Metaphysical Speculations: The Physical Body

[EthanT]

Originally Posted by 4vektor

i'll look at aharonov's paper. thanks.

No problem.

That layman's article is really worth a read too. It's well written, imho.

It has a very "easy-to-digest" description of weak measurements in QM - something I found a little confusing at first.

Also, Paul Davies ideas on TSQM and the fate/origin of the Universe are in that article, but not in Aharanov's paper. If these hold up, they will be mind blowing.

But, I won't hold a gun to your head, or anything, and make you read it, lol.

[Johann]

Originally Posted by 4vektor

yes. but just bc there are 2 outcomes does mean they are equally likely. whatever the probability is, could be 63/37. or 50/50. but if you have a known probability distribution and the probability distribution DETERMINES the process, it is RANDOM process. that's all. there is no choice. if you have choice you can supervene over and control the process.

Given two paths that look exactly identical, you probably have about a 50/50 probability of choosing either one. Given a sandwich and a lump of plutonium, however, you might have, say, a 1/10^100 probability of biting the plutonium atom. Do these approximate probability distributions mean that you have no free will?

what do you mean randomly? human beings are not good random number generators. even programs are only approximately random number generators.

Humans have small biases that cause them to act in slightly less random ways than random number generators, it is true, but the distribution of choices by a human between two objects that hold the same appeal should still be approximately random.

and does a random number generator substituted for the person holding up the card (0=green, 1=red) have free will?

If, in this interpretation, you replace chance with choice, then yes! The 1s and 0s within the random number generator are being chosen by the quantum process it measures.

Just because humans have more variables (biases) interacting that cause their behavior to be a bit more unpredictable than random number generators in a two-choice experiment (due to chaos theory), does not mean that both subjects are not choosing. The randomness is the choice.

the whole point is that either (1) the process is not random -- there is the human's choice / free will which determines the outcome or (2) it is actually a random process and our perception that there is choice / free will involved is an illusion.

or (3) chance does not exist, and our direct perception of choice is more fundamental than our indirect inference of probability.

no. that will not tell you anything either way. if the process is random, then the drift will be towards the mean (law of large numbers). whatever it is. you are assuming the probability that the subject selects the cards is 50/50? why? you don't know the mean so you have nothing to compare it to. and if it is not random, the subject will still have some tendency even though he has free will. how you differentiate the outcome from random? you can't. what this experiment tells you? nothing. but if you know the mean you can isolate free will as the agency that shifts the outcomes away from the mean. by detecting the shift. so you set up a KNOWN random process and see if someone's will can shift it.

You are right. The experiment tells you nothing in and of itself; it is the interpretation of the results that is important.

that is not the point of free will. you can have a computer program select. does it have free will bc it "could have" made the other choice? does a deck of cards shuffled by a machine have free will? no.

In this interpretation, anything with counter-factual definiteness has choice.

- Johann

[4vektor]

Originally Posted by EthanT

I could be wrong, though. I never really looked into that much.

i don't know either, i didn't study QFT in historical sequence. i remember the dirac sea (bad idea), but i thought it was feynman or stuckelberg who are responsible for backwards-in-time picture, and this happened later. anyway, it is just interpretation.

As far as Feynman diagrams, they're not really meant to be taken as a literal spacetime depictions of the process in question.

The best (and most controversial) example of that is with virtual particles. A Feyman diagram seems to indicate the exchange of virtual particles. But, seems the majority of opinion is that they don't really exist.

A Feynman diagram is just a pictorial representation of a single term in an infinite perturbation series. So, the claim is that virtual particles are mathematical artifacts that arise from using an approximation scheme - perturbative techniques. Indeed, since the Feynman diagrams representing higher and higher order terms include more and more virtual particles (and the series is infinite) one is led to conclude every interaction involves an infinite number of virtual particles. Just one of the many conclusions some folks seem to find distasteful.

i agree that the perturbation expansion is "kind of" fake. but not really. we can't compute full green's functions in an interacting theory (so one sticks in sources and expands using functional derivatives wrt them, etc). if we could evaluate functional integral in closed form directly there would be no proliferation of radiative corrections with free propagators. but the full propagator exists (if the theory does), whatever it is, and it could still be interpreted as particle moving backwards in time.

anyway, real antiparticles have been detected. you can think of them as traveling backwards or not. it is not testable. as you can think of QM in terms of TSQM picture. or not.

also there are diagrams that correspond to important non-perturbative features of the theory. for example a certain triangle feynman diagram corresponds to chiral anomaly which is a deep global topological feature. radiative corrections may not even contribute (like in the singlet anomaly the 1-loop calculation gives complete result). so when people make categorical statements like that about perturbative picture, i would have to disagree.

Anyhow, perhaps the virtual particle "interpretation" is also going by the wayside over time. But, in many people's mind to say they exist is "incorrect". I was under the impression, for the reasons I stated above, many folks feel to claim "antiparticles travel backwards in time" is also incorrect. I was told this by a teacher, or two, of mine back in the day, anyhow.

there are other reasons i would disagree with the statement re virtual particles. casimir effect. hawking radiation.

Yep, I learned QFT in school under the functional formalism, myself. It definitely has some strengths over canonical quantization. Regardless, the utilization of either method in QFT (canonical and functional) is more recent than Dirac's single-particle wave equation interpretation, so I don't think this applies to that discussion.

yeah, you were mentioning canonical quantization but you said "NOT canonically quantizing" and i read past that, sorry. anyway, this is all tangential.

[4vektor]

Originally Posted by Johann

Given two paths that look exactly identical, you probably have about a 50/50 probability of choosing either one. Given a sandwich and a lump of plutonium, however, you might have, say, a 1/10^100 probability of biting the plutonium atom. Do these approximate probability distributions mean that you have no free will?

it doesn't. nor does it mean i do. it does not mean anything. are you saying that you established humans have choice / free will?

Humans have small biases that cause them to act in slightly less random ways than random number generators, it is true, but the distribution of choices by a human between two objects that hold the same appeal should still be approximately random.

you don't know they hold the same appeal. maybe the guy dislikes red bc it reminds him of blood. but that is another point, it doesn't matter. i don't think i am getting my point accross. a different approach then. suppose you get a 53/47 distribution after 100 trials with subject 1, and 41/59 distribution with subject 2. what do you conclude?

If, in this interpretation, you replace chance with choice, then yes! The 1s and 0s within the random number generator are being chosen by the quantum process it measures.

so you established that humans have choice the same way as a machine has choice by renaming "chance" with "choice". what have you accomplished except a linguistic maneuver?

Just because humans have more variables (biases) interacting that cause their behavior to be a bit more unpredictable than random number generators in a two-choice experiment (due to chaos theory), does not mean that both subjects are not choosing. The randomness is the choice.

see my last comment.

or (3) chance does not exist, and our direct perception of choice is more fundamental than our indirect inference of probability.

"our" perception? does that include the card shuffling machine's perception? chance exists, the question is whether it is all that exists.

You are right. The experiment tells you nothing in and of itself; it is the interpretation of the results that is important.

In this interpretation, anything with counter-factual definiteness has choice.

this interpretation is equivalent to simply redefining free will AS just random process -- and in that case both humans and machines have it. this is tautological statement. you are actually closer to arguing for non-existence of choice or free will in the meaningful philosophical sense that the question is asked -- whether there is an agency that supervenes on the (for lack of better term) physical -- by avoiding having to ever ask the question.

[Johann]

Originally Posted by 4vektor

it doesn't. nor does it mean i do. it does not mean anything. are you saying that you established humans have choice / free will?

No, just that it is obvious - supposing that humans did have free will - that some situations would have differing probability distributions, and that this fact in no way invalidates the possibility that the people are acting freely.

you don't know they hold the same appeal. maybe the guy dislikes red bc it reminds him of blood. but that is another point, it doesn't matter.

"Disliking red", etc was discussed in my treatment of biases.

i don't think i am getting my point accross. a different approach then. suppose you get a 53/47 distribution after 100 trials with subject 1, and 41/59 distribution with subject 2. what do you conclude?

You conclude that the two subjects chose the two colors with differing probabilities, nothing more.

so you established that humans have choice the same way as a machine has choice by renaming "chance" with "choice". what have you accomplished except a linguistic maneuver?

In order for something to have choice, it must possess subjectivity; thus, this interpretation necessarily implies panpsychism. This means that all things are conscious to some minimal extent, and that they make choices, so yes, the machine has free will as well. Being much less complex than a human mind, however, with no cognition, no ability to learn from memory, etc, it's choices are less influenced than a human's, and more predictable from a probability standpoint.

"our" perception? does that include the card shuffling machine's perception? chance exists, the question is whether it is all that exists.

Can you prove that chance - this objective thing - exists, from your subjective standpoint? All you have is the feeling of free will, not chance; thus, your experience limits you to accepting choice as more fundamental than chance.

this interpretation is equivalent to simply redefining free will AS just random process -- and in that case both humans and machines have it. this is tautological statement. you are actually closer to arguing for non-existence of choice or free will in the meaningful philosophical sense that the question is asked -- whether there is an agency that supervenes on the (for lack of better term) physical -- by avoiding having to ever ask the question.

Yes; this interpretation does to some extent avoid answering the question, but this is because it denies the question's ultimate validity in the first place. It basically forces us to redefine our intuitive understanding of chance by asking "how would it feel to not make a choice?" The answer is that we couldn't feel how it is to not make a choice - choice is intrinsic to consciousness. Therefore, if we apply panpsychism - which says that everything is conscious - we are forced to accept that all actions that an object takes feel like choice, not chance. So what could this thing called chance even be like, and why do we think it is different from choice in the first place?

- Johann

[4vektor]

Originally Posted by Johann

Yes; this interpretation does to some extent avoid answering the question, but this is because it denies the question's ultimate validity in the first place. It basically forces us to redefine our intuitive understanding of chance by asking "how would it feel to not make a choice?" The answer is that we couldn't feel how it is to not make a choice - choice is intrinsic to consciousness. Therefore, if we apply panpsychism - which says that everything is conscious - we are forced to accept that all actions that an object takes feel like choice, not chance. So what could this thing called chance even be like, and why do we think it is different from choice in the first place?

well, now we finally got somewhere -- we have to apply panpsychism (a belief) for what you are saying to make any sense. but i don't want to "apply" panpsychism (i can still do that bc it is just a belief, right?). so i'm out.

[Johann]

Originally Posted by 4vektor

well, now we finally got somewhere -- we have to apply panpsychism (a belief) for what you are saying to make any sense. but i don't want to "apply" panpsychism (i can still do that bc it is just a belief, right?). so i'm out.

Not so fast; I wouldn't say panpsychism is a belief so much as a unavoidable reality for materialists. Galen Strawson, a prominent materialist philosopher, has recently argued very controversially that his position on our conscious experience - that it arises from the brain - necessarily implies panpsychism. In addition, there are extremely strong logical arguments against the possibility that matter is unconscious. Here is one I used from another thread:

----

Proof that the emergence of consciousness from unconscious processes is logically impossible:

(1) We define consciousness as inner experience/subjective awareness/what have you
(2) We assume that matter and energy by themselves are not conscious

(3) We equate consciousness with some arbitrary number - because it is something real.
(4) We equate a lack or absence of consciousness with 0 - because it is not something real (an absence of elephants is not a real thing)

Per (2) and (4), matter and energy have 0 consciousness. A neuron is made of matter and energy; therefore, it is not conscious. Why? Because nothing multiplied by 0 can ever equal something other than 0. But what if you increase the number of individually unconscious neurons to 100,000,000,000 (like in a real brain)?

0 x 100,000,000,000 = 0. Therefore, per (4), a brain is not conscious.

If this proof seems confusing, consider that the reason the proof concluded that the brain was unconscious arose entirely because we assumed (2) - that matter and energy are unconscious. As Galen Strawson argues, if you redefine this assumption by including panpsychism, you can then prove that the brain is a conscious object. It does not even matter how much consciousness you attribute to elementary matter and energy; there just has to be something there to begin with.

----

Do you see where I am going?

- Johann

[EthanT]

Originally Posted by 4vektor

i don't know either, i didn't study QFT in historical sequence. i remember the dirac sea (bad idea), but i thought it was feynman or stuckelberg who are responsible for backwards-in-time picture, and this happened later. anyway, it is just interpretation.

Yes, you're totally right, it was Feynman!! Not sure how I forgot about Feynman. So, I'm pretty sure I messed up the historical sequence on that. I think my QM text by Shankar had a nice read on this. I'll have to read it again this weekend for the fun of it.

Originally Posted by 4vektor

there are other reasons i would disagree with the statement re virtual particles. casimir effect. hawking radiation.

Yeah, I agree with everything you said about that. I've gone through some of the examples you mention too, including vacuum fluctuations to try and get a solid basis for virtual particles. Lots of problematic areas, though.

Casimir force got shot down as an appeal for the existence of virtual particles, with this paper:

[hep-th/0503158] The Casimir Effect and the Quantum Vacuum

"In discussions of the cosmological constant, the Casimir effect is often invoked as decisive evidence that the zero point energies of quantum fields are “real”. On the contrary, Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be computed without reference to zero point energies."

Then you have this guy (popular at physicsforums.com) who seems to refuse to give any reality to virtual particles, and gives a very abstract description of vacuum fluctuations:

http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/ph...topics/vacfluc

Later, this paper came out on the dynamical Casimir effect, which certainly seems to appeal to VPs, but it's my understanding they can be taken out of the picture again.

[1105.4714] Observation of the Dynamical Casimir Effect in a Superconducting Circuit

But, finally this paper gave me some piece of mind on the subject and represents how I view VPs now, which really isn't as a particle at all. But, it does give them some reality. It's a really good read.

Virtual Particles: What are they? | Of Particular Significance

That guy also has a great blog for LHC updates and stuff.

Anyhow, I guess this is all rather tangential too.

[4vektor]

Originally Posted by Johann

Not so fast; I wouldn't say panpsychism is a belief so much as a unavoidable reality for materialists. Galen Strawson, a prominent materialist philosopher, has recently argued very controversially that his position on our conscious experience - that it arises from the brain - necessarily implies panpsychism. In addition, there are extremely strong logical arguments against the possibility that matter is unconscious. Here is one I used from another thread:

----

Proof that the emergence of consciousness from unconscious processes is logically impossible:

(1) We define consciousness as inner experience/subjective awareness/what have you
(2) We assume that matter and energy by themselves are not conscious

(3) We equate consciousness with some arbitrary number - because it is something real.
(4) We equate a lack or absence of consciousness with 0 - because it is not something real (an absence of elephants is not a real thing)

Per (2) and (4), matter and energy have 0 consciousness. A neuron is made of matter and energy; therefore, it is not conscious. Why? Because nothing multiplied by 0 can ever equal something other than 0. But what if you increase the number of individually unconscious neurons to 100,000,000,000 (like in a real brain)?

0 x 100,000,000,000 = 0. Therefore, per (4), a brain is not conscious.

If this proof seems confusing, consider that the reason the proof concluded that the brain was unconscious arose entirely because we assumed (2) - that matter and energy are unconscious. As Galen Strawson argues, if you redefine this assumption by including panpsychism, you can then prove that the brain is a conscious object. It does not even matter how much consciousness you attribute to elementary matter and energy; there just has to be something there to begin with.

----

Do you see where I am going?

- Johann

this argument is not confusing. but it is a flawed argument.

1. you are assuming that the essence of consciousness must correspond to some property of matter that behaves as a real scalar quantity -- so you can naively add and multiply, etc (actually you should start at higher level where you observe presence of consciousness, assign a value and then divide but be that as it may). you have no basis to do that, a lot of things do not behave as a real scalar -- take a basic thing like spin.

in fact, if it is a property already present at all levels, it could not be a scalar bc the amount of mass/energy does not correlate to level of conscious experience. a 2 ton rock is not more conscious than a fully functioning human being (i hope we can agree on that). so the way this property would couple in aggregate would not be a scalar, the way the matter is arranged clearly affects the level of conscious experience. and so you have no right to assume how to manipulate it mathematically.

or the property may be absent altogether at the elementary level. example: color. orange is a term used to describe the conscious experience of processing light with a certain wavelength. fine. so color corresponds to some scalar property of matter? it doesn't. elementary particles have no color (not zero color, no color) because they do not absorb/emit light with specific frequency. so if you were to apply the same naive argument to add up the color of all the elementary particles on the surface of an orange you get 0 color + 0 color + 0 color + ... + 0 color = 0 color = flawed argument. color is an emergent property then, no?

2. you are conflating conscious experience with choice / free will. we may be conscious, but it may be just a fancy version of watching a movie on an LCD with the illusion that you are controlling the action, so maybe we are conscious (we have "experiences") but we have no choice / free will, only the "feel" that we are making choices when we are actually just along for the ride in a complex but purely random process. the discussion was about choice / free will, not consciousness.

[Iyace]

Originally Posted by 4vektor

1. you are assuming that the essence of consciousness must correspond to some property of matter that behaves as a real scalar quantity -- so you can naively add and multiply, etc (actually you should start at higher level where you observe presence of consciousness, assign a value and then divide but be that as it may).

I don't understand where this thinking is flawed, as you imply. It would follow that if consciousness arises from matter, there would be a unique scalar quality of 'conscious coherence'.

you have no basis to do that, a lot of things do not behave as a real scalar -- take a basic thing like spin.

Spin may be a property of a particle, but it all relates to the angular momentum of the particle. Since we can't express spinors in terms of classical physics, we call spinors properties of such a particle. Thats much like saying that spinning is a property of a carosel. Spinning is what a carosel does, not what a carosel is.

in fact, if it is a property already present at all levels, it could not be a scalar bc the amount of mass/energy does not correlate to level of conscious experience.

How? If not, then what does?

a 2 ton rock is not more conscious than a fully functioning human being (i hope we can agree on that).

How can you know?

so the way this property would couple in aggregate would not be a scalar, thse way the matter is arranged clearly affects the level of conscious experience. and so you have no right to assume how to manipulate it mathematically.

In agreeance, slightly, because we know nothing about what makes things " more conscious ". As the shrooms study shows, sometimes dampening in certain areas INCREASE conscious interaction that that area pertains to.

or the property may be absent altogether at the elementary level. example: color. orange is a term used to describe the conscious experience of processing light with a certain wavelength. fine. so color corresponds to some scalar property of matter? it doesn't.

Most wave-lengths are solved by scalar wave equations, so I don't know what you're saying.

2. you are conflating conscious experience with choice / free will. we may be conscious, but it may be just a fancy version of watching a movie on an LCD with the illusion that you are controlling the action,

You're going to have to explain this.

so maybe we are conscious (we have "experiences") but we have no choice / free will, only the "feel" that we are making choices when we are actually just along for the ride in a complex but purely random process.

Again, we're going to have to talk this one over. This seems unparsimonous.