mathematical calculation in class, that student could be an automaton not really thinking mathematically at all. It means there is no connection whatever between people's behavior and their minds. Are you prepared to go that far out on a limb in defense of what you want to believe?

It doesn't fit in your ballpark; the assumptions you have made.

This has nothing to do with assumptions. It has, rather, to do with the entire corpus of knowledge gained from observation. If we accept the literal reality of "spirits," we are left with a huge number of unanswered questions, including what exactly a "spirit" is, and how to fit it in with the rest of the known universe. As such, it becomes far more complex than an explanation which does not require such a hypothesis.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

There is indeterminancy with dead matter. So there is "free will" in "dead matter", but it's not agency. I suspect that it's essentially random and ultimately bound by the geometry of space-time.

Let me suggest to the contrary, on the basis that we don't really understand what "free will" and "decision making" imply. Also, when a decision is made without our understanding the basis of the decision, it looks random. Say you have someone walking in the park, who comes up to a branching of paths and could go one of two ways. He chooses to go left, not for any reason he can explain, but just because he felt like doing so. From my point of view as an observer, a random event occurred. From his point of view as an actor, he made a free choice.

From our perspective as observers, a photon being detected at one point of the probability cloud rather than another looks like a random event. What does it look like to the photon?

I don't mean this as a goofy question although it may sound like one. While I don't suggest that photons have feelings or conscious preferences or make rational decisions, I believe that quantum indeterminacy and the collapse of the wave function is the prototype of all decision-making, and that such things as emotion and reason, while they add information, complexity, and rationality to the system, do not ultimately make the decision. Photons and other subatomic particles do not have emotion or reason but they do have will.

At the macro-level, it looks like determinancy.

No, actually in most processes it doesn't. That's why I talk about quantum mechanics and chaos together, not about one or the other in isolation.

One of the important discoveries of chaos is that a process which is mathematically deterministic can generate unpredictable outcomes based on inability to precisely determine initial conditions, or rather on sensitivity to initial conditions so great that it is impossible to determine them with enough precision. Small differences in origin resulting in big differences in outcome. One hears students of chaos insisting that the processes are "really deterministic," but this relies on the assumption that the initial conditions actually HAVE a perfectly precise set of descriptors even if we are unable to measure them. The contribution of quantum mechanics is that no, they don't.

At the subatomic level indeterminacy is universal. At the macroscopic level, indeterminacy is sometimes suppressed by certain processes; it still exists, but on too small a scale to measure. This is true for example of the swing of a pendulum or the orbits of the planets. But many other processes don't suppress that root-scale indeterminacy and manifest it on a macroscopic scale as well: these are the processes studied in chaos.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

If you mistake a machine for a human, then that is what's funny. It is simpler just to admit that what we are is intentional agents. All the complicated, fantastic, irrelevant stuff about alternative universes are attempts to evade what we know that is basic and fundamental to just existing as spiritual beings. We are, we are aware, we act. Quite simple.

*Starts banging head against the wall*

Originally Posted by JonLaw

There is indeterminancy with dead matter. So there is "free will" in "dead matter", but it's not agency. I suspect that it's essentially random and ultimately bound by the geometry of space-time.

At the macro-level, it looks like determinancy.

The rock is going to do what I tell it to do when I throw it into a window.

I don't believe in Free Will and trying to defend it using quantum mechanics reeks of desperation. The opposite of Determinism is NOT "Free Will", the opposite of Determinism is Randomness. QM is just as deterministic as classical mechanics, just in a different way.

"Free Will" is an illusion caused by the working of out brains which evolved to help us survive as social organisms. IMO the fact that people have unique personalities goes against the notion of "Free Will" because what is personality if not habitual behaviors and thought processes?

Ultimately, as The Buddha pointed out, there is no "me" or "mine", our own thoughts are just another perception in consciousness that has an infinite chain of causes.

Originally Posted by Odin

I don't believe in Free Will and trying to defend it using quantum mechanics reeks of desperation.

Odin, how would you define "free will"?

To my way of thinking, all that "free will" implies is that my choices (as I experience them) cannot be predicted ahead of time with perfect certainty. Operationally speaking, the term can mean nothing else. This means that randomness and free will are the same thing, the difference between them being only one of viewpoint. Viewed from outside, an unpredictable event is random. Viewed from the inside, it's a choice.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

From our perspective as observers, a photon being detected at one point of the probability cloud rather than another looks like a random event. What does it look like to the photon?

I don't mean this as a goofy question although it may sound like one. While I don't suggest that photons have feelings or conscious preferences or make rational decisions, I believe that quantum indeterminacy and the collapse of the wave function is the prototype of all decision-making, and that such things as emotion and reason, while they add information, complexity, and rationality to the system, do not ultimately make the decision. Photons and other subatomic particles do not have emotion or reason but they do have will.



No, actually in most processes it doesn't. That's why I talk about quantum mechanics and chaos together, not about one or the other in isolation.

One of the important discoveries of chaos is that a process which is mathematically deterministic can generate unpredictable outcomes based on inability to precisely determine initial conditions, or rather on sensitivity to initial conditions so great that it is impossible to determine them with enough precision. Small differences in origin resulting in big differences in outcome. One hears students of chaos insisting that the processes are "really deterministic," but this relies on the assumption that the initial conditions actually HAVE a perfectly precise set of descriptors even if we are unable to measure them. The contribution of quantum mechanics is that no, they don't.

At the subatomic level indeterminacy is universal. At the macroscopic level, indeterminacy is sometimes suppressed by certain processes; it still exists, but on too small a scale to measure. This is true for example of the swing of a pendulum or the orbits of the planets. But many other processes don't suppress that root-scale indeterminacy and manifest it on a macroscopic scale as well: these are the processes studied in chaos.

I'm in agreement that photons have will, but since it's not rooted in agency, the distribution is going to be random.

With respect to chaos theory, you still have attractors, so it's not "random", but rather it's distributed according to the underlying geometry of the chaotic process. There isn't any "will" at the macro level, rather it's being distributed according to the geometry of space-time, which is what gives rise to the attractors. The chaotic processes have boundary conditions.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

It means what we observe to be true. In this particular case I'm not talking about what we can observe versus what we can't, I'm talking about accepting what we observe versus insisting that it's not true. Thus, any limitations of the method don't arise. We observe that brains think. We observe that people with damaged cerebral cortexts experience cognitive difficulties. We observe that stimulating a part of the brain electrically produces cognitive, memory, and emotional responses.

Note that I'm not talking at the moment about anything else that may be observed with any other method, merely about the fact that these things are observed in this way. And so, regardless of what else we observe, regardless of what is "beneath the surface," and regardless of what metaphysical theory we prefer to account for what the brain is in any cosmic sense, the fact remains that we observe brains thinking. That fact must remain with us regardless of what else we do.



We observe that when people suffer cerebral cortex damage of certain kinds, they have difficulty using language, performing mathematical calculations, and reasoning logically. All of these are normal observed concommittants of reported experienced mental states. Either you accept that they are associated with, and reliable indicators of, those mental states or you do not. If you do, then you must accept the evidence that brains think.

If you do not, then you should consider the logical consequences. It means that when you hear someone talking, this is not an indication that they are aware in any subjective way of using language. It means that when a student performs a mathematical calculation in class, that student could be an automaton not really thinking mathematically at all. It means there is no connection whatever between people's behavior and their minds. Are you prepared to go that far out on a limb in defense of what you want to believe?



This has nothing to do with assumptions. It has, rather, to do with the entire corpus of knowledge gained from observation. If we accept the literal reality of "spirits," we are left with a huge number of unanswered questions, including what exactly a "spirit" is, and how to fit it in with the rest of the known universe. As such, it becomes far more complex than an explanation which does not require such a hypothesis.

I know a '81 cohort gal who had a traumatic brain injury from a car crash in 2003 and she has all the behavioral dysfunctions one would expect in a person, like the famous Phineas Gage, with damage to certain parts of the frontal lobes: Rude behavior, lack of self-control, etc. She also has some minor brain damage in her language centers, which shows in her often forgetting to use "the" and "a/an"

rejecting the material basis of human behavior in the physical brain is simply denial, a denial akin to Creationism and Global Warning Denialism.

Originally Posted by Odin

I don't believe in Free Will and trying to defend it using quantum mechanics reeks of desperation. The opposite of Determinism is NOT "Free Will", the opposite of Determinism is Randomness. QM is just as deterministic as classical mechanics, just in a different way.

"Free Will" is an illusion caused by the working of out brains which evolved to help us survive as social organisms. IMO the fact that people have unique personalities goes against the notion of "Free Will" because what is personality if not habitual behaviors and thought processes?

Ultimately, as The Buddha pointed out, there is no "me" or "mine", our own thoughts are just another perception in consciousness that has an infinite chain of causes.

I wake up and decide to kill Odin for the purposes of my own amusement.

Why should I go to jail?

I don't have free will!

There was no choice in the matter.

It was random!

Originally Posted by Odin

I know a '81 cohort gal who had a traumatic brain injury from a car crash in 2003 and she has all the behavioral dysfunctions one would expect in a person, like the famous Phineas Gage, with damage to certain parts of the frontal lobes: Rude behavior, lack of self-control, etc. She also has some minor brain damage in her language centers, which shows in her often forgetting to use "the" and "a/an"

And if you chop off my arm, I can no longer pick things up with it.

Same thing.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I wake up and decide to kill Odin for the purposes of my own amusement.

Why should I go to jail?

I don't have free will!

There was no choice in the matter.

It was random!

The knowledge that you will go to jail will prevent you from killing me unless you think you can get away with it or you just don't care if you go to jail. "Free Will" is simply irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Odin

The knowledge that you will go to jail will prevent you from killing me unless you think you can get away with it or you just don't care if you go to jail. "Free Will" is simply irrelevant.

What about if I decided to make my decision based on the flip of a coin?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

If you mistake a machine for a human, then that is what's funny. It is simpler just to admit that what we are is intentional agents. All the complicated, fantastic, irrelevant stuff about alternative universes are attempts to evade what we know that is basic and fundamental to just existing as spiritual beings. We are, we are aware, we act. Quite simple.

When I was younger, I always got angry that people didn't function more like machines. The fact that they had free will (and emotions) just kept causing problems. Someone needed to put a stop to that!

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Odin, how would you define "free will"?

To my way of thinking, all that "free will" implies is that my choices (as I experience them) cannot be predicted ahead of time with perfect certainty. Operationally speaking, the term can mean nothing else. This means that randomness and free will are the same thing, the difference between them being only one of viewpoint. Viewed from outside, an unpredictable event is random. Viewed from the inside, it's a choice.

Is "choice" something that you "experience" (perhaps implying something you experience "passively" that just happens), or is "choice" something you make "intentionally and at will" (actively, and consciously)? Or neither, rather some kind of spontaneous event?

Your "way of thinking" concerns how a scientist may view your choices, operationally. It is not a "difference in viewpoint," but rather of definition. "Randomness" can be how a "choice" is observed scientifically, according to the limited methods of science; that does not equal a "different viewpoint," since there are many other ways of being viewed "from outside" than scientific ways.

You can have an argument in favor of legal sanctions against crime without resorting to the concept of free will, based on operant conditioning theory. However, the statement "there is no such thing as free will" could still benefit from a definition of the term. By my own definition above, free will certainly does exist. Odin must therefore be using a different one and I remain curious as to what that is.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Is "choice" something that you "experience" (perhaps implying something you experience "passively" that just happens), or is "choice" something you make "intentionally and at will" (actively, and consciously)? Or neither, rather some kind of spontaneous event?

A choice cannot be something experienced passively; it must be something that is experienced as oneself doing the choosing. But something can be a choice as experienced from within, and a random event as viewed objectively from without.

Your "way of thinking" concerns how a scientist may view your choices, operationally.

Incorrect, in this case. From a scientific perspective the concept of "free will" is meaningless. It is something that has meaning only subjectively. However, if my choice cannot be predicted ahead of time from causal factors with perfect certainty, and I experience it subjectively as a choice, then it is a manifestation of free will.

I think what you really have a problem with here, Eric, is my suggestion that nonliving things such as photons may also have free will, removing that fundamental distinction between the living and the nonliving.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

You can have an argument in favor of legal sanctions against crime without resorting to the concept of free will, based on operant conditioning theory. However, the statement "there is no such thing as free will" could still benefit from a definition of the term. By my own definition above, free will certainly does exist. Odin must therefore be using a different one and I remain curious as to what that is.

Not if you use my coin-flip decision making approach. Since all decisions would be made on a purely random basis, operant conditioning wouldn't work because there would be no operant to condition. You can't condition randomness.