In article <2f4gl2$8pp at nucleus.harvard.edu> Dan Crevier <crevier at husc.harvard.edu> writes:
>Subject: Re: Is uploading feasible?
>From: lmk2
>Date: 17 Dec 1993 19:04:30 GMT
>>WilsonR at LILHD.Logica.com (Richard Wilson) writes:
>> > Who says that neural activity can "choose," and what is choosing?
>>>> I do and I agree with you: what is choosing?
>>>> It seems to me that in our intuitive definition of choosing requires
>non-determinism. If a computer program is playing chess, is it choosing
Right.
>which move to make next? If you would say yes, then we have a
>deterministic system that can choose, so you can't really argue that the
>brain is nondeterministic because it can choose. If you would say no,
>then it seems to me that your reason for saying that it can't choose is
>because you know that the system is deterministic, and that makes the
>arguement that the brain is nondeterministic because it can choose
>circular because you would be basing your statement that it can choose on
>it being nondeterministic. Do you see what I am trying to get at? I
>hate to argue word definitions though.
The reason I say that the computer is not choosing is because it doesn't.
You know how the next-move algorithms go and, yes, they are deterministic.
There is no circularity because I am asserting choice as a fact then
reasoning that it is a non-deterministic process.
>> >seems to contradict our ideas of consciousness and free-will, but it
>> >seems to me that you have invoke religous arguments for a soul to get
>> >free will.
>>>> Not so and I don't. Traditionally, the scientific focus has been on
>> linear systems. Even then we still have the show-stopper of the 3 (or
>more)
>> body problem. The activity in the brain is certainly non-linear and no
>> one claims to have a theory to account for it.
>>>> However, no one would argue that the 3 body problem is
>non-deterministic. We can write Newton's law for all 3 bodies, which
>completely describes what would happen. We just don't have the
>mathematical tools to write out equations for the positions of the 3
>bodies over time. There are lots of chaotic systems that are described
So it's deterministic behaviour but, as yet, non-computable.
>by simple equations, and I would say that those are completely
>deterministic, but very complex and hard to predict.
Yes, if they are deterministic i.e. not literally chaotic.
Richard
