Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

[T-hawk]

but the question of altering others' matter is about something else entirely. The immorality of changing another's body is not that the matter is substantively different, but that it's not Yang's to change, just as another's food is not yours to eat. Yang is of course right that all his problems are solved when there is only one consciousness and only one set of ends, so no question of conflict arises. Morgan is far bigger a realist here

There is no concept of "yours" in Yang's utopia.  Property and even bodily rights are a socially invented fiction.  There is only matter, no possession of it.  Nothing belongs to anyone any more than any honey cell belongs to any bee in the hive.  All matter is to be used for the purposes of the collective.  You answered your own concern, that it all comes back together when there is only one consciousness.  Yang believes that that end justifies his means to get there.

You think there is some other thinking that goes on in the background, which REALLY determines your actions, and then a second, entirely gratuitous train of thought is invented for nobody except yourself to experience?

Yes, that's actually it exactly.  The brain resolves its process autonomously before the conscious mind knows it has, and then the conscious mind invents its rationalization for what it thinks was a decision.  There are studies that demonstrate this.  Here are examples:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com...free-will/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1...ure-moves/

Yes, free will is an illusion.  It is a useful illusion evolutionarily, because that's what makes us do things like acquire resources and reproduce, rather than sit inactively.  The only outcome of life is more life, so consciousness evolving with self-delusion is a success if it results in more of that.

My biggest problem with all the many versions of human customisation of this sort is that we have no access to the mental states of others, and so we never really know — did we splice out the consciousness, or just the ability for consciousness to manifest itself?

That's an interesting point that I never thought about and SMAC never touches - what if Yang's process becomes faulty.  It's certainly an argument against doing this in the real world, but the computer game gets to conveniently ignore such an outcome.

[Bacchus]

Yes, that's actually it exactly. The brain resolves its process autonomously before the conscious mind knows it has, and then the conscious mind invents its rationalization for what it thinks was a decision. There are studies that demonstrate this. Here are examples:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com...free-will/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1...ure-moves/

You do understand that postulating an entirely different, fully developed thinking process that is completely invisible and runs in parallel to the readily observable thinking process is an incredibly strong hypothesis. Especially, as you want to leave no real work at all to the observable thinking process (otherwise it's not entirely an illusion). Such a strong hypothesis requires far more proof than a couple of studies that can "predict" a meaningless binary choice with an "accuracy" of 60%. I also haven't seen Soon's and his collaborators work independently replicated much, albeit it's over a decade old now. There's more that could be said, but that would really be far afield for this thread. For other readers who may be interested, I looked at Wikipedia and it actually has a surprisingly good write-up on the subject (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will). It's a bit Daniel Denetty, but that's not the worst thing that could happen.

[DaveV]

Yes, free will is an illusion.  It is a useful illusion evolutionarily, because that's what makes us do things like acquire resources and reproduce, rather than sit inactively.

This seems like a contradiction. If there's no free will, then why do we need its illusion to make us do things?

[T-hawk]

You do understand that postulating an entirely different, fully developed thinking process that is completely invisible and runs in parallel to the readily observable thinking process is an incredibly strong hypothesis.

Of course.  I'm not at all claming that it's proof or a rigorous theory.  Just that there is indeed real and plausible experimental evidence for the behavior we observe to derive from physical materialism as the first and sole principle.  And the process isn't fundamentally invisible; it merely hasn't been observed yet, but could with sufficient technological capability to examine every neuron in sufficient detail.  (It is possible that capability can't exist, if the sufficient detail would violate Heisenberg limits for the observing. But we can still form a theory about the unobservable, as we do with black hole singularities.)

This seems like a contradiction. If there's no free will, then why do we need its illusion to make us do things?

We don't necessarily.  We may not need the illusion, but that's the argument for why we might.

[Bacchus]

Just that there is indeed real and plausible experimental evidence for the behavior we observe to derive from physical materialism as the first and sole principle.

What you are arguing for is way beyond physical materialism though, in fact it explicitly brings in an assumption that is additional to materialism. There is a version of physical materialism where conscious deliberation is just what the physical processes amount to — just as running an operating system and apps within it is what all the electrical activity in the CPU and other chips amounts to. It is entirely materialist to claim that an operating system is a higher-order process than the switches of transistors, and that it's the higher-order system that structures and guides the underlying physical activity (you could run the same OS on different hardware, the pattern of electrical impulses would be different). You argue that the physical processes in our body amount to some other higher-order system than the conscious thinking which we directly observe, and that the directly observable thinking is entirely gratuitous. Neither of those claims follows from materialism.

Edited to clarify some meanings.

[T-hawk]

You're misreading my claim, though I didn't clearly state it.  I'm not arguing for a "second system of thinking" or any system at all.  I'm saying that the results just occur physically.  The functioning of an organic brain is no different or higher-order than the process of, say, a vinegar-and-baking-soda science-fair volcano.  Framing it like those studies, whether a subject moves his left or right hand is entirely deterministic behavior arising from the chemical processes, just like the volcano might flow left or right based on where the reactants might be slightly denser.  Both the brain moving the hand and the volcano are a complex interaction of chemicals that gives rise to macroscopically observable behavior that is deterministic.  There is no fundamental difference, the subject moving the hand is no more a system or thinking than the volcano is.  We just haven't had sufficient observational resolution to predict one of them, but we are now approaching that as shown in those studies.

[Bacchus]

You're misreading my claim, though I didn't clearly state it.  I'm not arguing for a "second system of thinking" or any system at all.  I'm saying that the results just occur physically.  The functioning of an organic brain is no different or higher-order than the process of, say, a vinegar-and-baking-soda science-fair volcano.  Framing it like those studies, whether a subject moves his left or right hand is entirely deterministic behavior arising from the chemical processes, just like the volcano might flow left or right based on where the reactants might be slightly denser.  Both the brain moving the hand and the volcano are a complex interaction of chemicals that gives rise to macroscopically observable behavior that is deterministic.  There is no fundamental difference, the subject moving the hand is no more a system or thinking than the volcano is.  We just haven't had sufficient observational resolution to predict one of them, but we are now approaching that as shown in those studies.

The thing is that human macroscopically observable behaviour includes things like memory, perception, goal-setting and ability to ignore local stimuli — so, sure, it's "exactly the same" as a volcano in the sense that "it's just atoms", but it's also completely different in that the actual causal pathway doesn't resemble a volcano at all, no more than a volcano resembles say, the development of a human heart. You wouldn't say that a heart develops just like a volcano flows, that's nonsense, nor would you deny, claiming to base this denial on materialism, that the development of a heart is guided by genes. But what do genes do? They effect a higher-order structure on a diverse set of chemical interactions, ensuring that these interactions taken together amount to something that pumps blood. Consciousness doesn't have to be any different — just as interactions of some particular types of atoms in particular circumstance amount to "genetic code", which has a very specific set of causal effects, entirely absent in a volcano or anything that's not genetic code, so particular physical and chemical interactions amount to consciousness, which also has a very specific set of causal effects, entirely absent in anything that's not consciousness. That's the only difference that I postulate, and indeed no more "fundamental" difference is even possible. It's actually you that appears to hold on to some version of dualism, as opposed to materialism, and relegate consciousness to some non-material realm, so that you can dismiss it as an illusion. A true materialist has no real grounds to do that, no more than he has grounds to disbelieve in genes, animal psychology, or any other higher-order phenomena.

The question for you would be this: what has a more prominent causal import — the ability of a predator to pick out prey against a background, or the particular neuronal pathway that happens to enable that differentiation in a particular instance?

[TheHumanHydra]

You do understand that postulating an entirely different, fully developed thinking process that is completely invisible and runs in parallel to the readily observable thinking process is an incredibly strong hypothesis.

Of course.  I'm not at all claming that it's proof or a rigorous theory.  Just that there is indeed real and plausible experimental evidence for the behavior we observe to derive from physical materialism as the first and sole principle.  And the process isn't fundamentally invisible; it merely hasn't been observed yet, but could with sufficient technological capability to examine every neuron in sufficient detail.  (It is possible that capability can't exist, if the sufficient detail would violate Heisenberg limits for the observing.  But we can still form a theory about the unobservable, as we do with black hole singularities.)

T-hawk, could you clarify something? You seemed to indicate before that you held Yang to be absolutely correct, but now you seem to say that there isn't sufficient evidence to constitute proof -- and that it's not possible to obtain that evidence currently. To my untrained mind, this sounds a lot like, 'you can't disprove this, so I will continue to believe it.' How does your rationale differ? Does it rest only on your assignment of the burden of proof? Thanks!

[T-hawk]

You wouldn't say that a heart develops just like a volcano flows, that's nonsense

Sure I would.  They're each chemical processes that progress from a starting state according to deterministic causal rules.  There's no difference.  That's not nonsense.

There's nothing special about genes.  They're merely a chemical pattern whose progression happens to result in reproducing copies of itself.  What we call a heart just happens as an emergent phenomenon during that process for some sets of genes.  It happens to have enough structure that we find it useful to name it and to treat as an abstraction.  But there's no underlying physical definition of that abstraction.

It's actually you that appears to hold on to some version of dualism, as opposed to materialism, and relegate consciousness to some non-material realm, so that you can dismiss it as an illusion.

I'm not sure on the terminology where my position falls under materialism or dualism.  Consciousness is an emergent aggregate property of material, like wetness is an emergent aggregate property of water molecules.  I don't deny that consciousness is a phenomenon, I deny that it has free will.  Consciousness is a set of perceptions that comes along for the ride on the deterministic chemical processes.  One of those perceptions can be that it has free will (and that perception is what Yang seeks to remove and does for the Genejacks.)  That perception is incorrect, but consciousness is perfectly capable of holding incorrect perceptions.

The question for you would be this: what has a more prominent causal import — the ability of a predator to pick out prey against a background, or the particular neuronal pathway that happens to enable that differentiation in a particular instance?

I don't know what work "prominent" is doing in that question.  I can only interpret it as quantity of matter affected, or maybe as quantity of consciousnesses.  Of course that's the former as an aggregation of many instances of the latter, but I don't see what point that makes?

T-hawk, could you clarify something? You seemed to indicate before that you held Yang to be absolutely correct, but now you seem to say that there isn't sufficient evidence to constitute proof -- and that it's not possible to obtain that evidence currently. To my untrained mind, this sounds a lot like, 'you can't disprove this, so I will continue to believe it.' How does your rationale differ? Does it rest only on your assignment of the burden of proof? Thanks!

Yang's correctness is absolute; we just haven't yet obtained evidence to constitute proof.  It's possible that will eventually happen; it's also possible that a limitation of physical law such as Heisenberg observational uncertainty renders such proof physically impossible; and furthermore that impossibility may or may not ever be provable.  I don't know if Yang considers his position to be proven (or more specifically, if Brian Reynolds imagined Yang's position as such.)

I think physical materialism is the theory of reality/neurology/consciousness most likely to be correct.  I hold that position basically based on a combination of all the relevant factors.  I think materialism gains the benefit of Occam's razor as the simplest and most self-consistent theory, and that weights the burden of proof towards competing hypotheses that make more complex claims.  I furthermore think that weighting is absolute, that materialism is so simple as to be trivially correct as its own first principle, like trying to prove that 2+2=4, it just is.  But I recognize that argument is circularly self-supporting and does not prove that absolute weighting.  I find materialism to be the most convincing first principle and take it through to its conclusion; but I acknowledge that one could find other first principles more supportable and conclude differently.  I think nothing nonmaterial exists and that no proof otherwise will ever arise, but I don't go as far as to eliminate the possibility that it might.  I don't know if Yang's position is the same as mine or if he does goes all the way into that last point (or if Brian Reynolds thought that deeply at all, or if Planet's consciousness and transcendence is meant to be proof to the contrary; Yang never comments on that.)

Short version: Yes, it does rest on assignment of the burden of proof.  I acknowledge that no argument is exempt from that just by declaring itself to be so.  I propose and advocate that the simplicity of materialism rationally justifies that assignment.

Shorter version: I say materialism is our best guess but the door is open to guess otherwise.

[TheHumanHydra]

T-hawk, could you clarify something? You seemed to indicate before that you held Yang to be absolutely correct, but now you seem to say that there isn't sufficient evidence to constitute proof -- and that it's not possible to obtain that evidence currently. To my untrained mind, this sounds a lot like, 'you can't disprove this, so I will continue to believe it.' How does your rationale differ? Does it rest only on your assignment of the burden of proof? Thanks!

Yang's correctness is absolute; we just haven't yet obtained evidence to constitute proof.  It's possible that will eventually happen; it's also possible that a limitation of physical law such as Heisenberg observational uncertainty renders such proof physically impossible; and furthermore that impossibility may or may not ever be provable.  I don't know if Yang considers his position to be proven (or more specifically, if Brian Reynolds imagined Yang's position as such.)

I think physical materialism is the theory of reality/neurology/consciousness most likely to be correct.  I hold that position basically based on a combination of all the relevant factors.  I think materialism gains the benefit of Occam's razor as the simplest and most self-consistent theory, and that weights the burden of proof towards competing hypotheses that make more complex claims.  I furthermore think that weighting is absolute, that materialism is so simple as to be trivially correct as its own first principle, like trying to prove that 2+2=4, it just is.  But I recognize that argument is circularly self-supporting and does not prove that absolute weighting.  I find materialism to be the most convincing first principle and take it through to its conclusion; but I acknowledge that one could find other first principles more supportable and conclude differently.  I think nothing nonmaterial exists and that no proof otherwise will ever arise, but I don't go as far as to eliminate the possibility that it might.  I don't know if Yang's position is the same as mine or if he does goes all the way into that last point (or if Brian Reynolds thought that deeply at all, or if Planet's consciousness and transcendence is meant to be proof to the contrary; Yang never comments on that.)

Short version: Yes, it does rest on assignment of the burden of proof.  I acknowledge that no argument is exempt from that just by declaring itself to be so.  I propose and advocate that the simplicity of materialism rationally justifies that assignment.

Shorter version: I say materialism is our best guess but the door is open to guess otherwise.

Thanks, T-hawk. I find this interesting because it seems to parallel rationales for religion, which are generally maligned by non-religious thinkers. You also seem to have gone from a very strong statement at the outset of your post to a considerably weaker one at the end. I guess I'm just puzzled by the strength of your convictions in the absence of much supporting structure.