<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2627" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"
bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document
face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>
<DIV>This is devilishly clever, Ted. And it gives a wonderful
opportunity to put ten years of thought about will down in one place. See
comments below.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 6/1/2005 2:47:37 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
eec1@nyu.edu writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Howard,
before dealing with the math that a putative "free will" would <BR>require, I
feel there is a paradoxical motivational issue regarding "free <BR>will" that
first needs at least considering (if not clarifying). One of <BR>the
reasons "free will" is an attractive concept is that it liberates us <BR>from
a smothering sense of external control with which determinism <BR>tyrannizes
us. </FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>hb: good point, and one I've been pondering a good part of the day.
In past years, I've written that the sense of self is a fragile envelope, a
perceptual membrane with which we achieve an illusion of control. Self is
a membrane we use to differentiate ourselves from our parents and from the
other power figures in our lives. And self is a perceptual
membrane that lets us say that we're similar enough to others that they should
accept us in their company, but different enough that they should pay attention
to us.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Self is like the O in Joel Isaacson's cellular automata. It is a
differentiator...a diversity generator. Gaining a sense of self in
childhood, adolescence, and adulthood is allied to the impulse among
bacteria to either take a position at a slight distance from their parents and
eat an as-yet-untasted part of the nearby landscape or to grow a propeller
and leave the ancestral homestead altogether. Self is vital to the itch of
biomass to spread, spread, spread, even if that imperialistic impulse takes
cell-and-dna-based life two miles beneath the surface of the earth, where
lithoautotrophs feed on stone, or to the surface of Mars, where several
inanimate probes of biomass are currently adventuring on our behalf.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The need for a sense of self is also akin to Val Geist's maintenance and
dispersal modes--his two basic phenotypes for all forms of life. Get
yourself a sense of self--of separateness--and either inherit the old family
patch or niche, use it in a slightly new way, or go off to seek your fortune
elsewhere.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Meandering even farther, self in the Bloomian view is a billboard of
control. Other members of our species cluster around those of us who seem
in control of circumstance. They shun those of us who seem clueless, those
of us who seem to have lost our grip and to have lost control. That's true
whether we are single-celled lymphocytes in the immune system, or human
beings. I also suspect it's true among bacteria, slime mold, and most
other living things.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The tendency of others to avoid us when we are bumbling and to cluster
around us when we are confident and have good reason to swagger turns us into
parts of a neural-net-like learning machine, modules in a
creative mass-computer, or neurons in a collective intelligence.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>OK, now what does this have to do with free will? Good
question.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The more perception of branching choices, the further we can spread.
And spreading is important to survival. Those who spread into the greatest
number of slots have the best chance of survival the next time a mass-die-off
happens. And so far we've counted 148 of those mass die-offs. But
there may be hundreds or thousands more we haven't yet been able to count.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Why so many mass extinctions? Because this planet periodically goes
through upheavals whose sources are far beyond the control of biomass--far
beyond the control of planetary passengers like busily-spreading
single-celled organisms and their newly-arrived relatives, multicellular
creatures. We circle our galactic core every 66 million years. On
our merry way, we pass through many a patch of "galactic
fluff"--schmootz--space dust, that increases our normal yearly accumulation of
space grit from 30 million kilograms a year to 90 million or more.
That dust changes our climate dramatically, wiping out branches of the tree of
life that haven't branched with sufficient bushiness. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Periodically the earth belches volcanically and blackens the sky,
doing just about the same thing an overload of space dust achieves--chilling the
temperature considerably. And we now think that periodically the seas burp
vast masses of methane, turning the planet into a hothouse.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>On a planet of massive change, those branches of the tree of life that
bet on permanence and stability die. Those that shift tactics and
locations, those that make new niches of what previously seemed to be
nothingness, thrive.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The mind is a new possibility-prober. The more options it imagines
the more options it opens. And more options it opens, the more mind is
likely to make it through the next planetary catastrophe. The
more imaginings mind turns to reality, the hardier and longer-lived
the family of mind is likely to be.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But is will simply an illusion? After all, Benjamin Libet says that
the impulse that moves our fingers starts its journey from the brain to the
muscles nearly a half a second before it announces itself to the
conscious mind. Will, Libet implies, is a clever illusion.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I suspect Libet is right about timing and wrong about the ultimate power of
will. "Anything we conceive and believe we can achieve," said the singer
and preacher Al Green while he was driving me slowly past Elvis' mansion in
Memphis. (Others attribute the quote to Napoleon. But Napoleon was
never kind enough to drive me past a local landmark.)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The quote is on the money, in my opinion. But how? You've
probably tried to go on diets many, many times and have discovered just how
powerless your will is. But think. Roughly one out of every five of
us DOES manage to go on that elusive diet. It may take him six tries,
but he does get there. How? </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Well, let's imagine that the desire to toss some change into a vending
machine and buy some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups originates in the limbic
system. That's just a guess. One of the difficulties with Libet's
studies is that he works with encephalographs, not with NMR or fMRI
machines. So Libet can't pinpoint quite which part of the brain sends out
orders to the muscles before letting us know what it's up to.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But let's take a wild guess and blame the errant impulse to eat a forbidden
bit of chocolate on that old stooge, the emotional brain, the restless
reptile, the limbic system. The limbic system registers the Reeses.
Out goes the order to slide a dollar into the machine. By the time
our conscious mind gets the message, it's too late. We are on our way to
another 500 un-needed calories.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>How does the limbic system manages to puppeteer us on critical issues
like chocaholic indulgence? The number of neurons going from the limbic
system to the cerebral cortex is large. The number of neurons headed from
the cortex back to the limbic system is small. In other words, the limbic
system comes equipped to puppeteer the conscious mind. But the conscious
mind has very few strings with which to jerk around the limbic system. Score a
neurobiological advantage for impulse over willpower. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But the brain is highly plastic. Use it or lose it. As studies
of musicians (including some Ted Coons has been involved in) show, the more
you exercise something--like your piano-playing or violin-stringing fingers--the
more nerves you manage to attract to the project on which you focus your
self-discipline. Yes, with enough practice you, too, can play the
piano. And in the process you can modestly remake your brain.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So the Bloom theory of will goes something like this. Try five times
to go on a diet and you may fail. But keep applying willpower, and
you may literally resculpt your brain. You may grow more than the normal
number of neurons going from the cortex--the thinking part of the brain--to the
limbic system--the emotional brain. With enough nerves going from the
haughty-but-impotent spokesman of self to the real meat of you and me, our
reptilian impulse, you can change the way the reptile makes its
impulse-decisions. With new limbic meshes born of steady practice,
you can assure that your inner reptile decides to keep
your hands in your pocket the next time you pass the vending
machine and are tempted by a Reese's Pieces opportunity.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Yes, you, too, can exert the power of will. But will you do it to
open a new niche for yourself, for your family, for your species,
and for the grand schemes of mind and biomass? Will you do
it with sufficient vigor and imagination to insure that mind and
biomass make it through the next cosmic or planetary catastrophe? If will
exists, then that depends on you. And, though will comes only with
enormous exertion, I think it DOES exist. But that's just my willful
opinion.</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Who
among us wouldn't like to throw off the behavior chains <BR>of causality and
"over these prison walls fly"? Yet when asked the reasons <BR>why we do
things, we say "because....," thus, admitting to a justifying <BR>influence in
vast preference to the insanity of doing something without <BR>reason (the
abhorrent equivalent of a motivationless crime, so to <BR>speak). So the
issue, at least psychologically, is: Can we choose without <BR>being chosen
or, if we must be chosen, can we still choose? Perhaps <BR>entanglement
is somehow the answer.....Ted</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>><BR>>At 11:19 PM 5/16/2005 -0400, you wrote:<BR>>>This is from
a dialog Pavel Kurakin and I are having behind the <BR>>>scenes. I
wanted to see what you all thought of it.
Howard<BR>>><BR>>>You know that I'm a quantum skeptic. I
believe that our math is <BR>>>primitive. The best math we've been
able to conceive to get a handle on <BR>>>quantum particles is
probabilistic. Which means it's cloudy. It's <BR>>>filled with
multiple choices. But that's the problem of our math, not of
<BR>>>the cosmos. With more precise math I think we could make more
precise <BR>>>predictions.<BR>>><BR>>>And with far more
flexible math, we could model large-scale things like <BR>>>bio-molecules,
big ones, genomes, proteins and their interactions. With <BR>>>a
really robust and mature math we could model thought and brains. But
<BR>>>that math is many centuries and many perceptual breakthroughs
away.<BR>>><BR>>>As mathematicians, we are still in the early stone
age.<BR>>><BR>>>But what I've said above has a kink I've hidden from
view. It implies <BR>>>that there's a math that would model the
cosmos in a totally <BR>>>deterministic way. And life is not
deterministic. We DO have free <BR>>>will. Free will means
multiple choices, doesn't it? And multiple <BR>>>choices are what
the Copenhagen School's probabilistic equations are all
about?<BR>>><BR>>>How could the concept of free will be right and
the assumptions behind <BR>>>the equations of Quantum Mechanics be
wrong? Good question. Yet I'm <BR>>>certain that we do have
free will. And I'm certain that our current <BR>>>quantum concepts
are based on the primitive metaphors underlying our <BR>>>existing forms
of math. Which means there are other metaphors ahead of <BR>>>us
that will make for a more robust math and that will square free will
<BR>>>with determinism in some radically new
way.<BR>>><BR>>>Now the question is, what could those new metaphors
be?<BR>>><BR>>>Howard<BR>>><BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate
Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution
Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango
Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New
Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology
Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of
Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>