Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

[ipecac]

Reality only becomes speakable and thinkable if it's ontologized -- without any ontology, by definition, it is an unstructured mess of undifferentiated stuff (even stating that requires an ontology). An ontology is not imposed 'over' facts to describe or explain them, it's what makes facts possible, without an ontology there are no facts, there's just the world.

Here is where we differ: I believe that there are distinct things out there, and they just are what they are and how they relate is how they relate, prior to any ontologising.

[Bacchus]

Well, so does T-Hawk. What would your candidate be for the one true ontology? What parts is the world really split into?

[ipecac]

Well, so does T-Hawk. What would your candidate be for the one true ontology? What parts is the world really split into?

I don't have a complete description, and don't need to. Realism is perfectly all right, though for some reason you've abandoned it.

At least T-Hawk believes there're things out there. You? I'm not sure.

[Bacchus]

How can you tell whether I'm a realist, if you can't specify what I'm supposed to be a realist about, at least in broad terms? Clearly you are not suggesting to be a realist about all possible ontologies. Given your disagreement with T-Hawk, nor do you propose to be a realist about any one ontology, I would imagine.

So, some ontologies? Which ones? The ones, expressions of which agree with experience? The ones that seem to work? Neither of these qualities appears to be of a binary sort, there are going to be degrees of agreement and workability, so maybe we should be bigger realists about those ontologies that work well and are in extensive, precise agreement with experience? I don't disagree with that. Ontologies can be entirely arbitrary but they can also in fact work, which to me suggests that they reflect something of the structure of reality.

There is another sense in which the objects of our ontologies are real and it's that they are all we have. There is simply nothing more real than them. But questions of a sort is a table really a table, or is it really a lid and four legs, or is it really a collection of bonded molecules, or is it really a soup of particles, or is it really solidified human labour to me are meaningless. It's all of those things, which inevitably also means that it's none of them.

Edit-to-respond-to-your-edit: I am sure of there being something out there, after all we experience and our experiences are of something. To the extent that those experiences are broken down into discreet objects, or feelings, or impressions -- well, that breaking down is more reflective of our biopsychological nature than of the world to my taste.

[T-hawk]

Was spending my time playing and reporting on SMAC again (and dipping into the politics thread), catching back up here now, tell me if I miss anything where someone wanted a response.

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.

I've formulated that: Given identical particles, can different results occur?

Of course, there is quantum probability.  I've specifically been arguing for "determinism including quantum effects", that the current state of affairs fixes future states except for differences introduced by quantum probability.

The alternative stance is that the current state of affairs does not fix future states because of differences introduced by a free will.  The possibility of that is what I'm defining as "free".  I am not sure exactly what observational evidence could distinguish between that free will and "free noise" from quantum effects, but I certainly allow for the possibility at least hypothetically.  The alternative stance to that is that quantum probability and free will are one and the same, as Zed was saying.

As for "evolution by natural selection" -- there could be cases where such a process is quite similar. I have a hard time imagining how in practice the random mutations to the code could be possible without entirely breaking it, but sure. You could make meaningful and objectively true statements about features of the resultant code to the tune of "this particular piece exists because it allowed the virus to avoid identification by Kaspersky version 2018". As for free will, I think it has since become clear: I see no reason why a process of this sort couldn't eventually result in a being that has free will.

This point is related to the above.  This position means that you define free will in terms of its observed behavior and not by its intrinsic material.  This disclaims that free will arises from a 'consciousness field' or quantum effects occurring in a biological brain.  (Not that you were ever claiming it did, I was just asking to establish your position from this angle as well.)

With this position, you say that the same system both acts deterministically and exhibits free will.  You seem to be able to hold those positions together, but that doesn't make sense to me.  You can describe the aggregate phenomena as a will, but there is nothing free about it.  At most you define the 'free' in terms of the system perceiving for itself that it is so.  That's the illusion that humans experience too as I've been claiming all along.  I suppose you'd say again here that I'm getting hung up on the 'free', but it's not a hangup, it's the core of what I'm trying to say, that there is no objective freedom even in what we subjectively perceive there is.

That leads to this:

Murder may give you a chubby but you shouldn't do it as it infringes on someone elses enjoyment of life.

What is the difference between terminating a computer program that prints out "I enjoy life and don't want to be terminated" versus terminating a human that says "I enjoy life and don't want to be terminated"?

You would say that the computer program has no perception or enjoyment while the human does.  But Bacchus also says that free will is empirically unverifiable from outside the system; how do you reconcile those?

[T-hawk]

I looked at it here because THH and T-Hawk have now gone into the last major branch of metaphysics left untouched -- object permanence, change and the passage of time.

I'm happy to just take an assumption that time exists as a first principle.  I don't need anything else since I make no statements about the reality of what you call objects.  I expect that the fundamental objective truth is discrete Planck units of time, and we're starting to have some support for that from observational evidence.  Discrete Planck time makes my ontology very simple, that the universe is entirely described by the coordinates of every particle in space plus its Planck-time coordinate.  Furthermore I then think it's easy to define causality as merely that the Planck-time coordinate advances in just one direction.

[wall of text] ... I'd say my view accords with reality much better

I say it doesn't, because you're inherently coming at it only within the constraints of the scope of human observation.  A book on a table has no meaning to a bacteria on its surface; it may eat it to extract the energy from the hydrocarbon bonds but it doesn't care about any other structure.  A book on a table has no meaning to the sun when it expands to engulf Earth.  This is what I was saying to THH: any abstraction that you try to ascribe meaning to can instead be seen from some other perspective where it will have none.

What we can't have, or rather what we can't make any progress in is an unmapped reality.

Sure we can.  We merely lack sufficient computational or cognitional power to describe every particle individually.  If we could, we'd have no need for the maps and abstractions.

I would say that it's wrong to rephrase T-Hawk's position in that way. Taking the analogy of map vs reality, Wittgenstein and you are talking about different types of maps (descriptions and models) while T-Hawk wants to get past all that and talk about the reality itself.

Yeah.  I took a look at the Tractatus but didn't get far into it.  Formalized philosophy first has to get so hung up on defining logic and language and truth and meaning before they can get to anything about the reality.  I get where that's necessary to formalize it, but that's boring.  Godel's incompleteness theorem shows that no language can be self-proving and consistent, so at some point we just have to accept an assumption that language is functional to get past that, so I just do.  (And before you rip apart my abstraction, by 'language is functional' I'm just describing a large aggregation of phenomena induced by my brain crafting this text and the effects it has on yours.)

As I've been saying all along, the reality of determinism and reductionism holds as reality no matter what arguments or meaning or lack of meaning or "it's just numbers" are advanced against it.

[T-hawk]

If your worldview is sufficiently reductionist, there's not even such a thing as a gene.

This entire discussion was started by "Genejack Factories".  It's very hard or outright impossible to say that there even is such a thing as a gene if your worldview is sufficiently reductionist.

That is exactly Yang's principle that leads to the genejacks.  The Genejack is a catchy name but it's not making any statements about the underlying reality.  There is nothing special about genes.  Yang is arguing to manipulate those chemicals the same as we would manipulate any other matter for what we deem to be our purposes.  He argues that there are no ethical concerns, that the resulting organism did not somehow have some right or entitlement for his chemicals to be in any particular configuration that has somehow been violated.

Sometimes a protein will cut off prematurely, just by random chance.  ...  Why this happens varies: it can be just a roll of the dice; or it might be sensitivity to precise conditions that may not be known or are practically controllable.

Your last statement is the thing there.  These events are not random chance, unless actually driven by quantum effects (but as we said, the scale of quantum effects is orders of magnitude below the scale of chemical interactions.)  All of this is driven by precise conditions that are merely below the threshold of our observational resolution.  We colloquially describe that as chance, but it isn't.  You're actually right that it's like a roll of the dice -- that's not random either, it's deterministic based on the launch angle and angular momentum and impacts and rebounds; all of that is merely below our observational threshold so we sum it up as random chance.

[Bacchus]

I've formulated that: Given identical particles, can different results occur?

What are 'results'? Aren't they also particles? Doesn't the question then become 'Given identical particles, do you get identical particles?' You might introduce the time coordinate -- given identical particles at t would particles be identical, within quantum noise at t+1? That's not a falsifiable statement by itself. We don't have two worlds to run in parallel. But even if it were, if you hold to materialism and see that t+1 the particles are different, how would you choose between: postulating a yet-unobserved particle, abandoning materialism and abandoning determinism?

There is also a completely different problem. As I see it, the particles being identical at t+1 by itself tells us nothing about the reason they are identical. I'll use a well-worn analogy: imagine looking at a mosaic, row by row. You note that every time row r looks a particular way, the row r+1 looks a particular way. Maybe a green tile is always followed by a red tile. Is that enough to say that the redness (or the appropriate fundamental particleness) is determined by the preceding greenness? What does this concept of determination add to a simple temporal observation: red at r+1, green at r? What reasons do I have to say that there is or there is not determination going on?

[Bacchus]

We merely lack sufficient computational or cognitional power to describe every particle individually. If we could, we'd have no need for the maps and abstractions.

Such a description would be a map

[T-hawk]

So you, reasonably, ask why I demand that you not possess a genejacked slave. And a better answer than I gave before is that I hold the genejack to be a member of the polity ('humans living in X')

Yang's argument is that the genejack is by definition not a member of that polity.  To make a genejack is to preclude from ever existing whatever essence you consider to qualify it as such.

I believe your only counterargument rests on the divine, that that essence is God-granted and cannot be precluded or created by human activity.

Your stand is unreasonable, in that you can't point to an ultimate reason to stick to your guns, while mine is constrained by an objective standard.

My ultimate reason to stick to my guns is "because I want to and nothing stops me."  That's subjective but your standard is equally so.  You define your wants by what you perceive as the genejack's detriment -- but the genejack itself perceives no detriment.  Aggregating a number of subjective justifications into what you call society does not make that aggregation objective.

I will agree with you, then, that materialistically, there is no free will, but -- sorry! -- must continue to disagree for now that there is no will. Like Bacchus, I think that the aggregate physical processes are accurately described as will (choosing -- even if predictably).

I've actually come around to that view as well, that the aggregate physical processes could be described as will, as I just said to Bacchus.  But I don't think there's any practical consequence to that definition.  It's an abstraction like "water wants to flow downhill" or "the chlorine atom wants to fill its electron shell", just describing the outcome of the forces acting on the physical process as a desire.

As I observe the world, however, your world view (that higher-order phenomena are not real as such) seems patently incoherent.

Bacchus made the right arguments here, the top-down ontology as we've been calling it.  It is equivalently true to describe reality as aggregations of particles as to describe it as subdivisions that resulted from the big-bang singularity (or even from a divine creator.)  It is equivalently true to describe the fundament of reality as "what cannot be subdivided" as to describe it as "what cannot be aggregated" because that aggregation already includes the entire universe.  Bacchus brought me to realize that my position is not inherently superior to that, but neither is the other way around either.