Only That Which Came About By Itself Is Real

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

I have been preaching a variation of this for some time, using a Yeats quote: Whatever flames upon the night, man's own resinous heart has fed, but I always find myself playing devil's advocate because you are such an unrestrained fanatic.

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Playing devil's advocate is useful. One has to consider the other side as well. I suppose I am doing something smilar, but I am not interested in showing you are a fanatic or even wrong. I just want to clarify what I think is the case.

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

All right. Then you are a determinist after all. The butterfly effect is a representative of the type of non-determinism you are constantly promoting.

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Sometimes we think we can list all the possibilities and then eliminate those that don't work. The last possibility remaining must then be true. That is an effective approach provided we have actually listed all the possibilities. Usually we are too blinded to do that.

Non-determinism contains a lot of possibilities. It is not just the butterfly effect which I think is too deterministic for even chaos theory. For example is the hurricane so determined that only the random change in a single butterfly will determine if it exists or not? It would seem that chaos theory needs a lot more randomness than that.

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

What bugs you, perhaps, is that it works in models, it works in simulations. When some parameters are tweaked ever so slightly, they produce major changes in the behavior of the simulation down the line, and hence the name of the effect because the butterfly flapping its wings in south America is responsible for a hurricane off Florida two weeks later. This is merely a metaphor to illustrate how sensitive models of chaotic systems are to slight changes in initial conditions, weather systems being chaotic. If you have never read a book on chaos theory, you should read Gleick. Chaos is no longer described as random. There is a certain amount of order in chaos, a kind of predictability but not determinism. I know you are a well read fellow, and have probably read this author. What I cannot understand is why you would not have sucked up these ideas for use in your own theory, since they seem a good fit. Chaos is the medium lying somewhere between full determinism and full randomness. That is the same medium you say we are in.

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Although I have Gleick's book I have not read it. I am reading Bergson's "Creative Evolution" at the moment. However, I wouldn't mind learning more about chaos theory when I get back to Chicago.

If chaos lies between full determinism and full randomness then it is not how I view reality. Reality contains neither determinism nor randomness as I see it so there is no way for reality to be some middle ground between a little bit of determinism and a little bit of randomness. Reality contains various forms of subjective consciousness making choices under constraints. At least, that is how I see it.

Models and simulations on the other hand (not reality) can contain various forms of determinism and randomness. And these models can be very useful, but they are not reality. They just model reality. Constructing models is a scientific activity based on experimental testing whose accuracy is limited by the precision of the instruments available for the tests. Claiming that reality is the model or simulation is metaphysics, not science. To confuse reality with a simulation of reality is like confusing a meal with the menu, to use an old saying.

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

If I were to agree with you and profess that consciousness is the ability to make a choice, I see nothing to further compel me to add the constraint that the choice must be non-deterministic and non-random. I guess you are saying it cannot be a true choice if it is either. However, it also means you are saying consciousness cannot exist without free will.

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That is close to what I am saying. However, people might argue that we do not have complete free will and we don't. We are somewhat predictable based on our "dispositions". But we have enough free will to make a choice which allows something new and intentional to appear.

You mentioned Penrose and Hameroff's quantum vibrations. These could be accepted as correlates of consciousness in humans. They are sometimes easier to work with than saying consciousness implies the existence of choice. It might not be easy to show that a choice was made. Suppose one accepts that finding these quantum vibrations implies that the being having them was conscious. It is easy to find these quantum vibrations. Then we could see what other species also had quantum vibrations and say they too are conscious. That is where I see the usefulness of correlates of consciousness.

Some people look at correlations differently. They find a correlate of consciousness and think they can reduce consciousness to that correlate. That would be like finding a footprint in a forest (a correlate of some animal walking in the forest) and claiming the footprint made the animal rather than saying that the animal made the footprint.

I fear that choice making may be another of what you call a correlate and I would probably have called an artifact.

And your theoretical human being that has just enough choice to give him free will within constraints, sounds like he falls between two notions, too, though you seem to object that chaos lies somewhere between randomness and determinism. Not so much an objection as a distinction. With chaos theory it may be that it contains just enough determinism to make it useful.

The concept of strange attractors is something I believe you will pull a lot of fascination from, and acts as a of focus for metaphorical insights. The brain is stirred to see these tiny and huge invisible structures our reality is swimming in, that were not known before. We get floored that the behavior of cotton prices, weather systems, static and dripping water, along with many other diverse phenomena we would never have thought so of, share a deep structural kinship, and we get to see the birth (or at least the public debut) of a new mathematical constant, the Feigenbaum constant. I got a little off tangent here. The first sentence.

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

I fear that choice making may be another of what you call a correlate and I would probably have called an artifact.

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I suspect most people restrict a "correlate of consciousness" to something in the neurons, perhaps even of a quantum nature. And the interest is to provide a base on which to find a deterministic theory that explains consciousness in terms of those correlates. In this sense making a choice would have to have a correlate if a deterministic explanation were to ultimately succeed.

In my view, I look at all reality as a correlate of consciousness. It need not be neural. However, that doesn't help someone measure anything. It is just a perspective on consciousness even the type that is not centered in a brain with neurons. What I am unclear about is differences between consciousness, subjectivity and awareness. They all seem to describe something similar. Being aware depends on a specific type of body that one has.

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

And your theoretical human being that has just enough choice to give him free will within constraints, sounds like he falls between two notions, too, though you seem to object that chaos lies somewhere between randomness and determinism. Not so much an objection as a distinction. With chaos theory it may be that it contains just enough determinism to make it useful.

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Chaos theory relies on determinism and randomness. I have no problem with that. It is a way to measure what we observe. However, does what one is measuring rely on determinism and randomness is what I doubt. We observe patterns and put them on a map. Is the map we construct, that is, the simulation of that reality that we construct, the reality itself?

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

The concept of strange attractors is something I believe you will pull a lot of fascination from, and acts as a of focus for metaphorical insights. The brain is stirred to see these tiny and huge invisible structures our reality is swimming in, that were not known before. We get floored that the behavior of cotton prices, weather systems, static and dripping water, along with many other diverse phenomena we would never have thought so of, share a deep structural kinship, and we get to see the birth (or at least the public debut) of a new mathematical constant, the Feigenbaum constant. I got a little off tangent here. The first sentence.

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After checking Wikipedia, I see that the Feigenbaum constant is a mathematical constant so it could be used in a model of reality. That model works or not depending on its ability to make accurate predictions. If predictions work, that does not mean that reality contains a Feigenbaum constant. The model contains that constant. If the constant is irrational then at some number of decimal places I would expect the predictability of the simulation and reality to break down. That is, predictions will fail to be useful. One will have to replace the determinism with a probabilistic model. Why do I expect that to happen? Because that is what happened with quantum physics.

If I were a God, down to what scale would I make my simulation understandable and the universe rational to its simulated hosts? Could their quest go on interminably, always with progress? Or has the scientific quest into finer and finer scales finally come to no man's land where there is no longer anything for rationality to work with, where order as we define it does not and cannot exist?

Our discussions continually encounter many of the things I touch in poetry. I have not shown any of these pieces out. I guess I will.

I would be interested in reading those poems. Maybe I would understand your position better.

Perhaps part of the problem is the word "create". We think creating means taking something unconscious as raw material and making something out of it equally unconscious.

When I think of the Big Bang I see the universe as coming out of "nothing", that is, nothing unconscious. Since it happened, there was a conscious choice involved outside the universe to start it. But what did that choice do? Did it create unconsciousness out of nothing or out of itself? I don't think there is any more unconsciousness now than there was before the universe began. There is still nothing unconscious in the universe.

When we look at the universe we create a simulation of it to help understand its orderliness. Our subjective view of the universe creates an objective and unconscious universe, a simulation. Our creation is something artificial. If it is a simulation of reality, what is real? The only reality is that consciousness that manifests itself through a universe of which we are a part. We are a manifestation of consciousness, not a simulation. We in turn make simulations using more primitive tools such as mathematics and experimental science. Mystics would use more advanced tools realizing that reality is not the objective unconscious world we think it is.

A simulation is also a manifestation of consciousness.

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

A simulation is also a manifestation of consciousness.

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I do not know the roots of manifestation, but the first three letters are provocative.

Not much to say right now. Working.

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

A simulation is also a manifestation of consciousness.

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Yes, it is.

I picked up Martin Buber's "I and Thou" at Hooked on Books in Colorado Springs. I don't understand it, but some parts seem to be true. The "I-It" relationship would be what we have with mathematics and hence more primitive than the "I-Thou" relationship. I'm trying to fit these ideas into the ideas we are discussing in this thread.

Here's a quote: "All real living is meeting." So, the "I-Thou" relationship is not one-way, but requires a two-way meeting for it to happen.

The I-It is also lived only in the past. The I-Thou in the present.

If everything is a manifestation of consciousness as I am trying to argue then the mystical, advanced methods would involve meetings not measurements. Measurements lead to theories and simulations which generate predictions about the future.

posted in the wrong thread! Sorry.

It is a great deal more fun to approach these big questions in poetry and fiction. Being a created being feels safer to me than being an accident of nature. A creator could always have empathy, provide for our consciousness after death, send us to an afterlife. It is much less believable that random forces of nature put together all of this and an afterlife. A creator is not necessary for an afterlife, though. It could happen without one.

The thing about an advanced creator is I believe it would not make throwaways. Like gold, the important aspect of us, our consciousness, would be recycled, subsumed, reabsorbed, for lack of better terms, if there is a creator, I believe.

Individually, I do not know if I am cosmically significant, but some of my "parts" might be universal. That is at the least what one hopes for. There is no proof, or anything like a proof. Yet I do not suppose an afterlife is any more miraculous than a life. Do you?

I am confused lately, making a lot of duplicate posts and such. Alzheimer's?

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

I fear that choice making may be another of what you call a correlate and I would probably have called an artifact.

And your theoretical human being that has just enough choice to give him free will within constraints, sounds like he falls between two notions, too, though you seem to object that chaos lies somewhere between randomness and determinism. Not so much an objection as a distinction. With chaos theory it may be that it contains just enough determinism to make it useful.

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I will not try to explain where I was wrong until you read the book, Yes/No. The dynamical systems studied by Chaos theory are fully deterministic systems which are nonetheless not prdictable beyond a short range. I need to brush up on the theory myself. Some of that will happen when you read the book and I fetch my own copy out of storage.

I agree that an afterlife is no more miraculous than a life. We just take our lives for granted.

My reasons for believing in an afterlife seem to be nothing more than an enlargement of Gauss's idea that if there were no afterlife it would be too wasteful. Typical Gauss, terse and direct. He may have hit it, though.