Re: determinism, freewill, chaos, and circular causality
- From: "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemore2@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 15:50:40 -0400
I thought that determinism, free-will, etc. were not worth talking about.
Odd, then, that you suddenly choose to talk about it and your criticism of
Skinner has focused on the one sentence you seem to have read - a statement
of Skinner's commitment to determinism couched in terms of "autonomous man."
"feedbackdroid" <feedbackdroid@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1145213220.743272.30670@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As I am continuing my adventures in reading on the issues of complexity
and cybernetics, in order to get an overview of these subjects, I
looked at "Turbulent Mirror", 1989, by John Briggs and David Peat,
about chaos. This has some interesting comments regarding certain
issues voiced on this forum ...
pg 76: "... the scientists of chaos have discovered that determinist
systems which maintain themselves by oscillation, iteration, feedback,
limit cycles (systems including most everything of interest to us) are
vulnerable to chaos and face an indeterminate (unpredicatable) fate if
pushed beyond critical boundaries ...".
Later, the discussion is heavily about Prigogine and the idea of
"bifurcation", which is where system response trajectories successively
split into separate possible pathways as some parameter is increased.
The trajectories bifurcate again and again, until at some point total
chaos ensues. In short, such systems go from ordered responses on one
end to total chaos on the other, but can exhibit 100s of different
chaotic "attractors" [modes of self-organized operation] inbetween.
pg 143: "... in Prigogine's scheme of things, 'bifurcation' ... is an
essential concept. A bifurcation in a system is a vital instant when
something as small as a single photon of energy, a slight fluctuation
in [a system parameter], .... [the butterfly effect, etc] ... is
swelled by iteration to a size so great that a fork is created and the
system takes off in a new direction .... At its bifurcation points, the
system undergoing a flux is, in effect, being offerred a 'choice' of
orders. The internal feedback of some of the choices is so complex that
there is a virtual infinity of degrees of freedom...".
pg 144: "... At each bifurcation point in our system's past, a flux
occurred in which many futures existed. Through the system's iteration
and amplification, one future was chosen and the other possibilities
vanished **forever** [my emphasis]. Thus our bifurcation points
constitute a map of the irreversibility of time...".
pg 145: "... Each decision made at a branch point involves an
amplification of something small. Though causality operates at every
instant, branching takes place unpredictably. Prigogine says, "This
mixture of necessity and chance constitutes the history of the system".
It also constitutes the system's creativity. The ability to amplify a
small change is a creative lever...".
.
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