Eise

The higher the energy of the particle, the bigger the chance that it will tunnel through. And higher voltage means higher energy for the particle. Maybe this diagram helps a little to get the idea: Now imagine that the particle has more energy (= more voltage), so in the diagram, the wave is higher than the potential barrier. And in your case of aluminium oxide, the voltage is much higher than the potential barrier. So you will not be 'quantum executed' but executed in the old classical way.

By applying low voltage. Every capacitor has a maximum voltage. To electrocute somebody you need a high voltage. High enough to break through the aluminium oxide layer. I think it will even be disrupted, so you do not even need the quantum tunnel effect to explain your execution.

So can you tell me what this methodology is? Please also give a few examples, e.g. how does philosophy study the physical world in contrast with how physics studies it? I really would appreciate you answer this, because I think it is at the root of our dissent. Take your time, please. And how do you know what valid premises are? Where do they come from? Science? Philosophy itself? How is this validity established? And to paraphrase one of your following points: who decides which premises are valid? Well, I do not think that analysing our ways of thinking is the same as intellectual freewheeling. You seem to equate philosophy to a body of definite conclusions, where it is in fact a continuing activity, because in time our way of thinking continuously is evolving. It seems to me you do. You claim to be an 'Authority'. More seriously: why should helping to clarify discourses, its concepts and presuppositions lead to a dictatorial attitude? Absolutist regimes hate philosophers, because they are well equipped to debunk their world views, ethics and politics. Wow. Clarifying discourse helps finding answers, but does not necessarily provides the answers. If it would be that, then philosophy would become dictatorial. If philosophers would come to power, the result would be disastrous in general, because they confuse philosophy as an analysing activity with 'Philosophy' as a set of results (Leninism anybody?), and everybody should follow the 'Truth'. Loyalty is the last thing you need in philosophy. As in any other discipline one needs intellectual freedom, to go there where your honest rational investigation leads you. Eh? Me not loving philosophy? (Well, maybe I do not love 'Philosophy'...) You know philosophy and science made some progress since the times they were seen as the same? Yes. However I did not mean to say that philosophy must be science, but when it does contradict established science, it is definitely on the wrong track. I am not a genius. I have a university degree in philosophy, that's all. Most ideas I present here are not original from me: I just think these ideas are correct, and I know arguments against and in favour of them. But I learned a way of thinking that is still strong living in me. Just compare with any other academic discipline: when you have studied, you are a specialist, a good, bad or mediocre specialist. As I am not working as a philosopher, you can conclude that I do not belong to the upper ten. So I better wait till you get your Nobel price for your Consciousness Research. Is this an example of your clear thinking? An academic philosopher is somebody who studied philosophy at an academy. How many of those people you mention have studied philosophy at a university? Then stop being personally yourself: let your arguments speak, not your authority that you are a 'Philosopher' who studies 'Consciousness'.

I hate to say this (well, not really...) but it is useful to read postings completely. My posting was a reaction pure at Gees' posting. I just called you as witness.

I assume that is meant for me. (noticed you gave me a neg-reppoint). However, it is not more personal than what you write yourself. So I agree with dimreepr here: Where I think I did not insult you. I am just critical about the claims you make about yourself. Right, that really is an important difference. I think it stems from the idea that humans are superior to non-human animals. Rationality, seen as the highest capacity, distinguishes between humans and animals. E.g. Descartes saw animals as a kind of machines, without consciousness. With that I still agree, but on other grounds. Only when inner states of a system are included as input of the system, there is a chance that AI becomes conscious. As I said before, your argument for sentience, namely that organisms 'have a drive for self-preservation' is very poor. 'Self-preservation' does not mean that there is a self. It just means that a dynamic system can change its environment, or move to another one, just that it can persevere. Does an autonomous vacuum cleaner has consciousness because, if it runs out of electricity, moves to an electrical outlet? This you could also call 'self-preservation': it enables the vacuum cleaner to go on. The 'philosophical zombie' is just a weird idea. Just from SEP, you see two highly disputable steps to take the idea seriously: First, that one can really conceive of what a zombie would be. Per definition of a philosophical zombie, there is no way to distinguish a zombie from a conscious person. A zombie behaves exactly as a conscious person, but it is not conscious. So it should report about internal states (otherwise you would soon recogise the difference between a real person and a zombie), but at the same time it has no inner states, per its definition. So I consider everybody who says he can conceive the idea of a zombie as a liar. As second step, one should accept that what one can conceive of, is also really possible. Zombies really could exist, because one can conceive it. This is a highly disputable metaphysical move, that I personally cannot take seriously. It reminds me of Anselm's ontological proof for God's existence. I am reminded of the very short story 'An unfortunate dualist', by Raymond Smullyan. With the idea of a zombie, one could see the poison in it as means to change in a zombie. Nobody notices, but you are not conscious anymore. Read it. It is funny, and thoughtful.

Don't you think? From here. Please discuss, with good arguments of course.

This made me suspicious. Here is why:

Definitely not. For the study of reality we have the sciences. Philosophy studies the ways we actually think, and the ways we should think to come to valid or practical results. I assume they called you that because you have shown these people that you ask questions that go beyond what we normally think about. That's fine. But what I miss in your postings is philosophical rigour. To name three examples: you are not precise in the definitions of the concepts you use; and as my remark above, you mix up science and philosophy; and then you should counter other philosophers who have well argued viewpoints that differ from your's. So I think it is no wonder that in the list of kinds of people you mention one category is missing: academic philosophers.

Gell-Mann had a lot of interests. Just to give an example: do you know anybody who really read Finnegan's Wake? Well obviously he did, and it was the book from which he got the idea for naming these funny subatomic particles 'quarks'. So I assume he knew the Buddhist Eightfold path. (Oh, btw Gell-Mann name it the 'Eightfold way', missed that one.) Wikipedia.

One of the founders of the standard model, one of the greatest particle-physicists of the 60s and 70s, has died. I remember him from a book I read when I still was at school: The scientist, from the Time-Life series. The discovery of the Omega-minus was given as an example of how scientists get to their discoveries. Gell-Mann, together with Yuval Ne'eman, predicted its existence. Gell-Mann gave his theory the name 'eightfold path'. I don't know if quarks were already implicit in his theory, or that he later got the idea that the existence of quarks would explain the symmetries he found.

Pity enough I do not remember clearly, but I found a few things in the Internet Encyclopedia of philosophy, under 'Analytic Philosophy', and there search for 'positivism'.

Just a few random thoughts... I think one should distinguish between the result (e.g. a table of random numbers) and how the result was obtained. Say, I have two tables of random numbers, and a statistician analyses them, and concludes that both tables are truly random. Now these lists were created in totally different ways: one was created using 'truly random' quantum processes, the other a good pseudo-random computer algorithm that in itself is not dependent on other random processes (thermal noise, radio noise etc). So the pseudo-randomiser is deterministic, but the result indistinguishable by statistical analysis of the result. So in my opinion, there is no contradiction between a deterministic process and randomness, at least from a practical point of view. However, the importance of random numbers in e.g. cryptography is not the statistical distribution, but exactly this unpredictability of what the next number will be. A code-hacker shouldn't get a clue about what the next number will be, and a strictly mathematical algorithm does not suffice for that. Contrast this with the following: I have a truly, unpredictable random number generator, but I write the results in a table. Now when I use this table in the order the numbers were generated, to pick the next random number does not change that they are truly random numbers. However, if the code-hacker somehow gets a copy of this list, we have the situation that the numbers are completely and perfectly random, but also perfectly predictable by the code-hacker. And now to get to quantum physics again: we have the Bohm-interpretation of quantum mechanics that is strictly deterministic. However, Copenhagen- and Bohm-interpretation are empirically equivalent. How is that possible? I think it is exactly in this respect: in the Bohm-interpretation a quantum measurement depends on all particles in the universe, and so predictions are practically impossible. So even if quantum events would be deterministic, it does not help the code-hacker because he is not able to predict what the next number will be. @koti: maybe we should distinguish between random1 and random2?

Ghideon, I think your forgot the third measure, namely that there are 'two Ligo's', and a Virgo. If not all three measure the same effect at nearly the same time, it is something local.

Please stop these caricatures of what philosophy is. Science, as an activity, is not just what we know, it is also its hypotheses that wait for empirical evidence or falsification. And hypotheses are what we don't know. Yet. I think you both conflate old-fashioned metaphysics with what (modern) philosophy is. If you are so fond of empirical evidence, then please look what modern philosophers do: I guess you both never did. It has nothing to do with your slogans. At least, I never learned, or speculated, why the universe is as it is during my academic education in philosophy. And as an example of what I know from philosophy: that there are different concepts of what free will is, and that we should clear about these when discussing about it.

To conclude from 'self-preservation' to having a sentient self, is like asking what rains in 'it rains'. Say you find a raw diamond in a field, and put it on a scale, you find it weighs 20 grams. But then somebody reacts, and says you must clean it first, the diamond itself might weigh less, e.g. 18 grams. Does that mean that a diamond has a 'self'? You lay heavily on the spell of our daily language use.

I thought I illustrated just that with my 'story'. So let's extend it a little. This is the road: A-City--------------------------B1----------B2---------B3---------B4----------B5--------------------B-Town The B's are the bridges, all built 70 years ago according the same design. The problem: traffic and the weight of trucks, tractor etc have increased, and the bridges are not built for heavy weights. So to avoid problems two measures are taken: the road is only allowed for vehicles below 5 tons (5000kg), and sensors are built at the bridges that issue an alarm when the weight on the bridges is higher than this 5 tons. One day, the alarm goes of for B1, a while later at B2 etc. However, it is slower than one would expect from normal traffic. So the field engineer, living in B-Town drives to B5 and waits. And yes, after a while a slow moving tractor with a heavy loaded trailer crosses B5, and it is heavier than the 5 tons. The farmer gets a fine. And this happens a few times. On another day the same phenomenon happens: alarms go off from B1 to B2, etc, The field engineer goes to B5 again, he waits and waits, but no heavy vehicles pass the bridge. So he reports back to the monitoring authority that there must be an error in the alarming system. In fact, of course it was a traffic jam caused by a minor accident between B1 and A-City. After a while the car involved in the accident is put aside, and the traffic jam starts to dissolve. But the congestion still slowly moves backwards, about as slow as a tractor. And as the bridges are longer than 5 vehicles, and every vehicle happens to have a weight of one ton, the alarms go off. So what can we conclude: There is a clear physical effect: the alarms go off, the weight on the bridges really is more than 5 tons. There is an illusion of a heavy vehicle moving from B1 to B5. So the congestion of course is real, the illusion is that it is caused by one slow vehicle moving from B1 to B5, where in fact it is caused by traffic moving from B5 to B1. So the illusion is that the alarms are not caused by one thing (a heavy vehicle) that is moving from B1 to B5, but by a process that occurs due to a moving pattern of many vehicles together. Now the naive neurologist is like the field engineer who says that there must be an error in the monitoring system: consciousness does not have physical effects. The error is that he sees consciousness as a thing, something like the 'command room', a soul, or the mind, which he clearly sees, does not exist as a thing: there is no tractor. On the other side, the process is real, and has physical effects. The not so naive neurologist of course sees this. The 'thingy tractor' is an illusion. But consciousness, and its causal powers, are not. As a Buddhist (if you are...) you might recognise the illusion: it is the independent existence of the soul, or self, like the illusionary tractor. I hope I have shown that it is a causal agent (the alarms really go off), but yes, they are different categories: the tractor is a thing, the congestion is a process, built up from a moving pattern of things. Yes, you could see it like that. We are observers that happen to observe other people, not at the neurological level (unless you work as a neurologist) but at the global level of an acting person, acting because of his motivations and (presumed) knowledge. As a remark: I have nothing against neurologists doing their work. I have something against neurologists who think they are justified in making philosophical statements.

I noticed that there is some bug in the forum software. Look at this: You see? I just wrote the posting, but my last visited is May, 7th. I noticed this also in other profiles, so it is not an error just when I am looking at my own profile.

Yeah. And I once lost a posting, because I did not tick that checkbox. I was writing a posting, was interrupted, and only after more than an hour I wrote further. But when I pressed 'Submit Reply' I got the message 'You are not logged on' or something like that. If I remember correctly, when I I logged in again, my later additions were gone... Maybe it was even everything. So I think this would be the best way: use 'Remember me'', and have your browser delete all cookies when you close it. So the combination of Strange's advice, and that of Stringjunkie, is the ideal combination. It has one additional advantage: by having to type in your password once a day, you will remember it in the end. (OK, beecee logs in at least 10 times a day, don't you? ). Real cases I encountered at other fora: users whose email address (with which they opened their forum account) was infiltrated, and they had to open a new one. Then, a few months later, their computer broke, and they got a new one. So they have to login again, but because they always had 'Remember me' activated, they forgot their password, and their password could not be retrieved anymore, because you need your email address for it. So they had to open a new account.

Yes, because this 'cog in the machine' is itself neurological activity. But your metaphor is a bit meager. As I said some postings above, it is not a 'one step' emergence, in contrast with the backwards moving congestion in traffic jams. Just to extend the traffic jam example a little. Assume a road has a few old bridges, and because the bridges are old, they are monitored for the weight of the traffic. Now you can imagine what happens when there is much traffic: first there is a maximum weight on the last bridge, then on the one before the last etc. So if all the weight readings are monitored centrally, the operator seems to see something is moving backwards on the road. Now he sends a field engineer to investigate, but being an ex-neurologist, he looks at the cars only, and reports back that nothing is moving backwards. So what we have: a real physical phenomenon (unusual heavy weight moving backwards), that is not visible looking at only individual cars. So physical effects due to emergent phenomena can go together very well. Now imagine that we have not one abstraction level (from individual cars to congestions of cars), but many more (10? 100?) in the brain. Then of course everybody gets lost. So a 'cog in the machine'? Principally, yes, practically endless more subtle. And as soon as we are on the level where we can talk about reasons, decisions, and actions, we can simply define what free will is: decisions according my reasons, actions according my decisions.

That is not quite what I am saying. The way you write it leaves the door open to 'magic'. The 'antecedents' are physical, and 'vlaham!', the result is 'magical consciousness'. Consciousness is completely implemented in the brain, like software on a computer. Close again... This other 'space' is just a higher description level of what the brain does. Yes, but the ethical reasons are just another 'drive' (from the biological view, not the moral view of course) that is implemented in your brain. It is a question of 'which drive wins': the lust for meat, or your ethical concerns.

Just to add. Where I agree that Hossenfelder is wrong, the way this article argues why is really even worse: Bold by me.

So as soon you have a purpose, your actions to reach that purpose are not free anymore? I would say that if your are not too strongly attached to your purposes, so strong that it overrules all other purposes (OCD?), you have free will.

Not to mention the motivation of something else. Where do think free will resides on the bell curve? Do you even know your self what you are asking? "Where does 'free will' reside on the 'free-not free' Bell curve?" The only consistent, but meaningless, answer would be: "It resides at the free will end.' Try again. Or let it be... (speaking words of wisdom...).

Which bell curve?

I would explain it in the following way. Mass has 2 obvious properties: resistance against acceleration, and gravity. Both are proportional to the mass of the object (the feather and the hammer in this case): Resistance against acceleration is described by Newton's law: F = mhammer * a Gravity is expressed by F = G Mmoon * mhammer / distance2. So now rewrite number one as. a = F / mhammer. So you know what a = (G Mmoon * mhammer / distance2 ) / mhammer = G Mmoon / distance2 . As you see, the mass of the hammer plays no role anymore. Of course with the feather it is the same. So both have the same acceleration. For the curvature of the moon, it is also just the same for the feather and the hammer. Of course they both have their individual mass, and with that a very tiny gravity field. But it is negligible with the gravity of the moon.