Does Neuroscience Challenge the Existence of Free Will?

[apeiron]

That we never expected... strawman but interesting: at a glance I would say default mode, cognition in cerebellum, consciousness in insula, modulation of cortical tickness, BCI with person supposely in coma.

OK, you suggest five neuroimaging breakthroughs. Let's see if they involve the discovery of top-down principles.

1) Default mode network

Yes. Raichle/Snyder contrast the bottom up "driven" view of computer science and the top-down systems view now revealed.

One view posits that the brain is primarily reflexive, driven by the
momentary demands of the environment. The other view is that the
brain's operations are mainly intrinsic involving the maintenance
of information for interpreting, responding to and even predicting
environmental demands.
http://www.appliedneuroscience.com/Default%20mode-a%20brief%20history.pdf

Then Friston/Carhart-Harris have more explicitly linked the default mode to the top-down Bayesian brain model in http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/133/4/1265.full.pdf+html

Some interesting snippets in that like...

Furthermore, we associate failures of top-down control with non-ordinary
states of consciousness, such as early and acute psychosis, the
temporal-lobe aura, dreaming and hallucinogenic drug states.

2) Cerebellum plays role in cognition and behaviour.

Again yes. I well remember the shock that the Fox/Raichle paper created (a PET experiment BTW, not that that matters).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC391365/

It did indeed show that language production was not confined to a couple of brain modules but was a dynamical hierarchy that included even "low level" structures like the cerebellum. For a long time critics insisted it must be an artifact.

So again a significant experiment because it undercut the reductionist computational model of brain processing and pointed to a hierarchical view of top-down in interaction with bottom-up. That was precisely why it got people excited. I was at conferences where the work was presented (as well as discussing it with Raichle, Fox, Posner and others).

3) Consciousness in insula

I presume you mean Craig's recent hypothesis - http://www.appliedneuroscience.com/Insula-what%20you%20feel%20&%20consciousness.pdf

Sadly you would be right that he wants to call it the seat of consciousness. So not a systems point of view. But then dig into the actual research and this claim starts to evaporate like the attention grabbing hype it is.

Quite quickly we are back into a standard hierarchical view of brain function. Craig says the insular handles the high level view of the interior millieu while the cingulate does the job for motor intentions. They work as a team and both have spindle cells (for strong and fast top-down control over the respective hierarchies below them). Etc. The seat of consciousness fast becomes the hierarchical systems story that it should be.

So disregard the hype and the insular cortex is not especially significant except as a higher brain area that is important for top-down influences.

4) Modulation of cortical thickness

Not sure what you mean here unless you are talking about the anatomical studies of brain maturation?

If so, isn't it interesting that the most top-down areas develop the slowest. As a hierarchy it takes time to develop from the bottom up (construction) and for the global constraints to fully organise. Exactly as hierarchy theory would predict (see Salthe on the stages of immaturity, maturity and senescence).

Adolescents are now said to be impulsive and temperamental simply because they are incapable of top-down regulation of their behaviour. The brain areas have not fully developed.

So if this was the neuroimaging finding you meant, yes it was big news. And because it was all about top-downness in neuroscience.

5) BCI with person supposely in coma

OK, again top down (if you are talking about brain computer interfaces and locked in syndrome) - if indirectly this time. A loss of top-down control in coma patients means they can't overtly produce response. But can generate enough EEG activity to be translated as an attempt to command. So a demonstration of top-down control over computer hardware.

I'm puzzled how this counts at a great breakthrough for fMRI though. Perhaps you can elaborate.

Anyway, five findings and the actually significant ones (that is 1, 2 and 4) are significant because they confirmed that the hierarchical approach to the brain, with top-down effects being key, are the way to go.

 

[Q_Goest]

No, you completely misunderstand if you think I said brain states are controlling genes and enzymes. The example I gave was of enzymes controlling metabolic processes, and making a parallel with the way words control brain states.

And the symbol grounding problem is an example of why there is more to life than just rate dependent dynamics (classical physics).

Perhaps we have indeed reached the end of the road on this discussion. I would really recommend reading Pattee carefully as I have founded him the sharpest writer on this particular aspect of the systems approach.

Ok, thanks for the clarification. Thanks also for clarification on the "top down constraints" and all that. I understand your position more clearly now, though I think I'm still not understanding a large chunk of it.

Are you suggesting that genes are what overcome the symbol grounding problem that Harnad talks about? What paper does Pattee have that explains that concept best? I might go along with that. Here's the problem though. Neuron interactions are governed by classical mechanics, so any strongly emergent phenomena (ie: phenomenal consciousness) can not emerge from those interations alone since classical interactions only allow for weakly emergent phenomena. Yet the mainstream view holds that phenomenal consciousness is emergent on the neuron interactions and not for example, genes or any molecular interactions. Does Pattee address this issue or does he go along with the mainstream view that phenomenal consciousness emerges from neuron interactions alone?

 

[Lievo]

I see. So the Planck scale is not a limit on computation after all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_computation

Absolutly not.

But clearly you selectively quoted. You did not relate the statement to the context of what I said...which was...

You said something stupid. Context doesn't change it was stupid. If I wanted to challenge the context, I'd have quote the context.

Actually I am surprised a little by these numbers because any masters psychology student can whip up an fMRI study in a few days given access to a machine. But doing microelectrode studies on animals is grinding science. You have to work in a fortress in fear of animal liberation terrorists. You need considerable technical skill as well as a good ethical justification.

Any fMRI experiment cost at least 5000$. I don't think many master student are allowed to whip up an fMRI study in a few day.

Regarding electrods studies, that's not the problem. The problem is that when you work in humans, you can ask anything and the subject will do it. When you work even in squirel monkeys, that's 6 month to learn to be quite with the head fixed, then 6 month to understand the task, then one to two years of data collection. Every day, every week, one week-end free every three weeks (ethical concern for the animal, good the student can benefit it also) Hope you have a result.

My arguments were about the fact that top-down has been a mainstream neuroscience concept since Luria and Sperry.

This is not the claim I contested. I would agree that top-down is one of the mainstream approach. However Luria and Sperry has little impact here. It's simply that there's only two logical possibilities: bottom-up and top-down approach. If you think that's a big claim one of the two is mainstream...well at least it's not false

 

[Lievo]

OK, you suggest five neuroimaging breakthroughs. Let's see if they involve the discovery of top-down principles. (...) they confirmed that the hierarchical approach to the brain, with top-down effects being key, are the way to go.

That's very instructive. So I understand now, that when you say your claim are supported by evidence, what you mean is that your claim are general enough to accommodate any evidence. Good to know, I won't have to lose my time next time.

 

[Ferris_bg]

By that I mean I see no reason to segregate 'living' systems that are described using classical mechanics from 'not alive' systems. That represents a paradox to me.

May be apeiron's view is that the functionality, which gives rise to consciousness can be implemented only through neurons.

But that's really not a problem relating to free will. The core problem is that even if we accept that the mental (defined as a property of the physical and qualia capable) is somehow reported by the physical, even then we still have some weak form of top-down causality, which in no way implies that there is any free will. To have free will the mental should apply some unique type of strong downward causality. And if you want to have such thing, you must accept that these greater causal powers of the mental do not derive from the physical substance thus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-re...won_Kim.27s_argument_against_non-reductivism".

And don't assume that I say that dualism is not a possibility, I am just saying that you can't have free will in any materialistic theory of mind. To illustrate my above writings I present you this example:

1) I throw a ball in a lake. I know where the lake is, but I do not see it. I know that the way I throw guarantees the ball to fall inside the lake. Now I want to find out the exact position of the ball, and Q_Goest can report it to me. I have a visual contact with him and he with the lake. So he says to me the exact coordinates of the ball.

2) Now imagine that apeiron is in a machine in the bottom of the lake and can influence the waters the way he likes. I throw the ball, apeiron modifies its location and Q_Goest reports it to me.

In example 1) we have a form of weak top-down causality, while in example 2) we have strong downward causality. Now if I define the lake as a property of the park, which I control, then we can only be in situation 1). The park is the only substance, even if it can have a special property like the lake, which I can not report by myself. But if the lake is itself a substance named apeiron then we find ourselves in 2). Apeiron can influence the ball's location thus changing my further computations. We can say that he has used his free will upon the park.

 

[Ken G]

That's very instructive. So I understand now, that when you say your claim are supported by evidence, what you mean is that your claim are general enough to accommodate any evidence. Good to know, I won't have to lose my time next time.

I'm not sure I understand this comment. Where I come from, making statements that are both unexpected, and general enough to accommodate all the evidence, is one of the highest goals of scientific inquiry-- hardly a waste of time.

 

[Ken G]

To have free will the mental should apply some unique type of strong downward causality.

I think we have to be extremely careful with language. The only way to express free will with language is, as usual, by connecting it to our experience. We have two relevant experiences there: the experience of free will itself, which is accessed via introspection, and the experience of measuring the neural correlates of free will, which is accessed via instruments and the "physical world," whatever that is. Causation appears at both of these levels, because causation is really nothing but a strong tendency for one type of event to be preceded by another. In the case of introspecting mental states, we can have the same kind of interplay between downward and upward causation that apeiron has discussed-- if I decide to take a deep breath and count to ten to calm some upset I'm having, I have downward causation of my mental state on my physical state, and the reverse as well. So we have intricate couplings.

Now, the physicalist reductionist will attempt to maintain that in this example, it's all upward causation of the physical onto the mental, while the physicalist systems analyst will maintain that the causation in the physical realm goes in both directions, but it all ends up determining the emergent mental state, which is only a kind of moot witness to the outcome. Those two pictures involve two very separate forms of free will, but both of a physical nature that may not gibe with most people's perception of free will. The common perception of free will involves a downward causation from the mental realm to the physical, not just the other way around.

The physicalist rules out such a possibility from the start, with little evidence for doing so I might add, it is more a kind of acquired bias. The question to ask ourselves is, if someone reports making a decision to calm down, and we can find neural correlates of that decision, and can track how the decision effects physiological changes in the brain, have we really shown that the mental states associated with that decision emerge from the physical, or have we just shown that the whole process involves a kind of tennis match between processes that we can only access via the experiential milieu of introspection of mental states and measurement of physical ones? I'm saying that everything we can talk about here, every word we use, comes through an experiential filter that the brain itself is responsible for the very existence of. We must not forget that, and glibly use language as if mental states could actually "apply downward causality." Neither mental states, nor physical states, do any such thing-- this is just the way we talk about them, which means it is the way we interpret their actions through our experiential filter. A filter that the brain is on both sides of, not just one.

And if you want to have such thing, you must accept that these greater causal powers of the mental do not derive from the physical substance thus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-re...won_Kim.27s_argument_against_non-reductivism".

I see what you mean here, and I think it's largely true, as long as we continue to recognize that the dualism here is traceable to our language about reality, our map of reality, not reality itself, not the territory. It is quite demonstrably true that our language about reality is inherently and inescapably dualistic-- language is connecting to experience, and we have dual experience: we introspect mental states, and we perceive measurements. Duality is unavoidable, what we make of that is all we can debate.

 

[nismaratwork]

That's why you have to clear your mind - clear away any existing imposed state of anticipation/intention.

I presume you already have some thoughts organising your mind at that moment - a prevailing top-down constrained view of what to expect. So you have to relax that to appreciate the power of the words alone.

...And does that self-imposed constraint show some ability to will for no better reason than to do so? It's a self-imposed restraint, and if you're then free from gross external influence (however fragile this situation may be), is that some element of free will? I look at meditation and often the goal is just that, a freedom gained through focus and a lack of external influence.

I wonder if it means anything at all...

 

[apeiron]

That's very instructive. So I understand now, that when you say your claim are supported by evidence, what you mean is that your claim are general enough to accommodate any evidence. Good to know, I won't have to lose my time next time.

Sound of Lievo beating another hasty retreat...

 

[apeiron]

...And does that self-imposed constraint show some ability to will for no better reason than to do so? It's a self-imposed restraint, and if you're then free from gross external influence (however fragile this situation may be), is that some element of free will? I look at meditation and often the goal is just that, a freedom gained through focus and a lack of external influence.

I wonder if it means anything at all...

Not completely sure of your question, but the ability to direct attention, form intentions, generate anticipations, would all be part of our sense of autonomy - the sense of freewill that would come from being able to juggle internal goals and external threats and opportunities.

What you may be pointing to here is a sharp dichotomy between endogenous and exogenous focus - or concentration and vigilance. So the whole brain can tilt towards a "stick to the internal plan regardless" state, or a "wide-eyed vigilance state". And the neural correlates are not hard to find. So dopamine underpins plan focus, noreadrenaline underpins a twitchy vigilance. Focus is more left brain, vigilance more right. Etc.

Relaxation and defocusing would be different again.

We can learn to shift between attentional styles "at will" just like we can learn to lift a hand and make it scratch out heads.

Maybe you might notice that if you want to disengage and search for an image or association while you are thinking, you look up and off to the left. Willing the eyes to move in that direction is easy. And what it also does is tilt the brain towards right-hemisphere peripheral focus - the kind of general vigilance where you can now "see" thoughts lurking on the fringe. Well, that is the hypothesis some have argued anyway.

So this would be an example of bottom up control over the top down state (but achieved by a top down "act of will" over the direction of out gaze...or top-downish as it is such a well-practised habit that we do it automatically, unthinkingly.)

 

[apeiron]

Are you suggesting that genes are what overcome the symbol grounding problem that Harnad talks about? What paper does Pattee have that explains that concept best? I might go along with that. Here's the problem though. Neuron interactions are governed by classical mechanics, so any strongly emergent phenomena (ie: phenomenal consciousness) can not emerge from those interations alone since classical interactions only allow for weakly emergent phenomena. Yet the mainstream view holds that phenomenal consciousness is emergent on the neuron interactions and not for example, genes or any molecular interactions. Does Pattee address this issue or does he go along with the mainstream view that phenomenal consciousness emerges from neuron interactions alone?

You keep building your position on the claim that because classical physics does not seem to permit something, it is not permitted. Plus then the assumption that the purpose of a model is to give the modeller "the feeling of what it is like to be" rather than a formal theory of the general constraints (which feel nothing like anything in particular precisely because they are maximally generic, maximally abstract).

Newton gave us F = ma. That describes a completely generic symmetry of nature. It does not tell you what it is like to be a falling apple or a human throwing a baseball.

So Pattee and other systems thinkers are trying to abstract the general laws of symbols, or hierarchies, or global constraints, or whatever. Phenomenal consciousness is something very particular (even your own state of mind is constantly changing). So it is just a false goal to demand that physicalist models must tell you why anything in phenomenological terms. It is a category error.

On the genes thing and symbol grounding, genes are just one example of semiotic constraints. Membranes, words, organelles, axon fibres - any kind of dimension reducing structure is a meaningful constraint on a systems free dynamics. But genes and words would be significant in being about the strongest level of semiotic constraint. Being 1D serial codes, they are both as removed from the worlds they control as they can be.

Anyway, there was a good conference on Pattee's work that offers a variety of views...

http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/

And some of the papers from it...

The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut
H. H. Pattee
Evolution requires the genotype-phenotype distinction, a primeval epistemic cut that separates energy-degenerate, rate-independent genetic symbols from the rate-dependent dynamics of construction that they control. This symbol-matter or subject-object distinction occurs at all higher levels where symbols are related to a referent by an arbitrary code. The converse of control is measurement in which a rate-dependent dynamical state is coded into quiescent symbols. Non-integrable constraints are one necessary conditions for bridging the epistemic cut by measurement, control, and coding. Additional properties of heteropolymer constraints are necessary for biological evolution.
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/pattee.html

Symbols and Dynamics in the Brain
Peter Cariani
The work of physicist and theoretical biologist Howard Pattee has focused on the roles that symbols and dynamics play in biological systems. Symbols, as discrete functional switching-states, are seen at the heart of all biological systems in form of genetic codes, and at the core of all neural systems in the form of informational mechanisms that switch behavior. They also appear in one form or another in all epistemic systems, from informational processes embedded in primitive organisms to individual human beings to public scientific models. Over its course, Pattee's work has explored 1) the physical basis of informational functions (dynamical vs. rule-based descriptions, switching mechanisms, memory, symbols), 2) the functional organization of the observer (measurement, computation), 3) the means by which information can be embedded in biological organisms for purposes of self-construction and representation (as codes, modeling relations, memory, symbols), and 4) the processes by which new structures and functions can emerge over time. We discuss how these concepts can be applied to a high-level understanding of the brain. Biological organisms constantly reproduce themselves as well as their relations with their environs. The brain similarly can be seen as a self-producing, self-regenerating neural signaling system and as an adaptive informational system that interacts with its surrounds in order to steer behavior.
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/cariani.html

Howard Pattee's Theoretical Biology - A radical epistemological stance to approach life, evolution, and complexity.
Jon Umerez
This paper offers a short review of Pattee's main contributions to science and philosophy. With no intention of being exhaustive, an account of Pattee's work is presented which discusses some of his ideas and their reception. This is done through an analysis centered in what is thought to be his main contribution: the elaboration of an internal epistemic stance to better understand life, evolution and complexity. Having introduced this core idea as a sort of a posteriori cohesive element of a complex but highly coherent and complete system of thinking, further specific elements are also reviewed
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/umerez.pdf

The semiotics of Control and Modeling Relations in Complex Systems
Cliff Joslyn
We provide a conceptual analysis of ideas and principles from the systems theory discourse which underlie Pattee's semantic or semiotic closure, which is itself foundational for a school of theoretical biology derived from systems theory and cybernetics, and is now being related to biological semiotics and explicated in the relational biological school of Rashevsky and Rosen. Atomic control systems and models are described as the canonical forms of semiotic organization, sharing measurement relations, but di.ering topologically in that control systems are circularly and models linearly related to their environments. Computation in control systems is introduced, motivating hierarchical decomposition, hybrid modeling and control systems, and anticipatory or model-based control. The semiotic relations in complex control systems are described in terms of relational constraints, and rules and laws are distinguished as contingent and necessary functional entailments respectively. Finally, selection as a meta-level of constraint is introduced as the necessary condition for semantic relations in control systems and models.
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/joslyn.html

 

[Lievo]

(some detailed comments where it seems necessary)

3) Consciousness in insula

I presume you mean Craig's recent hypothesis - http://www.appliedneuroscience.com/Insula-what%20you%20feel%20&%20consciousness.pdf

Sadly you would be right that he wants to call it the seat of consciousness. So not a systems point of view. But then dig into the actual research and this claim starts to evaporate like the attention grabbing hype it is.

Yes. I agree this is tentative, not to the extent to call it hype.

4) Modulation of cortical thickness

Not sure what you mean here unless you are talking about the anatomical studies of brain maturation?

No, this is interesting but too linked to older studies to meet your requierement. I was thinking at the variations we now find in adults.
http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/1/25.full.pdf+html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361002/
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/27/9240.full.pdf+html

(edit: reference to MRI experiment provided instead of animal studies)

5) BCI with person supposely in coma

OK, again top down (if you are talking about brain computer interfaces and locked in syndrome) - if indirectly this time. (...) I'm puzzled how this counts at a great breakthrough for fMRI though. Perhaps you can elaborate.

(this time ) I see this finding as important not only for the patient themself but as directly pertinent to any embody cognition model. This show one can remain conscious and mentally sane despite years of lost of motor and sensory inputs. This does not refute these theories, but at least implicate the importance of the body to the developemental phases mostly. In other words, if standard AI did not manage to set up a mind, that's not because it was a wrong move to try to have a disembodied mind (or more properly, if it was wrgon, that's because of the developpemental part, not final result)

 

[apeiron]

No satire-- just putting physicalism into a kind of operator formalism.

Thanks for explaining further. It seems an interesting line of thought. I'm not familiar with operator formalism. Is it the same as bra-ket and complex number magic? And then your argument about the evolution operator connected to how passing light through two polarising filters "resets" the indeterminancy each time rather than constraining it additively as a reductionist thinker might expect?

 

[Lievo]

That's very instructive. So I understand now, that when you say your claim are supported by evidence, what you mean is that your claim are general enough to accommodate any evidence. Good to know, I won't have to lose my time next time.

I'm not sure I understand this comment. Where I come from, making statements that are both unexpected, and general enough to accommodate all the evidence, is one of the highest goals of scientific inquiry-- hardly a waste of time.

I think what you have in mind is accomodating all known evidence, whereas I was talking about accomodating any possible evidence. The first is what you want in science, the latter is not even wrong.

Suppose one claim that a given bunch of evidences support one's view. Then question yourself: would it be possible to find the opposite results, and using the same arguments still make the case that these evidences supports these view? If that what you constat, the claims have just no value at all. (edit: I mean no scientific value. Spirituality or sense of aesthetics is not bad in itself -until you don't confound that with science)

(unrelated stuff, please see https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3196911&postcount=240")

 

[apeiron]

No, this is interesting but too linked to older study to meet your requierement. I was thinking at the variations we now find in adults.
http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/9/1/1.short
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361002/
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/24/3/628.abstract


(this time ) I see this finding as important not only for the patient themself but as directly pertinent to any embody cognition model. This show one can remain conscious and mentally sane despite years of lost of motor and sensory inputs. This does not refute these theories, but at least implicate the importance of the body to the developemental phases mostly. In other words, if standard AI did not manage to set up a mind, that's not because it was a wrong move to try to have a disembodied mind (or more properly, if it was wrgon, that's because of the developpemental part, not final result)

OK, you were going to give me your five great breakthroughs delivered by functional neuroimaging. You ran out after three and now give me an animal study and a BCI one.

Attempts to engage with your point of view are just becoming increasingly flaky.

 

[Lievo]

OK, you were going to give me your five great breakthroughs delivered by functional neuroimaging. You ran out after three and now give me an animal study and a BCI one.

Attempts to engage with your point of view are just becoming increasingly flaky.

I gave you five and add comment for the two you were not understanding. I guess this is your spicy way to say thank you.

 

[apeiron]

Now, the physicalist reductionist will attempt to maintain that in this example, it's all upward causation of the physical onto the mental, while the physicalist systems analyst will maintain that the causation in the physical realm goes in both directions, but it all ends up determining the emergent mental state, which is only a kind of moot witness to the outcome. Those two pictures involve two very separate forms of free will, but both of a physical nature that may not gibe with most people's perception of free will. The common perception of free will involves a downward causation from the mental realm to the physical, not just the other way around.

This is it in a nutshell.

The reductionist says objective physical theory says states of mind are constructed bottom up from firing neurons creating brain-wide patterns. Yet I also have the feeling of being a conscious doer, a unified high level being with free choice and control over my actions. So there seems to be something strong that can act top down. That has no place in my physicalist theory.

So either I believe in dualism, with a spirit in charge of the matter. Or I believe my sense of being a self with top-down causality is an illusion (epiphenomenalism). Or I believe that consciousness is another local property of matter (the panpsychic view).

But the systems approach by-passes all these kinds of paradoxical conclusions because it recognises the existence of both bottom-up and top-down as universal in nature. It says it is not just brains that are organised this way. The whole of reality follows the same causality. Even QM, for instance, needs the top-down constraints represented in the notion of an "observer" to decohere the possibilities being venture from the bottom-up evolution of a wave function.

And then, even though all nature is organised via a systems logic, we can see that life and mind are a bit different. Which is where we get into theories about complex adaptive systems, non-holonomic constraints, semiotics, etc. Theories of complex systems, and not just simple systems - yet still with the same fundamental assumptions about causality involving both bottom-up and top-down in dynamic interaction.

 

[apeiron]

I gave you five and add comment for the two you were not understanding. I guess this is your spicy way to say thank you.

I see you have gone back and edited your post to insert an MRI reference for 4. Very deceptive behaviour on your part.

I could point out that the MRI studies in humans are confirmations of animal studies (you replaced a 2002 animal study with a 2010 MRI one), but given the flakiness of your debating methods, it really is not worth taking anything you say seriously.

I still don't see the coma stuff as an fMRI breakthrough, but don't bother with further explanation...

 

[nismaratwork]

Not completely sure of your question, but the ability to direct attention, form intentions, generate anticipations, would all be part of our sense of autonomy - the sense of freewill that would come from being able to juggle internal goals and external threats and opportunities.

What you may be pointing to here is a sharp dichotomy between endogenous and exogenous focus - or concentration and vigilance. So the whole brain can tilt towards a "stick to the internal plan regardless" state, or a "wide-eyed vigilance state". And the neural correlates are not hard to find. So dopamine underpins plan focus, noreadrenaline underpins a twitchy vigilance. Focus is more left brain, vigilance more right. Etc.

Relaxation and defocusing would be different again.

We can learn to shift between attentional styles "at will" just like we can learn to lift a hand and make it scratch out heads.

Maybe you might notice that if you want to disengage and search for an image or association while you are thinking, you look up and off to the left. Willing the eyes to move in that direction is easy. And what it also does is tilt the brain towards right-hemisphere peripheral focus - the kind of general vigilance where you can now "see" thoughts lurking on the fringe. Well, that is the hypothesis some have argued anyway.

So this would be an example of bottom up control over the top down state (but achieved by a top down "act of will" over the direction of out gaze...or top-downish as it is such a well-practised habit that we do it automatically, unthinkingly.)

That's what I'm getting at, but I was curious how it would be seen from the Systems approach, which I'm familiar with, but only just. It also seems like an interesting event for humans, an I wonder if that fractured nature of the mind is why we are sentient at all. Sadly, it has little impact on free will as it's being discussed here, but I couldn't pass the opportunity by.

Thanks for indulging me!

As it happens I believe in a messy combination of reductionism and physicalism... I think it largely depends on the kind of activity and the part of the brain involved. I'm guessing that your view is most useful in dealing with the "new" parts of the human brain, and its very impressive cerebral cortex. I think it's one of the more impressive feats of biology that we manage to reconcile the two experiences of top-down direction, and bottom-up events we 'react' to.

I don't believe in dualism, but I think that experience is a result of a kind of... maybe you'd call it a 'systems dualism'. I wonder if that's what also helps to give us the messy combination that we percieve as being conscious, sentient, and self-directing. Sometimes we are, sometimes not, but most of the time it's a mix at the same time.

 

[apeiron]

I don't believe in dualism, but I think that experience is a result of a kind of... maybe you'd call it a 'systems dualism'. I wonder if that's what also helps to give us the messy combination that we percieve as being conscious, sentient, and self-directing. Sometimes we are, sometimes not, but most of the time it's a mix at the same time.

Maybe you are talking about the attention vs habits dichotomy here. As I said early in the thread, the neural correlates of these two modes is well understood now.

Habits are where we merely "emit" a behaviour. There is no need for conscious oversight because the lessons have been learn earlier during the development of the habit. So now the top-down global constraint is not being actively evolved to create the behaviour. It has been frozen in exactly the way I have been describing. The state of constraint has become embedded, no longer dynamic. And so habits look like local, purely bottom up, responding (stick someone in a scanner and a habit produces minimal activation literally).

This is another of the "surprises" of the systems view. The brain is trying to do least conscious oversight it can get away with (the Bayesian brain principle - minimising the free energy).

So "freewill" is all about the fact we must have continual high level oversight (we can chose to do it, or not do it). Then the paradox is that so much of our life seems determined by reductionist habits and reflexes. We just do it.

This is where Libet's experiments caused so much confusion. He asked subjects to do something so routinised, and with as little conscious oversight as they could achieve (twitch a finger in "spontaneous" fashion), then made a deal that the point of top-down countermanding followed the initial bottom-up habitual urge to act.

But the design of the brain has in fact the goal of minimising the effort involved in global attentional processing. Relaxing the global constraints so as to be able to learn new states of constraint is costly and destabilising (what Grossberg explored as the stability~plasticity dilemma for neural network models - learning is very unstable in naive neural net models because there is no hierarchy of responses to match attention vs habit).

So humans have neurological "freewill" - the ability to plasticise the global constraints on their behaviour repertoire and learn from fresh experience. But the larger goal is to learn to do as much as possible at the routine unthinking level where the global contraints have been frozen and behaviours can be simply emitted in a fast efficient way, as when we are driving a car, eating our dinner, etc.

 

[nismaratwork]

Maybe you are talking about the attention vs habits dichotomy here. As I said early in the thread, the neural correlates of these two modes is well understood now.

Habits are where we merely "emit" a behaviour. There is no need for conscious oversight because the lessons have been learn earlier during the development of the habit. So now the top-down global constraint is not being actively evolved to create the behaviour. It has been frozen in exactly the way I have been describing. The state of constraint has become embedded, no longer dynamic. And so habits look like local, purely bottom up, responding (stick someone in a scanner and a habit produces minimal activation literally).

This is another of the "surprises" of the systems view. The brain is trying to do least conscious oversight it can get away with (the Bayesian brain principle - minimising the free energy).

So "freewill" is all about the fact we must have continual high level oversight (we can chose to do it, or not do it). Then the paradox is that so much of our life seems determined by reductionist habits and reflexes. We just do it.

This is where Libet's experiments caused so much confusion. He asked subjects to do something so routinised, and with as little conscious oversight as they could achieve (twitch a finger in "spontaneous" fashion), then made a deal that the point of top-down countermanding followed the initial bottom-up habitual urge to act.

But the design of the brain has in fact the goal of minimising the effort involved in global attentional processing. Relaxing the global constraints so as to be able to learn new states of constraint is costly and destabilising (what Grossberg explored as the stability~plasticity dilemma for neural network models - learning is very unstable in naive neural net models because there is no hierarchy of responses to match attention vs habit).

So humans have neurological "freewill" - the ability to plasticise the global constraints on their behaviour repertoire and learn from fresh experience. But the larger goal is to learn to do as much as possible at the routine unthinking level where the global contraints have been frozen and behaviours can be simply emitted in a fast efficient way, as when we are driving a car, eating our dinner, etc.

This is a large part of what I'm getting at, but consider: if you have the freewill to act in a manner that we're not evolved to do, at the cost of generally beneficial behaviours... does that imply a more global freedom of will and choice?

 

[apeiron]

This is a large part of what I'm getting at, but consider: if you have the freewill to act in a manner that we're not evolved to do, at the cost of generally beneficial behaviours... does that imply a more global freedom of will and choice?

In humans there is also a socially constructed dimension to our chosing and willing. So social evolution develops constraints that we then internalise and apply to our thinking. And these are indeed constraints evolving at a higher level and so more global in their scope.

We have more choice as a result of this extra degree of constraint of our individual psychologies. For example, we can choose to defy what we percieve as the social conventions. (That is, we are aware there is an alternative path even if we rarely go very far down it).

And even this level of freewill is a recent social innovation. You can trace the idea of the free-thinking human back to Socrates and Athenian democracy. But it remained a priviledged view of the few for a long time before becoming the mainstream view in modern Western society following first the Enlightenment, then the Romantic reversal that followed - the switch from Hobbes to Rousseau philosophically.

So that is the current irony. We believe we are independent of society in the choices we can make. But this is just our most recent state of social evolution. It is a particular brand of social organisation that teaches this belief.

In the short-term, it has been a belief with a strong competitive advantage. By relaxing the global social constraints (such as views on religion, morality, conformity, etc), a greater local creativity, diversity and experimentation is permitted.

In the longer term, well, history will judge. As has been argued, it is all about a balance between attention and habit, plasticity and stability, novelty and custom. And there could be various views about what is the most adaptive balance for a global-scale society (one that incorporates all the people of the planet).

 

[apeiron]

I haven't heard it said from a systems perspective, but I always stress that all laws of physics are differential equations, so are never complete-- there is no "theory of boundary conditions", that is the dirty little secret of the manual elements of physics. It's the thaumaturgical element.

Ken, I hope you find time to read Pattee's summary. It addresses this point exactly.

Pattee was also a phd student of von Neumann (if memory serves correctly) and so his view arose pretty directly out of the QM observer issue (and ways von Neumann's own views were often over simplified).

http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/pattee.html

 

[Lievo]

Maybe you are talking about the attention vs habits dichotomy here. As I said early in the thread, the neural correlates of these two modes is well understood now.

Another example of these claims you're making everywhere about the status of neuroscientific questions. There are hundred if not thousand of neuroscientist trying to figure out this question. Your statement just mean that you're not really interest in how it's works, not that we know how it is working.

 

[apeiron]

Another example of these claims you're making everywhere about the status of neuroscientific questions. There are hundred if not thousand of neuroscientist trying to figure out this question. Your statement just mean that you're not really interest in how it's works, not that we know how it is working.

More noise from someone with nothing to say.

As usual, I can happily source my views if requested. I won't be needing to doctor my too hasty posts when I get caught out.

So Lievo, what exactly are your credentials then...as a neuroscientist? Just give us a few of your publications to give a hint of the actual extent of your knowledge when it comes to the topics that have been under discussion here. You can PM them to me if you are shy.

 

[Lievo]

So Lievo, what exactly are your credentials then...as a neuroscientist?

Your usual line when you got it wrong, isn't it?

 

[nismaratwork]

In humans there is also a socially constructed dimension to our chosing and willing. So social evolution develops constraints that we then internalise and apply to our thinking. And these are indeed constraints evolving at a higher level and so more global in their scope.

We have more choice as a result of this extra degree of constraint of our individual psychologies. For example, we can choose to defy what we percieve as the social conventions. (That is, we are aware there is an alternative path even if we rarely go very far down it).

And even this level of freewill is a recent social innovation. You can trace the idea of the free-thinking human back to Socrates and Athenian democracy. But it remained a priviledged view of the few for a long time before becoming the mainstream view in modern Western society following first the Enlightenment, then the Romantic reversal that followed - the switch from Hobbes to Rousseau philosophically.

So that is the current irony. We believe we are independent of society in the choices we can make. But this is just our most recent state of social evolution. It is a particular brand of social organisation that teaches this belief.

In the short-term, it has been a belief with a strong competitive advantage. By relaxing the global social constraints (such as views on religion, morality, conformity, etc), a greater local creativity, diversity and experimentation is permitted.

In the longer term, well, history will judge. As has been argued, it is all about a balance between attention and habit, plasticity and stability, novelty and custom. And there could be various views about what is the most adaptive balance for a global-scale society (one that incorporates all the people of the planet).

Then what to make of psychopaths?... They lack even a sense of those constraints, and are ruled by impulse. That impulse is subject to their environment, but for all their 'sameness', they do manage to show a shocking degree of going down multiple paths.

 

[nismaratwork]

Your usual line when you got it wrong, isn't it?

Given what you've said and cited, and claimed as personal knowledge, it's actually quite a reasonable question.

 

[apeiron]

Then what to make of psychopaths?... They lack even a sense of those constraints, and are ruled by impulse. That impulse is subject to their environment, but for all their 'sameness', they do manage to show a shocking degree of going down multiple paths.

That is why psychopaths are presumed to be suffering from a brain dysfunction. So the exceptions that prove the rule.

Of course, we could also agree that there is genetic variety and that is part of the evolutionary learning story. Evolution supplies a global constraint, but the very systems logic that I have been employing explains why constraint is simply the constraint of local degrees of freedom. So genetics has that irreduciable random element that means the global genome does not freeze and lose the capacity to adaptively learn. There has to be Ashby's "requisite variety".

Thus we should expect some gaussian distribution of empathy or whatever trait you believe psychopaths to be lacking. And we would also expect to find the pathologically empathetic at the other extreme (if empathy were a simple trait).

The audience for chick flicks must come from some part of the human gene pool!

 

[apeiron]

Your usual line when you got it wrong, isn't it?

It is you who has been simply relying on your personal standing rather than making arguments backed by references (and undermining that standing by dishonest behaviour like editing posts).

Frankly your behaviour does not add up. It is very flaky. So if you claim to be a neuroscience researcher with a personal knowledge of the areas under discussion, then sources please!

 

[nismaratwork]

That is why psychopaths are presumed to be suffering from a brain dysfunction. So the exceptions that prove the rule.

Of course, we could also agree that there is genetic variety and that is part of the evolutionary learning story. Evolution supplies a global constraint, but the very systems logic that I have been employing explains why constraint is simply the constraint of local degrees of freedom. So genetics has that irreduciable random element that means the global genome does not freeze and lose the capacity to adaptively learn. There has to be Ashby's "requisite variety".

Thus we should expect some gaussian distribution of empathy or whatever trait you believe psychopaths to be lacking. And we would also expect to find the pathologically empathetic at the other extreme (if empathy were a simple trait).

The audience for chick flicks must come from some part of the human gene pool!

Heh... there is that...

I certainly believe that ASPD is primarily a neurological dysfunction, specifically in executive functions. What's interesting is that while most end in a spiral of behavior they seem unable to analyze or reconcile with society, quite a few manage to enter society to one degree or another. These people are not dysfunctional in a way that is anything like another known disorder... practically a different species for all intents and purposes.

Still, while exceptions in the general population, there is ample evidence they've been a pretty steady percentage for as long as we have records. Maybe it's a persistent flaw in the old genome, but I wonder that it seems to be so steady and universal. Schizophrenia is another, but let's put that aside for the moment, in favor of the less clearly disturbed sociopath.

In the absence of social order, a sociopath would fail to meet specific criteria for ASPD, only NPD and probably severe ADD, and other issues. So sociopaths are broken people by our standards, and probably any standard humans could apply, but exception or not they may be a window into our own experience.

I wonder how much of relatively high functioning sociopath's thinking is influenced by others' words, as emotions and many social cues would either be lost on them or ignored. Contrast that with a 'normal' person (i.e. non-psychopath) and it's the basis for that dichotomy you mention. Still, it exists with the sociopath, but to what degree?... they seem to be creatures of action and impulse without much if any restraint. That argues for the reductionist view, with social cues and evolution being almost entirely lost on this group.

I would dismiss it as disordered thinking, but ASPD is unique. Schizophrenia I think, is another view into human consciousness, and therefore freewill. You have a steady %'age of the population across gender, race, nationalities with this mental illness, yes? It's far more complex than sociopathy, and its often debilitating nature mixed with constant prevalence argues for it being some kind of inescapable result of human genetics or the brain... a kind of "risk of being conscious".

When I compare the sociopath-average-schizophrenic trio, I feel as though I'm looking at very different elements of the 'average' thought process. The person suffering from Schizophrenia thinks differently, not just in terms of hallucinations and other frank symptoms; they are often HIGHLY driven by surroundings, and can range from hysterical to catatonic.

There is something in that continuum from impulsive internally driven behavior, somewhat random and pattern-seeking (and failing) behavior, that mixed seems to be the 'norm'. I'd argue that the former and latter lack a degree of freewill that could be argued for a 'healthy' individual (i.e. not a sociopath, nor schizophrenic). If we consign these to "abnormalities", then it's just as you say, points on the bell curve, but if we consider these to be inevitably linked not to our genome alone, but consciousness and sentience... do you see where I'm going? Ignore psychotic symptoms for a moment and consider the high functioning sociopath and schizophrenic, both of which are predictable percentages of humanity and seem to always have been so.

For a random genetic variety issue, or evolutionary 'experiment' it's terribly constant and has been for a long time. Remember, you can have profoundly emotionally stunted people, lacking empathy who are not sociopaths. You can have people with a range of schizoid/schizophreniform disorders who are in the end, very little like Schizophrenics; when properly treated the former are "normal", the latter are not. I hate to say normal, but for the sake of brevity I am... anyway... what is it that makes those two disorders so constant, so persistant, and so unlike other mental illness?

Perhaps they are examples of the constraints top-down, or bottom-up failing in some profound way, and if so, it implies a combination of the two in a "normal" person. Depresed, anxious, manic, schizoid, psychotic... you don't find the same persistance of thought disorder that is a CONSTANT once the acute issue is dealt with. I find that more than a little fascinating, and why I wonder if the approach you outline is sufficient, in that it seeks an answer, rather than a gray area between reductionism and your view.

 

[apeiron]

For a random genetic variety issue, or evolutionary 'experiment' it's terribly constant and has been for a long time. Remember, you can have profoundly emotionally stunted people, lacking empathy who are not sociopaths. You can have people with a range of schizoid/schizophreniform disorders who are in the end, very little like Schizophrenics; when properly treated the former are "normal", the latter are not. I hate to say normal, but for the sake of brevity I am... anyway... what is it that makes those two disorders so constant, so persistant, and so unlike other mental illness?

I think you are seeking too simple a view of dysfunction. I would say the normal brain is more like a minestrone soup and there are a lot of ingredients that could be under-represented or over-represented and so unbalance the flavour.

But there is a very simple model of why "faulty" genes persist stabily in gene pools - the standard sickle cell anaemia model. So a little bit of "dysfunction" may be part of the essential variety. We could ask how genes produce gay brains too. That seems even more of a challenge to simple minded genetics.

Dyslexia, discalculia. People who are unco. Who actually ends up representing normal?

Brain development would in fact to seem to have an alarming number of degrees of freedom. So it is probably a good thing that our physical and social worlds enforce such strong constraints on our actions. Between them, they create much greater actual conformity than would otherwise exist.

A lot of the things you describe are really modern mental diseases. What was just borderline odd in the highly constrained life of previous ages can flower into full glorious psychopathy given the freedoms of the modern era.

 

[Lievo]

It is you who has been simply relying on your personal standing rather than making arguments backed by references (and undermining that standing by dishonest behaviour like editing posts).

No it's you who self-promoted yourself, and in a ridiculous way (I've talk to Chalmer!). Don't count I will do the same.

You also insulted me several times, and others too, and you're again insulting me by pretending it was dishonest to edit my poost, even though I let an explicit note of what I had change.

That's enough. You win. Place as much bull **** as you want, I won't correct you anymore.

 

[apeiron]

No it's you who self-promoted yourself, and in a ridiculous way (I've talk to Chalmer!). Don't count I will do the same..

Poor Lievo! You asked me if I had talked to Chalmers. I just replied honestly to your out-of-the-blue enquiry. And you shut up rather quickly after that.

You also insulted me several times, and others too, and you're again insulting me by pretending it was dishonest to edit my poost, even though I let an explicit note of what I had change.

Whereas you have always been the model of politeness and integrity.

Your edit came after my reply pointing out your failure. Honesty would have been correcting it via a reply in turn.

Honesty would also have involved telling me how it was an MRI breakthrough rather than an animal one (hint: if you had said http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4398, then maybe I could have agreed with you).

Honesty would have further involved answering how fMRI has anything to do with the BCI coma work.

You have had the chance to come clean on so many things so often it could have its own thread.

That's enough. You win. Place as much bull **** as you want, I won't correct you anymore.

So you will be forever that "mysterious neuroscientist"? The one who could never substantiate his claims to a greater expertise than the people he had to deal with.

Again, that would not matter if you could simply make a coherent case for your beliefs, supported by relevant references. But your choice.

 

[Ferris_bg]

Offtopic: Guys, what's your age, really? How can you continue to argue through multiple threads about things not related with the thread subject? Really there should be some rules about that, because flooding the thread in a way like that have not a single positive side. Apeiron, no offense, I really enjoy reading your posts, but you don't see how flawed sometimes your position is and what is more important, you take for granted that your position is the absolute truth. Please let us know if you are from the future, because ignoring other comments and refusing to even consider other positions is not at all philosophy.

Edit: @nismaratwork: I completely agree with you, offtopic posts should not be tolerated!