Reductionism and intelligence

If there would be such a thing as free will (which i personally am very sceptic to) i definitely would go for 3. But due to my scepticism i cant argue baout it :)

There is no "free will", didn't you get the memo?

From,
Nice coder

No there is, but you have to choose the blue pill... or was it the red one.... ugh.... decisions.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster what evidence is there that you think?

Oh for heaven's sake, it's an assumption, given in the first line

I think that the OPs original discussion is suggesting that "free will" is something we have over and above a body, in the same sense that some people think that the mind is something over and above the functioning of the brain. Sure, we don't yet fully understand the brain, however, most of the functionality of the body and even some of the decision making of the mind can be attributed to known states and functional relationships of elements of the brain.

Can you offer any evidence that, or even a good hypothesis as to why, 'free will' would be able to 'move between systems'? What you're basically saying here is that you believe we have a soul (and no, I'm not suggesting that a soul necessarily be of a spiritual/religious nature. I'm suggesting only that a soul be an ethereal aspect of a thing seperate from the physical aspects, which would account for your definition of 'free will'). It also appears that by extension, you're saying that a light switch has a very small, simplistic soul.

Personally, I see no reason to posit souls or other intangible, ethereal constructs to explain 'free will'. Indeed, I don't think we even need to have free will to be intelligent, rational beings. 'Rational' and 'Irrational' are subjective concepts based on values. There is nothing to suggest that we ever make a decision contrary to our values or desires; simply that we might not always be aware of what those values or desires are or the extent to which they relate to the decision context.

Here's a little thought experiment to consider: Suppose that one day we learn how to build a nano-device that can replicate the input-output functionality of any sort of cell in the human body. Furthermore, assume that the device can devour a cell in your body and replicate its behaviour. So, now I could inject some of these devices into your body and they would replace some of your organic cells, but because they perfectly mimic the input-output funtionality of the cell they replaced, you would be functionally no different than if you were made entirely of organic cells.

Now, consider that I keep replacing your organic cells with nano-cells. If I were to continue until all of your organic cells had been replaced, you would be made entirely of nano-cells and would not be the same physical matter you were before I started. Are you still you? Functionally, you would be exactly the same. Would you be 'intelligent'? There's no reason to believe you wouldn't be. If you had a soul, or some other ethereal form of free will, would it still be connected to your new body? If so, then it can only be connected to your body through functional relationships of the matter making up your body. In which case, Occam's Razor would suggest that your 'soul' and your 'free will' are only perceptions of the functionality of your body, rather than things connected to it. For all intents and purposes you would be you, just with a body made of slightly different matter.

Cheers,

Timkin

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Original post by walkingcarcass Assuming in this argument that free will and conciousness actually exist, at what point do they begin to control our bodies? The way I see it, there are three possibilities. 1) There is an as-yet unidentified ingredient of matter which is responsible for free will

This is definitely an assumption of materialist objectivism. However, if we subscribe to this ontological viewpoint, then we must live with Cartesian duality. However, if mind is an epiphenomenon of matter (the brain), then we are deterministic machines and hence can not have free will. To assume that something is made up of matter and yet can have freewill, imagine for a second a particle, subatomic or not, being able to influence itself.

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2) Free will is a fundamental property of matter

This is a viewpoint more espoused by noumenonalists or other ontologies which hold that matter does not hold primacy. Reductionism does not hold well in non- materialist metaphysical viewpoints because you can not simply observe the parts, and then sum them up to deduce the whole.

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3) All the constituents of matter are "dead", but are collectively granted a mind by virtue of their organisation

This is a belief that holds that mind or consciousness is nothing more than an emergent epiphenomenon of the interactions going on in the brain. What we perceive as qualia (subjective mental states) are nothing more than various electric and chemical responses in the brain. These processes are still deterministic, yet because of the untold number of variables, chaos theory will hold and our actions will be unpredictable (though still determined). Again, this would mean that we have no free will, only the appearance or illusion of it.

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One way of approaching this is to ask "at what point does a baby begin to think?".

Piaget and others have done some interesting child psych development, but unfortunately, babies can't talk to us :) I've often always imagined what it must have been like for that first proto homo-sapiens to have exhibited his sapience...his self-awareness and ability to understand. Was it something gradual or was it like a light bulb going off? Think about our own childhood...we don't have this wham sensation where we realize that we are independent. In fact, in most child studies, babies up to the first few months of age don't have a sense of self yet. This is why a baby cries when it is taken away from its mother.

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2) will be lept on my advocates of superposition of quantum states etc., the result of an observation appears to be essentially random (as do the digits of pi, although we know they are anything but), but one could believe a particle settles to a given state because it "wants" to, and that minds result from the constituant parts forming a consensus.

While I've been studying Buddhist and Hindu thought, what has leapt out at me is the notion that there is no self, and therefore there is no freewill. Or rather, there is choice, however, that choice doesn't belong to an "I". Rather, there is only one thing, consciousness (God, Brahman, void, or what have you) that has freewill. Quantum mechanics breaks down at the interppretation level into various camps. We don't really know what or if consciousness plays in decision making, nor for that matter do we know what role the unconscious plays on quantum objects.

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3) is a very similar line of thought to 2), except it applies to the intangible organisation of matter, even though all the parts may be "dead". Here, Platonism plays a big role.

This idea belies the idea of reductionism, that all things are seperate or at the very least can be taken apart or can be independent of one another. These seperate things can then be put together in a fashion that provides new functionality. This functionality can then become (as is argued) freewill, consciousness and intelligence. However, there are alternative viewpoints to this.

I for one am a monistic idealist. Instead of perceiving that the mind stems from the brain, idealists see it as the other way around. From the mind comes matter. In other words, consciousness is the basic "stuff" of reality, and matter is a secondary creation of consciousness. That explains the idealist part, the monistic part means that there is only one thing. The idea that there are seperate objects is something of an illusion. This idea is not the same as everything being causally linked and therefore everything is in effect affected by everything else. But rather, there is only one thing...again, consciousness, God, Brahman or whatever you want to call it.

If you can, think of Plato's cave allegory. Reality wasn't the shadow's dancing on the cave walls. Nor were they the objects that cast the shadows. Reality was the light itself, and the shadows were merely manifestations cast by concepts within the light. Similar ideas are expressed in Buddhism's "form is void, void is form" dharma.

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3) seems to be the stance of followers of strong AI, but always seemed suspicious to me. They say if you could build a mechanical replica of the functions of the human brain, it too would think. Also that this replica could be written down and would aquire thought by virtue of being read, presumably by anyone, although a Turing machine is typical. This seems silly to me, it suggests the encoding is essentially irrelevant (e.g. a variety of Turing-complete machines with totally different instruction sets), by this argument one could devise a bijection between any two systems of the same complexity e.g. neurons in the brain with a subset of stars in the sky. Thus, everyones mind exists everywhere. And if the computer program was stored, but not executed, could the way the wind blows be considered an encoding of some mind, which was reading the program? Reality subject to point-of-view I can cope with, reality subject to definition seems silly.

Why does that seem silly? Another way to look at this is what Protagoras said, "Man is the measure of all things". In effect, our measurement, our definition of things is what makes them. Solipsism often seems to be something of a pariah or a ridiculed superstitious belief, and yet one can't prove it wrong. Our scientific method has enchanted us with the idea of reductionism, causality, and objectivity. The idea of pure subjectivity seems arrogant (I'm God here), incorrect (why can't I just wish myself rich?), and against our common everyday experiences (why can't I read your mind if you're just really a part of my mind?). And yet, this is a selfish view of Solipsism which says that you are the center of subjectivity. But what if "you" aren't?

I've analogized what might be a possibility for mind as something like this:

Mind, consciousness and freewill (all one thing) is a great big mainframe. All we sentient and sapient beings are terminals connecting to the mainframe. All the processing and all the decisionmaking is done by the mainframe. Only the mainframe has freewill. We're really just dumb terminals that have a small amount of data access. What's worse, we don't realize we're dumb terminals, and we think we're doing all the processing and choosing ourselves.

The analogy isn't perfect, but it gets across the main idea.

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2) is philosophically appealing to me. It allows one a great degree of freedom in speculation and belief. It may be that the couciousness and free will are liquidlike, flowing between systems, favouring complex ones because that is where the essence of mind is most needed, and presumably being a part of a more important system is somehow nicer. In this case we don't permanently own our minds. It also doesn't exclude ESP etc. It also means that even the simplest systems like lightswitches possess a trivial amount of intelligence, only capable of manifesting itself in negligible ways. I find it quite amusing that people are trying to make computers think, when they may be already thinking: "Help! I'm stuck in a computer!". The humane thing to do would be smash the microchip, and release the free will to spread into other things. Maybe turning it off would be just as good. Maybe simple things such as microchips are home to lazy minds. This is only one interpretation, of course.

I agree. Takuan, a famous Zen philosopher once advised Yagyu Munenore (whom some consider to have been a better swordsman that Miyamoto Musashi since the latter turned down an invitation to duel by the former's father), "the mind should be nowhere in particular". And not only should it not, perhaps it is not anywhere in particular. We attach our minds to our physical bodies, but is it really? Who knows, but I think that in many ways, we've let the material objectivist ontology of the scientific methodology reign for far too long. I really think that at least one semester of philosophy should be mandatory for all science majors in order to expose them to different metaphysical viewpoints that could underpin reality.

If the individual particles of our universe are of a free will, we have no method of perceiving this fact, or conversing with them on the matter. Thus, the decisions they may make may as well be random. This brings about the convergence of your second and third possibilities, as there is no perceivable difference to the human mind, which is all we have to study the universe.

As to the statements about reality being subject to definition, this is a major flaw in your line of thinking. Reality is a product of our imaginations, no matter what anyone things. We interact not on external sensory, but on internal representations that may be influenced heavily by external sensory, thus our definitions of the components of reality are of equal or greater importance than the driving forces behind those components.

When we try to understand things like what it is to think and to feel and to be self-aware, it is natural to debate on the definitions of the terms used in the discussion. This is because of two reasons: the ambiguality of human languages and the classifications of realities components according to our own perceptions, differing from individual to individual (and, species to species?). Thus, without a proper and solid definition of the description we have of our universe, we can not properly analyze it. Pertaining to intelligence, this means that what it means to think and feel is dependant largely, if not solely, on our own definitions and understanding on what it means to think and feel and to be self-aware.

Thus, as with any problem, we must break out questions into their primal pieces and recombine them in a more simple matter. Are we asking what it would take to make a machine think, or are we asking what it would take to make a machine perform the same functions we perceive as thinking in a human being, or even in a less organism with a sufficiently complex neural system? There is much debate between the intelligence of artificial intelligence and the immitation of intelligence by artificial intelligence. However, if we consider that intelligence is not in the implementation (being neurons in our case and software in a computer's), but in the resulting relationship between the being and the being's enviroment (humans and the universe, AI and data, robots and the universe), we find a very interesting conclusion: immitation is no less than being truly intelligent *.

* Here, I use "truly intelligent" to mean the means of intelligence of a human being, or other living creature, as opposed to that of an artificial intelligence, in those cases where one thinks it important to make any distinction between the two.

Of course, if your Possibility #1 is true, it may be safe to assume the architecture of the universe and this Will Element to be such that the Will affect matter only in situations and manners where it could not be perceived by any intelligence derived from a collection of Will-driven particles. The affects upon the matter would be sparse and subtle, but numerous, as to combine in a larger scale to generate the forces desired. If this is all true, no debate will ever determine the true nature of the universe, although any speculation we make considering Will to not exist as an element may as well be true, as still there is a reality both outside and inside, and it is only the second we truly live in.

Irregaurdless of the reasons behind our conciousness, immitation indistinguisable from otherwise is as real as any. Immitation may have been the key design of our own race by the Unknown Creator(s), and so who are we to place judgement upon those we may likewise create? This, of course, brings questions into play on the nature of gods and their own intelligence and how it relates to ours.

In the end, its nothing but another discussion of grammer and sytax.

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Original post by Timkin Here's a little thought experiment to consider: Suppose that one day we learn how to build a nano-device that can replicate the input-output functionality of any sort of cell in the human body. Furthermore, assume that the device can devour a cell in your body and replicate its behaviour. So, now I could inject some of these devices into your body and they would replace some of your organic cells, but because they perfectly mimic the input-output funtionality of the cell they replaced, you would be functionally no different than if you were made entirely of organic cells. Now, consider that I keep replacing your organic cells with nano-cells. If I were to continue until all of your organic cells had been replaced, you would be made entirely of nano-cells and would not be the same physical matter you were before I started. Are you still you? Functionally, you would be exactly the same. Would you be 'intelligent'? There's no reason to believe you wouldn't be. If you had a soul, or some other ethereal form of free will, would it still be connected to your new body? If so, then it can only be connected to your body through functional relationships of the matter making up your body. In which case, Occam's Razor would suggest that your 'soul' and your 'free will' are only perceptions of the functionality of your body, rather than things connected to it. For all intents and purposes you would be you, just with a body made of slightly different matter. Cheers, Timkin

Your (your?) experiment is one of the best things I've read lately. Remembers me the William Gibson's "Flat-Line construct", which was the "image" of the mind of an old-dead hacker...

I've recently read "The Light of Other Days" (Arthur C. Clarke), which also touches the subject.

And all an everything brings me back to the following line from BladeRunner:

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die."

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Original post by TimkinPersonally, I see no reason to posit souls or other intangible, ethereal constructs to explain 'free will'. Indeed, I don't think we even need to have free will to be intelligent, rational beings. 'Rational' and 'Irrational' are subjective concepts based on values. There is nothing to suggest that we ever make a decision contrary to our values or desires; simply that we might not always be aware of what those values or desires are or the extent to which they relate to the decision context.

I would say that intelligence is only a meaningful idea in the context of making choices, you may say which choice we make depends on our desires and this can then be deterministic, I would say being able to prioritise is the essence of free will. You may argue a machine can prioritise selfishly, but what if my desire is to act against my desires? That would be a paradox in a deterministic world, but it's no obstacle to free will. Unfortunately it is undemonstratable, I could cut my own hand off (which I don't want to do) but doing so could prove nothing beyond my desire's to win an argument greater than my desire for self-preservation.

Your gradual reconstruction experiment is a great demonstration of the liquidity of conciousness, although the construction of suitible artificial replacements for cells would have to accomodate nondeterminism (in my line of thinking). And yes, if this were possible, building the result from scratch without converting a person would be the creation of a mind. Does this mean strong A.I. is possible? Not unless a nondeterministic computer can be built whose possible actions can either be harnessed by a mind, or give rise to a mind.

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Quote: Reality subject to point-of-view I can cope with, reality subject to definition seems silly. Why does that seem silly? Another way to look at this is what Protagoras said, "Man is the measure of all things". In effect, our measurement, our definition of things is what makes them.

Apart from being a chicken-and-egg problem, this seems silly because if we alter our definitions, the world doesn't change either objectively, or how it appears to us. Our understanding of the world may change, but show me evidence our sensations alter. "Man is a measure of all things", as I understand it, is simply a wry truism: there is no measurement without man! Can there be man without measurement?

As an interesting side-note, I read somewhere that white blood cells can now be considered a part of the nervous system. Where does it end?

I wonder, as babies grow up, to they start out a TOTAL blank slate, where thought is concerned. Not only do they move their limbs randomly until they learn the neural patterns which give useful movement, but they seem genuinely suprised that actions are repeatable. My baby cousin recently spend a happy half hour putting sand down a crack in the floor. Do we learn modus ponens, or is it a priori?

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Original post by walkingcarcass what if my desire is to act against my desires? That would be a paradox in a deterministic world, but it's no obstacle to free will. Unfortunately it is undemonstratable, I could cut my own hand off (which I don't want to do) but doing so could prove nothing beyond my desire's to win an argument greater than my desire for self-preservation.

That's a paradox in any world. You cannot act against your desires other than through some outside force. How is a deterministic world any different? You are an accumulation of experience onto some base personality/instincts whether the world is deterministic or not. Whether the world is deterministic or not only matters at an egocentric level where we like to think that we are masters of ourselves and our world.

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Original post by walkingcarcass Your gradual reconstruction experiment is a great demonstration of the liquidity of conciousness, although the construction of suitible artificial replacements for cells would have to accomodate nondeterminism (in my line of thinking). And yes, if this were possible, building the result from scratch without converting a person would be the creation of a mind. Does this mean strong A.I. is possible? Not unless a nondeterministic computer can be built whose possible actions can either be harnessed by a mind, or give rise to a mind.

Since the entire point is that the artificial cells are deterministic this would erode the point a little don't you think?

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Original post by walkingcarcass I wonder, as babies grow up, to they start out a TOTAL blank slate, where thought is concerned. Not only do they move their limbs randomly until they learn the neural patterns which give useful movement, but they seem genuinely suprised that actions are repeatable. My baby cousin recently spend a happy half hour putting sand down a crack in the floor. Do we learn modus ponens, or is it a priori?

we learn a posteriori [smile]

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My views on free will:

• I'd like to think it exists (that egocentric thing I mentioned before...)
  
• For all intents and purposes, whether we have it or not doesn't matter. The illusion is just as good as the reality (unless you know it's an illusion).
  
• A deterministic world is virtually indistinguishable from a non-deterministic world since the universe is a complex, nonlinear dynamic system. There is underlying order, but on the surface there appears not to be.
  
• For free will to exist there must be an extra-physical element to our makeup, or there must be some "as-yet unidentified ingredient of matter" to quote the OP.
  
• Given the last two points, and using Occam's razor, it is more likely that the world is deterministic.

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btw. why hasn't anyone else mentioned that the first two points mentioned by the OP are exactly the same? If free-will is a fundamental property of matter we obviously don't know about it, it is an "as-yet unidentified ingredient of matter"...

[Edited by - lucky_monkey on February 15, 2005 5:04:01 AM]

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Original post by walkingcarcass Apart from being a chicken-and-egg problem, this seems silly because if we alter our definitions, the world doesn't change either objectively, or how it appears to us.

Actually, if you alter your definitions then the world's appearance does change subjectively. I don't see why you would think that it doesn't, since appearance is always subjective. It might not change objectively, but then it might not exist objectively so that's irrelevant.

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Original post by walkingcarcass Our understanding of the world may change, but show me evidence our sensations alter.

Sensory input is different to sensation. Have you ever had an injection?

RE: a-posteriori

Sorry, that sentence was ambiguous, I meant are we born with a faculty for
understanding causation and then use that for learning, or is that logic itself learned from scratch? It makes a world of difference when we build a logical learning machine.

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That's a paradox in any world. You cannot act against your desires other than through some outside force.

I disagree, that ability characterises free will: we can base our actions on any criteria. Typically (rationally, usefully) that criteria would be our desires.

From Dauntless' explanation of monistic idealism:

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Original post by Dauntless The idea that there are seperate objects is something of an illusion. This idea is not the same as everything being causally linked and therefore everything is in effect affected by everything else. But rather, there is only one thing...again, consciousness, God, Brahman or whatever you want to call it.

And yet, whether it is an illusion or not, it is sufficient to believe it isn't and live happily in the delusion of free will (which, whether it exists or not, most people enjoy doing)! Actually, I think most people don't like the alternative, so they're happy to stay with the delusion; take the red pill or the blue pill!

Beware: GOING OFF TOPIC

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Takuan, a famous Zen philosopher once advised Yagyu Munenore (whom some consider to have been a better swordsman that Miyamoto Musashi since the latter turned down an invitation to duel by the former's father)

Interestingly, Musashi (during his early years) was also greatly influenced by Soho Takuan's teachings. Takuan was an advisor to the Shogun and the Yagyu clan. Yagyu Munenori was Swordmaster to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Munenori's father was Yagyu Muneyoshi. Muneyoshi died in 1606 when Musashi was only 24. While already a competant swordsman by that age Musashi was not yet at the peak of his art. Musashi won his first duel at 13, interestingly though, not with a sword, but rather through the use of jujutsu. He threw his opponent to the ground and bludgeoned him to death with a stick. Musashi and Munenori fought on opposing sides during Seki ga Hara, although at that time Musashi was but a common soldier and it is unlikely that the two ever saw each other in battle (Munenori was advisor and protector of Tokugawa Hidetada during that war, in which it is said 70,000 warriors died).

It is difficult to answer the question as to who was the greater swordsman; Muneyoshi, Munenori or Musashi. Munenori took what he had learned from his father and altered it significantly, based on his battlefield experiences and his deeper quest of self-enlightenment. Most of Munenori's skills were honed on the battlefield, whereas Musashi (also highly experienced on the battlefield) fought and won around 60 individual duals. Personally, I think it highly unreasonable to suggest that Munenori was a better swordsman simply because Musashi declined to dual. Indeed, because of his reputation, Musashi received challenges to dual from all over the country. Thus, I think it is an open question that will never be answered.


Cheers,

Timkin

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Original post by walkingcarcass Quote: That's a paradox in any world. You cannot act against your desires other than through some outside force. I disagree, that ability characterises free will: we can base our actions on any criteria. Typically (rationally, usefully) that criteria would be our desires.

If I could think of an example of someone acting against their desires then I'd say you are right. I can't. People can act against some of their desires, but always at the behest of some other, greater, desire.

Give me one example. An example of something that you or someone you know, or someone that you've heard about, or even a hypothetical situation in which someone would act against all their desires. One example of someone acting against their desires and not because of some other, overriding, desire or because of some outside force. One example. Otherwise the simplest explanation is that a person cannot act against their desires.

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Original post by lucky_monkey Quote: Original post by walkingcarcass Quote: That's a paradox in any world. You cannot act against your desires other than through some outside force. I disagree, that ability characterises free will: we can base our actions on any criteria. Typically (rationally, usefully) that criteria would be our desires. If I could think of an example of someone acting against their desires then I'd say you are right. I can't. People can act against some of their desires, but always at the behest of some other, greater, desire.

I think your are right right there. But I think you both are talking about different desires.

Instincts != Aspirations.

My instincts tell me to be violent sometimes (ie: Somebody insults me badly) even to a point in which my body reacts before I can think about it, but my aspirations keep me alert about my instinct tendences, and with some will and training I can control and nullify them. Based on this experience I can say I can act against my physical desires. No other non-human creature on this planet can do this.

-o-

And this makes me think twice about Timkin's experiment... I belive the "encoding" of our instincts reside in our whole body, like if every cell of our body were "configured" to react in a specific way given a certain stimuli. If that were the case, the nanites of Timkin's experiment should perform this task aswell, thing that I find highly unlikely to be "replicated" artificially.

[Edited by - owl on February 15, 2005 8:59:16 PM]

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If I were to continue until all of your organic cells had been replaced, you would be made entirely of nano-cells and would not be the same physical matter you were before I started. Are you still you? Functionally, you would be exactly the same. Would you be 'intelligent'? There's no reason to believe you wouldn't be.

Well, maybe we (as the observers) might not notice any difference. But what about the subjective consciousness of the subject? And if that changed, how could we ever know?

If they communicate their subjective experience ("weird...I feel like part of me just faded out") then that's an observable change from our perspective. What inferences (if any) could we draw from this?

There's a possible practical objection to your example - it may be that such nanites could never, ever be constructed - a 'running' brain may be too complex to 'stealth-replaced' without making massive observable changes. Think about quantum effects preventing perfect observation of the original cell states.


How about a practical slant on this issue? Is anyone here able to behave as if they don't have free will. If I say "okay, working on the basis that my brain's just a machine and that my agency is an illusion, I'll just not make any decisions or take any actions.". Result? - I sit there like a pudding. Nothing happens.

If you can't behave as if you don't have free will, then surely its existence (or lack of it) is irrelevant?

Timkin-
On the topic of monistic idealism, it's a philosophical viewpoint that really runs totally against our grain of common everyday understanding. It just seems to make so much sense that objects exist whether or not there is a mind to create them. Objectivity seems so much more powerful than subjectivity.

I used to fear the idea that I didn't have free will, but now I understand that it doesn't really matter. All I can do is be who I am. Is freewill necessary for artificial intelligence? I doubt it. Is it necessary for sapience? Hmmm, that's a little more tricky.

Because I'm an idealistic monist, I think "I" don't exist in the sense that we normally think. I'm just an observer, but an observer that can tap into consciousness. Can we design machines to do the same? I think we will, though only until Quantum Computation comes of age. And even then, current research on quantum computation seems to be focusing solely on how qubits work mathematically. Trying to figure out how quantum mechanics and consciousness are related may be left to some other field (probably when the cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, AI, philosophers and theoretical physicists all bump heads together)

== WARNING: TOTALLY OT==
Have you heard of the Peony flower that Muneyoshi cut and had a messenger deliver to Musashi? As the story goes, Musashi had become an accomplished duellist, though as you mentioned not yet at his peak, and he wished to challenge the legendary Muneyoshi. However, Muneyoshi had retired so he wrote a letter to Musashi suggesting he have a duel with his son Munenori (who was with the Shogun in the Bakufu at this time IIRC). Before giving the letter to the messenger however, he cut a peony flower with his wakizashi to be delivered with the message.

When Musashi recieved the letter with the flower in it he was puzzled. He carefully examined the peony flower and noticed the perfect cut on the stem. Going to some nearby peony flowers, he attempted to cut them as well, but he could never get them as perfectly cut as the peony that Muneyoshi had cut. He thereby called off the duel with Muneyoshi and declined the offer of duelling Munenori as well. Perhaps Musashi returned the favor of Muneyoshi's katsujinken "the sword that saves lives" (the flower was basically a warning) by allowing Muso Gonnosuke to beat Musashi with a Jo staff in a duel. Musashi's legendary reply was that he could have won, but only if he had killed Gonnosuke. Instead, Musashi wanted Gonnosuke's skill to flower so Musashi suffered the defeat to let Gonnosuke's skill flourish.

If you read The Book of Five Rings (Musashi's) and The Life Giving Sword (Munenori's), it's interesting how different they are. Munenori definitely takes the spiritual approach to things, through a disciplined and formal training. Winning was subservient to doing your duty, which was to be the best you could possibly be to serve your lord. Musashi's book on the other hand is sort of a treatise on how to win. Thoroughly understanding something to its core is the means to an end...winning. Understanding is not the end. BTW, I'd also recommend to anyone Soho Takuan's The Unfettered Mind to read.
==END OT==

I think this post kinds of reminds me of "A mind forever voyaging" game.

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Original post by owl And this makes me think twice about Timkin's experiment... I belive the "encoding" of our instincts reside in our whole body, like if every cell of our body were "configured" to react in a specific way given a certain stimuli. If that were the case, the nanites of Timkin's experiment should perform this task aswell, thing that I find highly unlikely to be "replicated" artificially.

Your 'instincts' as you call them are a variety of hardwired behaviours within your central nervous system. Some of them, like your instinctive reaction of pulling your hand away from a hotplate, are encoded within the neuronal loops that exist between your hand and your spine. In other words, your brain doesn't play a role in that instinctive reaction. Many of your autonomic functions (those that you perform without thinking) are encoded in your cerebelum. Your midbrain and brain stem control the activiation of these functions based on signals received from the body and from the cortex. Many of your fundamental (some call primitive) desires are encoded in this way. For example: sexual urges, hunger, fight-or-flight. I don't personally see any reason to believe that if I replaced all of the cells in my body, I couldn't have the same instincts.

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Original post by Rob Alexander Well, maybe we (as the observers) might not notice any difference. But what about the subjective consciousness of the subject? And if that changed, how could we ever know?

If the subject themselves noticed no functional or perceptive difference in their being, then what is the more reasonable explanation: that there was no change to them, or that they were somewhere along the line disconnected from their soul but they didn't notice it.

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Original post by Rob Alexander If they communicate their subjective experience ("weird...I feel like part of me just faded out") then that's an observable change from our perspective. What inferences (if any) could we draw from this?

Given the way in which I described the experiment (that cells were slowly replaced with nano-cells), at which point would they report this finding? When the experiment was complete? When 60% of their cells were changed? Or when certain cells had been changed? If there was a reportable change from the subject, then yes, presumably you could try the experiment many times (on different subjects), replacing cells in different orders to determine exactly which cells were responsible for the soul.

If we do have a soul though, why would it necessarily be connected to one or more cells. Wouldn't it more likely be a part of every cell? Then if that is the case, what is it about those little bags of chemicals that connects them to a soul?

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There's a possible practical objection to your example - it may be that such nanites could never, ever be constructed - a 'running' brain may be too complex to 'stealth-replaced' without making massive observable changes. Think about quantum effects preventing perfect observation of the original cell states.

That well may be the case; that a replica nano-cell may be impossible to create. In which case, yes, the simple practicalities prevent it. But then, that would imply that free will arises purely from the complexity of the system. If our supposed 'free will' or 'soul' arises from chaotic complexity (a highly nonlinear system and sensitive to initial conditions) then its still deterministic and therefore lacking of free will. If it arises from the uncertainties associated with quantum states of the system, then yes, it might be possible to suggest quantum free will; but then, that suggests that by mere mind-power alone we have the ability to control the evolution of quantum systems. Highly unlikely.

If the practical limitation is the uncertainty in our observation of the state and our inability to model it exactly, then we can overcome that. We design a nano-cell that adaptively learns the functional input-output relationship for the cell (we can already do this for nonlinear, complex, dynamic systems for which we can only influence some of the inputs and observe some of the outputs... exactly what I'm working on these days) so I don't see a problem with hypothetically making a 'learning nano-cell' that learns to replicate the cell before eating it!

Having just spent a couple of years working in a neuroscience research team I can tell you that very few neuroscientists (from the sample I met and read literature from) support the notion of quantum consciousness. Most believe it to be nonsense. Enough is known about the computational abilities of the complex, nonlinear interactions of networks of stochastic oscillators (of which our brains are an example) to suggest that quantum variation plays no part. Indeed, evidence suggests that most neural systems are not even stochastic. That is merely a way of describing their time-averaged distribution of firing events.

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How about a practical slant on this issue? Is anyone here able to behave as if they don't have free will. If I say "okay, working on the basis that my brain's just a machine and that my agency is an illusion, I'll just not make any decisions or take any actions.". Result? - I sit there like a pudding. Nothing happens.

Wasn't that a choice to sit there? ;) In all seriousness though, I think that most of our actions during the day are driven by external forces and internal desires and that in fact, we make very few decisions requiring any form of evaluative judgement.

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If you can't behave as if you don't have free will, then surely its existence (or lack of it) is irrelevant?

Yes, I do believe that the existence of free will is irrelevant. Since we are capable of believing that we have free will and our observations of the world and our part in it don't negate the illusion of free will, then for the most part, we should be content. Of course, it would throw our legal systems into a tailspin if we managed to prove that we didn't have free will! ;)