Response
Summary
This is Derek
Abbott's reply (DA5) to Cosma Shalizi's
posting (CS4).
CS4
= Cozzie's fourth reply (Cosma Shalizi)
DA5
= Derek's fifth reply (this msg) (Derek Abbott)
The
Debate Continues:
CS4:
DEREK DESCARTES OR RENE ABBOTT?
DA5:
COSMA RUSSELL OR BERTRAND SHALIZZI?
CS4:
By hypothesis, the soul has energy and momentum; therefore it has a 4-momentum;
therefore it has an invariant mass. If this rest mass is zero, then
soul must move at the speed of light in all reference frames. This presents
difficulties in the way of maintain contact with the body.
DA5:
So what if soul moves at the speed of light? An optical computer has light
whizzing
around inside. Cannot one postulate that the soul likewise circulates
at such speeds? Or maybe it is a big standing wave ;-)
CS4:
If it has a non-zero rest mass, though, then we have a material substance
after all, acting like any other. Derek describes not a spirit proper at all,
but a new sort of matter, the spawn of an unholy union between D. D. Homes
and James Clerk Maxwell.
DA5:
The idea of a material soul is not new, it's called Stoic traducianism.
Not only is it heretical, but it spoils the idea of being a non-mechanistic
medium. So I would agree with Cozzie that this is probably not the correct
option to choose, unless I'm missing something. (Which I'm known to do).
CS4:
The idea that something could be too simple for a soul to express
itself is - at least to me - odd.
DA5:
If all a soul can do is toggle a few atoms or affect quantum events
in a Wignerian consciousness style, then being trapped in a lump
of rock and massaging some rock atoms, hardly affects the rock. It
would be an extremely boring life for a poor old soul. If the meaning
of soul is to solve the problems of free will & self-identity,
then it is only appropriate to imagine souls as residing in human bodies.
Cozzie could be right: there could in fact be souls in rocks, but what I
am saying is that those souls are in limbo and are therefore of no
consequence
to this discussion.
I'm
also prepared to hypothesize that souls extend out of our bodies
and
possibly affect quantum observations in a Wignerian sense. Though
I'm not that interested in defending this idea. I could quite easily
take it or leave it.
CS4:
In PN1, Peter Nyikos, commenting on CS2, wrote
[T]he
purely deterministic brain may be a fiction, because
of quantum indeterminism whose outcomes may in turn be influenced
by "soul" or "spirit," yet it is a choice between outcomes each
of which was possible even without the influences of a soul...
The choice between two possible QM effects might not have to take
any measurable amount of energy.
CS4:
I see no reason why the choice need take any energy at all, and with that
modification, find this a much better theory than Derek's.
DA5:
Why is there no energy required?
CS4:
It does not lead to absurdities like calculating the soul's Hamiltonian or
its
spin eigenstates; it does not gut physics wholesale; it is, in fact, a fine
theory, and I attack it with real regret.
DA5:
Your heart bleeds and the violins play.
CS4:
First: It could well be untestable.
DA5:
Fine. Then it becomes a religious solution, rather than a scientific one.
Not
everything in life has to be testable. You have to take things on faith
sometimes.
CS4:
Second: ......This
implies that the soul can somehow call upon immense computational
power from outside the brain, which seems to be used only for the messy
details of implementing free will. This is not logically impossible, of
course, but it seems unlikely.
DA5:
Much to your chagrin, no doubt, I have to say this is a product
of
over reductionistic hubris. What you are saying is analogous to saying
"Fourier transforms require lots of messy computations on a computer,
therefore I cannot believe that the pattern of light passing through
a simple slit is the Fourier transform of the slit, because there is
not enough `room' in the slit to make such a messy calculation."
You
are confusing the flow of a natural processes, with the man-made
abstraction of simulating it with messy calculations. Sometimes there
is a "magical" (I would say coincidental) resonance between mathematics and
nature. But more often, some very simple and beautiful processes
in nature are described only by very ugly cumbersome equations.
Do not be seduced by the lust of the sexy-new-age-chaos-math-is-magical
Siren charm. It will lead you astray :-)
CS4:
As I read them, in both Nyikos's and Derek's formulations, the soul is
conscious - another role for the soul will be discussed below. Presumably,
my soul's stream of consciousness is my stream of consciousness
-
the alternative needs a close shave with Occam's Razor if ever anything did.
DA5:
No need for a shave: the two streams of consciousness are one. They
are contingent & inextricably linked. It's like two children holding hands
and swinging each other around in a circle. You need the two kids
to create the
rotation action and together they map out the same circle.
CS4:
Regardless, the soul has a big problem: How does it communicate with the
material
world? They have said (more or less) how it imposes its free will on
matter, but how does it learn about the world?
DA5:
How does a rock learn to sink in water? How does light learn to diffract?
The
free will drive is in the very nature of the soul. It doesn't need to learn.
In the same way you don't learn to breath or make your heart beat - it just
happens.
CS4:
[a long ramble on how soul gathers information on the body in order
to
make decisions on which atoms to toggle so as to affect choice]
DA5:
Again you are making the mistake of (a) implicitly subscribing
to a soul-body dualism, whereby the soul is a separate entity from
the body and therefore has to monitor it to know what is going
on, and (b) reductionistically thinking it calculates like a computer,
rather than just being a natural holistic process.
The
body and soul are holistically one, and yet two. Like two children, holding
hands
and swinging in a circle. One cannot perform without the other. One does
not need to calculate the other's position - they are both dynamically part
of the same movement.
CS4:
The soul's troubles are not over once it has information; there are
plenty left. The biggest is the free will's lack of freedom. The
soul is limited by what the brain could, if left to itself, do.
This prevents many absurdities, e.g., speaking fluent Sumerian
through an act of will alone. The price is a loss of freedom of
action. If the right things are done to my brain - by drugs, disease,
Ned the nefarious neurosurgeon, etc. - my soul might not have the
option of doing the right thing. Learning, habituation, etc. -
the normal operation of the brain - might achieve the same thing. By
working the way it does, the brain limits the soul's choices -
perhaps to one.
DA5:
You are forgetting that we are allowing the soul to influence the brain.
If
you are presented with two physically possible choices, without a soul, your
brain's choice is either predetermined by it's current state or is random
if a quantum event gets amplified. Now with a soul, your brain
is biassed towards one of the choices so as to reflect your true
will. If there are no external impediments (eg. being drugged out)
then your body will carry out your will according to the bias.
You
see, without a soul, your "will" is not really your own. It all boils down
to identity. Your soul is what makes you you. Without a soul, you
are controlled by the states your brain happens to be in. Your
actions are results of these states that are a product of growing
up in a particular corner of this universe. So you become nothing.
Your actions are not yours, they are really just part of the universe.
Your identity is swallowed up and you have the
flavour of an all-vanilla-universe. With a soul, however, you can now
have your own identity - you are no longer vanilla, you are the unique,
special, never-before-created, yes, wait for it, Cosma Rohilla Shalizzi.
Wow. Gasp. You can now play a part in your destiny, even though you are
not totally free to speak Sumerian, Kalihari clicking language, Arapaho,
participate in all-female mud wrestling or levitate your body.
CS4:
A person might be habituated into involuntary sainthood. Perhaps this will
be
taken into account on the Last Day, but neither Calvin, nor Mohammed, nor
Augustine make me optimistic.
DA5:
I'll put in a good word to Cthulhu, for you :-)
CS4:
The point of those two paragraphs is this: Even if we grant the soul the
power of choosing between the physically available options, it is far from
clear
that there are meaningfully distinct options available.
DA5:
You can choose to love me or hate me. You can hate someone, and suddenly
decide
via free will that you are going to stop hating and start loving them.
It is clear that the options are available. You can choose between chocolate
and strawberry ice cream.
CS4:
There is also what I like to call the "split soul syndrome" to consider.
While differences between the hemispheres of the brain are exaggerated in
many popular (i.e. trashy) accounts, the two hemispheres of some
split brain patients
do appear to be conscious of different things, and even to
express different preferences - which means, under the current theory, that
they must have different souls. Perhaps the soul splits in two when the corpus
callosum is cut? If so, do these bifurcations happen only along the corpus
callosum, or elsewhere as well? How small must a piece of brain be before
it can no longer harbor a soul - and what happens if, through some miracle,
these bits of brain get re-attached?
DA5:
The one soul still pervades both halves of the brain and carries on as
normal.
The brain, however, carries on as two entities. It's the same as when
you whole brain is drugged out: the soul still carries on as normal, but the
brain can't respond much at all (in this case). Your freedom of action has
just been diminished. A split brain simply mucks up your freedom of action
in a slightly different way.
CS4:
And how on Earth does one reconcile the soul with the existence of multiple
personality
disorder, and its cure? (I refrain with difficulty from discussing
the theological implications.)
DA5:
Again, the one soul is coping with a disordered brain, but is always there.
There
is room within theology for more than one "evil soul" to jump into
your body, in which case, you now have a more soul related problem.
CS4:
The soul has suffered a tragic decline. As William Burroughs put it in
The Western Lands, "The Egyptians say you've got seven souls - fourteen
if you're Pharaoh" (from memory). Aristotle was so impressed by
the fact he could do
arithmetic he concluded humans have one more soul than animals, which muddle
along with only two, poor beasts. This "intellectual" or "rational" soul did
sums and philosophy. (See Russell (1945), pp. 169-72.) For a long time we
thought that everything mental was "in" the soul, but now "We all know that
memory may be obliterated by an injury to the brain, that a virtuous person
may be rendered vicious by encephalitis lethargica, and that a
clever child can
be
turned into an idiot by lack of iodine" (Russell (1957), p.90; cf. any
introductory book on psychology or neurology). Even the soul's utility as
an explanation for consciousness is being attacked (see, primarily,
Dennett (1991), and Ryle (1949), Johnson-Laird and Calvin (1989)
and (1990) as well.) If this last citadel falls, the only job left
to the soul will be injecting free will into our streams of consciousness
- somehow. (One imagines quandaries being dropped into a little
black box with "Free Will" stenciled on the side, and decisions
popping out the other end.) Since Ryle (1949) has thoroughly discredited
volitions, this will take a good deal of subtlety - and will still
face the problems of data gathering, limitations of freedom, etc.
DA5:
This is nothing more than an argument by authority. You appear to be saying
that
the experts have gradually been attributing fewer & fewer functions to
the soul and that by this trend the soul will be redundant before
long. I will enjoy this as a cute observation, not as an argument.
Doctors attributed fewer and fewer functions to tonsils and it
used to be trendy to have your tonsils removed. Now it is realised
that they help to protect lower parts of throat from getting infected
and so are a good thing. Tonsil removal is no longer trendy.
CS4:
Derek asks how something so complex and unpredictable that it cannot
know its own future behavior could have goals and purposes. Indeed, in DA4
he goes into Social Darwinist rhapsodies: "We visualize ideas and
we set out to achieve them. We are competitive, we achieve and
win. If what you are saying is true, then we should really all
be uncreative defeatists and say, `there's no point in making any
effort as I don't really know what I'm doing and every-thing is predetermined
anyway.' But this is clearly not the case. Just look out of your
window and see what civilization has achieved." We infer that Derek
is
not living on the streets of Calcutta - but this isn't the time for those
jeremiads. Note that Derek uses "should" in the third sentence
in the sense of "would," not "ought."
DA5:
It is dangerous to draw conclusions, based on my poor usage of English
grammar.
Caveat. :-)
CS4:
I beg leave, O Kings and Queens, to illustrate with a fable. [Cozzie,
then
goes off into Alice in Wonderland to tell us, with grace and charm, in
a manner we are becoming accustomed to, from this great raconteur, that a
thermostat and a control computer are goal oriented and hence no different
from human goal orientation.]
DA5:
In short, the difference is that we visualize and shape our own goals and
then achieve them. We even can change direction, abandon goals and find new
ones.
CS4:When
Derek asked how something lacking free will could claim it, Frank
Adams replied quite simply in FA1. "I can easily write a compute program,"
he wrote, "which, when executed, insists it has free will. Do you
think this means that it does?" Derek's response, in DA3, was "In
the case of the computer program you programmed it to
make it say that it had free will. But.... [sic] who programmed
me to say that I have free will?" Despite my pointing out in CS3
that a) the argument from design is out of place and b) Adams proved what
was already clear, that a claim of free will does not establish its existence,
in DA4 Derek gave us this gem:
But
you programmed the computer to say it had free will.
What
programmed me to say I have free will?
My
free will?
Ergo,
QED.
CS4:
Derek's Latin is beyond redemption, but he should see that his own theory
of the soul allows an unfree entity to claim free will. His soul,
after all, merely interferes with a physical, mechanical brain, deciding which
of several possible things it does. Surely, then, a soul-less (i.e., de-animated)
but living (i.e., animate) human body is not impossible. Sad though
the de-animate's lot is, it would be able to learn the behaviors
of society as well as one of us; its brain, which does the learning,
is not damaged. It would learn to speak, and might even learn enough
philosophy to
become indignant - or act indignant, if you prefer - when its free
will was questioned.
DA5:
If we are to believe reports of "out of body experiences" the body is
unconscious
& "dead" still, when the soul momentarily leaves.
CS4:
But then, how do we answer Derek's question? (You can put your body back
on now.) What has programmed him? It is tempting to say, "Nothing
- Derek is the snow between the channels of the mind," but that's
really not true. Things
have programmed him. They include:
*
Some 46 chromosomes, product of a 3.5 billion year ecumenical
collaboration between the Rev. Malthus and Father Mendel
*
Nine months (more or less) of chemicals from his mother in the womb
*
His food and other environmental chemicals
*
About two decades (probably not more than three and almost certainly
not
less than one) of sensory input, some of it encoding quite
abstract
information
*
The instruction and example of parents, teachers, peers, passers-by
and
other featherless bipeds.
DA5:
Those other featherless bipeds must have taught me using their
free will :-)
CS4:Thus
spake Derek in DA4, which called itself DA3:
DA2:
If free will is only an illusion, then you are not responsible
for
murder. Hence morally bankrupt.
CS2:
True enough, as you're using the words, but only in the same sense
that
a toaster which electrocutes someone is "morally bankrupt." Normally
the phrase implies that you are a Bad Person because you could,
in other circumstances, be morally solvent. There determinist (or
strictly indeterminist) position says such other circumstances
are impossible.
DA3:
So Cozzie, you are nothing more than a toaster. That explains everything
:-) In fact, whenever you think of a brilliant idea, you cannot
even applaud yourself for being clever, because it was only the
predetermined movement of atoms in your brain that gave you the
idea. So you are only as creative as a toaster. [Derek
goes on to say he
is a toaster with six slots in his head. This, alas, must be false:
household appliances do not, yet, have Net access.]
CS4:
This is odious, and shall be disposed of quickly. Whether we like involuntarism
or not - I don't, for what it's worth - has nothing to do with whether
or not it is true. In ordinary matters, we try to find the truth without
prejudice; one who refuses to believe in leprosy because it is horrible, or
love because it is not; is at best stupid and at worst mad. Not doing likewise
on speculative matters is morally dubious and an intellectual disgrace. Better
to be a toaster, than to be guilty of such hubris.
DA5:
Cozzie. You can't get off that quickly :-) It's not a case of me refusing
to
believe you are no more than a toaster. I actually value you more than a
toaster, with good reason. You're more fun than a toaster, for starters.
CS4:One
approach is to deny the science, which seems to preclude free will.
DA5:
Not at all. One can simply reserve judgment.
CS4:
Another approach is to claim that science gives us free will on a
platter. The vitalists, quantum mystics, chaotophiliacs, etc.,
who have infested the soft dark underbelly of the modern mind since,
at least, Bergson do not merit serious consideration. (They would
not even merit mention were they not so common.) But Penrose, also,
thinks that free will and many other goodies will
bubble up out of quantum gravity. He may be right; he is a much
smarter man and a much better physicist than I, and I cannot follow his
arguments.
DA5:
He may be right indeed.
CS4:
Some try to save free will be redefining it, much as Hegel redefined
liberty
as the right to obey the police. This procedure has one merit: It can
save face.
DA5:
That approach is not audacious enough for me. Progress needs audacity.
CS4:
Ryle (1949) argues in Chapter 4 that there is no incompatibility between
physical mechanism and mental freedom. He offers (pp. 76-77) the analogy of
a game of chess - every move made conforms rigidly to immutable laws, but
those laws do not determine the course of the game. Or, again,
a sentence in full accord
with all the rules of English grammar is not determined by those
rules.
DA5:
An incomplete analogy. It explains how the freedom is allowed but
not where
it comes from. The freedom is the free will of the chess player or
the speaker of English, but he doesn't show how that then connects back
to his original point.
CS4:
What is left is the view that free will is only an appearance. Spinoza:
"Men
think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and
desires, but are ignorant of the causes by which they are led to wish and
desire." We have an understandable horror of being controlled, but
Ned the nefarious neurosurgeon does not exist. There is no one
pulling our strings and cackling at us - or, if there is, He ought
to be ashamed of Himself. All of us who are not mad accept limits
on what we can do, and if those limits are narrower - much narrower
- than we thought - there is nothing to be done.
DA5:
I've explained many times why I don't accept this position.
CS4:
BUT IF THERE IS NO SOUL, WHAT AM I? I do not know.
DA5:
The doubt is frustrating, isn't it? It's tempting to get a soul identity
:-)
CS4:
I
have been reading my old poems, and they were written by somebody
else.
Yet
I am that selfsame person; or, if I am not, who is?
If
no one is, when did he die - when he finished this poem,
or
that one, or the next day, or the end of that month?
Was
it murder, or suicide, or natural causes?
But
if I am he, what prevents me from becoming you
-
if indeed I cannot? Is it memory?
I
can count the times I recalled the past during the course of a
day
on
my fingers at its end, and someone else's might have done as well;
or
no ones, if I became amnesiac. Is it, then, just habit?
Am
I no more than my accumulated tics, tremors, tell-tale gestures,
turns of phrase?
Is
putting my keys in my right pocket each morning as much me as my
love?
How
could it be? And how could it be less?
Both
are strong; both came without my willing them, without my thinking
about them;
and
if anything, the first will outlast the last.
And
is not love, too, a habit - or rather a bundle of them?
I
have fallen into the habits of happiness in her company,
and
of pain when she is hurt. But where does this leave
me?
I
acquired some of these habits, and had some of them pressed upon
me
-
yet if I am my habits, who was it that got them, and therefore
had them not?
And
when I loose them - as I have lost the habits of picking my nose,
and
of integrating sin(x) into cos(x), and of staying
awake in class - do I die?
If
they are me, after all, whatever lacks them is not
me.
If
my body acquired your habits, and yours mine, would we have exchanged
bodies
- or would our bodies have exchanged tics?
If
our bodies shared exactly the same habits, would one person
have two bodies?
Or
would we still, somehow, have two people?
DA5:
A brilliant piece of poetry. I like it. This is where a soul solves
such
uncertainty.
CS4:
On the other hand, saying, "I am my soul; or rather, a soul,
the
one right there" seems to help not at all. What is a soul doing with
a hand, or two of them, or a body?
DA5:
It's all holistic, my friend. It's all part of the order of nature.
What
is gravity doing with a planet, or two of them, or a galaxy?
CS4:
How is it that things can happen to its body to make a soul feel estranged
from
it former selves? If the soul is changing, does it make sense to speak of
the infant and the sage she grows into, or the villain before his conversion
and the saint afterwards, as being the same soul?
DA5:
You can clearly distinguish any Monet from any Picasso. Even though
each
Picasso is different, each bears the same character or style. The
same goes for souls. A soul has its fixed character & identity, but can
spiritually mature or regress. A dusty Picasso is still the same Picasso,
whether it gets dirtier or gets cleaned up & restored.
CS4:
I dislike all the answers, and find ignorance even more irritating.
DA5:
I don't think you've seen all the answers yet. In life, sometimes
the answer
is to take some things on faith. Those things need not contradict
science - just supplement it. Faith is not as irritating as doubt.
Suck it & see.
CS4:
Incidentally, Derek, I've always though violets were violet, not
blue, but
have been wrong on these sorts of things before...
DA5:
You mean you've never heard the ditty "Roses are red, violets are blue...?"
You
have lived a sheltered life :-) Happy soul searching.
NETOGRAPHY
Abbott,
Derek (dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU)
DA1
= <1992Oct29.032255.24455@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU>
DA2
= <1992Dec2.072250.28853@ etc.>
DA3
= <1992Dec7.00153.19130@ etc.>
DA4
= <1992Dec10.012116.14502@ etc.>
DA5
= this
Adams,
Frank (frank@Cookie.secap.com)
FA1
= <1992Dec02.164938.158703@Cookie.secapl.com>
Holmes,
M. Randall (holmes@opal.idbsu.edu)
RH1
= <1992Oct29.180335.3011@guinness.idbsu.edu>
Nyikos,
Peter (nyikos@math.scarolina.edu)
PN1
= <nyikos.724134655@milo.math.scarolina.edu>
Shalizi,
Cosma - your humble narrator (lizi@soda.berkeley.edu)
CS1
= <1corvaINNfi3@agate.berkeley.edu>
CS2
= article number lost
CS3
= <1futaOINNa2m@agate.berkeley.edu>
CS4
= <1jsqik$i1l@agate.berkeley.edu>
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Calvin,
William. 1989. The Cerebreal Symphony
Calvin,
William. 1990. The Ascent of Mind
Dennett,
Daniel. 1991. Consciousness Explained
Johnson-Laird,
Philip. 1980-something. The Computer and the Mind.
(My
copy is temporarily misplaced, so I can't give the date.)
Russell,
Bertrand Arthur William. 1945. A History of Western Philosophy
Russell,
Bertrand Arthur William. 1957. Why I Am Not A Christian
Ryle,
Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind
Stove,
David. 1991. The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies