Are randomness and free-will compatible concepts?

[apeiron]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Qualia is definitely the wrong word to capture what I was talking about. They are the local particulars of subjective experience. I was talking about the globally general, and objective, forms or constraints.

So a failure on a number of counts. Too local, too particular and too subjective.

 

[JoeDawg]

Qualia is definitely the wrong word to capture what I was talking about.

And yet, it seems to be what someone else was referring to...

 

[baywax]

The way we use words is always significant. It is a key fact that we seem to need two words to capture the two essential aspects of the brain/mind.

Brain is talking about the local substances out of which the brain/mind is made. Mind is talking about the global form, the specific kind of organisation that shapes that collection of substance between our ears.

To think you can do away with one view or term, and just make do with the other, is what creates so much confusion. Instead, we need terminology that does full justice to both aspects.

Again, this is why I say freewill is a bad and misleading term (capable only of spawning endless debate about the paradoxes it creates). If you talked instead about anticipation or autonomy, then you can get on with actually understanding something interesting about the brain/mind as a system.

Randomness vs determinism is a debate about the properties of un-organised substances. Collections of stuff, ensembles of materials, that have only the simplest kinds of form or globally coherent behaviours.

Complex systems have complex behaviours and you have to find the right ways to talk scientifically about them.

It is a mistake repeated so often. Is the development of a human about nature or nurture, genes or society? Clearly it is how two kinds of thing interact that is the interesting story.

Sorry, didn't mean to disregard the rest of this post. I agree that the more words we have to describe conditions and events the better. Its just that there has to be mutual agreement amongst the those discussing a matter as to the definition of the terms. Like I said earlier... the word "soul" is often bandied about yet the word as you say is far to subjectively rooted to be of any use in a conversation. Similarly "love" can be a stumbling block on the road to mutual understanding.

"Mind" is not used in neuroscience because it is, again, interpreted in many different ways by just as many people... as is "consciousness" (which must be joined to "awareness" when used in neuroscience discussions).

These are difficult items because... like i said again... everyone pretends to know what the other is saying when the definition is left up to the observer. We don't have to eliminate the words... each person needs to express how they are utilizing the word when its being used in a discussion... and even then the listener's definition will always automatically kick in when they hear the word. What to do?!

 

[apeiron]

Like I said earlier... the word "soul" is often bandied about yet the word as you say is far to subjectively rooted to be of any use in a conversation. Similarly "love" can be a stumbling block on the road to mutual understanding.

My view is that ancient greek metaphysics did a good job on establishing the maximally robust, objective and invariant terms for discussing things. They are so strong as to be mathematical. And they came for good reason as dichotomous pairs - asymmetric terms that exactly complement each other as A and not-A.

So you have "good" dichotomies such as stasis~flux, discrete~continuous, chance~necessity, substance~form. And in more modern times we have added local~global, event~context, signal~noise, and a few more.

There are also some "bad" dichotomies that have persisted, such as matter~mind, love~hate, evil~good, etc.

Good dichotomies all share the property of strong asymmetry - in scale terms especially. While weaker pairings are simpler "same scale" symmetry breakings. So for instance, love and hate, or good and evil, are the same size metaphysically. But the robust dichotomies have a breaking of symmetry across scales. Local~global is explicitly a breaking across scale and so is "very good" !

Event and context also are maximally asymmetric in this way. Discrete (the local part) and continuous (the global whole) again fit the bill. As does stasis (what stays located) and flux (the whole that is in movement).

So we are not completely helpless so far as finding good terminology for discussing meta-physical issues. Part of the job of philosophy really has always been about reducing the discussion to the most fundamental concepts, the words that really mean the most.

Soul and mind and consciousness and qualia and freewill - those are all a historical baggage of terminology that just aren't that helpful. But metaphysics already established the most robust language back in ancient greece.

And if we follow the path of maximum asymmetry - dividing our ignorance or vagueness as strongly as possible in opposing directions, not forgetting to go in different directions in terms of scale as well - then this has actually proved itself the best way to produce the necessary language.

There is a method for making the words.

 

[baywax]

My view is that ancient greek metaphysics did a good job on establishing the maximally robust, objective and invariant terms for discussing things. They are so strong as to be mathematical. And they came for good reason as dichotomous pairs - asymmetric terms that exactly complement each other as A and not-A.

So you have "good" dichotomies such as stasis~flux, discrete~continuous, chance~necessity, substance~form. And in more modern times we have added local~global, event~context, signal~noise, and a few more.

There are also some "bad" dichotomies that have persisted, such as matter~mind, love~hate, evil~good, etc.

Good dichotomies all share the property of strong asymmetry - in scale terms especially. While weaker pairings are simpler "same scale" symmetry breakings. So for instance, love and hate, or good and evil, are the same size metaphysically. But the robust dichotomies have a breaking of symmetry across scales. Local~global is explicitly a breaking across scale and so is "very good" !

Event and context also are maximally asymmetric in this way. Discrete (the local part) and continuous (the global whole) again fit the bill. As does stasis (what stays located) and flux (the whole that is in movement).

So we are not completely helpless so far as finding good terminology for discussing meta-physical issues. Part of the job of philosophy really has always been about reducing the discussion to the most fundamental concepts, the words that really mean the most.

Soul and mind and consciousness and qualia and freewill - those are all a historical baggage of terminology that just aren't that helpful. But metaphysics already established the most robust language back in ancient greece.

And if we follow the path of maximum asymmetry - dividing our ignorance or vagueness as strongly as possible in opposing directions, not forgetting to go in different directions in terms of scale as well - then this has actually proved itself the best way to produce the necessary language.

There is a method for making the words.

This is great news. Thanks apeiron!. I'm going to have to distill this concrete info and let it simmer before solidifying enough to comment further in this locale...

 

[baywax]

For the moment, let me just express my confusion about the validity of the word "meta-physics". It appears to me to be a contradiction of terms or at least of root terms.

Metaphysics means to be above or outside the physical world. Yet, we discuss it using physical terms... we contemplate it using our physical and biological bodies, including our brains. And if someone told me an idea is not physical I'd tell them they are wrong because an idea is, in its most fundimental form, an electromagnetic pulse. Metaphysicists claim that energy is evidence of metaphysical reality yet energy is in fact electromagnetic pulses and/or radiation.

How is it that a concept, completely conceived by physical means, and claimed to be above and beyond all physical realms, exist in the first place? And how do does one go about proving the existence of the metaphysical using nothing but the clumsy butterfingers of a physical frame of reference?

 

[JoeDawg]

Metaphysics means to be above or outside the physical world.

Actually, it means, this is what Aristotle wrote about, after he was done writing about physics. :)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics
The word derives from the Greek words μετά (metá) (meaning "beyond" or "after") and φυσικά (physiká) (meaning "physical"), "physical" referring to those works on matter by Aristotle in antiquity. The prefix meta- ("beyond") was attached to the chapters in Aristotle's work that followed after the chapters on "physics," in posthumously edited collections. Aristotle himself did not call these works Metaphysics. Aristotle called some of the subjects treated there "first philosophy."

 

[apeiron]

Meta makes sense if you take it as a more general level of discussion. So if physics is concerned with what is, then meta-physics could be a step up to a more general view about what could even be.

 

[baywax]

Meta makes sense if you take it as a more general level of discussion. So if physics is concerned with what is, then meta-physics could be a step up to a more general view about what could even be.

That's usually called a hypothesis isn't it?... not metaphysics..

 

[magpies]

Invsible forces like magnetism would be considered a part of metaphysics by ancient greeks I am sure.

 

[apeiron]

That's usually called a hypothesis isn't it?... not metaphysics..

No...

 

[baywax]

No...

Surely, you jest... what else do you call the imaginings and over-reaching of physical entities such as humans?

Of course many say that physicalness is a manifestation of the "spectrum" of some other something or other... but that's as hypothetical as imagining a form of "life" that is not carbon-based.

 

[apeiron]

Surely, you jest... what else do you call the imaginings and over-reaching of physical entities such as humans?

I was talking about the process of generalisation - the development of universals or general principles from particular or local experiences and observations.

A hypothesis is something else - a particular guess about how some particular thing could be explained. (Although that something could be very large - like a particular universe).

 

[baywax]

I was talking about the process of generalisation - the development of universals or general principles from particular or local experiences and observations.

A hypothesis is something else - a particular guess about how some particular thing could be explained. (Although that something could be very large - like a particular universe).

Ah... I see. So, when Lao Tsu hits upon a sort of axiom that appears to be true in many situations and on many scales... that would be a metaphysical constant. Such as when he points out that being supple like the grass is a better way to survive than being brittle like old wood...?

There are more observations by many philosophers that seem to apply as axioms yet are not nor never could be construed as theories or as physics. Yet they are truths in as far as metaphor or analogy can be truth. This is a very interesting take on metaphysics. Thank you!

 

[apeiron]

There are more observations by many philosophers that seem to apply as axioms yet are not nor never could be construed as theories or as physics. Yet they are truths in as far as metaphor or analogy can be truth. This is a very interesting take on metaphysics. Thank you!

I was thinking more of concepts which really are taken as "truths". So ancient greek philosophy came up with a whole bunch of meta-physical ideas that underpin our physical models.

There also all happen to be derived as dichotomies.

So we have fundamental distinctions like discrete~continuous, stasis~flux, atom~void, one~many, substance~form, chance~necessity, etc, etc.

This is more than just analogy or metaphor. It is a greater level of abstraction about what is believed to be "true". Or at least logically possible in some limit case exhaustive fashion.

Of course, since you mention Eastern philosophical traditions, this was also the essence of Taoist I Ching. But not so completely developed.

 

[baywax]

I was thinking more of concepts which really are taken as "truths". So ancient greek philosophy came up with a whole bunch of meta-physical ideas that underpin our physical models.

There also all happen to be derived as dichotomies.

So we have fundamental distinctions like discrete~continuous, stasis~flux, atom~void, one~many, substance~form, chance~necessity, etc, etc.

This is more than just analogy or metaphor. It is a greater level of abstraction about what is believed to be "true". Or at least logically possible in some limit case exhaustive fashion.

Of course, since you mention Eastern philosophical traditions, this was also the essence of Taoist I Ching. But not so completely developed.

Yes and I am more conversant about the tao than I am about greek philosophy. The eastern philosophies really do tend to use metaphor to explain their observations. Although this was perhaps to extend their understanding and truths to the general public and the more dense of the dynasties. So that, when they saw the grass bend in the wind and the stiff and hard tree be blown to the ground by it, they remembered that being rigid of spirit and action is not an enduring way to behave when compared to the "flex" of the grasses.

So, perhaps the poetry of Lao Tsu is a description of his more metaphysical and observed truths and is meant to convey these truths in the simplest format. Confucius often paraphrased the tao but his verbose use of the imagery shows how reliant he was upon the simpler form of tao's truths.

(is this off-shoot going to resolve in an understanding of randomness and free will?)

 

[apeiron]

(is this off-shoot going to resolve in an understanding of randomness and free will?)

It might if we return to the metaphysical origin of the perceived conflict.

Ancient greeks dichotomised action into chance and necessity. What we today call the random and the determined. And these are indeed the two extreme possible states for simple systems.

The question for simple systems then is whether this means all such systems are either of one kind, or the other kind? So either completely deterministic (eg: GR) or completely probablistic (eg: QM).

Or instead, we could recognise that the dichotomy crisply defines two kinds of limits that can be approached (so all actual systems exist in the spectrum of possibility that lies in-between). So some systems are as random as possible (like a coin-tossing process), or as determined as possible (like a coin placing process).

Then having got a good fix on simple systems, we can ask what is different about complex systems. Do the same dichotomies actually apply once reality has this further dimension?

If you are of the "more is different" camp, then yes, new dichotomies, new metaphysical-level distinctions, are required to capture this different dimension of truth.

But the ancient greeks did not really develop any. And modern science has not done too well at popularising any either.

There is the concept of autonomy to stand for what is special about a complex system's choice making abilities - creative action within bounding constraints. But what do we call the simple system's abilities in this context? What is the right word (non-autonomous not adding much to the discussion)?

One quite good dichotomy coined by Stewart and Cohen is complicity~simplexity.

This would be an example of modern metaphysics - attempting to create new unifying concepts that generalise from scientific understanding.

 

[baywax]

It might if we return to the metaphysical origin of the perceived conflict.

Ancient greeks dichotomised action into chance and necessity. What we today call the random and the determined. And these are indeed the two extreme possible states for simple systems.

The question for simple systems then is whether this means all such systems are either of one kind, or the other kind? So either completely deterministic (eg: GR) or completely probablistic (eg: QM).

Or instead, we could recognise that the dichotomy crisply defines two kinds of limits that can be approached (so all actual systems exist in the spectrum of possibility that lies in-between). So some systems are as random as possible (like a coin-tossing process), or as determined as possible (like a coin placing process).

Then having got a good fix on simple systems, we can ask what is different about complex systems. Do the same dichotomies actually apply once reality has this further dimension?

If you are of the "more is different" camp, then yes, new dichotomies, new metaphysical-level distinctions, are required to capture this different dimension of truth.

But the ancient greeks did not really develop any. And modern science has not done too well at popularising any either.

There is the concept of autonomy to stand for what is special about a complex system's choice making abilities - creative action within bounding constraints. But what do we call the simple system's abilities in this context? What is the right word (non-autonomous not adding much to the discussion)?

One quite good dichotomy coined by Stewart and Cohen is complicity~simplexity.

This would be an example of modern metaphysics - attempting to create new unifying concepts that generalise from scientific understanding.

The "complicity and simpexity" dichotomy reminds me of a sort of consilience between the two concepts. Especially the way the words are a hybrid of one another.

In the tao there is a unification theory described by the way water flows, fills voids and continues on after conquering the deepest abyss while all the while providing the sustenance of life. The dichotomy described in the tao is between the multitude (all living and non-living things) and the "unnamed way". Some people think the "way" is chi or energy but after reading the i ching and the tao te ching for many years I have not determined this to be true. In fact, I would suggest that energy is one of the multitude and the manifold.

But, of course you're right and there is always a dichotomy and there has to be in order for anything to be perceived. As Doris Day has pointed out "you can't have one without the other". But, the tao's "unnamed way" seems to be the determining factor with regard to the survival of the multitude. And the actions, behavior and "swaying back and forth" of all things appears to be determined by the nature of the unnamed way.

What would a physicist or a greek philosopher call the "unnamed way"?

 

[apeiron]

What would a physicist or a greek philosopher call the "unnamed way"?

Why, the Apeiron of course! The boundless, the unlimited. A state of pure plenipotential. Or in modern philosoohy, ontic vagueness.

All ancient philosophies share this same basic notion of organic creation as a division, a symmetry breaking, of a state of pure potential. As crisp divisions develop and mix, this creates the multitude that is.

In Indian Buddhism, you have dependent co-arising, for example.

The basic idea may be shared either because it was such an obvious idea, everyone arrived at it. Or there could have been a transmission of the concepts from west to east, or east to west.

 

[baywax]

Why, the Apeiron of course! The boundless, the unlimited. A state of pure plenipotential. Or in modern philosoohy, ontic vagueness.

All ancient philosophies share this same basic notion of organic creation as a division, a symmetry breaking, of a state of pure potential. As crisp divisions develop and mix, this creates the multitude that is.

In Indian Buddhism, you have dependent co-arising, for example.

The basic idea may be shared either because it was such an obvious idea, everyone arrived at it. Or there could have been a transmission of the concepts from west to east, or east to west.

So far all I've got on "apeiron" is that its a computer game on the macintosh and that its a

"a cosmological theory created by Anaximander in the 6th century BC"

and

"Apeiron is a Greek word meaning unlimited, infinite or indefinite from the Greek a (without) and peiras (end or limit in Ionic dialect)."

While the unnamed way is the continuous ebb and flow of all that is and its propensity to strike a balance of same.

Interestingly enough these two ideas were both recorded around the same time, in the 6th cent. BC.

 

[Deveno]

Some have mentioned in this thread that it is rediculuous to reject the notion of free will will, because that entails denying the self, or sense of "I".

I agree that rejecting free will does indeed have this consequence. Where I diverge with them, is in the rediculousness of such a notion. Our brains are good at symbolic manipulation, abstraction is a basic form of our thought processes. When we think about the world, and the things in it, we do not do so entirely faithfully, but use (with more or fewer degrees of awareness) representations of the world adequate for evaluation. We lose the fine detail, in order to see larger aggregates of ideas. It's really kind of an awesome thing that we can function so fluidly this way.

But one thing we over-look, is that "I" is just a central symbol our brains create to refer to ourselves. And that, being a symbol, leaves out a great deal of imformation. This symbol is no more who we are, than saying "my friend John is John." I may indeed have a friend named John, but he is surely more than his name. He is also surely more than everything I have ever thought about him. The actual details of his physical existence are so many, I doubt there is room in my consciousness to hold them all.

Such is the bane of self-awareness. Eventually, we realize that the very reasoning process that allows us to have these conversations, also bars us from discovering what is ultimately true. Naming apples, blinds us to the uniqueness of every individual apple, in an essential way, the idea of an apple takes us even further from the truth. What is, isn't "I", what "I" is, doesn't actually exist. The world of words and ideas, is in many ways a profound and beautiful one, but its structures and concepts are those are our own devising, not what may (if you believe in an independent reality) be there without us.

 

[apeiron]

While the unnamed way is the continuous ebb and flow of all that is and its propensity to strike a balance of same.

It is this idea of ebb and flow where I think the two approaches diverge.

If reality arises as the crisp division of some raw, vague, unformed potential - a symmetry breaking phase transition - then either a) there is ebb and flow. What is divided is just as easily reunited. Or b) there is only flow. Once a breaking has started, it must flow all the way down a gradient until some new different, and permanently broken, equilibrium is arrived at.

Tao is based on a.

Anaximander's apeiron is more b. What is produced can subside again. But overall, the story is of a succession of phase transitions which gradually create the complex materials of the world.

I would describe my own position as strong b. And this would be based on modern cosmology and thermodynamics. For example, the ancients never imagined a dynamic universe that cools~expands towards the nullity of a heat death, the ultimate phase transition. Taking the potential for anything and transforming it into the most immense nothing possible.

So there are both similarities and essential differences of view here. And the ancient traditions were only a metaphysical start.

 

[apeiron]

I agree that rejecting free will does indeed have this consequence. Where I diverge with them, is in the rediculousness of such a notion.

This is certainly the correct view. The idea of a "chosing self in charge" is a social construction, a convenient fiction created with language.

 

[baywax]

This is certainly the correct view. The idea of a "chosing self in charge" is a social construction, a convenient fiction created with language.

I'm not sure how the Greeks see it but the taoist and asian take on "self in charge" is more like "to serve is to rule" and "to rule is to serve". Interesting that this is a dichotomy yet apparently a hybrid like "simplexity and complicity" of ideas and function.

Another thing is that if one does act or chose to act in a stubborn or "brittle" way, eventually nature will "crumble" you. And, yet again, there is the unspoken rule that the way or nature has prompted your stubborn or "take charge" actions because they not only provide a compliment to the humble and persevering approach of nature but perhaps also somehow provide other means that continue and support the duration and progress of all things.

When you say the tao suggests there is a beginning that is simple and whole which then splits into the myriad of all things, then returns to the whole... I would beg to differ. The multitude is the compliment to the "uncarved block". This is can be seen as being depicted by the yin and yang symbol where there is always a compliment and there can be neither without the compliment of the other. Thus the two compliments are the whole. However, we must add a third element which is the observer taking note of the whole... slightly perplexing.