I saw the following opinion which picturize the human beings as programmed automats (I don't remember the author):
A human being is built from anatomic systems, and reacts to the environment according to the composition and fisiology of these systems. Thus, if a machine to which we would input the particularities of all the systems of a certain individual, would react to the environment exactly as the individual.
Thus, we are predictable robots, and our free choices when we face a certain situation and have to make a decision, is an illusion.
This presentation reminds me of a finite-state macine, of course, with a huge number of states. Though, such a machine is also a "learning machine", not a static one, i.e. the states and the rules by which the machine passes from one state to the other, change in time according to both an autonomous evolution of the component systems, and the feedback of the environment to the behavior of the machine.
Is this an acceptable thesis? Does something missing from this thesis?
I would appreciate opinions, not references.
No, Sherif,
I don't speak of political freedom vis-a-vis some governments. No, I question whether it could be that our decisions are those of a programmed robot.
Please see, there is a terrible problem in the quantum mechanics (QM): I see from your profile page that QM is one of your fields of interest/activity. So, I you probably know that entanglements lead us to the conclusion that future and past influence one another, or, in traditional words, we have influence from future.
That's unbearable!!!! Snd though, what stands behind my question is the thought: could it be that future is an illusion, that all the universe, galaxies as well as human beings, everything evolves predictably as a finite state machine with an unimaginably huge number of states?
In the question that I placed here, I posed a segment from this general question, the part regarding the human being.
Best regards!
Mesut Kavak,
My question has nothing to do with the "soul". Neither has it to do with being kind to other people for pleasing God. If I have to take actions that affect other people, these actions are not free, because I have to avoid harming other people. This is a constraint emerging from the fact that we live in the human community.
Free will means that in a non-constrained situation (e.g. not constrained by considerations of effect on other people, or upon myself, or by certain agreements, etc.) I can take whatever action I want - i.e. the action that I would decide to perform is not known a prori, neither predictable a priori.
This is the meaning of not being a pre-programmed machine.
Dear Sofia D. Wechsler
No, human don't have real free will in ruling set of logic over to dynamic quantum vacuum, particles and fields are bound so we are too. although range for flight is too high in some matters that without gone deep down into such experience we didn't even get clue that how much we are bound to system of nature in cosmos. However biologic have ability to make difference if can tend toward the change the current ruling logic by alteration into natural particles and genetics.
Regards,
Raja N A Khan,
I am sorry but I have no idea what you talk about. If I have to make a choice whether to set my polarizer in the direction x, or x', or x'', I don't rule the quantum vacuum, neither I fly into cosmos, nor do I alter any genetics.
Dear Mesut Kavak,
Yes, this is the problem.
You see, I don't want to mix God in scientific matters. But I don't know if it is possible to avoid that.
If a huge memory would exist, comprising absolutely all the information in the world from the movement of the stars down the the activity of the cells in EACH human being, and ALL the human beings, plus a certain program that takes one state of the cells in our brain to another state, I believe that everything would be predictable, and all the dynamics of the universe would be just that of a pre-programmed machine.
But even if such a huge memory exists (maybe in the hands of God), we, the human beings, don't have access to it. So, in all the situations in which we are not aware of some constraint, we can choose freely between different options. Can't we?
Best regards,
Sofia
First you have to define what the brain is, what consciousness is and the relationship between both and the universe, what is programmed and what not, what is deterministic and what is probabilistic, in order to talk about free will.
Do you have free will, or are we mere pre-programmed automats?
If human's "free will" is in the context of an "if-then-else" decision of a very sophisticated software that consists of billions of codes including multiple & nested "if-then-else" decisions as well as machine / self-learning / -healing capabilities, then human beings can be equivalent as pre-programmed automats.
If the human's "free will" is in the context of this physical world that we are living in or interacting with, then I think human beings have the free will i.e. we can do what we want to do as well as responsible for its outcome e.g. pursuing our different interests, doing good or bad, believe in God or not etc. However, I think human beings also inherited certain limitations that we are still pursuing the related knowledge e.g. why everyone has to die? how to overcome death / become immortal, how to increase our understanding on the billions of stars in the universe etc.
I think only very few of humans can be considered as pre-programmed automates.
At the same time the behavior of many of our friends is very predictable.
But it is because - they have a CODE of behavior. They always follow this Code - the Nobility Code. And this is the very reason - we admire them
Leonid
Dear Dina,
I accept your criticism. So, I try to answer. My answer is also in response to Han Ping Fung's lucid answer.
Brain = memory + a processor + a program running on the processor.
Consciousness: I am not sure. Can we say that "consciousness" is part of the memory, and part of the program, encapsulating the awareness of who am I, i.e. my memories, my purposes, my learning abilities, my character?
Universe = (from the point of view of my question) stimuli that we get from the world around us. These stimuli may be just all sort of signals, e.g. a sound, or a light pulse, etc., or may be reaction of the environment to our actions, or may be new information.
Now, our brain has the capacity to learn, i.e. the memory records (selectively) the stimuli, and the program adjusts itself. That means, the program is relatively simple in the beginning of our life, but it learns from the reactions of the environment and from the new information.
It "sounds" as if we are pre-programmed, doesn't it? I am just asking, I do not know the answer.
Bet regards!
As far as we can tell, the answer has to be "both." Yes we do have certain natural reactions that are difficult to impossible to control. And as far as we know, we also have free will.
Your breathing, your heart rate, your instinctive reactions, are fairly well automated. If you put your hand on top of a flame, it will instinctively be pulled away.
But at the same time, I don't think anyone has proved that our opinions and our beliefs are hard-coded in each of us. I sometimes feel that far too many people simply accept, blindly, what they are told, which is distressing. However, that's just my opinion. Maybe these people really do go through some logical thought process, and it's only I who assume they have not.
I can certainly POSTULATE, without proof, that all of our reactions are pre-programmed. The obvious mechanical ones, to protect the human body, of course. But perhaps even what we think are subtle logical constructs, could be nothing more than if-then-else loops themselves.
That last is pure conjecture.
Sofia
Neuroscientists are still not certain about how or where memory is encoded in the brain. What is memory? Information? Is information physical?
DNA is a program, while epigenetics is activation by the environment
Consciousness could be considered as awareness+intelligence+organization
On the other side, are the laws of nature programmed or where do they come from ?
What is energy and what is light ?
We watch the universe from a film projected by light inside our brain, interpreted by our senses,
Is the universe "outside" or is it in our brain or consciousness
Dina, my dear,
I understand that you are not from my domain of investigations, as you introduce all sort of elements: DNA, intelligence, organization, that I mapped on the program running on the computer. The DNA and intelligence are mapped on the program with which we are born. But, since we are a learning machine, the intelligence gets widened with the feedback and with the new information we get from the environment.
Now, you ask what is energy and what is light. What these have to do with my question?
About "we watch the universe . . .". Instead of the word universe I use the word environment. A program gets input from the environment, I called this stimuli. And I explained that some stimuli are feedback to our actions, or new information about the environment, and that the program both stores them in the memory, and also learns from them.
This program and the capacity of the memory are, of course, not identical to all the individuals, there are differences. What we call intelligence comes from these differences.
Up to this point, do you agree with me?
The next point that I'll like to tackle is: what is free will, in terms of the above computer.
With kind regards!
That's a realy actual, popular scientific, fascinating and may be science fiction question.
We have free will and this free will is based on biologically movements in our nerve systems and our brains.
About 90% of these movements are unconscious - therefore some scientist say we are "biologically organisms" without free will.
But every Information recognised by our senses gets conscious after a unconscious preselection phase. And these consciousness makes up to 5 or 10% of our nerves activities.
In biologically way we can define an biologically point of every recognition where this consciousness begins.
In mental feeling we have a related but not so definitive (pointed) recognition. We have a slowly changing to consciousness.
If you are interested read Victor A.F. LAMME.
In general we have to separate a physical automat (= mechanical machine) computer fron a living organism like our brain. My personal meaning is that a computer will never be as intelligent like a Human Being.
There are programs in the body (DNA is a program) but I also agree that consciousness is independent from any program. There is a brain program, but not a consciousness program. A program cannot be conscious of itself. Even if the program has better capacities than your brain, it doesn´t have consciousness and therefore is not alive.
Dear Sofia,
in my understanding I like to use the name "organism" for living systems and "machine" for materialistic dead ones.
It's too simple to use physical terms in Biology. Biologists call Physicists "reductionists". Life is not more than a sequence of predefined and artificially constructed states. We would have done a great step forward in science if we could explain life.
Inside of Biology the Human Being is the highest step of "evolution". Every Human Being consists of more then biologically cells only - the most important part of a Human Being is his mind. This mind is based on 95% unconscious activities ( so we are driven organism) but 5% of our brain is based on conscious activities. And these activities make us to intelligent organism with a free way of learning, knowledge and acting - we have free will and are no biological animals only even no machines.
It is consciousness what differentiates us from machines.
On the other side, biological entities possess consciousness in different degrees according to evolution.
Biologists and physicists should stop calling each other "reductionists" and instead integrate their knowledge to advance
If we assume that consciousness is somehow 'embedded' in or consequent upon the causal interaction between material objects and phenomena which themselves are NOT conscious then it would seem impossible to escape the fact the we are merely passengers or slaves to blind physics.
However, this seeming, common sense position may be in error. My own research correlates consciousness with the real time unfolding of a catalytic quantum coherent matter wave.
The physical nature of interaction is interesting from a 'causal' point of view. The catalytic coherent wave pre-empts where energy is to be located in the excitable medium of the brain and releases that energy as it goes.
The catalytic 'soliton' is not so much 'caused' as 'causal' and therefore the physical context within which the question of free will and determinism is cast is quite different form what we might normally suppose.
Within the context of the Fractal Catalytic Model catalysis iinvolves the interaction between two 'domains' which are in different material phases! - the so called 'real world' of classical physics and the quantum coherent world of 'functional waves' the unfolding over time of which is largely determined, not by interaction with the world physically, but simply as a consequence of their dynamic functional/informational content
This absurd zombie interpretation of human condition is very well explained by John R. Searle(the best without dout)
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