OT: Memes Vs. Free Will

[Kevin Aylward]

John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Rich Grise <null@example.net
wrote (in <sRg6d.4274$8H1.2979@trnddc08&gt about '[OT]: Memes Vs. Free
Will', on Tue, 28 Sep 2004:

Take, for example, an ameba.
How does it know what to eat and what to run away from?

If you've ever looked at one under a microscope, you'd know that it
eats anything that doesn't repel it chemically, and it doesn't run
away from a predator, only harmful chemical gradients.

[snip]

Everything that has electric currents has magnetic fields.

Your thoughts are contained in the interplay of electric fields.
Your feelings are contained in the interplay of magnetic fields.

You cannot be serious!

Yep he is. He's a serious fruitcake.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[Scott Stephens]

Clifford Heath wrote:

Kevin Aylward wrote:

"The immaterial essence of an individual life".

And what "immaterial essence of an individual life" would that be?
Your babbling like Mumbles here.

He is, but the concept can still be usefully defined.

The concepts of "immaterial", "essence", "individual", and, to a lesser
degree "life" are all defined. The proposition using them deserves a
logical analysis.

I have a novel in my computer. It's not material, it's
information, an arrangement of things, which may be
represented in various ways and even translated into
other languages. I can't extract its essence, though
I can create a representation of it in a new medium.
Even if I open my computer, I can't point to the novel,
but it really *is* there. In the novel is a story,
which I can tell without reference to the novel - in
fact I could write the same story in a completely new
novel. You would see the similarity and be bored though,
because you read for the story.

The soul is like that, except that it is also an evolving
process running on some convenient wetware. It can't be
extracted nor (at present) can a fresh representation of
it be made, because it only exists as an arrangement of that
particular piece of wetware. Nevertheless, it does exist in
a useful sense.

I think there is a bit more to a soul. Information on a computer isn't
an active participant in a chain of causality in the way a living
creature is. Life metabolizes to live, and affects the energy and
entropy of the universe. Information is an attribute life uses in its
process of living.

I think
damn near everyone here knows evil and evil people when the see it.


Scott, perhaps you live in a homogenized culture, but there are people
whose goals are so radically different from yours that you wouldn't
relate to many of their values at all.

There is a cultural war in progress. Who is more tolerant of others
living their life? Who goes running to court to get a cross or nativity
scene taken down, or get a monument to the 10 commandments installed in
a public building? Who makes attacking one philosophy a "hate crime",
but not another? Who demands taxes be extorted, and children inculcated
with their values?

--
Scott

**********************************

DIY Piezo-Gyro, PCB Drill Bot & More Soon!

http://home.comcast.net/~scottxs/

Those who sow excuses shall reap excuses

**********************************

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <Wzh6d.111585$U04.47232@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
Kevin Aylward <salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk> wrote:

Ken Smith wrote:
[...]
Actually QM is based on limits of knowledge not measurement. Even the
electon doesn't "know" its exact position. The value is not hidden it
does not exist.

Not true. It "exists" in any usual sense of the word. Even accounting
for the various interpretations of HUP, there is nothing in QM that
prohibits the position or momentum to be measured to any degree of
accuracy that is desired.

You can't ever measure both, exactly. The case I was talking about here
was assuming the momentum is known. I should have stated that. Tunneling
is an effect of the electron not "knowing" its location. If it "knew" and
only you couldn't measure it, tunneling as we know it wouldn't happen.
The electron's "wave function" spreads over into the other conductor so it
has some chance of being there. This is what I meant.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Clifford Heath]

Scott Stephens wrote:

The concepts of "immaterial", "essence", "individual", and, to a lesser
degree "life" are all defined. The proposition using them deserves a
logical analysis.

Perhaps you'd like to define essence here for us, and explain
how the essence of a life may be identified?

I think there is a bit more to a soul. Information on a computer isn't
an active participant in a chain of causality in the way a living
creature is.

No, but a process in a computer which has I/O devices can be.
You're going to argue that the person who wrote the program
and activated it on the computer is the true cause. The buck
must stop somewhere however, or else everything's the fault
of the big bang, and we have no explanation for that.

Go back and read about the turtles. Animating a body by supposing
a spirit simply pushes the same problem back one realm. It's only
done by people who want to move the problem to a convenient
location where it can't be tested or analysed, except in thought.

Who is more tolerant of others living their life?

Where was your nation's culture 100 years ago, or 200 or 400?
Cultures evolve. Much of Islam is where Xianity was 400 years
ago, but it's being forced to evolve fast - look at the reasons
those Italian women got released. Medieval ideas are dying, as
they died in the West when the wisdom of the Greeks was
rediscovered; thankfully the Muslims had preserved it from Xian
solipsism.

 

[Guy Macon]

John Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> says...

You can't be a ; you haven't celebrated the summer solstice at
Stonehenge.

Orthodox Druids celebrated the summer solstice at Stonehenge.

Neodruids celebrate the summer solstice in Las Vegas, Nevada.

(Also,"summer solstice" is +/- 183 days...)

 

[Guy Macon]

John Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> says...

Nonsense. Pussy cats are lovely. Especially white ones.

E. Blofeld.

I was just watching that one a week or so ago. Did you notice
the cat digging his claws in when the explosion went off?

 

[Guy Macon]

John Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> says...

You cannot be serious!

You already said "Rich Grise wrote."
No need to say the same thing twice.

HTH.

 

[Guy Macon]

Ken Smith <kensmith@green.rahul.net> says...

Kevin Aylward wrote:

Even accounting >for the various interpretations of HUP,
there is nothing in QM that prohibits the position or
momentum to be measured to any degree of accuracy that
is desired.

You can't ever measure both, exactly.

Don't bother trying. He is ineducable. I advise killfiling
him and spending your efforts conversing with people who have
tumbled on to the basic concept that asserting something again
and again is not a logical argument.

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Guy Macon <http@?.guymacon.com>
wrote (in <10ljua8c1st0j5c@news.supernews.com&gt about 'OT: Memes Vs.
Free Will', on Tue, 28 Sep 2004:

John Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> says...

You can't be a ; you haven't celebrated the summer solstice at
Stonehenge.

Orthodox Druids celebrated the summer solstice at Stonehenge.

No, it still happens every year. These 'druids' have around a 2000 year
gap from the druids that Julius Caesar decided to leave severely alone
(religious fanatics, you know: liable to commit acts of terrorism in
Chester), so must qualify as 'neo'.

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Robert Monsen]

Guy Macon wrote:

Robert Monsen <rcsurname@comcast.net> says...


If you believe that all behavior derives from the meat, then its
difficult to believe in such concepts as soul or free will. We are
physical beings, whose behavior, while astonishingly complex, is really
derived from the mechanical and electrical interactions of various proteins.


If you believe that all behavior derives from the meat, then it
is only difficult to believe in such concepts as free will if you
don't know about emergent behavior.

So you are saying that our will is free if things are so complex that we
can't understand the biological processes that are making the decisions
for us?

Regards,
Bob Monsen

 

[Scott Stephens]

Clifford Heath wrote:

Scott Stephens wrote:

The concepts of "immaterial", "essence", "individual", and, to a
lesser degree "life" are all defined. The proposition using them
deserves a logical analysis.


Perhaps you'd like to define essence here for us, and explain
how the essence of a life may be identified?

Aw hell, if I must.

Merriam-Webster sez: "1.fundamental nature or quality, 2. substance
distilled... 3. perfume.

So if a "life" is what a living entity has that a dead one doesn't, it's
essence, its fundamental nature or quality of living, must again be its
life. Sounds a bit redundant, it should have just been defined as "life"
in the first place, rather than "immaterial essence of an individual
life". Immaterial essence makes soul a non-material phenomena though, as
distinguished from material, say metabolic phenomena. In this case, an
immaterial essence would be the attributes of life abstracted from the
physical, the way content is abstracted from media and presentation.

Actions are abstract. "Fast", "slow", "spin" et. So the essential
attributes of living things would include such actions as, "eating",
"replicating", "hunting", "sensing", "deciding", "acting", et.

I think there is a bit more to a soul. Information on a computer isn't
an active participant in a chain of causality in the way a living
creature is.


No, but a process in a computer which has I/O devices can be.
You're going to argue that the person who wrote the program
and activated it on the computer is the true cause. The buck
must stop somewhere however, or else everything's the fault
of the big bang, and we have no explanation for that.

Causality may not be applicable to the big bang, especially if the
universe is a closed 4d object. 4D objects have no beginning or end. The
coordinates our consciousness moves through are along the psychological
arrow of time, which may not be the same as the cosmological "arrow of
time" or parameter of evolution. Time is subsumed by a 3+1 D universe,
so the universe is an object that exists and doesn't have a beginning or
end.

Go back and read about the turtles. Animating a body by supposing
a spirit simply pushes the same problem back one realm. It's only
done by people who want to move the problem to a convenient
location where it can't be tested or analysed, except in thought.

I'm not trying to defend some ancient notion of spirit and soul, where
life was soul and spirit that come from heaven & hell to animate flesh,
then leave when its dead. I can still call spirit an information-form,
and soul the momentum-like influence characterized by the chain of
causality consequent from living creatures organizing and transforming
the matter it animates. The ancients were identifying the phenomena of
life correctly, even if not the correct reasons why it takes modern
science to explain.

--
Scott

**********************************

DIY Piezo-Gyro, PCB Drill Bot & More Soon!

http://home.comcast.net/~scottxs/

Those who sow excuses shall reap excuses

**********************************

 

[Clifford Heath]

Scott Stephens wrote:

an immaterial essence would be the attributes of life abstracted from the
physical, the way content is abstracted from media and presentation.

Ok, so we have "attributes of life", in other words a description,
mere information about the life. But going back to the context where
you used it: "It's much deeper in our souls", the "motivation to be
good". You clarified that the soul is the immaterial essence... so
to re-connect the whole picture, the "motivation to be good" is deep
in the attributes of a life. Information can motivate a mind, but
this is information *about* the mind, i.e. descriptive. So you're
saying that minds have intrinsic motivation to "be good".

I think I'll leave that simplistic view without too much comment,
other than "there's so much good in the worst of us, and so much
bad in the best of us...", with apologies to Robbie Burns or someone.

Causality may not be applicable to the big bang,

Yes, I'm aware of the details of this side issue. You side-stepped
the main point though. Can a computer be considered an "active"
participant in a chain of causality? What does active mean in this
context? Does it need an independent "spirit" to activate it, or
does it just need enough randomness filtered through a sufficiently
complex process that its actions are inscrutable? Inscrutable here
means basically that no jury would consider the *programmer*
responsible for the computer's actions, in the way that parents
aren't held responsible for the actions of their adult children.

We don't accept the inscrutability of computers yet, but it's
conceivable that someday we might - and therefore according to
your definition our computers (probably already) have primitive souls.
But if you maintain that could never happen, then you're a Platonist
using modern language.

Clifford Heath.