Okay, playing words. Choices, choices or random choices. Does Deep Blue choose a move? Deep Blue, I guess you say "makes" a move. Or maybe it chooses. What about a Chimp? Do they choose? Okay, lets head down to worms? Choices still? Okay, bacteria? Choices if have we found a missing link? What about a virus? Choice? How about just a few loops of DNA?? Choice there. Guess not. How about a molecule getting mucked up in some Zeolite? Crystal growth - looks nice and lively, but very boring close up.
So, let's head back up to round about bees, and praying manti. Choices there?? Ants? Do you have some dividing line on the chain of brainpower where choice flickers on? Is it humans only who make choice? All humans? I suppose "consciousness" will get into the act about here too. Is there a subliminal creature which becomes liminal with the addition of another neuron? Two neurons? It's a bit like chasing a will-o-the-wisp. I suspect you will say it is not a switch that is on or off, it is a kind of ghostly presence which can't be pinned down to one living thing or another. No dividing line anywhere. There will need to be a convenient "out" for you. At least if I could have a dividing line from you, I'd know where to start looking for the magic.
I say they all use the same sort of process, but some have really super duper sophisticated modelling methods which give great representations of reality compared with other brains/nerve systems.
So you call choice freedom. Where does the freedom start and stop?
You asked me do I have choice to continue? Well, I guess the answer is no, if we use the word in your way. There are competing inputs to my 80 hp brain. I need about 10 Mw to do a half decent job really, but being stuck with 80 hp, my attention sticks here, trying to model these ideas so that I can operate more effectively. My experiences to now tell me that it is a significant area worth thinking about and you are a pretty damn good input variable!! Hahaahaa!! jfred is an "input variable". Bet you thought you were a person... never mind, that makes me an output variable or something. Hang on, no, I'M the input variable because I'm doing the typing and YOU get to read.
Gee, I hope we don't end up like Buridan's ass, never able to leave this alone because all internal systems are irrational - need external input to leave it alone, like a call to dinner, call of nature or a wolf at the door. So to answer your question, I have no idea whether I can leave this alone or not. I'll find out when I do or don't. I guess I will leave it alone, or I will come into the category of insanely obsessed, so I don't have much choice. But in the normal conventional sense of the word I do have a choice and that is obvious - but convention overlooks the tricky process of this pretend "choice". You know very well what I mean. So don't say I want to have choice but no choice.
Okay how to test determinism. Look for cause and effect everywhere. If you ever find an effect without a cause, then curtains for determined people like me. That pretty well will exclude quarks quarking because we can't tell, but anything we can tell about all those little guys they behave in very standard ways. Nothing to say they don't do the same thing every time. If you find gravitons suddenly heading backwards I'm in trouble, unless a rock was heading down to my head from on high. The other area is in the wondrous human free will. Maybe you will find perfectly loved and well developed people suddenly become mad serial killers or freaks. Or the reverse - people who have started their lives in predictable mayhem suddenly becoming some other thing altogether. They can moderate their behaviour a little, but not very well at all. Any sociologist or normal person will tell you that intuitively, since we are quoting intuition as proof now, there are people who you can predict will be bad eggs.
Choices don't have to be self preserving at all. There is nothing other than evolution pushing in the direction of self preservation. Those that don't choose self preservation, and there are more of them than choose it if you count the bodies, simply don't appear in future generations so it seems that there is self preservation. Read "The Selfish Gene" for this side of things.
But now I have a sore bum from sitting on the floor, so I'm stopping though incomplete!!
M
PS Wow, my stocks must be going up!! |
