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<DIV>Yes, I think new metaphors are needed, and new math, and probably also new (perhaps interdisciplinary) ways of empirically testing hypotheses that relate to the mind-brain question. But I suggest there are still some fairly significant gaps in our current knowledge that need to be bridged before we can begin to apply and test such new ideas to directly bridge the classic divide of "free will" and mechanism, or what some call the manifest and scientific images of nature. </DIV>
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<DIV>My suspicion is that Dan Dennett managed to capture one of the pieces the concept of "free will" and why it confuses us ... our natural human talents let us operate with different explanatory stances for different kinds of domain of phenomena. Without realizing why they are inane, we probably often get lost in inane questions like whether "free will" exists. In effect I suspect that we often end up arguing across different conceptual models where we don't have the tools (at the time) to make them 'commensurable.' In extreme cases like this, Kuhn probably had a reasonable point about arguing across 'paradigms' and such. </DIV>
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<DIV>For example, having "choices" is something that make sense from the perspective of a reasoning human agent trying to explain their behavior and that of other reasoning human agents. They have "choices" because they have (1) the capacity to represent different outcomes which they value differently and (2) because they have some weakly understood mechanism for feeding back that information regarding that capacity into the parts of the nervous system that drive behavior and initiate new patterns of attention and thought. In other words, we can envision different options and we can pick one. More importantly, we simply take that process for granted because it is wired into us. We truly don't know the specifics of how it is implemented in terms of causal models that relate back to our sciences. That leaves us with various extreme explanatory options that rely more on individual plausibility than empirical testing for their resolution.</DIV>
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<DIV>I think it is the fact that (2) is so weakly understood that makes "free will" remain a philosophical rather than (yet) a scientific issue. (Naturalistic) philosophers struggle with how the apparently emergent high level global properties of mind can have a causal effect on the nervous system from which they arise. To oversimplify just for rhetorical purposes, having the mind do something physical seems from a strictly monistic naturalist position a little like the wetness of water having an effect on the hydrogen and oxygen that composes it. The question of "top down causation" of high level mind properties on physical things is hard to get past. </DIV>
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<DIV>I think this is not just a matter of metaphors and mathematics (broadly speaking, what other thinking tools do we have?) but because we don't yet know the specifics of how the mind's global high level properties arise from the complex processes of the body. The metaphors and math will have to bridge that gap in order to bridge the physical and intentional explanatory stances. That means they will have to capture the evolutionary and developmental history of the mind and how it gives rise to something capable of representing options and choosing between them.</DIV>
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<DIV>I've seen several speculative attempts at this, but nothing that yet comes close to being what I would consider empirical. My suggestion would be that we should first map out the missing levels of description tentatively before imagining that we've bridged the explanatory gap. The cognitive linguists and related cognitive scientists like Lakoff and Johnson and Mark Turner have made some initial attempts at this, but I'm not yet persuaded that they've really bridged the whole gap. They have testable hypotheses about how neural function leads to computation and loosely how computation leads to cognition, but no model of cognition that captures the phenomena relevent to "top down causation" as seen from the perspective of a human observer. </DIV>
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<DIV>For example, look at all the different interpretations of Libet's "half second delay" experiments; ranging from paranormal to outright denial, with Dennett''s and Dan Wegner's naturalistic explanations in the middle. This kind of phenomenon is important because raises central issues in the relationship of perception, cognition, and "top down causation." I think if we could agree on what is happening there, we would have a huge step forward to understanding "free will." </DIV>
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<DIV>I think that is a more productive avenue than directly investigating quantum effects, for example, although it seems unavoidable that "quantum spookiness" and nature at the lowest levels will _eventually_ have to be considered somewhere in the causal models.</DIV>
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<DIV>kind regards,</DIV>
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<DIV>Todd</DIV>
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<DIV>In a message dated 5/16/2005 11:28:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time, dsmith06@maine.rr.com writes:</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Traditionally, the problem of free will is not a question of whether or not we have choices, it is the question of whether or not these choices are caused by prior events. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>David</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>----- Original Message ----- </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, May 16, 2005 11:19 PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Paleopsych] free wills and quantum won'ts</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This is from a dialog Pavel Kurakin and I are having behind the scenes. I wanted to see what you all thought of it. Howard</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>You know that I'm a quantum skeptic. I believe that our math is primitive. The best math we've been able to conceive to get a handle on quantum particles is probabilistic. Which means it's cloudy. It's filled with multiple choices. But that's the problem of our math, not of the cosmos. With more precise math I think we could make more precise predictions.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And with far more flexible math, we could model large-scale things like bio-molecules, big ones, genomes, proteins and their interactions. With a really robust and mature math we could model thought and brains. But that math is many centuries and many perceptual breakthroughs away.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>As mathematicians, we are still in the early stone age.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But what I've said above has a kink I've hidden from view. It implies that there's a math that would model the cosmos in a totally deterministic way. And life is not deterministic. We DO have free will. Free will means multiple choices, doesn't it? And multiple choices are what the Copenhagen School's probabilistic equations are all about?</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>How could the concept of free will be right and the assumptions behind the equations of Quantum Mechanics be wrong? Good question. Yet I'm certain that we do have free will. And I'm certain that our current quantum concepts are based on the primitive metaphors underlying our existing forms of math. Which means there are other metaphors ahead of us that will make for a more robust math and that will square free will with determinism in some radically new way.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Now the question is, what could those new metaphors be?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Howard</FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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