File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 243


Date: Wed, 11 Feb 98 23:24:11 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: abortion







		Justin,


	First, chaos is not deterministic.  Nothing that is unknowable and
random can be deterministic.  Chaos has tendencies, that's all.  


	
	The role of chaos does not make much sense if you think of the
mind as one mind.  The mind is many minds.  All of these are stimulated
and create simultaneous mirrors of reality.  They, in turn, stimulate the
other minds creating patterns and tendencies in the minds they stimulate
based on their independent perception.  Not only that, but all these
minds, from the very conscious to the very sensory, stimulate themselves
because of the chaotic nature of the nervous system.  In this way they
change the structure of their "mirror worlds" of perception autonomously. 
They then stimulate the other minds on the basis of a self-modified model
of reality. 


	We know this happens because we dream.  When we dream we
self-generate a model of reality that, if it is a particularly moving
dream, influences the way we react to external reality.  What is free will
but acting on self-generated models of reality?  If one imagines that the
process of acting on the "dreams" - self-generated mirror worlds to
external reality - happens constantly in the brain and at many levels of
the brain (spinal chord, low brain, mid-brain, cortex, left brain, right
brain, etc.) one sees will beginning to arise.



	The key is more than one level of chaotically self-stimulating
mirror-mind.  We don't know what we are going to think from one minute to
the next - not in any of our minds.  Neither does the external universe
"know" what we are going to think.  We are our own chaotic, independent
universe with, if you like, chaotic sub-universes within us.  All these
universes are independent in perception and self-stimulation, but
interdependent in function and mutually influential. It is impossible to
know which is the "true' one because each one is "true" from its own point
of view. Furthermore, they can never be synchronized causally because they
are chaotic systems.  Brain number 1 does not always stimulate brain
number 2 which stimulates brain number 3 after a given stimulus.  Brain
number 1 may already have been stimulated by brains 4 and 5 before it gets
a chance to do its first stimulation.  



	"Will" is not the tricky bit.  The tricky bit is choice.  How do
we choose (if indeed that word is appropriate) which self-generated
reality to act upon.  Of course that is the problem of consciousness
itself. Frankly, I don't have an answer. If I did I would probably write a
book.  I think that the answer lies in the fact that choice may be a
paradoxical concept.  When does Zeno's Achilles "choose" to pass the
turtle? 



	When I find myself in a settled state over the concept of choice,
I like to remember the Monty Hall problem.  I remember what it felt like
to get it wrong, and then what it felt like to get it right and then I
ponder what it was that I couldn't see when I was getting it wrong.



	In case you have never heard of the problem or heard it called
something else, I'll give it to you:



	There are three curtains.  One has a new car behind it.  If you
choose that curtain, you win the car.  Monty knows which one that is.  You
choose a curtain and it remains closed. Monty chooses another curtain and
opens it, revealing no car.  You are now left with two closed curtains to
choose from.  Monty will now give you a lot of propositions but they all
come down to the same choice:  Should you stay with the curtain you chose
first, or should you switch? 



	More later, in case anybody hasn't ever done this problem.




	peace




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