Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

[ipecac]

I don't disagree. However, these don't seem terribly different in nature to past mysteries that have been solved by further scientific research.

I would say that beginnings have always been an issue. Take as another example the beginning of the universe. 

However, in the absence of a specific alternative non-material model or strong evidence of ongoing scientific failure (decades or centuries is the sort of timescale i have in mind), I'm going to take (A:yes) as my position.

It's not so much a matter of non-material vs material model. Physical models work decently to describe what happens after the physical system is set up, but the perennial questions are about how they are set up.

Don't let me derail you though. I would add to your earlier post that another criterion by which a scientific model is judged is by what it demands that cannot be justified at the time. Newton's vision of gravity demanded action at a distance that was impossible to justify at his time, making it difficult to accept. Later anomalous observations were reconciled with the hypothesis of an undetected planet, in more recent times we've had the hypothesis of dark matter-energy. At such times the model could reasonably be not affirmed because of such demands.

[T-hawk]

With materialism. I've been trying to show that there is no contradiction between accepting free will and believing that there is just one world, in which all higher-order facts supervene on lower-order facts or, in a more concrete formulation, if you 'fix' all physical facts, you also fix all chemical, biological, psychological, sociological and cosmological facts.

I agree that materialism is compatible with free will.  But you don't seem to like the mechanisms that can reconcile them, that an emergent 'consciousness field' or quantum probability manipulation are how a will could exist and manifest freedom on material substrate.  You seem to want to define free will as a first-principle fact, and you go into everything about higher-order facts and phenomena in order to enable that.  I'm not claiming that position is untenable, but it seems you're reaching for a harder explanation when there's an easier one available.  Although you probably think it's the other way around, that the first-principle is simpler and I'm making the harder argument that relies on physical mechanisms.  But I do it that way because the physical mechanisms can gain the support of observational evidence.

Also, how does the "just one world" clause in there differ from objectivism?

Determinism is just an ill-formulated notion as far as I'm concerned. As I take it, it seeks to answer the following question: "Does the complete set of current states of affairs uniquely fix all complete sets of future states of affairs obtaining at any point in time?" I don't think this question has any meaningful answer. At any point in time, only one complete set of states of affairs obtains, that's just definitional. This also means that we go, in an entirely fixed fashion, from one set to another. Does it mean that the future set is fixed by the current set? As far as I can see, you can answer yes, you can answer no, these answers have no real justification or consequence. So I'd rather say the question itself is ill-posed.

I'm genuinely confused by this argument.  You were going in this direction earlier when you didn't want to define causality.  I honestly don't see what problem exists with causality or whatever else you see here, unless you're trying to disagree with the definition or existence of time.  It becomes very simple if you accept the notion of quantized Planck-time; every time step of reality is as discrete as Deep Blue's next state of the chess board.  That simplification makes it easy, but it works with continuous time too.  It's perfectly sensible to say that the state of affairs at any moment fixes their state at any other, or doesn't fix it because quantum randomness is indeterminate and unknowable, or because the ensuing state is influenced by a will whose definition of freedom is that it is not fixed by the prior state of affairs.

I see a relation between that and Morgan's point in the quote.  The counterargument to Morgan is that the 'moral value' does differ, that value is perceived in the original because it physically came from the touch of its creator's hands, while the copy didn't.  There are facts that derive from the historic behavior of the particles even though the current state of affairs is indistinguishable.

Kind of a jump to give falsifiability to your metaphysics, and make them empirical.

I don't know why anyone would expect anything else - what is the alternative, to continue to believe in a solution after it's been falsified?

[T-hawk]

1. Would you feel that empathy for an electromechanical robot that exhibits the same functionality and responses as a Genejack?

No. But, erm, why are you arguing on the moral aspect of this subject? I hold strongly that morality (as an objective standard) is irrational without belief in a singular deity. If you wish to argue on moral grounds, then, you must submit your reasoning to the preferences of the divine, from whom we derive such ideas as the perversity of depriving other humans of the potential with which he vested them.

I'm not trying to argue on moral grounds; I'm deconstructing where you're doing so.  You would feel empathy for a biological Genejack but not for an electromechanical android that behaves and perceives indistinguishably.  From where does that difference derive?  Your answer depends on a deistic creator giving special treatment to the biological.  That's your first principle, and at that point we've simply agreed we hold different ones.

But I don't think you answered my query. Why not assign yourself different goals? There is no intrinsic value to creating a Genejack under your framework. The Genejack provides you the practical benefits of slavery, but not trying to force the issue promotes social unity, allows collective time and thought to be spent more efficiently, and likely averts violent conflict.

Sure, there's intrinsic value.  Flip it around: why should your moral opinion have the power to alter my self-assigned goals?  I can value my own time and thought above the collective.  Why wouldn't I want a Genejack to wash my laundry and dishes and such?  Problems with social unity come from opposition, not implementers.  You (general 'you') create conflict by making a demand on my actions (that I not have a Genejack); I make no demand that you have one.

Your answer can only come back to the prospect of a deity to enact judgment.  Yes, my position is abhorrent given a first principle of Christianity or most religions, anything that posits that the genejack has/had a soul or any other right to not incur that treatment.  But in that absence as defined by materialism and determinism, no one has been wronged by the existence of a genejack, the genejack cannot lose something it never had.

There is an intermediate position that is basically Pascal's wager.  If we don't know if the genejack has a soul, then we should act as if it does, since creating it represents infinite loss to it as compared to finite gain to its master.  I reject this argument on two grounds.  One, that Christianity's soul gets no special consideration compared to any other religious claim; I can as easily posit a Satanic deity who encourages torture.  Two, we have no standing or observational evidence to say that the genejack had a soul but an electronic neural network of equal functionality and complexity doesn't.

(I think you might already have agreed with me that materialism/determinism justifies genejacks, and that your opposition comes all from your first principle of deism.)

That's actually not quite what I was arguing. Bacchus restated the thrust of it yesterday -- 'random variations specifically lacking a reason would produce free noise, not free will.' Alternatively, will is preference. Preference requires feedback. Feedback requires a receptor. So will is consistent with physical feedback and a physical processor. Will is consistent with a particle existence.

It's a hypothesis. I do believe in a soul. But I'm not sure that the definition of free will you proposed way back is accurate.

I've clarified since then that yes, free will can be consistent with particle materialism, as in my reply to Bacchus just above.  But not with determinism.  I'm defining free will as "that which is not deterministic", perhaps minus quantum effects.  For a will to be free requires the capability for it to manifest some result according to its own desire and not deterministic particle behavior.  I don't propose a means to distinguish between that desire and free-noise; I don't need to; that burden is on proponents of free will; I merely need to be receptive to considering observational experimental evidence.

Sorry, I think I'm failing to follow -- you seemed to propose some aggregate concepts as relevant to our description of a particle grouping. In any case, we would accurately describe those two particles as part of a binary system. If we needed a word to describe only the solar matter in a binary system, we could come up with one, and it would reflect a reality. Whenever the similarities of a collection break down, we already have or can make a word to describe the realities of the level of granularity or the particular similarity we wish to discuss. They always reflect the real.

I grant you that our words are sometimes approximations. But that does not detract from that they describe real things.

The concepts are always approximations, except when dealing with something fundamentally unsubdividable (at least as far as we know experimentally) like an electron.  Any composite description is an approximation that can fail to reflect reality.  Of course we can always use a different approximation that is true, but that has nothing to do with the approximation that fails.

Actually, regardless, you're right; all objects are mutable, because they undergo decay. But I think we know that when we say that the objects are, nevertheless, real and definable.

A fundamental object such as an electron does not undergo mutability or decay, as far as we know experimentally; if it reacts with something such as an antielectron then it unambiguously entirely ceases to be an electron.

But any composite object can fail to be real and definable.  How about the Ship of Theseus paradox?  Is your pen still your pen if we swap out the rubber grip for another?  How about if we also swap out the clicky button, then the ink tube; when is it no longer your pen?  The solution to the paradox is either that the abstraction of the ship/pen was meaningless in the first place, or at best that such a description of reality applies to no more than one instant in time.

Now that I think about it, that last solution seems particularly elegant.  To describe an object also requires recognizing the time coordinate along with whatever recognition you're according its spatial coordinates.  One can unambiguously define and speak of the sun or pen or ship only at some particular instant.  That description no longer holds once time is introduced as a variable.  What if we throw your pen into the sun - would you still describe its formerly constituent protons and electrons now dispersed among the solar plasma as your pen?  The most elegant solution to that is to discard time as a variable and say that any description of your pen only applies at any particular instant.  Any grouping of observations over time is yet another abstraction of perception.  Maybe this is what Bacchus meant about the problems of defining causality and fixing future behavior.

[T-hawk]

All is not well in Physics ... we don't even begin to understand 95% of the universe.

Abiogenesis, the intersection of chemistry and biology, is also plagued with problems as is well known.

ipecac, I need to point out something to you and to the others engaging with you in this thread.

I think you fundamentally misrepresent science.  It's about making a best-guess, not that a guess must be absolutely perfect and inviolable to hold any merit.

You consistently jump on any small flaw or weakness or unprovability in any position and act as if that blows up and falsifies that position entirely.  That's simply... not how science and rational discourse work.  Scientific and philosophical theories acknowledge gaps and aspects that can be improved with further experimentation and refinement.

You're not engaging in the same debate as the rest of us.  You're not seeking truth, you're seeking to snipe around the edges for opportunities to go "ha! ha! gotcha!" and tear something down. You wouldn't congratulate Newton for his insight, you'd throw out his work and taunt him because he didn't have the observational resolution to see the relativistic mass increase that affects Mercury's orbit.  Science doesn't work as "boom! wrong!", it works as "how could we refine our hypothesis to account for this data?"

You've got the credibility of a flat-earther proclaiming "you can't PROVE it's round therefore it's flat."  Until you can fix that attitude and join us in seeking truth rather than gotchas, this will be the last time I reply to you, and I encourage others to do likewise.

[ipecac]

All is not well in Physics ... we don't even begin to understand 95% of the universe.

Abiogenesis, the intersection of chemistry and biology, is also plagued with problems as is well known.

ipecac, I need to point out something to you and to the others engaging with you in this thread.

I think you fundamentally misrepresent science.  It's about making a best-guess, not that a guess must be absolutely perfect and inviolable to hold any merit.

You consistently jump on any small flaw or weakness or unprovability in any position and act as if that blows up and falsifies that position entirely.  That's simply... not how science and rational discourse work.  Scientific and philosophical theories acknowledge gaps and aspects that can be improved with further experimentation and refinement.

I think you have a big issue. All I pointed out was that science at present has big problems, but I didn't reject science because of that.

You're not engaging in the same debate as the rest of us.  You're not seeking truth, you're seeking to snipe around the edges for opportunities to go "ha! ha! gotcha!" and tear something down.  You wouldn't congratulate Newton for his insight, you'd throw out his work and taunt him because he didn't have the observational resolution to see the relativistic mass increase that affects Mercury's orbit.  Science doesn't work as "boom! wrong!", it works as "how could we refine our hypothesis to account for this data?"

You've got the credibility of a flat-earther proclaiming "you can't PROVE it's round therefore it's flat."  Until you can fix that attitude and join us in seeking truth rather than gotchas, this will be the last time I reply to you, and I encourage others to do likewise.

I'm not sure what's behind these misrepresentation and attacks. Maybe you're upset that what I posted about dark matter and abiogenesis blew up a caricature of science (we may call it Dawkinsian ) that you may believe in, the caricature that 'science basically has it all together'. Maybe you're just sore that I've refuted your reductionist position in many ways.

But I don't think the reason matters. Stop replying to me if you want. As for encouraging others to stop talking to me, that's quite amusing. I'll just keep posting, and we'll see what happens.

[ipecac]

A fundamental object such as an electron does not undergo mutability or decay, as far as we know experimentally; if it reacts with something such as an antielectron then it unambiguously entirely ceases to be an electron.

Annihilation is a type of change. Electrons can also change in the process of electron capture or emerge from beta decay.

[ipecac]

The thing about reductionism is that if you take it to its proper end, all you get is numbers. The hard physics data is all numbers, reality becomes a number-generating thing, and science is about getting more and reliable numbers and fitting equations to the numbers.

So that's the true reductionist view. If you want to move on beyond that and talk about what's physically actually existing out there, say particles, inevitably metaphysics comes into the picture because you're making a metaphysical interpretation of the mathematical data. You have to decide what type of 'abstraction' to impose upon the numbers and equations.

[Bacchus]

I honestly don't see what problem exists with causality or whatever else you see here, unless you're trying to disagree with the definition or existence of time.

It's quite a long story. But basically, causality seems perfectly straightforward whilst we use it informally, or whilst all the "causation" happens within models, where no causation actually happens, you just have a parameter, t, which is plugged into some equations and is no different fundamentally from all other parameters (it might be restricted in domain and direction of movement). When you try to give a formal definition of what does it mean for A to cause B in the world you run into immediate problems. There is a very good Very Short Introduction on Causation from Oxford University Press which covers the key ground (you can get it on libgen.io, and if you are not familiar with the series, the name can appear patronizing, but they are legitimately strong views into the state-of-the-art of their subjects, this one I can vouch for, it's on my shelf).

For determinism specifically, though, for it to be meaningful, it has to be at least logically possible for "undeterminism" to be true. If determinism is a statement along the lines of "I hold squares in Eucledian space to be square" it has no real content, it's not taking a stance to which any alternative is possible. Thing is, I never seen a proper formulation of that alternative position that determinists are so keen to avoid. When you select determinism, just what is it that you forgo? Until that's clear, I can't even say whether I'd follow your choice or not, determinism just doesn't mean anything to me.

Also, how does the "just one world" clause in there differ from objectivism?

Just one world can have particles, hearts, humans and planets without any challenge to its oneness. The higher-order concepts aren't introduced to allow for free will, they are introduced quite independently, because it's much more straightforward to accept their reality than deny it. And if you do, there is no reason to consign free will to some exotic implementation at particle level.

[ipecac]

All is not well in Physics, where non-radiative 'dark' matter and energy is invoked to save GR. However, such dark matter-energy is not accounted for in the Standard Model, and given that the conventional account has the universe to consist of ~95% dark matter-energy that means that we don't even begin to understand 95% of the universe.

Let's expand on this a bit here.

A popular conception of science in general, and physics in particular, is that it provides a more or less complete description of reality, with the gaps remaining being not very significant or assuredly to be filled in due time. I've called this view Dawkinsian because he can be credited for being the populariser of this concept as well as how a certain type of worldview can be built on it.

So taking the idea that our scientific knowledge and understanding is the most reliable thing we have, many have rebuilt their worldview upon this as a central foundation: science becomes the foundational way to understand the world, everything else can be measured and judged by it. Going with this is some sense of assuredness about science, and how our knowledge about regular behaviour in the past can be extended into proclaiming about regular laws that prevent anything irregular from behaving. This gives a very comfortable closed system, with pesky supernatural stuff assured to not happen, a sense of reliability because everything is, in principle, knowable. In short, a sense of 'we have it all figured out (or practically and essentially so)'.

However, the foundation of the rebuilt worldview is not sound. The reliability of science rests on how general relativity and quantum field theory (aka the Standard Model) are good predictive models, with GR explaining gravity and space-time and QFT about everything else in physics. Indeed they are, but one headache for physicists for maybe half a century now is that they cannot be reconciled at the present time. As far as I can tell, this happens in 3 main ways.

1) General relativity rests upon a classical conception of field, and a quantum field theory of it doesn't work.

2) Quantum field theory rests upon a classical conception of time, and doesn't take into account the insights of general relativity about time.

These two are foundational problems arising from the mathematical formulation of the theories. And these are deep problems preventing a 'grand' unified theory for the purpose of giving one unified comprehensive picture of the universe. Since science also depends on observation, a third problem arises because it has been noted that

3) Some current observations invalidate general relativity as is because there isn't enough mass out there of observable matter to account for certain behaviour of galaxies. The mainstream approach to this has been to save the main hypothesis (in a Lakatosian way) by jettisoning an auxiliary hypothesis: postulating the existence of matter that we haven't detected because it is 'dark' or non-radiating - such matter does not give off radiation, which is why it hasn't been detected. Needless to say, this hypothetical matter is not accounted for in the Standard Model. And we don't understand this stuff, which is supposed to make up 95% of the universe!

So we have a thorny issue, unprecedented and unforeseen: two theories that are good that don't fit together. It doesn't allow for a comprehensive and accurate description of the universe by science, which is what some want.

Naturally, physicists have been hard at work for decades trying to resolve the three problems, and many proposals have been made. None have been experimentally validated yet, so while remaining very interesting hypothesis to be investigated, no proposed solution is anywhere near the level of tested science.

The conclusion is that the idea discussed at the beginning of this post about physics giving good comprehensive view of the universe, that 'we have essentially figured everything out' just doesn't work, not least because we don't understand 95% of the stuff in the universe. It can only be sustained by an ignorance of the current state of physics. Whether physicists will be able to resolve the problems remains to be seen.

[ipecac]

Let's spin off one point and talk about how it relates to the main discussion: according to the most popular account, we haven't directly observed 95% of the stuff that makes up the universe, and we haven't the least idea about how it behaves. But the existence of this stuff is generally accepted based on indirect evidence. So while direct evidence is of course desired and much better, we can still reasonably talk about the existence of stuff without direct evidence

Since indirect evidence is 'allowable', I argue we can 'get at' the existence of the immaterial even if at best indirectly. Qualia points to consciousness, moral intuitions points to a moral order and free will, mathematics points to an abstract order, the immateriality of communication through a physical medium points to minds and how they relate (as well as how the immaterial can possibly be linked or interact with the material), the physical needing a beginning points to the non-physical, deep order points to a designer.