Prof Denies Human Free Will

=========================================================The picture caption reads "Resistence is futile. Prof William Provine, ecology and evolutionary biology, argues against intelligent desing and human free will yesterday before an audience of about sixty.Will Provine was my Day Hall apointed "mentor" and advisor. He is responsible to for my education going down rather than up. I will explain as Will had said "I was a vocal opponent of I.D. even before [the movement] began," Provine said at the opening accroding the Sun Staff Writer.In fact the whole thing is really really funny because all this IS is Will NOT saying how dyanmic science controls free will, which is what he told me he thought *MIGHT* happen IN THE FUTURE waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the 80s but confusing an audience memember say, Scott Jackson, who thought "[Provine] seemed to be talking about [volitional] free will".I would like to get a tape of the proceeding but short that I will have to use things like "Choosing doesn't imply free will", he said "Choices are not made freely - there are all kinds of constraints on it."But i can pretty much guarentee that WILL DOES NOT even THINK about what Betrand Russell said in 1918 that I just posted YESTERDAY
EvC Forum: Building life in a lab - Synthetic Biologists
for then HE COULD NOT SAY THERE ARE "all kinds" of constraint on "it". There are not. Of course we might be disagreeing a bit across a period here but it is clear FROM WILL HIMSELF (to me and probably many others) that there must be CONTROL (hence "choice") BY DYNAMICS FIRST. That has never happened since the 80s and it ALL back to "before the movement began".His discussion about human and chimps is at least a public thing will Phil Johnson ~ mid 90s so still nothing new here either.The other quotes look like he has not moved an iota since the 80s dressed up in 90s clothes.I'll look into it a little further but the whole thing smells worse than Amsterdam if I might mix a few meta-what/fors.
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The Cornell Daily Sun vol. 122 No. 7 Front PageThis message has been edited by Brad McFall, 09-05-2005 06:09 PM

Yea that is pretty easy to explain. &, Yes, it is pretty "crazy" to think humans have that much control nervously over other humans (or could have, as I should have, said).I must start off by saying that Bertrand Russell had said that sometimes "words"'just appear' but are not there. I will not use this however in answer to you today unless later someone else really tries to pull the chain in this thread etc. lOLThere is this idea from Paul MacClean(sp?) who asserted back I think in the early 80s at around the same time as "Broca's Brain" came out in paperback that the ANIMAL brain is "triune", including a categorical split of the reptile and mammamal etc, essentially cutting in the medulla oblongotta out.So, if someone says to you that "your spine made you do it" rather than a cortex etc they might be advocating a kind of evolutionary psychology which associates some kind of primal urges or primative instincts to our cold-blooded ansestry... or so they think. Personally I do not know of detailed neurophysiology of reptiles that enables one to particularize such a statement. I have stopped looking after I got rather turned off with perceptrons which are appearing again in artificial intelligence. That is not how the reptile brain looks disseted to me at least.Now the writer using "relfexive" action might be a bit more sophistiacted in the difference of empirical and other kinds of psychology could have been using or thinking of Pavlov and tried that out as well but again the division of a brain three fold or how ever many fold is a generalization. If a neurologist or brain biologist shows me evidence that this seperation supports discussion such as you teacher might have presented it as then I will even "believe" it. I havent seen that kind of evidence.Instead Will Provine, indeed, said something similar to what your teacher apparently said. Your teacher actually "fleshed in" in the rest of the argument by naming hormones etc. Will was not that willing to put his will on the line in the 80s as he only said that there would be "dynamic control" over the will (he did not seperate free from good will). It appears from the article that he AGAIN over 20 years later skipped these things just as fast. An audience memember could not follow his reasoning .Now I did follow his reasoning in the 80s but I just discounted it awaiting evidence. I have not seen it. By only asserting "dynamic control" he was on save ground. There has been since a lot of scholarship after it was found that invariants might not be the key to the discussion to discuss "constraints" and all it appears to me that Will has done as present the elite view sans rasion de etre.I have a spinal cord injury and indeed there are "body motions" that my soma makes these days it never made volitionally before and I never noticed them. I dont think they ever occurred in the past either. But the only real result of lower nervous system activity on my behavior is in slightly altering the length of some social interactions but as people really are generally good natured and many people are sympathetic to injuries AFTER they know it only causes some blushing and embrassement on my part. I can live with that.I hope that helps. If you want a little more science"". I'll look some things up for you. God Bless. Brad.

Nuggin, I didnt know!Wall Mart now is even bigger.We are talking Cornell not Ithaca. YOU know the difference and so does Mammuthus.This is the coffee shop (Collegtown Bagels) however so ... ok...In fact I found New Orleans to bring out more diverse points of view than can be associated in any way with Ithacans. I hope they all survive and do so willingly.

Prophex,I actually went out and BOUGHT some picture space on the web so now I will be able to get anything I need up visually. I havent scanned in the Provine piece but I will next.In this lighter vein, I will also discuss two Cornell Daily Sun editorials on ID which I "bet" were inspired by Will. One came out just before he spoke and one just after. The Dennet piece in the Times however trumps any four of these clippings combined in likely effect. The state of science that has the property to explain form-making and translation in space symbolically (as to the equations referred to or taught at Cornell) is not up to the job of encompassing "most" of the observable evidence. Some elite standard of what is MORE than most is being applied here. I'll dissect this and the two other papers"" later. Thanks for giving this thread some life!!My English teacher also teaches at IC and the organist in my Church is a music teacher at IC. God Bless

What this author fails to notice is that good will can turn the discpline of evolutionary theory into an engine for solving the popuation problem WITHOUT resorting to theological disputes among the people. I'll be the first to admit that this is a difficult idea to bring into the structure of evolutionary theory but that such world views get amalgamated instead seems outside the pail or the pale pile of twisted phone networks.

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The strengths of the ether theory lies in its sober noncommittal attitude; it studies matter by its effects without attempting to penetrate into its interior. Speculation is tempted to fill the ”lacuna’ left by the particle. Pure field theory of matter does it in one way; another is suggested by general relativity theory, for the latter makes it possible to entertain the hypothesis that the grooves of the elementary particles are bottomless, without forcing one to conceive of the particles as actual singularities in the space-time manifold. (I speak here of the channels in the four-dimensional world as if they were grooves in a two-dimensional surface). Indeed general relativity does not prescribe the topology of the world, and it may therefore happen that the wolrd has unattainable ”fringes’ not only toward the infinite but also inwardly. In line with Leibniz’s ideas, the material particle, although imbedded in a spatial environment from which its field effects take their start, would itself then be a monad existing beyond space and time. Hence one may not say, ”Here is a charge,’ but only, ”This closed surface within the field surrounds the charge.’ The inner fringes would be the geometrico-physical basis for the splitting of the world into space and time which takes place within our consciousness, tied as it is to a material body.
Schelling , partially under the influence of Leibniz, has expressed ideas which vaguely anticipate this development. “Thus there ought to be discernable in experience something, “ he says on p 21. of his “Erster Entwurf der Naturphilosophie” (1799; Samtliche Werke, III, p 21, Cotta, 1858) “ which without being in space, would be principle of all spatiality,” This “natural monad” is not itself matter but action, “for which there is no measure but it own product.” Based on the thesis that “ the striving of all original tendencies is toward the filling of space,” he then arrives at the construction of a shapeless fluid - which we today would replace by the field.

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p176Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science. Herman WeylIt can not be completely true if Prophex was trying to associate his teacher’s teaching with Will’s views to assert that it simply WAS Pavlovianism even if that was what the teacher quoted in class. The question, it seems to me, and Pro please don’t hesistate to proclaim anyotherwise if that is the case, is if teachers are teaching misinformation BECAUSE the elite profs are NOT doing their homework, covering up the homework of their students, or simply being authoritative without substance. One teach from authority without the authority being true. (this brings up the issue of what is the relation of science and the government etc).There is no way that Provine could be referring to simple behaviorism. He intends to subsume “choice” under control via constraints. But look. In Will’s Evolution and Ethics Class in 1986 we all had to give oral presentations. I attempted to essentially detail what Weyl had already described above surfically. I named this thing , not a monad, but a “fundamental particle”. I was going a little further than Weyl ( and this can be brought out if I explain other chains of thought of Weyls in terms of my own) by SUBTRACTING the surrounding volume as being TOO MUCH. I started by trying to say that it doesn’t matter where in the nucleus the proton is, so long as it is in the nucleus provided the nucleus is in an atom and atom in a cell a cell in an organism an organism in a deme. At this point where Weyl went to the word ”fringe’ I questioned if the subtraction would include the linnead hierarchy or not and I located the issue of evolution and ethics HERE, not in the choice of not saying what surround the charge for what is a charge. Will and the other faculty member were impressed by ALL that I had to say but you see this distrupts Will’s POSITION that free will does not exist as he can only maintain that dynamically in a science that can assert what the charge is not merely what surrounds any charge. I think the elite science failed to move on, failed its students and/or is thus failing to have high school teachers teach sensitivity to border questions.It will take me some scholarhship to work this up to the issue of symbol manipulation but my dear amphibious poster I will try, for I truly do believe, you, when you said in that other thread that you did not understand what I Had said. I have to give some more thought to posting in a more serious vein, as I don’t think that the ambiguity in the edge, no matter how minimzed remands the form of response that AEA seems to want from me, also elsewhere. The math problem is metric vs geometry but the biological problem is not clear to me short of direct translation of Gould’s rather less than potential position on future utility.Yes love at first sight is troublesome to self-righteous but teaching hormones where fields were clearly thought is wrong. Let’s not confuse the evolution of space with the Microsoft functionality of “filling” right or down!! Heirarchical Thermodynamics can refill any database emptied of contents.Will doesnt believe in free will. I see no evidence that science has been able to dynamically contain this will, goodly free. Science and Will should be more defensive but instead they dont even feell the tension. This leaves the student with either a bad grade or a bad taste even though what is proffered is not bitter. Weyl attempted to place Russel's Kantian personality "in the framwork of Laplacian physics". Provine asserts that Wright is a Laplacian. Therefore the same framework applies syllogistically. WRONG!! The questioning student is proof enough. Politicians can hear the differnce. When will the teachers? The elites know too much for their own good.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 09-06-2005 07:59 PM

Will appears to be offering a repeat performance next Tuesday Night (Oct. 25) from 7:30 PM at 777StewartAve., Ithaca NY, titled ("Evolution and Intelligent Design").There are a few seats open to the public. I will try to get in. I would like to ask him if he has any thoughts that a possible deceleration of evolution from Gladyshev's extension of Gibbs' thought is not but what is causing the error between Dawkins who insists that IC is but the same thing that Gould was trying to dis Cuvier for AND what Pennock accused Behe of moving too fast on AND IS whatver the design argument could become biologically?I have to figure out how to ask this in a less discursive manner however. Any ideas, anyone??If you want a spot contact barmish@cornell.edu

I doubt he is. But it could put him in a compromising position if I get to be in the audience and I phrase the question purely in terms of thermodynamics. He was not at all familiar with Kervran's concept of biological transmutations, when I asked him about THAT in the 80s, even though apparently Kervran was enough well known in his native France, to have had it circulated that he might be up for a Nobel. I guess I didnt suspect how insular science was then.Gladshev's work brings the lie to Hennig's term "vicarying reproductive community" if true. It is possible that the secondary circulatory system in fish and the first natural affinity graph by Agassiz on any fish, reported on by Nelson and Platnick contra Croizat but pro Hennig, reflects not "propinquity by descent" but rather a disjuntion of inherited monoheirarchies of thermostat parameterization dependent on pressure differences of air and water.There is a difference between versimultude and probablity unnoticed if this representation had been properly alledged as I depicted sententially.My current understanding of Gladyshev's work could allow one to collapse a set of molecular combinations into groups that are restricted to certain macrothermodyanmic monohierarchies but are distributed in clade space essentially polyphletically(as per Agassiz drawing being represented as a phylogeny instead).This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 10-19-2005 04:01 PM

The "big guys" are probably going to say something similar to Mayr's chastisment of Waddingtion, to paraphrase, "If you keep generalizing language and biology you might as welll say that the 2nd law of thermodynmics is teleological". This kind of possible response to some question of mine if, might be , but it begs the stage of the science where we find or do not find the aggregates of molecules the statement denotes either postively or negatively. It is even possible if I see my way the mass spectrilization of such post-Gibbsian aggregates that creationists will simply move on from there.I did get an invite. To the event. I was not planning on challenging Will on creationism but only on hierarchical thermodyanmics.That is posible but if the tact is to put a tack in the way getting the material decision that is an error on the part of the current crew. I do not see how macrothermodynamics as it relates to evolution rates MUST be teleological. This does not preclude man from patenting its what appear at this point as conspiring motions (but are not). The issue simply seems to be if the evironmental divisions can not be better categorized by using thermodynamics when investigating otherwisely deployed diverse categorications of forms.You really dont need to figure out how this will "sound" in Janpanese etc. I either crazy or just seeing something others in position of authority refuse to acknowledge IS in the literature or else they dont wear ICR "biblebias" glasses.Look this looks like a fish to me:
Furthermore the pargonal clinamen drawn by the artist looks like a fish scale with a secondary circulatory system ( I did take that book out but will if you want the pic)Instead to get some TIME Hennig takes the curvature in Huxkely's
and finds a wedge of some format between his vicariously different populations of sexually reproducing differences. I assert thatthat wedge is a scale not a triangle.

Propinquity runs through the foreground of these figures but if you invert the black in the first figure into a white representation of fish scales with black marks for attributes of a deviated circulatory system I thought I had seen the remarks necessary to give pressure parameterization to Gladyshev's still qualitative presentation. Seeing quantity is harder than quality unless it is tabulated and added up. We need the molecules to do that. Saying that the 2md law is teleological and thus not worthy of funds belies the error of trying to find the largest species rather than geneus but it PRACTICALLY or pramgatically keeps research from searching out a possibility. My envirnoment is larger than the current economic instantiation of gov supported science and frat boy funded elite university endowments.They can do this because Nelson and Platnick framed up a bird's eye or suns position view of the earth not an earth's position of its own life (I do not mean GIA). This is clear from page 481-2. I find it INSTRUCTIVE that Croizat wrote to Craw that "either chance dispersal or vicariance is to go". In the 80s I knew more about Croizat than anyone at Cornell it so seems to me and that was by only reading him for about 6months. Liebherr who was actually trying to use his method seemed to not follow as many rabbit trails as I was doing by then.The introduction to the first pic in this post N&P was on page123
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Material from "Phylogenetic Systematics" by Willi Hennig and "Systematics and Biogeography" by Nelson and PlatnickI will give you quotes from Hennig and Nelson.

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The idea of "natural affinity" in the sense of "propinquity of descent" early and easily lent itself to graphic representation i the form of a branching diagram - soon to be called a "family tree", "phylogenetic tree", "phyletic tree," etc. An early geneological diagram of this kind was published by Duchesne in 1766 (figure 2.61), another by Lamarck in 1809 (figures 2.62,2.63). A similar diagram, the first of many published in this style during the next 130 years, was published by Agassiz in 1844. Interestingly, Agassiz's digram (figure 2.64){the one I, BSM, copied above} was not intended to reflect evolutionary relationships, for Agassiz was not an evolutionist(Patterson 1977). Another, entirely theoretical, diagram was published by Darwin..."

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p123 "Systematics and Biogeography Cladistics and Vicariance"I am rather solidly being able to establish in my own mind that this diagram can not be so narrated into the bunch of family grams. Croizat wrote a later paper, in the early 80s, if I recall correctly asking people who wrote on vicariance to maintain proper citations. This has NOT been done. In the late 80s no one was really teaching much vicariance but since then, that changed and yet no one teaches the senistivity to the word itself. "Barrier" is not always the correct denotation.I found Kant's 1800 Logic text p 72 (Philosophical Library 1963) helpful in keep the thoughts clearly seperated when not suspended on principle. Kant said in chapter "X"(Look closely at B.Russel's chapter "X" in his book on Principles of Mathematics and the History of logic)

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To the doctrine o the certainity of our knowledge belongs also the doctrine of the knowledge of the probable, which is to be regarded as an approximation to certainty.

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By probability we are to understand an assent from inadequate reasons, which however bear a greater proprotion to the adequate reasons than do the reasons for the opposite. By this definition we distinguish probability (probabilitas) from mere (versimultude), which is an assent from inadeaquate reasons in so far as these are greater than the reasons for the opposite."

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What I mean to say is that series of fish fossils are not arguably the same objects as sequences of fish fossils with other "more complex"(Sic!) coldbloods and warm bloods (going away not to Tunicates and Vent Worms etc om the sketching).I will quote Hennig on individuality, reality, Woodger's difference from Russel, and SQUARE methodical beginings.

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It is more difficult to determine the particular individuality character of the species. There can be no doubt that , like the higher categories of the phylogenetic system or any other divisional hierarchy . Thus all categories of phyogenetic system are characterized by individuality and reality, in contrast to the abstract and timeless categories of the morphological system . Our conclusion that all categories of the phylogenetic system havge individuality and reality is true, of course, only if our system reflects accurately the divisional hierarchy to which its elements belong in nature”p83

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by Willi Hennig Phylo-Genetic SystematicsOrganisms DO NOT have perpendiculars in them. No one has defined the possible one in the population. Is it any wonder that Russel went from one woman to the next and STILL claimed he was "looking for certainty?" I could not do that. What Hennig and Nelson wrote was inadequate although it did begin something for computer use in biology.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 10-27-2005 11:57 PM

You were not off topic there is a difference between Will and Rawlings. see news todayin the SUN.

I need to get the quotes from Hennig on individuality and reality out so that you can read/listen for the science and not the politics.
It is important to understand the good will of Will with respect to primate phylogeny & bacterial phylogeny. I was not affected by this in the 80s because I had my own personal and kept to myself idea about how the mind materially works. It was wrong but I had it nonetheless.The evening was delightful. I knew all the topics presented quite intimately and so enjoyed everything even the quip by Will that he could not proceed until he "clicked" onto Phil's head on the projection in front of us.I have said in other links what this article today said about Behe but the person writing it, one of only about 30 others there, was reading only for the DIFFERENCE of creation and evolution and not for the science underlying the rhetoric.Will had many of the mannerism of the Stanford debate but I can not see that his position has changed any bit since the 80s. That is probably a very good thing. I think it is. I dont know if he will read any of the Gladyshev papers I gave him. He was being his usual curteous self. He knows where to reach me if he wants more.I learned about how he came to disbelieve in pursposeful evolution by reading Dobshanky AND THEN finding Chardin quoting Dob. Aside from the individual reality of phylogram depictions, he has quite conviently found it necessary (by talking with Lyn Margulis etc)to find that the "tree of life" is not valid, hence easily avoiding my citation of Aggasiz's fish but he said he recently aired new book material of his that claims that drift in the Wrightian sense or any other did not exist. I would likely be found to have or be writing this part of evolutionary theory if macrothermodyanmics HAS a thermostat. I suspect it does if only that there once was a fish in tank in Faraday's Cambridge.Will opened with an interesting observation of Darwin on Asa Gray and excursions into how to retract papers on the subject. He also reported that he retracted a paper on free will where when he and Raup went to Biola to honor Johnson...He may be debating him later this year again at Cornell.The reporter for the Sun made it seem by quoting that Will thinks that one can be a Christian and be an evo if one disses miracles but in truth it was Raup said that. Raup said that one must "give up something". Provine let that go.If you ever get a chance to study me and will you will find that where Will says "yes" I say "no" and where I say - NO - he said "blank". I even got to finish a sentence for him, as I did as his student. A question was asked how his change from Dobshanky and Chardin affected the four generation of past Presbyterian clergy in his family; Will said his sister was clear (on that) that his family was ( long pause) in their graves. I said "turning". He said, "WRONG!" try "writhing".I heard him say how he differed from Mayr once again. This time I understood. He also said that Richard Lewontin stuck it in for him on the drift thing. That is what I need to read. I can care less for issues surrounding rejection of gene pools and family trees.I will get the Hennig material so you can read around the simple question of what do you believe, later. The crux of Will's antiID is simply to challenge between bacterial and primate phlyogeny if creationsts are willing to diss systematics as a whole.Ben my memory did fail a bit, it was "RUSE" not "RAUP" above. I did not change the above proper noun as it might be material. For me it is not.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 10-28-2005 03:38 PM

There is this difference between Provine and Rawlings. It is not right that that happened to me (you name it) because they differ about "intellectual guidance" at Cornell. Will simply thinks that ID is not something he would talk about in a Presidential Address. It was an easy target/shot.In fact Rawlings did not "damn" it earlier than the report I provided. It was in his thoughts before he was confronted by a reporter but his idea of religion and Cornell extends to contention that Civil War Cornell is the same then as it is today. That it has held up well and is to be accepted for that. ID if true would mean that this is a wrong time to take the perspective "back" to, Will knows better, but first ID must be more than some internal cadre.Will noted this difference quite starkly by calling the lack of participation from the audience compared to his high school audiences as a consequence of CU students being "repressed". I looked back at them. They only smiled.You have to understand , Will does not believe there IS free will. So do his students, apparently from the one I talked with.Will does have a point on that. If free will is such a big deal why isnt God a bigger deal?I am not interested in the politics of Johnson tricking Ted Kennedy but only if we can get a hierarchical theory of evolution that can help solve the human population issue not divide the citizenry any forther than it further has farther. Will's position is not the problem Rawlings' might be if they can just decide HOW students are to be guided. I was not.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 10-27-2005 07:18 AM

It is not true that Cornell is only still "godless." Baer's voice can be heard here from time to time. Rawlings DID try to structure his talking as sectarian vs nonsectarian. What we have being dicussed now is this above. which I think Will only figuratively manuvered around with his above. Instead what we get along with the tiny voice of Baer is simply this picture. The only difference is that I would be on the left side of the picture in real space and time in the evenings in the 80s and now I am on the left side only in the mornings. So in so far as there is any cve it does not even exist in the margins I made here above.
I would like to see the discussion of Jefferson continued
EvC Forum: talking to god
but the issue of Islamic people and their religion as in the mind of ONE individual (Phil Johnson) is the reason that Will
RETRACTED his publication on FREE WILL from the conference where he presented it. WIll is using this as the Carrot and Stick rather than the pillars seperating Wright from Bateson in the picutre. On reading Kant's introducation to logic and applying it to what everyone has available on EVC I was lead to the inevitable conclusion that evc is destined currently for being collectively in a state of mental retraction. After seeing Will after so many years, what did I really and actually hear?, his reason for being in a state of retraction!!!
http://EvC Forum: The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma -->EvC Forum: The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma References-
The Cornell Daily Sun
Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology by William B.Provine
Genetics and the Origin of Species retitled as Genetics of the Evolutionary Process by Theodosius DobshanskyThis message has been edited by Brad McFall, 11-11-2005 07:55 AM