Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id BAA26787 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 13 Apr 2001 01:09:02 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 19:11:32 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Determinism Message-ID: <3AD5FDE4.6866.4549B1@localhost> In-reply-to: <20010412194507.B1393@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <F21kiyPoHZgzDgtZKpj00005c1f@hotmail.com>; from ecphoric@hotmail.com on Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 01:20:27PM -0400 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 12 Apr 2001, at 19:45, Robin Faichney wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 01:20:27PM -0400, Scott Chase wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Scientific conclusion: A (the higher announced decision) causes
> > > > B (the accessing of the particular area of the supporting lower
> > > > material substrate). Once again, it's called science...
> > >
> > >I thought you said causal chains can't be traced in such complex
> > >systems as the mind/brain?
> > >
We haven't been able to trace the finest-grained interactions down
to the communications between individual neurons and the coding
used (to be able to do so is the memeticist's wet dream, for it
would allow us to say - this is the endocortical meme that
precisely corresponde to the somatic and exosomatic behavior.
We can, however, tell when someone is seeing, since the visual
cortex light up, as opposed to when they are listening, as then the
auditory cortex lights up. We can even tell what visual or auditory
field is involved, and what the source direction, frequency, volume
and timbre of the sound or thesource direction, color, size and
shape of the viewed object is, to a rough degree.
>
> > Wouldn't the fatal objection be to ask what caused A itself, lest A
> > popped into existence from thin air.
>
> It is true that the concepts of willpower and consciousness represent
> twin terminii, an ultimate source and sink of information,
> respectively. There can be no answer either to what caused a free
> action or to what was the effect of a perception. Of course, the
> obvious way to resolve such loose ends is to plug them together, so
> that perceptions cause actions. But that means there's no actor, which
> suggestion very much upsets Joe, so I better say no more! ;-)
>
It's the same arrogant behavioristic mindset ("I don't know how to
study it, so it doesn't exist; I can't see inside the black box,
therefor it must be empty) that was shown to be theoretically
bankrupt ostrich-periscoping by cognitive psychology.
And people do indeed receive perceptual information presenting it
with the ground situation within which the decision is made, as well
as mnemonic information retained from past experiences which
allows them to render such situations and decisions meaningful in
a personal context.
>
> would call A a decomposable component. Maybe
> > this component could send arrows downward, but other compents below
> > it exist previous to A in the causal network. "Top-down causation"
> > would be limited in that it is ultimately open to decomposition and
> > that it is not a general flow direction, perhaps a mere exception to
> > the rule of bottom up.
>
They both occur, and are inextricably intertwined, each feeding
back and forward to the other in a dance of mutual influence.
>
> See my message of a few minutes ago on this. I don't believe in
> "vertical causation" (top-down *or* bottom-up), and I think I present
> an unanswerable case against it there.
>
And my answer to your point was that it is a mistake to think of the
instant of cauation, when the entities are spatiotemporally
contiguous, as temporally durational; duration involves the
interacting entities proir to and subsequent to their interaction. A
cause becomes a cause at the moment it causes an effect, and an
effect is an effect at the moment it is caused - that's it. The
simultaneity and instantaneity of cause and effect is not well
understood outside philosophical circles. Hume could not see a
perceptual cause in addition to the objects involved, which is why
he came to the conclusion that causation is not perceived, but
merely inferred, and is a relational property that we impose upon
objects to explain to ourselves why our perceptions of them follow
as they do. There is in addition the problem of which is the cause
and which is the effect. From one referential frame, billiard ball X
strikes billiard ball Y; from another, it is just the opposite, and from
most, they strike each other. In the case of instantaneous
simultaneous alterations concommitant upon object interqctions, it
may indeed be improper to label one to be the cause, and the other
to be the effect, exclusively, and perhaps the terms themselves are
archaic and misleading, and need to be jettisoned.
>
> > Mindbrain is less dualistic than mind/brain. Those who exlore
> > psychosomatic stuff might chime in and say a mental state can
> > influence a body state. If so, this mental state itself decomposes
> > to a neural state.
>
> I don't follow your reasoning there.
>
Not do I. The material substrate is that which contains the
dynamically recursive pattern configuration flowing, but they are not
identical. Kill the brain, and the brain is still there, but the dynamic
pattern flows are absent; the brain is reduced to a static thing.
> --
> Robin Faichney
> Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org
> (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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