>However, if we apply even the barest of epistemological tools to the issue, we rapidly recognize that even if Penrose is correct, the chance of his position being accurate is so remote and so unverifiable so as to be useless.
You are saying that if he is right then it's probably not accurate?
>But the existence of a counter-argument against the deterministic mind itself, absent of its validity, is itself useful. It allows us to collectively hem and haw before changing our views and institutions to fit our understanding of how people work. Which means Penrose's argument is not going away anytime soon.
if the mind is deterministic how can we change our views - how can the position be useful? Things are, and you will, or will not.
>You are saying that if he is right then it's probably not accurate?
No, I'm saying its overwhelmingly unlikely that he's right, and that even if we're agnostic about which reasonable epistemological framework we use, there's SO much evidence against his perspective that it isn't important.
>if the mind is deterministic how can we change our views - how can the position be useful? Things are, and you will, or will not.
I've never understood this line of reasoning. If my perceptor is the output of a baynesian evaluation that uses information as an input, receiving new information may or may not change the output.
How can a (meat)machine learning algorithm ever change from it's starting state? Well, it is provided more cycles, changes state, and accordingly changes output. This doesn't mean that a machine learning algo needs to be non-deterministic and non-verifiable in order to change from state to state.
As for the utility argument, I think there's a tremendous amount of utility to be gained from understanding how consciousness actually works, even if it is the we-are-bio-robots outcome.
>if the mind is deterministic how can we change our views
There's nothing incoherent here. Determinism doesn't mean you can't change your views, it just means that the change was not acausal in some manner. You can still form new beliefs from being exposed to new ideas. Determinism doesn't mean you are a static thing that can never grow and change with your environment, it just means that the dynamics of your changing person was written in the initial conditions of the universe. But at no time point do you have access to all future influences, and so you will still change as time passes.
But the change of views is not a matter of decisioning, it's a matter of inevitability. Stars cool - because they do. I contend that poets write - because they want to.
Sure, but what makes poets want to write? How does the answer being "the initial condition of the universe" instead of some acausal mechanism change anything of importance?
Because if it is the initial condition of the universe then there is one history and everything is predestined. This has a number of implications like :
- everything could be predicted
- criminals are not responsible for their behavior
- human life is not sacred
- our thoughts are not real
It's this last one that catches me; predestination means "I think therefore I'm not really me" we then need to abandon the whole of rationalism and retreat to the caves!
I don't see these points as following from determinism.
>everything could be predicted
Not at all. Think about what you need to predict someone's behavior. You need to emulate the entire universe (at least within the cone of causal influence) and then run it long enough for the thing you're trying to predict to occur. Essentially you're creating a duplicate universe and just seeing what happens. You're not predicting, you're observing. In this tangent universe, the person is thinking and deciding just the same. So ultimately the decision is still the necessary precursor to the event.
>our thoughts are not real
Our thoughts are real, they're just highly complex interactions of physical atoms. Our thoughts aren't non-physical, or acausal, or anything supernatural. But I don't see these properties being necessary for our thoughts to be real and hold value to us. As I said before, our thoughts necessarily precede our decisions which necessarily precede our actions. What else do you want from your thoughts?
If you give this function a positive integer, it chooses returns 1; otherwise it chooses to return 2. This is what I think choice is.
g = () =>
f1 = (x) => x > 0 ? 1 : 2
f2 = (x) => x > 0 ? 10 : 20
f = f1
return (x) =>
if x > 100
f = f2
f(x)
f = g()
This is a function that can change its mind, and choose different results when it's given different input.
I see this as isomorphic with what you call choice, and I believe that any distinction you see is in your imagination. You don't know what the algorithm feels like on the inside; for all you know, a machine executing these instructions feels like it's got free will. You can't prove otherwise.
Hello, I think what I regards as choice and free will includes autonomy - which is the ability to decide to pursue and, by implication, create goals. I think that there is type 1 autonomy where an entity is free to undertake goals according to "choice" of the sort that I believe you are outlining above. Essentially a type 1 autonoma can create and modify plans like the code you have written down above.
A type 2 autonoma can decide to do, or not do things. It can write the code you have written, if it decides to go on a functional programming course.... To me this is the difference between the weather and a sentient entity. I think of computer programs in the same category as I think of the weather, but I see sentient entities in a different category.
I don't exclude machines from this category now, but I see all the machines that I have had experience of a part of category 1. How a machine could be described that fits into category 2 eludes me - and everyone else I think.
Is choice more like a process, or more like a surprise inscrutable bolt out of the blue? We aren't talking about what it feels like from the inside. We're talking about what it is.
>However, if we apply even the barest of epistemological tools to the issue, we rapidly recognize that even if Penrose is correct, the chance of his position being accurate is so remote and so unverifiable so as to be useless.
You are saying that if he is right then it's probably not accurate?
>But the existence of a counter-argument against the deterministic mind itself, absent of its validity, is itself useful. It allows us to collectively hem and haw before changing our views and institutions to fit our understanding of how people work. Which means Penrose's argument is not going away anytime soon.
if the mind is deterministic how can we change our views - how can the position be useful? Things are, and you will, or will not.