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 --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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