No Ghost in the Machine by Alan M. Kadin

If there will be another FQXi context and I may contribute again, then I will perhaps quote you again because I consider your courageous reasoning important.

Please feel confirmed and further motivated by Wudu's cry for help.

DearMr. Kadin

You're right. But, what is the ultimate reason for the 'noise' and the lack of determinism.

Best regards,

Branko Zivlak

Dear Alan Kadin

very nice essay, taking the macro viewpoint seriously.

>> The stated question in this essay contest, "How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?," implicitly assumes that human behavior should be ultimately derivable from particle physics. This is entirely wrong, on several levels.

Correct! The higher levels also have their own causal powers. This is possible because of the interplay of bottom-up and top-down effects between the various levels.

>> The paradigm of natural selection is central not only to biology, but to psychology as well. Neural networks are capable of learning and adaptation to complex environments, and the conscious mind represents a simplified dynamic model of the environment. Goals and intentions are abstract representations of adaptive programs that can promote individual well-being and success.

Yes indeed. Again this depends on the neural nets realising their logic via lower level elements, whether neurons and synapses or logic gates based in transistors

Regards

George Ellis

One of the few sensible essays; but I struggle with your talk of the "illusion of consciousness" because I know that I am conscious, using my definition of consciousness. Maybe I need to re-read, but in what sense could my experience of consciousness be an illusion? Rather than consciousness as such, do you mean my sense of control and of freewill? I perfectly understand that these may be an illusion.

Dear Alan Kadin,

It's difficult to confirm which is fundamental, consciousness or matter, which is emerging from which, however it's obvious that they are intertwined. So instead of debating which is first we should acknowledge the importance of both. They are like software and hardware of a computing system. The system is meaning less with either. I welcome you to read there are no goals as such its all play, in which i propose that we humans are capable of interpreting our reality from with in a 3-sphere and that consciousness is the 2-sphere manifold (Riemann sphere) with in that model. We can also created artificial consciousness based on the article representation of Qdits on Riemann sphere for quantum computing. We can abstract all objective and subjective phenomenon that we see and experience using mathematical geometry and transfer that to an artificial being. If the objective part is the machine, then we may call the subjective part the ghost. So there "can" be a ghost in the machine if we say so. It's a mere perspective or expression of choice. Also please see the attached document with several diagrams that i have made from my exploration of human condition.

Love,

iAttachment #1: 1_zero__i__infinity.docx

Correction - The computing system is meaning less with out either one of software or hardware.

Perhaps Alan, we can rephrase the question for you: why is it that the illusion of intentionality exists? Is nature really in the business of creating illusions for illusions sake? If you see a tree, you might say, "it's an illusion; just as my consciousness is an illusion" etc, but why would nature bother with the fallacy of your existential self?

Another way of looking at it is as follows:

Physics may explain that an atom of a type X will behave as all atoms of type X behave; likewise that a system of type Y will behave as all systems of type Y behave; and therefore that an organism of type human will behave as all organisms of type humans behave, as in, they all read and write, all play and fight etc. Thus, the processes of one human to another are identical in their physical nature. But here in lies a problem surely. If you are conscious of your 'self', but all such system-types as yourself are indistinguishable in the manner of the physics, why is your 'self' not all such systems or none? What physical principle or law, can be applied to all selves that have existed in the history of the universe (and will exist in the future) that will account for the uniqueness that you can identify as 'your particular self'? Are you sure there is no ghost?

Dear Alan Kadin,

Thanks for your interesting essay. I can't say that I agree with your position, but I enjoyed reading the piece. One point that I will comment on was the following;

"Furthermore, we tend to see ourselves as free agents, but we actually have much less control than we think we do. Control is just another illusion."

I would argue that one of the defining characteristics of any animate entity is control. It is only by maintaining a certain relationship between inner and outer conditions that that ability to control is maintained, and ultimately expanded (via evolution). So, how can control be an illusion? If you meant to write "conscious control", well that's a bit different. However, I would argue that it seems pretty clear that, in general, self-control increases as the complexity of an organism increases. Do you really think that people aren't getting together to decide to build things like the LHC, or to send a probe to Mars, or sell some shares of stock? It seems clear that although our conscious control as human being most certainly is supervenient upon a vast array of unconscious expressions of control, and an even larger array of uncontrolled inanimate causes, that our conscious experience cannot be labeled as an illusion.

Yours,

William Ekeson

Dear Alan Kadin,

it seems to me that you identify the source of all meaning as irreducible randomness. Mathematically, this would be no problem, since if one waits long enough, every possible event will occur. Nonetheless i ponder about the nature of randomness, if it plays such a crucial role in nature. Surely, its essence is due to the fact, that its subsequent events do - per definition - in no way refer to some other events. Every random event is independent of any other random event. But for 'every possible event will occur' to be true in general, there surely is something other needed, namely a distinction between possible and impossible events. It seems to me that the concept of randomness, aka accidental events, necessitates a meta-law dictating which events are possible and which not. To figure out the answer, one had to examine the very roots of randomness and on what ontological objects it acts upon. Alternatively, and i think this is the path you took, one takes randomness and physical laws as a package, whereby the physical laws dictate what is possible and impossible and the randomness does the rest.

Surely, in the case of the Darwinian paradigma, there is a landscape of well defined physical relationships available to act upon. But making randomness a general explanatory principle - as many scientists today prefer - one is forced to explain how genuine randomness in the first place should have come into existence. I mean here that some proponents argue that this genuine randomness is the cause of the big bang, the cause of space and time. I ponder upon how a timeless randomness can be defined meaningfully, besides the question what it acts upon in a time- and spaceless realm. If genuine randomness is such a powerfull concept that one is forced to believe in it, i have the impression that it is far from being 'meaningless'. Here my problem arises: How can one define genuine randomness as meaningful and at the same time as the parade example of meaninglessness? Well, maybe i project some 'meaning' into genuine randomness which isn't there. But if true, the meaning of randomness for the course of events and for your answer to the essay contests' question would be just another illusion (although on the basis of some other reasons as the ones you give for the illusion of agency etc.), it would have no objective, ontological meaning, if it isn't fully understood as fundamental and why. I doubt that shere irreducible randomness can produce objective meaning, unless one takes it as a synonym for a lawful behaviour: randomness is needed to produce the kind of agents which are able to figure out that randomness is needed to produce some kind of agents which are able to figure out that randomness... It seems to me that randomness is a dead end for explaining its own necessity. It is true that this tautological recursive statement makes some kind of sense, it is consistent. But is it therefore necessarily also true? If yes, randomness and necessity are somewhat intimately intertwined. Randomness and lawful behaviour are intertwined and the big question for me is how they refer to each other. You gave some well known examples for this, but at a deeper level, i would like to know how scientists imagine a world like ours to emerge out of genuine randomness and at the same time define control, agency, design, intelligence and consciousness as illusions. Surely, the brain does hide more than it reveals, but why should it be able to precisely reveal the answers to the essay contest's question, namely that they are genuinely only illusions if one assumes that they are indeed only illusions? How can illusions reveal such profound truths at all on the basis of genuine randomness? I think we aren't yet in a position to fully understand the relationship of randomness and necessity, this would be only the case if we had figured out how the cosmos came into being at the first place. Until we figure it out, i think it is problematic to conclude from parts of reality to the whole realm of existence.

Hello, Mr. Kadin,

Your essay is the first essay that I have started in FQXI for discussion as the topic is very interesting and I, pretty much enjoyed the most part of the essay.

Your way of defining illusion is very different from others. The part that I liked very much was when you mentioned " So biological design, too, is an illusion, which is explainable in terms of blind adaptation to complex environments " and "Control is just another illusion."

Also check out my essay "Our Numerical Universe" showing how, by knowing numbers and mathematical patterns of universe, we could reach aims and intentions.

Best Regards,

Ajay