erraticwisdom

The Neurobiology of Freedom

2008-07-28T14:26:20Z

So, consciousness is accompanied by an experience of freedom, which phenomenologically speaking, does not seem illusory. But, what exactly does that mean about consciousness and our brain?

There are basically two options. One, the experience of freedom is simply not real, our brains, like every other physical object, operate deterministically. Like an elaborate computer program, the firings of various neurons (or whatever the exact mechanism is discovered to be) are causally sufficient for a decision to be made.

The second option is that consciousness does somehow allow for us to make and act upon free choices. How exactly could something like this occur without making the mind out to be a causal black hole somehow circumventing the laws of physics? (At this point, quantum mechanics is often brought up as a loophole of sorts, but introducing randomness isn’t quite the same as free will. See discussion in Phenomenology comments)

Let’s take an example of what we normally see as a “free” choice. In the famous case of the Judgment of Paris, there is a point right before Paris begins to consider his alternatives (Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess) where no decision has been made, and then a second point soon thereafter where he has made his decision and begins the motions of awarding the golden apple to Aphrodite. In the intervening period, Paris appears to make a free choice. He responds to the problem presented to him as a conscious being, considering the potential rewards and penalties as they affect him.

What is most important is that there is a necessity to this type of response. One simply must exercise this (potentially illusory) freedom. Paris, now a dejected determinist, cannot just sit back and wait for his fated choice to roll out of his mouth. No, whether genuine or random, he must at least make the mental motions that would produce one of the available three names.

Free will is then dependent on a conscious, self-aware being, and is a necessary component of even the simplest decisions. How exactly does this freely acting consciousness fit into our physical world then?

Now that’s a doozy and perhaps the single most fascinating question I can think of. My immediate inclination is to view consciousness as a higher-order aspect of traditional brain functions, neither entirely immaterial nor causally chained. Without being too nebulous, consciousness as a subjective phenomenon cannot be easily reduced to objective parts, and so it seems to somehow emerge from the activities of the brain. The relationship roughly corresponds to that between the molecules in a man-made object and the function of the artifact itself. For example, the table in front of me is composed of different molecules, and its solidity and brownness are reducible to properties of its molecules and their bonds, but its function as a table is not entirely contained by the particles buzzing around inside.

Similarly, consciousness seems to be rooted in but not entirely reducible to neural activity. Damage my brain, and my level of consciousness will appreciably suffer, but psychological abuse, for example, can be just as damaging and its effects aren’t always visible at the level of neurons and neural networks.

Is consciousness as a higher-level product of the brain’s activity therefore outside of the determined world? Not quite, but if we can establish, or at least allow for the possibility, that the state of my brain’s neurons at any point is not sufficient – causally speaking – to determine the state of my consciousness at the next point, then we have something like free will.

The big leap here is the “higher-level” part, and I’ll readily admit that it’s purely speculative. It’s difficult to describe without sounding as if consciousness spawns magically every instant, but there are no other cases where we have subjective, 1^st person phenomena with objective, 3^rd person ontologies. Like I said, it’s a doozy.

Natural Kinds in Chemistry

2008-07-21T11:16:58Z

One of my favorite courses so far was last semester’s “Natural Kinds”. Everything from the unique subject matter to the seminar-like structure made the class a blast, up until the final paper was due.

Never one to procrastinate (cough), I got started early and buried myself in the literature. I was on the hunt for a good topic, something I could sink into to keep the required twenty pages tightly focused. I ended up – not surprisingly – back in the sciences, studying natural kinds in chemistry.

I worked feverishly in the final weeks and was rather proud of the finished paper. So, with some encouragement I submitted it to the department’s scholarship program, and was surprised to learn that I won.

The paper is long, probably pretty dull, and in such a tiny niche that I’d only recommend it for someone with at least a bit of experience in the area. For some support material, Natural kinds and the seminal works of Kripke and Putnam.

Download the paper.

The Phenomen- ology of Freedom

2008-06-30T19:35:50Z

Are we truly free? Are the paths of our lives charted beforehand, or is every moment an opportunity to break new ground? The answer isn’t easily found, the determinate physical world seems to hit a causal brick wall at human consciousness, and the theories of free will advocates are likewise thwarted by the explanatory role of rationality. Given the mind’s pivotal role in the debate, it seems natural to tackle the issue from within, working with our intuitions and direct experience to discover if we are free.

In my mind, there are not many experiences more clear or distinct than freedom. It appears to me, despite the supposedly ever-extending causal chain of events, that I am fundamentally free. At this moment, and without apparent cause, I can lift my arm and lower it, I can decide to daydream for a bit, I can choose to hold my breath, I can do (almost) anything.

Soft Determinism: Causal (hard) determinism and free will can be compatible.

There are those who disagree, the hard determinist, who asserts that no event is without physical cause, would argue that my actions here are all still not free, that the events of the past lead directly to that moment and would necessarily cause me to do one of those things. I may have the illusion of choice, but the reality is that I cannot help but raise and lower my arm. However, the hard determinist’s argument is too strong, annihilating both the opposing position and our own mindset (and the actions of our everyday lives). If I still feel that I’m free, that the choice I make is spontaneous, then the causal chain is irrelevant, I make choices.

For the hard determinist, an individual’s path is “locked down” or determined beforehand and the outcomes of specific events can theoretically be deduced given the appropriate antecedent conditions (and one hell of a computer). Within that individual’s mind, however, a choice is made and – at least psychologically if not physically – that choice could have been otherwise and the individual was free in making their decision. In this sense, the individual’s path is locked down after them, and a sense of freedom is maintained.

It may be a feeble distinction from an external perspective, but we’re working from the inside out; there’s no such thing as an “illusion” of choice.

The alternative, libertarianism, rejects causal determinism, finding it utterly incompatible with free will. Libertarianism seems outdated, modern physics tells us that our world is causally determined (at least at the relevant scale), that each action has a reaction. To deny these laws and their influence in the debate is to ignore a significant chunk of our understanding of the universe and seems counterproductive.

We therefore arrive at my preferred position, soft determinism, combining the existence of a causally connected world – whose physics tangibly influence the interactions of the mind – and the phenomenology of freedom. The position maintains the possibility of total causal determinism but still allows that our actions could have been otherwise (and that we were free to do so). It seems counterintuitive, but it makes more sense from our current, internal perspective: I do not know which of the three available actions I will perform, I will surely do one (and the specific one may have been deduced by somebody), but there remains – in my mind – a choice to be made.

That “almost” earlier is something I may return to (perhaps in the context of literature), it explores a different layer of free will.

Terms: phenomenology, causal (hard) determinism, libertarianism

An Open Letter to God.

2008-05-12T13:03:01Z

So here’s the deal, we’ve been here a while doing great things and…eh things, but there’s always been that trickling or gushing concern about why.

We’re amazing, when you stop to think about it, the things I can think and do are staggering, I’m constantly in awe of the fact that I can wiggle my fingers. But why?

Disclaimer: this is just for fun, no offense intended, blah blah blah.

It’s often (and beautifully, seriously, watch that) suggested that it’s the journey and not the destination that’s important, and while I can wholeheartedly agree that this experience is amazing and worthwhile in itself, there are other beings equal in every way to myself whose lives are filled only with pain and hunger. If there is a creature somewhere, lining up dominoes of lives and be-ings, that’s just cruel.

Didn’t find any odd IP’s in the logs, so I’m not sure if you’re subscribed, but there’s been a slew of these “open letters” recently and maybe they work for something.

Nietzsche: The Fast Track

2008-04-11T12:00:00Z

The darkly dressed student made yet another existentially pessimistic remark and the professor unleashed one of the harsher insults I’ve heard:

“Every student goes: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard…” Ok, so maybe it’s not as bad as it sounded, but the accusation was that we (particularly as malleable young students) go through predictable stages of intellectual and spiritual development.

Whether you want to or not you may go through “states” corresponding to each of these philosophers’ accounts.

Nietzsche’s provocative philosophy challenged traditional Christian morality (“God is dead”), and his concept of the Übermensch is appealing as a template for the dominant, worthy human.

Schopenhauer (to whom the professor was associating the troubled student) proposed a more pessimistic philosophical system, finding the universe irrational and often cruel and painful. There were avenues to freedom, mainly through ascetically amplified levels of awareness, but they are long, difficult and rarely successful.

Finally, Kierkegaard’s philosophy was partly a theological account and described the uselessness of rationality in spirituality and the importance of faith. His concept of the “knight of faith” is of an individual who has absolute faith in God, who is nothing other than their faith.

Do we really all go through such similar and clearly demarcated “phases”? It’s worrisome to me because my own understanding (or ignorance) of life and existence differs significantly from the professor’s and most in their post-Kierkegaardean states, and with each phase shift, one’s ability to step back into their earlier state of understanding becomes more difficult. Despite the torture of not knowing much, I like the questions I’m thinking about and the grounding that what little I do know is indubitable. I fear that an inevitable phase shift (especially that last Kierkegaard one) will subdue my curiosity with leaps of faith, maybe as some kind of defense mechanism. Accompanying this suppression seems to be the dreaded “normal” life, the mindless nine-to-five existence that I – in my current state – vow to never succumb to (however unrealistic that may be).

Feedburner says there are over 1800 of you out there. Where are you, in terms of your age, daily activities/obligations, and intellectual state (it needn’t be of the three described accounts)? I don’t think I’m the Schopenhauer type, but I would say I’m a pretty even mix of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard (if that’s even possible with such polar characters).

Computers and God

2008-03-03T13:23:40Z

I came across an interesting presentation on digg (and surprisingly, it wasn’t a kitten with horrifying spelling/grammar) recently that compared – albeit often fallaciously – our existence and universe to a computer program.

The more prominent arguments for the existence of God, at least in the realm of philosophy of religion, posit the existence of some greater being, but it is often unclear what attributes such a being would have. Cosmological or “first-cause” arguments identify God with the supposedly necessary spark at the beginning of the universe, but it is still a leap to assign it omni-everything (omnipotent, omniscient, all-good) attributes. Similar leaps occur in other arguments (ontological, teleological, etc), where the vagueness of what this God is allow the computer analogy to take hold.

Uncaused Cause – This “argument from first cause” appeals to the principle that nothing can come into being without being caused to do so (excepting, presumably, God).

What does this all mean? If at the helm of our universe is not the traditional God, and we can only know that something exists (if that), then we have something closer to the computer program analogy where there is only a creator and its product. So, let’s push that analogy.

Cosmic Geek

At this stage, the creator does not of necessity have the omni-everything attributes of the traditional conception of God. In fact, it need not even be all-powerful, just powerful enough to provide the first cause (following the cosmological argument). Therefore, the creator’s motivations may not include attending to our universe’s condition (these cosmic geeks are notoriously irresponsible). Our universe could be one of millions of instances, or just a prototype – a flawed beta abandoned for the next revision.

Natural Laws

If our universe is analogous to a computer program, then it was likely designed according to a blueprint or archetype and is subject to laws and rules. Once a program is run or instantiated, however, it exists independently of its source though it continues to be bound by the laws according to which it was created. Similarly, if our universe is comparable to a computer program, then it’s subject to natural laws and proceeds according to a predetermined causal chain. Nothing that happens within a computer program is causally inexplicable, and while our universe may be more complex than Mail.app, it would be in principle possible to deduce that a particular event will occur if we know all of the antecedent conditions and laws.

Reaching the Creator

Is it possible for us, as objects within this application, to communicate with the creator? Here, some of the analogies seem to falter (and collapse altogether in the presentation). In a typical program, instantiated objects are necessarily restricted to accessing things in their “universe”. Direct contact is therefore not possible, however, the creator can incorporate relative metadata which could be accessible by objects in the program.

Our universe differs from a typical program in that it includes objects (such as ourselves) that are self-aware, and while we’ve decided that our universe is deterministic, we can still allow for a soft view where if we had chosen to, we could have done otherwise. So, we can choose to access this “metadata”, and since our analogy is particularly weak at this point, it doesn’t seem entirely impossible for us to reach beyond our universe and attempt to contact the creator.

What does the Universe Run On?

In a program (simplifying things a tad), variables and objects occupy bits of memory and the application runs or is interpreted by some kind of processor. In our universe, objects extend in space, but what exactly “powers” everything? This one gets quite difficult as we don’t typically conceive of our universe as dependent on some other thing, and any guesses here would be purely speculative.

Conclusion

Well, this has been a fun little thought experiment (and it’s just that, an experiment, these are not my views nor am I advocating what I’ve said as a belief system, blah blah blah), if you have more ideas for stretching out the analogy, leave them in the comments!

If you like it, digg it

Surviving Life

2008-02-11T13:16:45Z

The questions we ask are not ones we can ponder in our free time and easily set aside when there’s life to do. What am I? Am I free? What is the purpose of my existence? Why should I strive to act morally? Is the reconstructed ship still the Ship of Theseus? (Ok, perhaps we can make it without settling that last one).

It’s often nearly impossible to return to the daily grind of school or work (or both) after exploring these problems. It seems like a failure to not study these questions continuously, but is the solution (devoting our entire lives to it) realistic?

Walden Pond vs. Times Square – Pick your poison, the deafening silence of solitude or the mind-numbing bustle of a metropolis.

As it always is with cases like these, finding the proper balance seems to be the key. Surviving in today’s world requires a significant amount of work (Walden aside), and it is almost inevitable that we fall into the routine of a full-time job. We are eventually faced with a life-or-death struggle for either our physical or intellectual/spiritual existence. The lines are obviously not always so clean cut, one can strive for the intermediate courses where our jobs incorporate intellectual activities (and are therefore more rewarding), but the fact remains that time spent on essentially surviving is time lost. This concern does not relate to the finer things in life: family, friends and fun which are always welcome (even as “distractions”), but to the other stuff, the stuff we have to do.

Even if one was able to somehow disregard the pull of society and ignore (or at least subordinate) one’s physical needs, there are no guarantees that the time for contemplation would produce any answers.

Neither extreme seems at all desirable, and the middle ground is far from satisfying. How do you balance your life?

The New Erratic Wisdom

2008-01-21T15:43:41Z

Another semester, another redesign (give it a solid refresh to clear your cache). This one’s been brewing for quite some time now, with the notched grid motif coming around a few months ago, along with my discovery of Gotham. It’s at once one of my most ambitious and most basic redesigns.

My intention was to create a more personal experience, to better illustrate myself through both the content and its presentation. Words aren’t the only, or even the best, way of portraying my thoughts anymore. So, alongside new posts you’ll find links to photographs I’ve taken and relevant songs I’m listening to. Visually, the clean lines and sharp (stiff, even) grid are me – I’m a neat freak.

I decided to hide away the sidebar after studying some ClickTales and even a few user surveys (thanks guys!). The sidebar is secondary content, supplementary information about me and what I’m doing, so it seems justifiable to push it aside to make room for the main content, while keeping it at your fingertips should you want to check on what I’m doing.

The site should work properly in all major browsers, although I am aware of a few remaining bugs and quirks. The redesign is so complex that I realized I would never get it live if I tried to squash every bug before launching.

There are also some improvements to the comment system which I’m sad to say I’ve neglected in the past few redesigns despite their key importance to the success of the site. In addition to giving you more room to type your responses, I’ve installed a plugin which allows you to quote other commenters by selecting the text you’d like to cite and clicking the “Quote” icon in the corresponding comment label.

Alternates – I went through quite a few revisions to find the look I wanted. This included shrinking the grid background in half and simplifying the typography.

The old version is archived here, and you can check out semi-complete archives of every redesign here.

Otherwise, peruse the site, check out the AJAX complements of jQuery and leave any feedback in the comments.

Update: I’ve attempted to correct some minor rendering issues with Safari. Please let me know if you encounter any other weirdness.

Imperfect Art

2008-01-07T11:06:20Z

Plato’s metaphysics and his Doctrine of Forms describes a general division of our universe into forms and particulars. Forms are instantiated by contingent particulars. That is, particulars are produced by imperfect participation in a form.

His argument is that if an imperfect representation of a thing exists, then there also exists a form to which the thing is relatively imperfect. For example, we may only be able to reproduce imperfect squares, but these representations are based on the perfect form “Square”, a definition of a two-dimensional shape with four equal sides and four right angles.

In later writings (namely Phaedo and The Republic), Plato expands the metaphysical levels at both ends. The mysterious qualities of souls – they are formlike in their perfection, but seem to be instances of something since we each have one – places them somewhere above forms. The more interesting expansion occurs downward (in Plato’s opinion, at least) regarding art. For Plato, since art is a representation of our world – a world composed of particulars – that it somehow ranks below particulars.

Is art really just a duplicate of a flawed universe? Isn’t what makes art beautiful its ability to represent the forms, to be even more real than reality?

Identity and Time

2007-11-19T15:36:30Z

A classic example in the metaphysics of identity is the “Ship of Theseus” story which introduces an interesting worry in the way we identify objects over time and change.

First, a brief overview of the problem itself. Imagine a ship, oddly enough captained by a man named Theseus, that was being preserved for historical reasons. Over the course of many years, every piece of the ship was replaced, from the main mast and Theseus’s own cabin to the tiniest bolt, such that no part of the original ship remained. Is the ship then still the Ship of Theseus?

There is more to the story, but first, do we feel that the ship is still the same? The trouble now seems to be drawing a non-arbitrary line indicating at what point (if ever) the ship is considered a new object. We wouldn’t say that we have a whole new car if our mechanic replaces a portion of the engine, and it is equally nonsensical to say that we’re driving the same car if our mechanic was able to salvage only the steering wheel in a massive reconstruction.

To throw one more kink into the puzzle, imagine now that the parts removed from Theseus’s ship were actually preserved in a warehouse and were then used to rebuild the original ship. Again, our intuitions tell us that some kind of Principle of Artifact Reassembly must be true as taking apart and rebuilding an object doesn’t feel like we’re creating a whole new one. Now which one is the Ship of Theseus, the one that underwent gradual part replacement or the one composed of the ship’s original parts?

It’s an interesting problem, particularly because of the importance that our intuitions and feelings are given in considering the potential solutions. From a practical standpoint, it makes sense that we would try to find an intuitively satisfying solution, but what if we’re in error. Changing one part means the resulting object is no longer numerically identical to it’s predecessor, so why should we consider our feelings on qualitative identity important?