But if that is so, it makes it useless for playing the roles that “free will” is supposed to play, such as assigning moral responsibility o beings. As I said: prong two. You can’t just have the free: you need a concept of will connected to some relevant agent which you are supposed to be judging.
Which undermines the needs of the “Free” part. Prong One. Identity must in some way be deciding factor that selects from among various recognized options. But for that to be, it is the indentity of the thing which determines its choice. So while something can be free from being forced to choose a particular choice by an outside agent, it can never be “free” from its own internal process of choosing, whatever that may be. If that process is not itself deterministic, then there is no will to speak of, no connection from the identity of the beng to its choice.
Er… yes. But what you are defending is entirely consistent with the “weak” form a free will, the idea that an agent’s deciding processes are some way indepedant from direct and immediate influence. This form is so trivial that everyone recognizes it. But it isn’t what is meant when someone pronounces that “we have free will!”
I don’t understand this use of “free”, then. Am I not free because I have physical limitations I didn’t choose (i.e., two arms and two legs)? If this is what you mean by “free” then I am sure there is no free will.
I don’t see why it should have to be. How else is the will to be a choosing agent? When has “free” ever meant “able to do absolutely anything without any restriction whatsoever, real or imagined”?
It isn’t? “The will is the conceptual or real entity that accounts for how choices are selected.” This is what I trust no one would argue.
But what is the agent then? If all we mean by “agent” is just an unknown thing called the will with no explanation of what it is or how it makes choices, then how can we hold anything at all responsible at all? If there is no process, no cause how can there be any responsibility? What is there to trace choices back to? If this is all the “agent” is, then by what cause is it ever associated with any particular human being, brain, nervous system? Why do we punish human bodies if they are not the things that are responsible for making choices?
What I mean by “free” is that something is not determined by what it is (an idea that is inconsistent with the idea of will and moral responsibility). Only that sense of “Free” can play the role required by the strong assertions of “free will.”
That’s not what I said. The point is simply that the sort of “free will” that is required for things like “it’s the sole responsibility of the killer, not society for creating him, he chose to kill by his own free will” or “free will solves the problem of evil” requires that things be able to make choices that are BOTH tracable back to some nature or character (the will/responsibility part) AND unable to be explained by it (the free/could have done otherwise part).
But, as I’ve said, this is a nonsense concept. The Will/Responsibility part requires that choices be explained. Free/“could have done otherwise” part requires that choices not be explained. How can this be resolved?
How can anyone argue with a non-statement? This is like saying that the X is the conceptual or real proof of the non-existence of God. Look, I proved God doesn’t exist! X!
You can’t call something an “account” or a “concept” when there is no account forthcoming, and no concept to reffer ones mind to. You can’t name an aspect of our ignorance and then pretend to have figured something out or described something.
Gee guys, good luck figuring out that whole “free will” thing. Let’s call it “an abiding epistemological mystery” and be done with it.
Danko emailed back saying he has tried to have web discussions about quantum consciousness before, but he finds it an inappropriate forum for heavy science, and I am beginning to agree. Nice guy tho. I have asked permission to post some illuminating parts of his email here. Waiting to see what he says.
Maybe you could design an experiment that compares subjective experiences between color-blind and normal color vision people. And it just so happens that I’m red-green color blind.
The “agent” of will and consciousness is who/what we really are. People think they’re human beings, but they’re not - they’re conscious sentient points of view, observers, which are engaged in the process of observing and influencing a human body.
Laws of chance/quantum entanglement, I guess. Like I posted above, where I asked why am I me, and the response was why not me. I still think there might be something to the theory that entanglement is the same as consciousness/free will. Lots of people who attempt to regress to before they were born, for example, describe having a choice between several possible lifetimes and choosing one. So that seems to fit IMO.
Doing harm to the body or limiting its basic human rights is the only known way to induce suffering to the consciousness. However you raise a good point. To use an analogy, if there’s a car accident due to driver error, it is the driver and not the car that is held responsible. But what if the driver is a nonphysical entity that cannot be captured or punished except through the car? What is the logical course of action then - to impound the car, perhaps? Now suppose the car is computer controlled and there is no driver. It gets in an accident, and what does one do? There is nobody to punish so the logical course of action is to reprogram the computer. IMHO, applying this line of reasoning to human beings is very scary indeed. My point in bringing that up is to show that both sides of the debate have the potential to get into the “not my fault” territory.
Why? If a person chooses to kill, he or she is subject to the consequences of that action. What difference does it make where the choice came from?
Or to put it a different way, the debate seems to be whether consciousness and free will are properties of the brain or something imparted from a nonphysical source. The concept that consciousness and free will are from the same source does not seem to be in debate here. So if a person chooses to commit an injustice, that same person should experience the consequences, no?
Again, why?
’possum stalker; I am very interested to see what Danko has to say.
Okay, that’s a very good place to start. Since we have no means of describing or comparing qualia between people, I suggest an experiment based on extending your vision using color filters. You could try looking through red filters for a while and seeing if the subjective experience of color changes any. Or you could look through one of those 3D goggle things that have one red lens and one blue lens. The dissimilar colored lenses will allow you to distinguish red and green because the blue transmits quite a bit of green light so red objects will appear brighter in one eye and green objects brighter in the other. After an unknown amount of time, in theory, you might begin to see red and green as separate colors, separate qualia, which are distinct but don’t quite classify as either yellow or blue.
I put forth this prediction which seems to be backed up by part of the Penrose-Hameroff model:
Which if I understand correctly, it follows that light itself may contain the property we call color, as a function of its wavelength, and that our qualia of color are based on the light’s wavelength itself.
I myself, having full trichromatic vision, have experimented with looking through filters that transmit different parts of the red region of the spectrum. I don’t want to skew your results, so let me know if I should post my results now or wait.
But this experiment doesn’t address the question I posed, since the earlier memory of these hues is most likely not replaced, only current and future experiences.
What does this mean?
[ol]
[li]The wavelength encodes the qualia itself. So that any photoperceptive organism “senses” the same qualia. [/li][li]Or simply that, for a given wavelength, the organism assigns a consistent qualia throughout life. [/li][/ol]
Theres a variety of visual phenomenon that can alter your perception of color. The opponent-process theory states that we perceive colors in pairs (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black, etc). In the red-green pairing, red, the longer wavelength has the effect of exciting our bipolar cells. Shorter wavelengths, like green inhibit the bipolar cell. So when you stare into a red image for a while, your cone fatigues. Upon looking at a white surface, you should see a green afterimage since your bipolar cell will get confused and think the lack of redness means a presence of greenness. So, although you are receiving all the wavelengths (white), your qualia experience is not the same as before. And it changes each time.
As for tinting your vision, it shouldn’t work as expected- that everything you see will be a shade of green. The retinex theory proposes that color is perceived through comparison of different retinal patterns. Because the proportions stay nearly the same, regardless of the tint, we see the same color.
Ex: Thats why snow appears to be white when its really just a clear crystal. All the light bounces around among the crystals and reflects back. In comparison to the environment around you, snow reflects the most light- enough to be super white.
My first suggestion does address your question, since I theorized that the changing of the eye’s spectral sensitivity would replace the old perception of yellow with a new perception best described as red. The second suggestion pertains to what you wrote below:
I very definitely mean #1.
pothead; I understand the functions of color vision (enough to write my own scientific computer program but I don’t think we are allowed to post links to software we wrote - mods, advice?) but don’t see how it has to do with what I said. Of course the cone cells and bipolar cells are subject to the same neurological fatigue effects as any of the other 5 senses, but I theorize that the opponent processes themselves are associated with the qualia. There’s two for each opponent process.
Have you been able to try the experiment yet? Should I post my own results with splitting the red region?
Maybe he should try actually discussing science rather than pseudo-science, before making such a sweeping generalization. It’s like saying: “I tried to have web discussions about Archie Comics and found it an inappropriate forum for serious literature.”
Forgive me if I’m being dense here for not understanding what you mean. As I see it, each color (or more specifically, each terminus of an opponent process) has an associated quale, and the question is whether changing the quale associated with a particular color will be noticed by the subject. You asked if a brain injury altering the quale would result in a noticeable change, and I responded that the question is probably moot since a brain injury theoretically wouldn’t change the quale in the first place. But it is a valid question whether changing a quale by any means would be noticed by the subject’s cognition.
Therefore I proposed to change the spectral sensitivity of a person’s eyes, thereby testing the theory that the qualia of color are related to the wavelegth regions themselves. pothead’s red-green color blindness is a fortunate circumstance since that type of color blindness entails only the perception of yellow (=red + green) and blue. Using color filters to change the spectral sensitivity of a colorblind person is a good way to test the theory. Basically, a red filter excludes the green region of the spectrum from the eye’s yellow-sensitive receptors. The neural pathways won’t change as a direct result of the change in spectral sensitivity, but the qualia might, and the change in qualia may or may not be noticed.
Looking at this over again it strikes me that if the qualia are noticed then it can only be the result of consciousness. This now seems like a very important experiment because if it succeeds it would provide evidence for not only the color qualia = wavelength theory but also the existense of consciousness as an active participant in human cognition.
The problem is, your first sentance is ENTIRELY consistent with the idea that a rock fell off a cliff and killed someone, so is subject to the consequences of that action. You haven’t explained what this thing called “choice” is that makes you think that it’s any different.
No, that is irrelevant. All we are considering is the concept itself, no matter what reality you need to invent to explain it (again, as I said, I’ll except any explanation, just so long as there IS one at all, regardless of the abscence or prescence of empirical facts)
Perhaps because there is nothing to debate, since neither term is well defined, and no one seems to know anything about their origins. They could just as easily have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
You’re missing some steps in this argument. Namely, all of them. And where does “should” come in here, anyway?
I should clarify that I (and most red-green color blinds) do see most portions of the wavelength. Its only certain shades which turn out to be altered, so differentiating between some low contrast colors can be difficult. Using Ishihara plates, the particular shades can be distinguished but I’ve never encountered (or maybe I’ve just never noticed) it to be especially prevalent in ordinary life.
I was unable to find any colored cellophone or filters but did have a piece of green tinted plastic which has a little curvature. What was interesting though was the numbers that red-green color deficit people (and I) saw on the Ishihara plates (near the bottom) disappeared; I’m guessing simply because of the tint. cityboy916, as for the experiment, I’m not sure what exactly is being asked or looked for. Do you mean that once the tint has been applied, and we encounter a wavelength our qualia of it changes? Wouldn’t the tint affect the wavelength to begin with? On another note, does anyone know of any programs or color profile files (*.icm) that can tint the screen?
They are. But, I’m not sure where you make the leap that the photon somehow “encodes” the qualia in itself, as opposed to the qualia being an internal consistent phenomenal representation by the observer.
And how does the change get noticed? Don’t you need to compare what the earlier qualia was, in order to notice the difference? Memory gets reconstructed during recall using the same circuitry of perception and imagination. In your experiment, the old hues are replaced, but not removed neurally since they correspond to being quales of other wavelengths as in normal observers. So, the participant might still recall and associate the old hue as the earlier perception. You need the ability to replace and remove a color from the neural color palette, so that any memory of a “red” car shows it being colored with “Alcolor”.
I’d ask how strongly tinted it is but not sure if that would be an easy question to answer. The ideal is to get something with a high absorption density to minimize the possibility of a false negative. Okay, so in the experiment the green plastic will cut out the red region from your eyes’ sensitivity.
It probably doesn’t make much difference to the test, but might I ask if you are a dichromat or anomalous trichromat, and are you protan or deutan?
I mean that the qualia represent the sum of all wavelengths that contribute to the stimulation of the proper photoreceptor(s) to produce the sensation of a particular terminus of an opponent process. In other words, to oversimplify:
is pretty much the theory my experiment seeks to demonstrate.
The tint affects which wavelengths are present, which affects the photoreceptors etc. along paths 1 through 3. The experiment is designed to look for evidence of the existence of path 4. In theory, if a photoreceptor that once detected the range of red-yellow-green wavelengths is deprived of its ability to sense red light, then the quale in question will no longer include the “essence” of the red region of the spectrum.
According to Hamerroff and Penrose’s theory, the “consciousness” is somehow linked to the real world. If the body has color receptors and the consciousness is also linked to the photons of light themselves, it makes sense that it would associate the stimulation of certain neural tissue with its perception of the wavelengths that cause that tissue to be stimulated.
The dry-facts type memory shows it being colored with the terminus of the opponent process that is stimulated by the L (long wavelength sensitive) cones in the retina. The subject refers to that as “red” or as “alcolor” at their discretion since it is the same neurological pathway. But the experienced-it type memory would show what the person’s consciousness was aware of at the time they saw the car, i.e. the quale of redness.
Of course, if consciousness is nothing more than a property of the brain, then the experienced-it type memory must also be a neurological phenomenon and the subject would not even notice that “alcolor” and “red” are not the same quale. At which point it becomes questonable if they even are in the first place, since the subject himself/herself does not even know anything’s different.
If such an experiment were designed, it could establish whether or not experienced-it type memory is neurological by origin.
A person has consciousness and free will (or else the illusion of consciousness and free will) and can be held accountable. What do you propose to do to the rock? Imprison it so it won’t fall off any more cliffs? Destroy it? Be my guest.
The concept itself, regardless of what explanation is required? That’s easy. I know I’m conscious of sitting here writing this, and I know I chose to do so. Case closed.
I already defined consciousness here someplace. Will come back and redefine it :rolleyes: along with free will after the first daily backup of the new year.
