Will-Is it free?

[Guest guest]

Re: [studycircle] Will-Is it free?

 

Sue wrote:

<< You're right - what's the use of this cosmic joke. It would be like

having a chess match written in a book and we simply read the moves as

we follow them on a board. >>

 

<< Referring to quantum mechanics and Schrodinger's cat-in-the-box etc,

it brings us to a world of partial predestination (earlier events) and

infinite possibilities.

 

Could you relate this to the topic of free will and predestiny in

detail?

 

It would be very informative to hear physics' point of view. >>

 

Response from Vivekananda Centre:

 

<< We have a situation which does not have any conceptual parallels with

Greek thoughts which formed the foundation of Science upto now. >>

 

<< -- this probabilistic world is not due to limitations of our

instruments -

This is the very -- -- Nature of nature. >>

 

<< The conceptual leap that is necessary to understand these ideas is

not present in the Greek thought. Science will be able to make this

conceptual leap when it turns to the ideas presented in ancient

philosophies like Samkhya Darshan of Kapila. >>

 

<< I am presenting a Physicists point of view. I leave it to your list

to see how this can translate to the idea of 'free will' ?? >>

 

 

Hello,

 

There seems to be a leap of some kind occurring in the mind since the

greeks. Some philosophers in the time of the greeks, when pushing their

mind to the limit would think that it was impossible to move, for to

move you had to first have crossed the first half of your path, and

before that that the first half of it, and so on to the infinitely small

linear path until you find out you cannot move in your mind applied to

pure logic. The activation of the mind seemed to close the system of

though instead of opening it to what is. The will from the mind was

cough in a prison inside the day to day reality realm of experience.

 

To give another point of view of the conceptual leap occurring where the

mind generated by our institutions is opening rather than close to our

anthropological system interactions to what Is, already present in many

mystic writings, here is a quote on a discussion on what is called the

hard problem of quantum theory.

 

Antoine

_______________

QUANTUM MIND Digest - 13 Jul 1999 to 14 Jul 1999 (#1999-31)

Thu, 15 Jul 1999 00:04:58 -0700

Quantum Approaches to Consciousness

<QUANTUM-MIND

 

 

[q-mind] Response to Mutnick and Verhey regarding The Hard

Problem -Hemetis

Wed, 14 Jul 1999 20:46:27 -0400

Nicole Tedesco <ntedesco

 

[Peter Mutnick]

Perhaps some of us who are relatively new to the list need to hear your

solution to the hard problem again - I for one do not know what it is -

I hope it is more than the cat chasing it's tail.

 

[Jan Verhey]

Cat chasing tail is one illustrating metaphore. Another one is, maybe

closer to the reality, the input-process-output analogy. Vision I find

is the best to illustrutate the idea.

 

I think most, if not all, agree that before you have moments of

experience, things happen you are not aware of. You see a tree.

("output" = tree-experience). Before this tree-experience is possible,

alleged light waves have to travel from the tree to your eyes, pass

lenzes..hit the retina..electrical pulses travel through the optical

nerve and find their way into the brain. Together with all other

external and internal information that flows in sensewise it is

"processed" (mixed, merged,filtered, transformed..) "in the brain"

(brain=brainprocess). Probably in cycles (Libet's 0,5 sec. cycles?), the

dynamic "system" has a sequence of moments of awareness. As Deikman says

"I = awareness". (That it feels as a binded and whole stream, is

basically because we are not aware of the intervals, the pre-conscious

in general. more?)

 

I know..its boring.. 101 rehash. There might be more to it, esp. detail.

But this is adopted as how it works basically. And from this scheme "the

hard problem" - i.e. " where do I find cs experience in the physical

world around?" (or experiential qualities/quantities in the paramaters

and variables used in the natural sciences) can be amazingly simple

understood! Too simple for many who have invested in the most wonderful

sophistacted and complex solutions.. creating Sarfattian mind<->matter

interaction, observer-observed mysteries in Solvay 1927..(which was imho

"opening one eye but closing the other")

 

So.. my temporary conclusion is, that what I observe, that tree.. a

brain under a microscope.. PET scans..detected lighwaves..numbers on a

display, thinking about waves that collapse into classical

particles..computing equations..ANYTHING....is "within the [spectrum of]

output". So the hard problem of understanding why/how what-is-observed

can generate conscious experience, is like looking around for where the

hell the head is that is looking around for a head. Like a cat chasing

its tail. In that sense, experience-self remains "invisible" (yet of the

utmost reality)

 

I really believe, that this also creates the age old feeling of "a ghost

in a machine", already bothering the ol' greec philosophers. Because the

physical world and your own physical body-brain is not at all "a bag of

bones and muscles" that "produces" experience like a rabbit out of a

magic hat. That would be confusing output

with input. But the context-body-brain is so good in creating an

"internal representation" that it appears as-if what you see is the

real-thing out there.. even before you "become aware of it".

 

All this not with standing.. of course the activity of that magic

substance in the pre-conscious "input-process" phase must have the

potential and intrinsic quality to"culminate" into these sequences

of moments of output-experience. So probably..even "an observed oxygen

molecule" (that appears mindless for the reasons explained earlier) has

experiential potential in its quality and plays its tune in the final

symphony of experience. (as Bohm says : "a rudimentary amount of mind"..

but not mind as opposed to matter of

course)

 

Does this make sense?

 

[Hemetis]

Yes and No.

 

Even though your argument is quite apparently logical, a cat's tooth

does not bite without being part of a biting cat. "Consciousness =

ON-ness". When a surveillance camera is responding to motion and

displaying an image on the monitors screen, it is functioning in orderly

manner. It is in the ON state. This does not make the potential of a

resistor to limit current a partner in the characteristics of motion

detection and surveillance. Similar to a cat chasing its tail to catch a

flee would be a man for an ear to see. Yet, we are not cats and we can

see the ear in a mirror. For me to see how do I look like, I look

through a mirror. To sense consciousness I "look" in my "inner mirror".

Empirically and physically speaking, I must add the dimension that

creates the Internal oscillation of two sets focusing on each other, the

observing CS, and the being observed virtual CS "The mirror". That is

how my experience of consciousness is not a reckless fantasy. It is a

keen meditation from which I learned that CS is a materialized wave. A

complex dynamic entanglement acting and reacting and interacting, the

design of which is purely evolutionary and topological. It is a

wave system turned ON. In the particular case of the Consciousness

experience, it is simply being aware of being aware. It is most probable

that such awareness is a wave function "byproduct" that resulted during

our evolution. The closest metaphorical experience that I know of, is to

listen to the echo of your voice. From a

neurological point of view, a visual input when compared to visual

memory results in a wave that makes a conscious decision, I have been

here before or otherwise. The resonating echo of a positive memory says

yes, while absence of echo says no. Stimulated temporal lobes could

create the illusion of past experiences at

first encounter. That is most probably due to a delay in the wave

comparison that might resonate and triggers an echo chain that confirms

an illusionary past experience. The neocortex with its three major

association areas: the frontal, the temporal, and the parieto-occipital,

is our evolutionary advantage with a 6 layered

mantle of grey matter spreading over the lateral surfaces of the

cerebral hemispheres. A new born human baby starts his audio-visual

recording through a functioning awareness. Repetitive inputs that form a

sensory ensemble gets memorized as being significant. The most obvious

of these, the smell of the mother's breast, the image of the mother's

face and the satisfaction of feeding with the significant comfort of the

absence of hunger and fear. At the instance of remembrance evocation

triggered by any partial input recalling the total experience,

Consciousness is registered to exist and never before that. Therefore,

although the materialistic brain is the premises of consciousness, it is

the whole living organism that contributes to the experience in

totality, and even though, consciousness is not this or that but an

"abstract function of the dynamic complex wave entanglement that lurks

in the neocortex". "Consciousness = ON-ness".