Strange Loops and Emergent Consciousness
My belief is that the explanations of “emergent” phenomena in our brains - for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will - are based on a kind of Strange Loop, and interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level.
Douglas Hofstadter from “Godel, Escher, Bach”
At least one of these loops exists in the world of mathematics… the “true but unprovable” statements that Kurt Godel proved must exist in any sufficiently complex model. Typographically, these statements will never result from dumbly generating theorems by using rules of inference. Yet, the reason they will not be produced cannot be found in the typography, only in the higher level “meaning” of the statement itself. In a sense, the high level meaning reaches down to exert a condition on the lower level symbols, which then procede to bear out the meaning of the statement.
One can get dizzy thinking about it.
On whether Consciousness actually is an instance of this strange looping behaviour happening in the brain (as opposed to in mathematical systems), I’m not sure I agree. As materialist theories go, this is the one that comes closest to raising the hairs on the back of my neck. It is a beautiful, hard to grasp theory that bears out some of our intuitions. Still, I can’t help but look for the sound of trombone and the smell of roses, and having a hard time seeing where they make their appearance.
Drawing by (who else?) M.C. Escher.
![Is This Boulder Free?
I’ve been thinking about free will lately. People have been “content to agonize” over free will for such a long time because there is a lot of tension in the idea. On the one hand, the idea of free will doesn’t seem to stand up to close examination. Every good philosopher I know either rejects it outright, or changes the definition before accepting it. On the other hand, we can’t help referring to free will in real life. We mean something by it, and it’s tied up with our notion of responsibility.
So here I am still thinking about it!
I think it’s true that there’s some overlap or confusion between the notions of Free, and Unimpeded, and this is what got me thinking about the Boulder…
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Caused, but Unimpeded
Cause, or Influence is also tied up with our notion of what is free. The boulder in the picture above is certainly caused/influenced by the little man pushing it. When it eventually rolls down the slope/off the cliff, we can say that the man caused it to do that.
However, it’s also unimpeded. A brick wall in front of the boulder would be an impediment… it would not be free to roll off the cliff.
I think this situation applies to physical freedom quite often, and what we mean when we describe things as “free to do X”. In common parlance, one can’t deny the truth of “I’m free to drink coffee in the morning”. I’m not saying there’s no cause when I drink coffee. I likely have a mild caffeine addiction. I’ve watched a zillion commercials of people going “sip… ah!” Some collection of things causes me to drink coffee on a particular day.
When we say “I’m free to drink coffee”, I think what we really mean is that I’m unimpeded. Coffee isn’t illegal, or unavailable. No crazy person is watching me and keeping me out of Starbucks. I’m free to drink it.
But Wait, What Makes an “Impediment”?
The brick wall or the crazy person are obviously impediments (to the boulder, and to my drinking coffee respectively). But it gets more complicated. For instance, is my mild caffeine addiction an impediment to my freedom NOT to drink coffee?
Or how about this… the boulder may be free to roll off the cliff, but is the little man an impediment to the boulder rolling right, back down the hill? Is gravity an impediment to the boulder floating straight upward?
It seems like impediments and causes can be mixed up with one another. That makes it problematic to say that physically free things can have causes, but no impediments.
Have What You Like… As Long As It’s Coffee!
So the boulder is free to roll off the cliff, but not back down the hill, and not to float up into the air… it’s free to do exactly one thing.
Given my past conditioning and current mood, I’m free to drink some coffee. My tastes impede me from drinking tea or grapefruit juice, and my addiction impedes me from skipping the beverage all together. I’m free to choose, as long as I choose coffee.
Is this what we mean by freedom? If we can only say “free to do X” for one specific X in any given situation, this seems to violate the spirit of the word “free”. In fact, we might define freedom in general as the state of being free to do more than one thing!
I think this might be how some philosophers have been led to secrecy being important to freedom. In reality, we may have only one choice, but with so many causal factors being secret, we’re ignorant of which “one thing” it is that we’re free to do! Is this a good substitute for what we usually mean by freedom?
To be continued…](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9xhlosrgq1rugavko1_400.png)
![“The Secrecy is Essential to the Freedom of the Agent…”
- Daniel Dennett
Awhile back, I posted an audio clip of Daniel Dennett talking about chess programs, and how it makes sense to say that one “could have” beat the other, even though they’re deterministic programs.
It was a ten minute clip taken out of the full podcast, which was one hour. On listening again, I may have lost some of the clarity of the connection to the topic of Free Will in the interests of brevity. Because I think there is a worthwhile point here, I’m going to take a stab at a written summary.
If you want to find out how chess programs, Secrecy, and Free Will are looped together into one super-meme, click on the read more link…
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Free Will Means Something
If I had to guess, I’d say Dennett believes in physical Determinism. Still, he speaks to justify and define Free Will for the full hour in this talk. Whatever inconsistencies may exist, there are sentences that use the concept of Free Will that really mean something. For example:
I’m more free than a person with bound hands and feet.
In Canada we’re free to criticize our politicians.
An epileptic becomes less free during a seizure.
Unless they’re being difficult (see picture below) anyone, including determinists, will admit that these sentences have meaning and are true. In his talk, I think Dennett’s aim is to find the definition for a Free Will that is philosophical, but that also applies to common uses like those above.
This Heading “Could Be” Shorter
For Dennett, Free Will is tied up with the idea that something “could be” different than it actually is. Even if I sit with my hands in my lap, I’m freer than I would be with bound hands, because I “could” make any gesture I like.
For a physical determinist, this is a tricky issue. An argument could be made that the deterministic conditions leading to my choice to keep my hands still is just as much of a cage as a rope would be. However, Dennett defines what “could be” means in a way that’s compatable with Determinism.
He says that every “could be” statement has an implicit list of mutable conditions. For example, to say that I “could make any gesture” might really mean that I “could make any gesture in a hypothetical world where my thought process was different.”
We must not take this too far. If *any* hypothetical world is allowed, then it would follow that absolutely anything “could be” true. For example, “I could have leapt into the sky and flown to work today” is false, but if we allow hypothetical worlds where Gravity is different, where humans have wings, etc, we may be tempted to call it true. So we must not allow *all* conditions to be mutable, only some.
How do we choose? Which conditions should be mutable? It seems there are an array of answers “right” enough to pass in everyday English. However, Dennett suggests that conditions that are Secret are the ones we should allow to be mutable.
Secret Physical Conditions Should Be Mutable
For example, imagine that Tiger Woods and I both attempted to make a hole-in-one, and we both missed.
“I could have made that shot” I say. My claim is false because I would have to consider a very different hypothetical world, in which non-secret conditions (like my being a uniformly unskilled golfer) are different.
“I could have made that shot” says Tiger. His claim is true, because he only needs to consider hypothetical worlds where the eddies of wind, or the arrangement of the blades of grass is different, and these conditions are secrets to us as we swing our clubs.
Of course, every agent has many secret conditions right inside their own brains (secret to themselves even). I suspect that this is what Dennett would say qualifies them as “agents”.
Chess
To drive his point home, Dennett explains how his definition of “could be” functions well even in clearly deterministic situations. The deterministic situation he chooses is pitting two chess-playing computer programs against each other. The audio of this part of the talk is available in this post.
To cover himself, Dennett allows the programs to use psuedo random number generators (which are also deterministic by the way). He then suggests the two programs play 1000 games against each other. He points out that if the random number generators are restarted from scratch, and 1000 more games are played, they will be the EXACT SAME GAMES as the first time.
Now, we start asking questions, like “Why did program A win game number 611?” Or, assuming program A won the majority of the games, we can ask “Why did program A win more?” Dennett astutely points out that the answer “because it was determined to win” is no answer at all. The true answer, he says, should be something like “because program A is better designed.”
We must ask ourself if program B *could have* won those games. The answer is yes if B wins in a set of “reasonable” hypothetical worlds. Such as:
The random number generator(s) are in a different state.
B misses a really good move by only a small amount (ex if B checks 500 scenarios, but 502 were required).
A notices and makes a really good move by only a small amount (ex if A checks 500 scenarios and the 495th is the good move).
On the other hand, some hypothetical worlds are not allowed in the consideration of whether B could have won:
A or B have different algorithms.
The rules of chess are different.
The random number generator(s) manage to work in B’s favour every time.
The items in this list are evidently false, wheras changes like those in the first list would be secret. Roughly speaking, saying truthfully whether or not these chess programs could have behaved differently (even though they are deterministic) is consistent with Dennett’s definition of “could have”.
The Conclusion in Bullets
All common references to Free Will rely on what “could be” true.
What “could be” true relies on varying some conditions and considering the resulting hypothetical worlds.
Choosing which conditions are allowed to vary is hard.
One mostly consistent choice is that Secret conditions may vary, but others may not.
This use of “could be” may even be applied to obviously deterministic situations, like chess programs, without contradiction.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6en0pCUTl1rugavko1_500.png)
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