Dialogue with ProfessorHansen (Time, Evolution, Memory, Imagination, Freedom)

[tonyfalca]

the three kinds of organisms thing is interesting as hell

[420HoLLyWooD420]

Anton: Awesome dialogue.

Hansen: Uh Uh yea and furthermore and uh yea and so forth.

Anton: Right, ...Right,

Anton: Another awesome dialogue

[ProfessorHansen]

@420HoLLyWooD420 It's nice to know that when someone is new to YouTube and still struggling to determine his video presence, an experienced user like you will step up and spit in his face and kick him in the nuts. Thanks for the constructive criticism; I'll be sure to return the favor. But you are right about Professoranton.

[420HoLLyWooD420]

@ProfessorHansen Im sorry I didn't mean to offend. I watch you guys alot and I am a big fan. Just tried to get a top comment. :P

[dowdfather]

What is the role of potentiality & possibility in relationship to human capacities for openness to time, imagination, etc. Isn't the "what if?" scenario both fact (in terms of the past) AND possibility (in relationship to the future)?

[pointyhead1]

Hello Professors !

As an example of how cultural evolution is as real as biological evolution - and in fact is part of biological evolution, there is the interesting phylogeny of phylogeneticists or even theologians.

The use of certain terms in particular ways and the understanding of concepts is traceable to the early teacher and the teacher's teachers before him..hybridization will occur with thought from other teachers as they progress, and from associates ( who also have their own tree ).

[spherocyte]

Can we see the past in the eyes of the past? or are we looking at it with eyes of present after we already changed? Hence any past is an elusive to reality manipulated by the change after “changes in ourselves and the environment”?

[CharlieUlivarri]

Also, in regards to the feral child. I would wonder where the line would be drawn that separates animals and feral humans from cultured peoples. What exactly do we possess that a feral person and animal doesn't? We witness conginitive displays in other animals, logic as well, taught social behavior, and temporal "expectations". It does seem to dissolve the question without really exploring where one ends and the other begins ..... perhaps a video on this!!!

[Neueregel]

@CharlieUlivarri The line drawn between humans and animals is that animals don't possess a human-DNA therefore their mental capabilities are inferior.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel that seems like an arbitrary standard. essential you said that the difference between humans and other animals is that other animals are not human, and then attached an inferior standard to them. not to say you are right or wrong, but I am curious about how you reasoned to that and also how it pertains to the idea of free-will.. that also does not address the savage child as mentioned.

[Neueregel]

@CharlieUlivarri Hey. The level of Free Will in a given being, is proportional to the level of Consciousness. The level of Consciousness(as a brain by-product) is proportional to the correspondent brain-to-mass ratio (the highest is in humans, about 1over 50 or 1 over 70). We are entitled to be mentally superior than any animal, because our human-DNA give instructions to create that extremely high 'brain-to-mass' ratio.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel the level of free-will being linked to brain-to-mass ratio is what I wonder about. I am curious where the grounds for this claim lay, barring insisting that it is so; and how this would imply that a savage child with the same brain sizes as our own would lack this free-will. I really think that is the crux of the problem here .... what gives free-will to begin with? And how to reason to that conclusion?

[Neueregel]

@CharlieUlivarri Hi. Free-Will is an emergent property of the conscious brain and not an actual measurable feat. It's a qualitative behavioural feat, regarding potential decision making. The savage has the human potential (nature) yet it lacks the proper developmental and environmental (nurture). Free will is both nature+nurture,so the savage has both to a certain degree. Read Francis Crick, Dennet, Hodstafer and especially Ray Kurzweil for more info on consciousness and the brain-to-mass ratio\

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel Hi Neuer. If i was to say that free-will is a spiritual property of the human soul and no an actual measureable feature, what would you think? You are stating these things as facts of free will but you are only making claims without showing how you got the claim. I am looking for the argument that starts at the beginning leading to free-will, not starting at the end (free will) and then deduces that it comes from the brain ..... well, not the brain, culture .... maybe..

[Neueregel]

@CharlieUlivarri "spiritual property" I am not a dualist so that's an irrelevant question to me. I don't believe in the existence of a 'soul' in the first place, because it cannot be proven. We are just made up of bunch of trillions of cells, that''s the only proven thing so far.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel That's not the point. The point is how you are asserting free-will and it's source without evidence or reason leading to that conclusion. It is seeming to me (and I could be wrong which is why I ask) that you are starting at the conclusion and then working backwards and attributing it to the brain by default. That is where I lay my question because I find an argument from insistence or pure assertion to be weak.

[Neueregel]

@CharlieUlivarri Everything attributed "to the brain by default". I presented free-will as a mere brain by-product which is what really is. I was not presenting an argument but stating a fact from neuroscience. There is no space for alternative sources or a window to a 'soul' because these kinds of dual entities can never be proven by brain science because they are only mere human constructs by psychologists and religious people.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel 1. You are not stating a fact from neuroscience. Neuroscience doesn't address the issue of free-will. 2. I used the "soul" as an analogous argument to yours by MODE OF REASONING. I could interject numerous other examples. Getting caught up on is telling me that you have completely missed the point.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@CharlieUlivarri 3. My question is "how does cultural learning or biological evolution imply free-will? where is the line drawn that humans can possess it and not animals, and on what grounds is this conclusion drawn from? --- i.e. what evidence or justification exists for making this claim aside from merely asserting it to the matter of fact?

[Neueregel]

@CharlieUlivarri 1."Neuroscience doesn't address the issue of free-will" Why not? The brain is the only source for decision-making as far as free-will is concerned. 2.On the soul issue;yes,maybe I shouldn't be so picky on buzzwords. 3.Free-will stems stems from the various levels of consciousness.A being has to have consciousness a priori, before acquiring Free-will. "Evidence or justification": All higher animals possess some kind of conciousness.There are 1000's of peer-reviewed papers on that

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel I see dogs deliberate how to respond to certain situations and objects just like an animal. They are clearly conscious animals. So do dogs have free-will? By saying that neuroscience addresses free-will you are already assuming free-will to be there. For all we know, the brain is merely processing information and sending signals. Delgado's experiment has shown that the brain is already committed to an action before the person is aware making a choice to act.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@CharlieUlivarri Correction: "I see dogs deliberate how to respond to certain situations and objects like a person"

Other primates display an alarming degree of mental capacity and brain functions as humans as well. Nature is abundant with things that we tend to attribute to humans only.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel That is just it Neuer. How does translating sensory input into thoughts suddenly create free-will? Moreso, what makes our thoughts born of free-will yet those of animals and savage children to be deterministic? And Delgado did test humans too, he found that the brain would send signals to command the person before the person is aware of "being about to" act. He was therefore able to predict what a person would before the person would actually decide to do something.

[Neueregel]

@CharlieUlivarri Hi, I think Delgado's experiment with human brain control is a false analogy,because the high-voltage signals that Delgado transmitted, were not really the same as the low-power neuron electric impulses.Maybe, the subjects were scared or partially paralysed so as to be controlled.On Free Will: The loss of causality emerges from the collapse of wavefunction in the quantum level in neuronal structures like microtubules.So, Indeterminism emerges due to Chaotic+Non-Linear processes.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel I am not referring to Delgado's human mind control but more of his brain reading studies. He was able to monitor the brain and see the signals send (commands to the body) prior to the person choosing take the particular action. In his "human mind control" study he did however note that the person would not be startled by the action but rather justified the action as a choice made for whatever reasons given (fabricated).

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel And quantum theory is not neuroscience. The collapse of the wave function (a probability) is due to the insistence in multiple probabilities being present at a given time and only one when a measurement is taken (i.e. Shcrodinger's Cat). The problem with that is the other "actualized possibilites" are never verified. That's like flipping a coin and saying it will land on heads AND tails, but the measurement (looking at the coin) only reveals one of the possibilities.

[Neueregel]

@CharlieUlivarri "quantum theory is not neuroscience" Hi. I didn't say it is. Quantum theory is only a tool to apply in neuroscience methods. I mean, according to a reductionism, all neurons (and ultimately their cells) are reduced to the movements of the individual atoms, when Heisenberg's uncertainty principle applies (along with other quantum mechanics laws). The loss of causality happens somewhere in that microscopic level but no one knows exactly the whole process of how the Qualia emerge.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@Neueregel Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is an attempt to equivocate energies. Just because the motion of objects seen in a moment in time is uncertain (and thus the total kinetic energy is uncertain) it does not follow that now there is no longer that amount of kinetic energy but miraculously ANY type of energy one chooses to interject. It means that there is a specific amount of energy and we don't know, not that anything goes and causality doesn't exist.

[CharlieUlivarri]

@CharlieUlivarri Not understand how something works and then asserting a claim on the premise that "such is the way, that is must contradict the rest of reality" is the same as the god of the gaps arguments. And insisting that probability is the rule is the same as saying that the way things are now is the way things will always be. That is just equivocating instead of admitting to not knowing.

[CharlieUlivarri]

Great video.  However I am unclear on how it became resolved that imagination implying freewill. Taking a familiar situation and applying it analogously to the past doesn't seem to justify saying the past could have been otherwise, so how does it change for the future? The fact that we are unaware of what WILL happen, doesn't necessarily mean various possibilities MIGHT happen. It appears to be an argument from insistence, so I am curious as to how the conclusion follows here.

[TheWendingRoad]

Thanks for sharing.

[ballyboneman]

If determinism were true there would be no 'one' to come to any realisation of anything. It would be determined so there would be no reason to suppose that anything is necessarily true including the notion that the universe and all our actions are determined. It is a self defeating (in every sense) argument/position

[CharlieUlivarri]

@ballyboneman I agree that naturalism refutes itself. The problem with the disregarding for that lies in the reasons why it does so. Naturalism doesn't implies values, it implies quantities and conditions. So, even though Naturalism is self-refuting when you measure the value of its arguments, it doesn't refute the position itself. It's pretty much a nihilistic god of the gaps approach.

[mythmanjay]

'Animal' (actually 'Jungle') is one of the Buddhist 'lower realities' (I forgot all of them, but I know the first is Hell, then there's a few including Jungle, Hunger, Poverty, and then the fifth or sixth is Humanity, then there's Heaven, then (in some order) Learning, Meditation and Bodhisattva, then Buddha ... and yes, we all can have a Buddha-nature 'within').

Jesus said "Why worry about the future? Let tomorrow deal with tomorrow's problems!"

2012 never happened

[mythmanjay]

So ... what IS "choice," but an imagined power one has over one's fortune?

'Mathematics': The tool evolves to tackle the arising problem. You call it a wedge, another calls it a ramp, another calls it an axe; call it whatever solves the problem.

I learned to read when I was 2 or 3 or 4, because my parents read books to me, pointing at the words when they said them.

So 'agency' is the multiple-choice (including the 'not choosing'-choice) that leads to the future.

History Is Imaginary, 2012 wasNot

[NAVYGOLDEIGHTFOUR]

Great discussion. It really does help me appreciate how challenging seemingly simple questions really are and also how worthy they are of being given thought. Progress can be made, really needs to be made. I really enjoyed it.

[meckmecks]

What are you each drinking?

[MardasMan]

It's so interesting sitting on the computer in the YT age listening humbly to two professors talking about science and society. Great to have this opportunity in this day and age.

[history797]

WOW BRO THAT NICE VIDEO ALL PEOPLE ON YOUTUBE

[F1ghtclub2k11]

For a somewhat unorganized discussion on the brain and the mind and conciousness check out my video.

[F1ghtclub2k11]

This is great stuff thanks for uploading...I keep sending you messages on my day off in hopes we can establish a dialogue simliar to this...I might have to offer experiences that confirm or disconfirm some of what is being said here...

[beltedDEEP]

free is a feeling... 

[IlludDivinumInsanus]

@beltedDEEP

Nope, free is a thought.

[beltedDEEP]

@IlludDivinumInsanus I would say "choice" is a word created by thought to define a situation, whereas "free" is word created by thought to define feeling. I don't know... the entire topic is pretty open for interpretation, is that free? is that choice? I've no idea.

[Monolith1618]

6:37 So in a sense we were determined to have free will?

[army2k08]

Freedom requires rules.

[kainniak1]

@army2k08 what -.-

[army2k08]

@kainniak1 Autonomy or freewill requires laws and rules whether the rules are made by humans or the by the universe(laws of thermodynamic) itself. Seemingly simple rules can give rise to unanticipated emergent outcomes, such as language, culture or technological progress.

[2bsirius]

I don't think very many people would think that a feral child is 'free' at all. Rousseau thought so with his now dated idea of the 'noble savage'. True there is not the sense of agency for them as we understand it. In reality feral children have missed a window of language imprinting that makes one human in the fullest sense.

The studies of feral children have found that it is impossible to compensate later for a total lack of acculturation. [Victor of Aveyron or Genie come to mind]

[LFcreative]

great post!! I enjoy your use of language! this makes me think that it's easier to understand our journey on the timeline (or timecone) using the word "influence" instead of power or control. For example, I can imagine a certain future that I want, but I don't have control or the power to make it into a past, given that I'm vulnerable to environmental obstacles, however, I have "influence" to make that fantasy into a past or into a reality, and I may over or underestimate that influence...

[2bsirius]

About mathematics, I think Professor Hansen was referencing an amazing high-functioning savant, Daniel Tammet. He's written some interesting books [Born on a Blue Day & Embracing the Wide Sky] about how his Asperger's syndrome has enabled him to use a special kind of synesthesia to imagine beautiful number landscapes, which has allowed him to become proficient with mathematical memory feats. It is not the same kind of mathematics that makes new discovers in math, but it's interesting.

[DrDissent]

I thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. Thank you both.

[2bsirius]

I love these kinds of discussions. Kudos for adding this.