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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Drogue
With regards to the observer effect. It is just another way of putting the idea that if a tree falls in the woods, and no-one hears it, did it make a sound. I think a phenomenon can occur without being observed. If something needs to be observed before it can manifest itself in the physical world, then how can it? How can it be observed when it is not physical, so that it can be made physical? I never got the point of the observer effect. I don't believe there is a pre-existing conciousness, there is no evidence for that, nor does it seem to make sense, how something can be concious without a brain. |
The observer effect is more philisophical than "physical". It is essentially the application of Occam's razor. If you feel no effects of an actions (thus, you didn't observe it), then you have no evidence to claim that it exists, and therefore, by Occam's razor, it doesn't, for all practical purposes. The real thing with quantum theory that I have beef with (and that is really mind-boggling if true) is that somehow the multiple possibilities can affect each other.
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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:33
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quote:
There is a delicious irony in all this. Contemporary Western scientific theory postulates that human consciousness is solely a result of the workings of a physical brain, yet if the observer effect is correct, the physical matter comprising a brain cannot come into existence until it is the subject of observation by some pre-existing consciousness. |
I don't think you understand that correctly. What happens is that if you measure (say, a neuron interacts with a photon) a physical value of a system under most conditions (namely, when the system's current state isn't an eigenfunction of the operator that represents the physical value you're trying to measure), it doesn't have a single well-defined value, rather it's determined by a probability distribution. That doesn't mean that the physical system doesn't exist until you measure it, just that aspects of it don't have a value. Furthermore, there isn't any reason to say that "consciousness" is the only thing that can collapse a system into a single value. It makes the most sense to say that all you need is physical interaction (say, a photon collides with the system).
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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Ramo
Physics controls biological systems. Biology is an abstraction of the physics of these systems. |
Well, true, but you don't necessarily need to study physics to understand the brain is all I was saying.
And as for the observer effect, we can observe our own brain, or more like our frontal cortex can observe the rest of the nervous system, its hard to explain if you don't have a background in this kind of thing.
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Rogan Josh
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Ramo: I am still not understanding what you mean by 'consciousness'. I think our definitions are differing because I can't see how a complex deterministic (or even quantum) system can be conscious.
In other words consciousness to me implies that one 'thinks'. But isn't thinking a manifestation of free-will. One chooses to think, and once thinking we choose the direction of thought.
PA: by the quote I think Ramo means that we could completely model the behaviour of the brain and thus someone's actions using physics laws (if we were clever enough to solve them). I don't think though that he is saying that there will only be one outcome, but rather we could predict the probability of each outcome.
If my interpretation was correct, this is not what I call consciousness.
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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:33
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A good description thought, I mean the capability to compartmentalize brain functions internally. Why shouldn't the mechanism for the aspect of "choice" be physical?
Last edited by Ramo on 03-02-2004 at 23:57
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Rogan Josh
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quote:
Originally posted by Ramo
Why shouldn't the mechanism for this "choice" (if you want to compartmentalize the brain in that way) be physical? |
Well, this depends on the definition of the word 'physical' of course. If you define physical as meaning explainable (or predictable) by physical law, then it cannot be physical by definition. Physics has no room for choice, because choice means that it cannot (reliably) be predicted by an observer. Ergo, it is non-physical. If your 'choice' were describable by a physics law that could (one day) be taught in schools then it is no longer a choice, because your decision is prescribed by the physical law.
But non-physical is an expression which conjours up supernatural shenanigans in most people's minds, so I don't like it. I would rather say 'non-predictive'.
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Rogan Josh
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That's not quite true zero. The uncertainty principle has been twisted a bit for the comsumption of the general public. It is true that if we know a particle's momentum then we cannot know its position, but it is not that we don't know its state. It really just has no well defined position.
In technical terms the particle cannot be in an eigenstate of momentum and position at the same time (or to be even more tchnical, the position and momentum operators don't commute). We can still work out perfectly well how the state will change with time and how it will interact with other particles. The only thing we can't say is which eigenstate the particle will fall into when a measurment is made (although we can say it will fall into state x with y% probability).
So we can in principle know the exact state of a system; we just can't know the value of certain quantities because they are not properly defined. Of course, you could argue that we can never put the particle back into a particular state without collapsing wavefunctions again, but that is a separate issue.
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Dr Strangelove
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Perhaps free will comes from the sheer complexity of the human brain, a complexity that is so great that in practice the output of any given person's brain is not predictable. The problem may not be so much the question of whether the human brain works on deterministic principles, but rather whether is it practical for us to make a claim of having anywhere near sufficient knowledge about it's function as to make predictions about a person's behavior.
The human cerebrum has ten billion neurons. Today we are making computers which superficially seem to approach the human brain in complexity, but it muist be remembered that while computers are basically binary systems, the human brain is an analog machine. Thus a computer with a memory of ten billion bits would not have the same "power" as the human brain. It is not currently possible to make a rational comparison between the basic unit of the computer, the micro-transistor, and the basic unit of the human brain, because while we know that the micro-transistor has two degrees of freedom we have not determined the degrees of freedom af any given type of neuron, and furthermore there is an enormous diversity of form and function among neurons. Also consider that while the computer's "brain" is organized into a processing area, the CPU, and memory areas, RAM and hard drive, in the brain no such division seems to exist. As best we know now every part of the brain contributes both to memory and processing.
Finally, consider that the human brain is a product of evolution, designed to ensure as best it can the survival of the human species. Parts of the human brain, like the brainstem are very ancient, being found even in pre-vertebrate sharks. Above the brainstem are the basal ganglia and paleocerebrum, which mediate the higher funcions in reptiles. In humans the older parts of the brain, areas which in reptiles mediate instinctual behavior, have become adapted to regulate and mediate our emotions and to play a role in the incorporation of longterm memory. Together these old parts of the brain are often called "the limbis system". Most of the old instinctual programmed behavior has been lost, but instead those areas of the brain work reciprocally with the higher brain to guide our behavior.
One portion of these ancient areas of the brain, the hippocampus governs our ability to "solidify" short term memory into long term memory. Destroy it and you will never be able to remember anything new for more than a day. Adjacent to the hippocampus is a structure called the amygdala. This structure seems to have an important role in governing emotional behaviors like rage, fear, and love. If you use precision techniques to destroy it the hippocampus doesn't work very well. Thus it seems that our emotions play a major rolee in how our memory works. That's really not such Earth shattering news is it? The way the brain seems to work then is that the thinking brain and the emotional brain reciprocally control each other.
Why does this contribute to "free will"? The emotional brain doesn't work on the same principles as the thinking brain. Some areas of it are more difficult to control. On a physiological level this is exemplified by the phenomenon of "kindling" in the amygdala. If you stick an electrode in the right place in a cat's amygdala and apply a minute current the subject cat will exhibit sham rage. It will hiss, spit and attack everything in site, but when the current is turned off it returns to normal like nothing happened. Move the electrode a few dozen microns and when you turn the kitty on the rage continues for an extended period of time after the current is turned off. So if something happens to turn on this "kindling" of the amygdala an emotional response occurs that persists and perhaps spills over to involve subjects or events completely unrelated to the subject or even that originally triggered the reaction. For example, the anger you felt at work when something went wrong today may spill over into your interactions with your family this evening. Because of the reciprocal interaction of the subjective and objective parts of the brain human behavior is inherently subject to being irrational and unpredictable.
Someone could argue that just because we're unable to completely understand ourselves today that doesn't mean that someday we will reach a sufficient level of understanding to prove that free will does not exist. Someone else may argue that once we reach such a level of understanding we will find that the human mind in all it's complexity, and working upon the basis of the subjective-objective reciprocal duality, creates in itself an entity that is original and integral above it's environment and thus exhibits "free will".
We're a long way from that day now, so currently we have to admit that free will exists if only because we are insufficient to understand its deterministic nature. On the other hand, even the most die-hard free will proponent would have to admit that we and our choices are influenced by our environment. Let me close then with this question: Why are we asking this question?
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28-01-2004 22:10
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