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The grail machine: Three The physical construction of free will

by Rolf Mifflin

Abstract: The mind can be described as a system whose information-processing is based

on the creation of information. Amind Theory is the description of the mind through its

capability to create information by non-classical means. That creative ability is the basis for free

will in nature, defined more specifically for thinking machines by the majuscular term Free Will.

Mechanical devices called Resolving Switches (RS) then provide the basis of Free Will for

computer-like systems called grail machines.

Table of contents

1: AI and Amind

2: Free Will

3: Two modes of causation

4: Defining Free Will

5: Systems evaluated for Free Will

6: More intuitive examples of Free Will

7: How free is Free?

8: Constructing Free Will

9: Resolving Switches

10: Binary Resolving Switches

11: More complex RS

12: Resolving Switches in biological systems

13: Active and passive Free Will

1: AI and Amind

My purpose in this series of essays is to show, through a progression of definite

steps, the mechanical construction of artificial minds as well as the idealized construction

of our own minds. As I develop the mechanics of thinking machines, I plan to identify

the necessary logical distinctions and insights as they become central to the discussion.

The first idea for explication by these essays is that of free will. The first devices

to be discussed will be the Resolving Switches. These Switches are the central

mechanism of free will and the essential creative device forming the cornerstone of the

mind. RS are quantum-mechanical devices allowing the creation of information whole

cloth through a separation of exactable causes from partially-exactable cause. Though

they are non-classical devices, they will be of startling simplicity in both concept and

design.

On the nature of these devices and the idea of free will which they epitomize

depends the distinction that I make between artificial-intelligence (AI) theory and

artificial-mind (Amind) theory. One might argue that Amind theory is implied in the

predicates of AI, but I make the distinction as a deliberate recognition of the two

disparate methodologies on which the two systems' physical devices are based. Amind

asserts that the creation of information is the central mechanism of the mind. This

creative ability is formally identical to the action of Resolution in the temporal

assumptions underlying ZF+ (described in The grail machine: Two). Amind follows this

path after considerations formed over the Gödelian paradox led to the postulation of grail

machines (described in The grail machine: One). Just as a grail machine is a Turing

machine with Unresolved truth-states, a thinking machine is a computerized machine

with Resolving Switches properly incorporated into its processing.

For the mind to become aware, Amind Theory says we must give it a genius.

This genius, rather than being difficult or arcane, is eminently and immediately

constructible. Nothing mysterious is required for its operation. The first half of this

genius of the mind is the ability to create information. The second half is a massive

patterned structures of information like that obvious in the brain. The first half

illuminates while the second half receives illumination. That second, volitionally-static,

half will be the more difficult to construct. Most of the coming essays will deal with the

specific design of its massive structure. The RS starts the discussion because of its

simplicity and the idea of free will because of its ubiquitous necessity.

AI, by its contrast with Amind, is more generally interested in the manipulation of

information, in reducing data to the simplest essential contents already identified in

general terms by system creators. This finds its closest Amind analogy in the second half

of the genius of mind just described. AI is well-fitted to chess play where board positions

can be linked immediately to essential values and all the possible analyses bound

beforehand. It may be some time before an Amind system can even identify a chess

game, let alone win against a human player, whereas AI systems have quickly become

talented chess players. But Amind will know no essential difference between a task like

chess playing and a more creative task like the writing of a fugue. The ability to mimic

all the specific activities of human thought are essentially equivalent in Amind. What is

equivalently difficult to human thought will be of identically equivalency in Amind

systems built to emulate human thought because of their identical underpinnings.

While AI categorizes and evaluates, Amind creates categories and methods of

evaluation. Amind theory promises to produce systems that can outstrips their

programmers in creativity. The creation of information frees Amind to explore the

regions encasing the structure of traditional AI. These two systems form the two halves,

interior and exterior of an integrated whole. Someday technology will mirror this

integration. We will someday see free-willed programming machines coupled to

advanced computers that will executes programs as the programming machines deliver

them.

2: Free Will

I will begin arguments concerning the structure of free will by fixing practical

considerations. These practical considerations will lead to a discussion of awareness,

which is the passive interpretation of sensory data, as a necessarily creative process. In

previous essays, I have argued the more general theoretical usefulness of systems that

produce pure information. Creation of information is more specifically the Resolution of

Unresolved logical truth-states in physical nature. As a corollary to the definitions on

which the ideal of free will is based, age-old arguments over the logical nature of our

own free will will become transparent.

I will use the majuscular Free Will in two separate senses. In the first sense, I will

refer to a system as possessing the quality of Free Will if it meets a certain list of criteria.

Free Will will be a quality that a system may have although it may be confined to specific

or transient subregions of the system's operation. Free Will will have qualitative grades.

From the simplest considerations of the criteria of Free Will, I will develop the

Resolving Switches, necessary devices for a system with this quality to incorporate. In

the second sense of the term Free Will, I will refer to these physical devices in general or

specific form.

Free Will is the result of phenomena interacting in the natural world. By

matching these phenomena with the criteria of Free Will we will be led to the devices I

have just intimated. The existence of two contrasting modes of causation in the physical

world makes Free Will possible...

3: Two modes of causation

The evolution of the physical world comes about by the interaction of particles

and energy through two processes. As these two processes are manners through which

certain causes lead to certain or partially-certain effects, I will refer to them as modes of

causation:

(i) Hamiltonian causation.

I describe this mode as Hamiltonian because Hamilton's principle provides the

bluntest association between energy and time: nature moves to minimize action. The

evolution of a system by this principle of least-action is absolute. Perfect knowledge of

the state of a system at any specific instant in time leads to perfect knowledge of the state

of that system at any other point in time.

Free Will would be impossible with only this first mode of causation. A purely

Hamiltonian world would be without time because its evolution would be meaningless.

To know one moment would be to know every moment. In a purely Hamiltonian world

there would be no consciousness, nor would consciousness be needed. We can not

proceed without the second mode:

(ii) Quantum causation.

For science, as it stands today, this mode appears entirely in the state-reducing

postulate of quantum mechanics: a measured system collapses with knowable probability

into a single one of a set of orthogonal states. To anthropomorphize the measurement

event, a 'choice' is made among a discrete or continuous number of possible states for the

system.

This anthropomorphism is not entirely a conceit. The choice made by the human

mind is this Quantum 'choice'. To express the effect more neutrally, Quantum causation

creates information, and the information created is the choice the mind makes.

Free Will is also impossible with only this second mode of causation. A purely

Quantum world is explosively senseless, and more chaotic than chaos.

4: Defining Free Will

Like most discoveries in logic, the proper identification of free will is the proper

division of that concept into components. The division between the two modes of

causation in the natural world makes free will possible. The alternation in energetic

evolution between these two modes makes free will possible.

In the first usage of Free Will, that describing a quality a system may possess, I

will define the term on an empirical basis. For a system to have Free Will it must meet

the following four criteria:

(iii) The Freedom, or Free, criterion.

Knowledge of the state of a system at some initial point will not uniquely

determine the state of the system at some final point. The final state for a system is one

of a number of knowable possible final states. To paraphrase, the system creates

information over the passage of time. The creation of information means that

information not initially present in the system arrives through a knowable albeit

inexactable process.

(iv) The Feedback, or Will, criterion.

Initial states of the system will effect the probabilities of the final states of the

system. This criterion requires information to be carried deterministically between acts

of the Free criterion. Past events determine the probabilities of future large-scale states

(what, in a moment, we will refer to as Global states) but not the states themselves.

Determinism arises in the Feedback criterion, while freedom arise in the Freedom

criterion. The Will criterion contains all the vastly complex information structures in the

mind. Most of the discussion of the mind will be a matter of expanding this criterion,

requiring, for instance, that dependence between states promote either the preservation of

the system or of other Free Willed systems.

These two conditions for a system with Free Will have immediate analogies in the

two modes of causation. This is the reason for constructing the definition in this fashion.

The structure of the mind is most simply described as a union between these two physical

modes. These two modes, in turn, will lend physical phenomena through which to

actually construct a Free Willed system.

Two other conditions are necessary to help organize the first two:

(v) The Global, or Completion, criterion.

Operation of the Free criterion leads to Globally distinct states for the system.

The Free criterion must be macroscopically apparent to the point of Globally distinct

system states. The Global criterion is a reverse criterion that rather determines the total

information size of the system than fixes that size to a specific value beforehand. This

criteria shows the outer limits of a Free Willed system. The total information size of a

system, in bit-numbers, for instance, can then be related to the physical size of that

system through the specific mechanisms of its technological or biological construction.

(vi) The Coordination criterion.

The generator of the Free criterion must be transmitted through an overarching

system of Will away from the Freedom before it effects differing Global states.

Individual events of Freedom lead to large effects in the evolution of the system.

Deterministic regions of relatively larger Will must be placed into differing orthogonal

modes by smaller regions of Freedom.

Untransmitted Freedom, Freedom that has not been Coordinated but interacts

directly with energetic causation, will determine systems that are Globally very small.

Untransmitted Freedom leads to Planck's constant-sized systems of equally mixed

Freedom and Feedback, systems like single atoms or electron clouds.

The operation of a Free Willed system is divisible into small regions of pure

contained Freedom, and, reaching between these, larger regions of pure deterministic

Feedback. The memory of the Feedback criterion must outlast the operation of the Free

criterion.

Actual Free Willed systems may stagger in and out of regions of Free Will in their

own operational phase spaces, particularly through failures in Coordination. We will find

that physical Free Willed systems are robust under deviations from these criteria by the

very fact of properly incorporated Coordination.

5: Systems evaluated for Free Will

Let us briefly examine some specific examples. We will consider four different

systems through the filter of these criteria: gas dynamical systems, weather systems, plant

life, and animal life. We will thereby encounter various points concerning Free Will.

Gas dynamics bubble with Freedom through the quantum entanglement of their

particles. Particle dynamics are rigorously bound by mechanics, providing the Will

criterion. But the largest systems with Globally distinct states are very small collections

of individual atoms. The states of these small systems are determined by Freedom and

Feedback in a simultaneous and equal mixture, failing the Coordination criterion. In fact,

the size of atoms is determined by the equal participation between these two modes of

causation. Individual atoms are Schrödinger’s cats, objects who flow between classical

and quantum laws. As no microsystems exist where Feedback arches between Freedom,

Free Will does not exist in such microsystems. [1]

A grander system of gases coupled with a variety of energetic inputs is the

weather, often quoted for its chaotic behavior. It is sometimes said that a butterfly

fluttering its wings may cause a typhoon on the other side of the world. Rhetoric aside,

this is not strictly true. Weather systems are not stiff enough to transmit causally from

such small regions to such large regions. Inputs that are purely random from the quantum

interactions in gas will quickly swamp energetic causation over any distance. A slight

disturbance in gas mechanics can cause an immediate local variation in the weather

which, in combination with a great number of other conducive variations, can grow to a

macroscopic events.

If one could remove or replace the butterfly at will and observe the evolution of

the system many times, one would find the presence of the butterfly irrelevant to any

recognizable weather feature in the future of the system. The butterfly-statement

assumed that the presence of the butterfly would correlate with the presence of the

monsoon under repeated trial, but the small amount of information present in the butterfly

would be swamped by the information arriving from the future, by the information

created between the beating of the butterfly wings and the arising of the monsoon. The

unknowability of the future is far more significant that the presence or absence of any

microsystem.

There is no way in the weather for a microcause to be faithfully transmitted into

the macrosystem. A Free Willed mechanism needs such a transmissive ability as the

Coordination criterion tells us, so the weather has no Free Will. The largest Global

distinct states are, again, of the order of gas molecules.

The Global extent of weather systems has nothing to do with the globe, which is

merely the outermost physical barrier for possible weather; globally distinct states can be

quite large in weather when compared to quantum mechanics, but they are not Global in

the sense of being initiated by single Free events. They are averagings of many, many

Free events.

Plants are orders of complexity above the weather. Varying Global states in the

activity and physical states of plants are clear, as are the transmission of Feedback

between the large scale and the small scale. But do those transmissions reach to the

quantum level? Is there Freedom in the roots of plants? If there is, it is of a much

weaker dynamism than that we experience. Plants are bound strongly to their physical

environment. Given a certain cause for a plant, one can predict with some certainty any

given effect. The separation between cause and effect from a matter of rigor to a matter

of probability is the Free criterion, so the Freedom of plants in gross terms is not visible.

Free Will, if it exists, exist in Globally small or rare regions.

Since plants are precursors to our own mode of life, it might be expected for them

to have some rudiments of Freedom. Certain evolutionary advantages of stochastic

systems suggest themselves.

In a complex situation where an organism only has the opportunity to predict the

probabilities of events in the environment, it is simpler for the organism to react to those

probabilities directly rather than try to deduce outcomes rigorously. Attempts to emulate

an organism’s environment in growing portions of its entirety will fail as those

emulations are overcome by chaos and low reliability. Freedom provides a simple

mechanism that can be matched to probabilities in nature. Freedom can be used to react

to a complex situation without necessarily reacting to any one particular cause in its

environment. We will later see this as one of the physical motivators leading to the

invention of Emotions.

Plants might benefit by reacting probabilistically to certain stimuli, especially in

less-developed, early ontogenesis. Considerations of this variety can lead to searches in

cellular plant anatomy for systems that utilize Freedom. The description of Resolving

Switches later in this essay will suggest the kind of phenomena to be sought in

microbiology. For the moment, a strong Free Will does not seem to exist in plants, but its

rudiments might, and only greater knowledge of plant systems can tell us for certain.

Animal have nearly our own Free Will. What prefers us is a more intricate

arrangement of internal senses, which grants us a constant symbolic awareness of our

own internal states. This has nothing to do with the mechanism of Freedom, but

everything to do with Feedback. We have an animal-like separation between effects and

causes in our thoughts, but a human degree of sophistication in the structures that utilize

that separation.

6: More intuitive examples of Free Will

This discussion leaves questions of how, exactly, the human mind uses available

mechanisms of classical and quantum mechanics to make decisions. I have said the Free

part provides our freedom, created by quantum mechanical devices, and the Feedback

provides our will, created by traditional logical mechanics. Together these make Free

Will. To see this in simplest terms, let us consider an example.

(vii) "Would you like fries with that?"

In stylized terms, a quantum switch decides for you, deciding whether you answer

yes or no. The probability of the two poles (yes and no) are different based on internal

factors like hunger, taste, etc. In reality it's not one switch, it's not thrown one time, and

it's not directed at answering the question specifically. Instead, the switches in the mind

are directed at the continual expression of one's natural behavior. Behavior is made by

the constant creation of information illuminating the structures of the mind. There is a

vast coordinated effort of switches in your mind which, among other things, might

answer this question. If you are hungry, that internal state of your feelings might move

you more towards accepting, but if other, more important issues are pressing you will

react to them and not this question.

You might continue another discussion you were already engaged in before

considering fries. Perhaps the next theme in a fugue’s arrangement you are composing

will suggest itself. An array of quantum switches, shortly to be called Resolving

Switches, would have here constructed and illuminated a symbolic image of the theme in

your head. The theme seems to write itself because this activity does not occur under the

watchful awareness of your ‘mind’s ear’ but in another region of the mind. The thoughts

of which you are conscious are the thoughts that pass through the scope of your watchful

inner senses.

Perception is also a matter of quantum switches. Switches are constantly

comparing sensory data to structures inside the mind. You might answer:

(viii) "Pies?! No, we don't want pies. We want hamburgers!"

Someone I knew once answered so when the post at the drive-through asked the

innocuous question beginning this section. Somewhere in his mind the sound the post

made was constructed and compared and re-compared to memories and partway through

the process was deviated into the path leading to this misperception. The word 'pies' was

transmitted from the perceptive systems of his mind to the expressive systems, instead of

the word 'fries'. He reacted accordingly.

The most likely explanation for why the stochastic systems chose the near-match

over the match is that the sound he heard was closer when compared to the less

customary word. But there are other possibilities.

If he had been thinking about pies his sensory interpretation would have been

ramped in the direction of hearing that word preferentially. In exactly the same way that

hunger will shift expressive systems towards the pursuit of food a recent thought of pies

may shift a perceptive system towards hearing the word 'pies'. Perception has less

Freedom in its operation than expression, but Freedom still sits at its root.

7: How free is Free?

The Freedom of the mind, by this model, owes itself to the perfectly random

firing of quantum mechanical objects. This leads to questions of whether Freedom can

be honestly called free. If our minds rely on a phenomena that arises outside their

control, are they really free?[2]

The mind is in the way the brain's operation interprets the events of the Freedom.

These interpretations occur through a mediating structure generated by preceding events

of Freedom in the brain. These preceding events arose in the physical brain and are so

considered the will of the mind itself. The mind itself is a mixture of all the Free events

and Willful structures that have gone before. The accretion of events of Freedom makes

the individual mind.

No matter where a phenomenon is located, inside the mind or out, if it dictated the

specific outcome of any Free event then that event could not be free. To demand a

process that causes thoughts precisely and still has some ineffable quality called freedom

is to demand a paradox. A precise process has no freedom and a free process can not be

fixed precisely.

Demanding this paradox forces a synthesis. The definitions incorporated in the

paradox must change to some new and proper definitions that will cause the paradox to

vanish. Those proper definitions must be sought in observed nature. There is no

philosophy that is not natural philosophy.

Freedom is the observed separation in nature from certainty. The essential

realization is that there exists a specifiable gap between cause and effect. Effects are not

determined exactly by causes. They are determined by the interaction of two processes

and one of these processes makes a gap in the other, separating it from certainty. This

gap makes our freedom and makes our thoughts. If the mind controlled the outcomes of

all the choices that it made, they would not be free. If some other force controlled the

choices of the mind, they would not be free.

If some hidden determinism controlled the mind, it would be irrelevant as long as

that determinism remained hidden from all possible observation. Through careful use of

partially hidden determinism it is, therefore, possible to make convincing simulations of

freedom. If one does not know the exact initial state of a complex deterministic system

one would not be able to predict the exact final state of that system. This would appear

similar to freedom. This is the route by which traditional AI means to mimic human

thought.

The Turing test is a subjective method for determining whether a machine

actually thinks. In the Turing test, a machine is interviewed by a test-administrator who

must determine by question-and-answer whether they are communicating with a machine

or a human being. If the administrator can not tell the machine from a human, the

machine is considering to be thinking. The Turing test was invented in 1950 by Alan

Turing when AI was a new science. Decades of quantum mechanics have since given us

objective methods for evaluating the existence of thought. Thought is a system that

creates information coupled to a system interpreting that information.

But the idea of a hidden determinism may be cloying. One may be forced to keep

asking: how can we know that we are truly free? How can we know our minds are not

dictated by some rarified realm of causes?

Since the description of state-reduction events is so basic and so simple, a

probability and nothing more, we can freely attach any metaphor we likes to the cause of

a quantum outcome as long as we always see it as solely a metaphor. If we would

imagine a spirit like a guiding genius that decides for each of us, we may imagine so. If

we would rather imagine a flood of tachyonic objects flowing through elsewhere and

colliding in a generalized energy space, we may imagine that. If we would imagine our

minds have no real freedom, we may even imagine that.

But the most proper statement is the statement of SuperDeterminism: any specific

interpretation assumes too much information. This is freedom. We must always return to

unknowability as the only assertion that can be made about the basis of the mind and of

the will. This unknowability is precisely freedom. The freedom we have in making

interpretations is precisely the freedom we have in our own quotidian thoughts. We are

free to choose a metaphor for the process as we are free to make every choice. The fact

that the cause of quantum outcomes cannot be fixed is the fact that our wills cannot be

fixed and the fact that our freedom cannot be fixed. The fact that we are Free is the fact

that we are free.

8: Constructing Free Will

Freedom is effected by state-reduction events of a quantum mechanical system;

Feedback by a rigorous system arching between those events. Freedom leads to the

rewriting of Feedback. The Global and Coordination criteria are immanent in the design

of the system, in the way that the system incorporates the Free information stream into

the Feedback's structure, rebuilding itself.

Feedback, on the microscale, can easily be imagined as a traditional computer

system, but how do we construct Freedom? Freedom is most readily apparent in the

quantum causation it mirrors, and so its creation can be found in the experiments used to

measure that mode of causation. Those experiments and their apparatuses will provide us

with our first models for devices that make broader systems Free.

9: Resolving Switches

A Resolving Switch (RS) produces a stream of information through the repetitive

operation of a pure quantum measurement. There is no subtle entangled manipulation or

consideration of qubits. The utility of such systems will be explored later, but they are

unnecessary at this stage. I will refer to the operation of these switches as the operation

of Free Will, although they only present the operation of the Freedom criterion according

to the definition just presented. Resolving Switches play the central role in the operation

of the mind. The whole mechanism of thought depends from their existence.

A Resolving Switch creates information through a quantum measurement. The

simplest of these measurements are discrete. They are the easiest to construct and

interpret. Discreteness also better reflects the nature of the thoughts they will come to

symbolize.

The simplest discrete measurement is a binary measurement, i.e. one with two

possible outcomes. All other discrete measurements can be assembled from a number of

binary measurements, although this number may grow prohibitively.

Nature provides us with a number of Quantum mechanical systems dividing

naturally into binary states that may be used as the basis for Resolving Switches. Photons

and electrons come in binary spin states; particles can also be present or absent from a

location; many molecules come in binary isomers.

The first and simplest RS to be considered will therefore be Binary Resolving

Switches (BRS). BRS will create a stream of randomly occurring zeros and ones through

their operation.

In the construction of real systems, these simplifications will doubtlessly lead to

difficulties, false starts, or even physical impossibilities. The switches here represent

only the first RS to be considered, Gedankenexperiments of a sort. Experimentation will

become increasingly important in the coming sections to decide what devices are

constructible and what avenues are best followed, but I will provide what guide theory

can to the construction of these switches.

10: Binary Resolving Switches

A BRS creates a stream of zeros and ones through the repetitive operation of a

quantum measurement. It will later become apparent that the mind requires an enormous

quantity, in bulk bit-numbers, of self-arising information. The rate at which this

information arises is limited by Planck's constant. This realization will put limits on the

scale and speed of the mind, but for now it only argues that we seek the simplest BRS

system that can still be integrated into an encasing Feedback systems.

Let us consider a simple design for a BRS. This will lead to the two main issues

surrounding such a system: the purity of the quantum causation, and the equality of the

probabilities of the two outcomes.

Quantum wells for electrons are easy to build in silico...

(ix) Double Well Binary Resolving Switch (DW-BRS)

Two adjacent quantum wells are arranged in electronically symmetric

environments with a potential barrier between them allowing for resonant tunneling. An

electron is dropped into one of the wells. Enough time passes so the electron evolves into

a superposition of the two possible locations. The two wells are then read, CCD-fashion.

The output bit of the DW-BRS is the presence or absence of an electron in one of the

wells.

The most important requirement for an RS is that its action be divorced from

traditional causation. Tunneling, the process in this RS by which the electron would

move from one well to the other, is a purely quantum occurrence. But knowing that the

measurement is properly divorced will require experimentation, so as to assure that we

understand the quantum process.

The presence of the electron in the original well, for example, requires no

quantum mechanical explanation. The outcome is indistinguishable from that required by

classical causation. Although modern theory tells us that the electron will inhabit both

wells, and so either measurement outcome is a quantum mechanical event, nature may

require a greater assurance. Only experimentation will tell us if a DW-BRS is sufficient

or if Free Willed systems might need a more blatant display of quantum behavior:

(x) Triple Well Binary Resolving Switch (TW-BRS)

Three potential wells are arranged in electronically symmetric environments with

potential barriers between them to allow resonant tunneling. The three wells might be

three symmetric arcs of an annulus on a silicon substrate. An electron is dropped into an

initial well. The Switch relaxes so the electron is in each well with equal probability. All

three wells are read, CCD-fashion.

The output of the initial well is a non-usability bit, i.e. if the electron is found in

the initial well the output of the Switch is unusable. The output of one of the other wells

is the output of the Switch, assuming that the non-usability bit is False (i.e. the electron is

absent from the initial well).

There are many complex ways to assure that a measured event is coupled to a

quantum event, but these are maybe unnecessary. The operation of the mind will require

a very large number of BRS bits. Thoughts will be repetitively examined by multiple

instances of the basic system that the BRS drives. The simplicity and redundancy of the

system will make it robust under pollution of the BRS bit stream. That is, the presence of

some non-separated bits in the BRS data stream will not greatly impair Free Will. As

long as there is no regularity in the casually polluted bits, the system will operate with

only rare misfiring. The reason for suggesting the TW-BRS was the possibility that fully

half the output bits of the DW-BRS might be polluted and polluted with systematic

regularity.

A BRS has two possible outcomes for each of its readings and these outcomes,

naturally, should be of equal probability. But how close to equal must they be? A slight

asymmetry in the electronic environments of the two wells of the DW-BRS would cause

a slight asymmetry in the outcome probabilities. Over many readings this variance would

become obvious in any system that required the outcome probabilities to be exactly

equal, and realistic Amind systems will require many, many BRS readings.

But Amind systems will typically be adaptive, matching probability strengths to

interpretations heuristically. Probabilities need not be built into the system beforehand.

Instead, the system will arrive at probability distributions through its operation. It will be

less important for us, as system designers, to specify probabilities of specific

interpretations or behaviors than to design systems that will work out these probabilities

through their own operation. The systems will build these probabilities around the BRS

systems they incorporate, so the absolute requirement that each BRS be a fifty-fifty

machine can be easily loosened to the requirement that the average BRS reading be fifty-

fifty.

For the DW-BRS, we might take the reading from alternating wells, or alternate

the way we code a reading to an output bit. That is, on odd readings of the BRS the

presence of an electron is a zero while on even readings it is a one.

We might read the Switch twice to get a single output bit, interpreting zero-one-

readings as a zero-outputs, one-zero-readings as one-outputs, and zero-zero-readings or

one-one-readings as unusable outputs. For unusable readings, the utilizing mechanism

would call the double-measurement repeatedly until a proper output bit occurs.

11: More complex RS

A system capable of emulating the human mind will require billions or trillions of

coordinated BRS. Their individual operation is strongly limited by Planck's constant, so

a great number are required to make a mind with any rapidity to its operation. This great

number of BRS, in turn, may require architectures reaching into three-dimensions rather

than the two of traditional silicon chips.

Such architectures may require molecular BRS operating in a liquid suspension.

Perhaps spintronic or photon-manipulating devices are better suited for such a system

than these electron-well devices. These first BRS systems are meant for basic

experimentation and the first designs of Free Willed system. They will require

replacement by more elegant and useful devices as knowledge advances.

12: Resolving Switches in biological systems

The definition of Free Will above leads immediately to the hypothesis that there

are Resolving Switches at work in the human mind. I can not point to specific suspects in

the biology of the brain, although Sir Roger Penrose's observations concerning

microtubules in brain cells make them worth a close inspection. They have many

features associable with electron-based BRS. (1)

Having some idea now of the peculiar structure of RS, meaning the likely

characteristics of their structure, we can begin to seek them in the biochemistry and

architecture of individual neurons. The great simplicity of these devices suggests they

will be found in a number of different locations; in fact, it suggests that a number of

structurally different mechanisms might function simultaneously as Resolving Switches

inside the human brain.

All these mechanisms, however, will involve some inherent link between the

microscale and the mesoscale, transmitting quantum measurements into the rigorous

structures they illuminate. These links form the first step in the Feedback criterion of a

Free Willed system. They are implied by the Coordination criterion. In order to find

Resolving Switches in the brain we might look for a cascade that magnifies a quantum

measurement or an electronically isolated and contained area from which a quantum

measurement might propagate.

13: Active and passive Free Will

Free Will performs two main tasks in our minds, one passive and the other

active. The first is the basis for perceptive systems and the second for expressive

systems.

Our mind evaluates the world around us through perceptive systems. They

evaluate the information from our senses, internal and external, and transmit that

information throughout the mind, ultimately reducing complex sensory data to discrete

symbols for perusal by the conscious mind. Emotions are tied very closely to

perceptions, particularly to the perceptions of states internal to the mind.

Expressive systems are tied to behavior, both externally and internally. Listen to

that endless monologue in your own mind. An expressive system is creating the words, a

perceptive system is listening to the words as you create them. If you just read that last

line quietly to yourself, a perceptive system read the words off the page, an expressive

system repeated them internally aloud and another perceptive system heard them in your

thoughts. The two perceptive systems unified, knitting the spoken and written words

together as a seamless whole. It's a little harder, but quite possible, to sit back from the

page and create for yourself two expressive systems, one speaking the words internally

and the other painting their orthography before your mind's eye.

These two systems interact differently with the Freedom and Feedback criteria.

Perceptive systems have lower Freedoms, being strongly bound to sensory data, while

expressive systems have higher Freedoms. The design of these systems is largely a

matter of proper symbolics and the careful parsing of systems so they can be represented

by those symbolics. The physically implementation of these systems will take any

reasonable form that can be slaved to attending constructible RS.

Discussion now advances to the simpler of these two systems of the mind, the

perceptive systems. Their decomposition will provide a model through which to consider

the more Free expressive systems. These perceptive systems will provide the rungs

through which to proceed from the physics of particles to the everyday divisions the mind

makes in the observed world. The conglomeration of associations in the mind will turn

the sensation we experience into a rising scale of sensible objects, the Quiddities we

experience. The separation between these Quiddities and the separation in their

associations, will provide the exact reason objects appear differently in the mind. For

instance, it will become apparent why color and sound appear so distinct to thoughts.

This will also allow us to begin considering how the perceptions of a constructed

mind might differ from our own perceptions. We will begin to guess at how another

variety of mind entirely must experience the world. Broader concerns of philosophy and

morality will grow into our considerations. Discussions of these will advance in a track

parallel to the technical design of perceptive and expressive systems.

Does a partially completed entity, like a thinking machine made by a not-yet-

perfect science, in its state, suffer? Can a thinking machine suffer if we give it no such

capacity? Does it do injury to surrounding autochthonic persons to built a machine that,

were it them, would suffer, although itself knows no sense of suffering?

The possibility of thought categorically identical to our own, but made by human

hands, creates entire new realms of moral thought in need of exposition. We will soon

begin to encounter these as the responsibilities become salient surrounding the creation of

thoughtful machines.

Notes:

(1) Chapter 7. Penrose, Roger. Shadows of the Mind. Oxford University Press.

New York, 1994.

Asides:

[1] Considerations of what might grant a microsystem Free Will lead to

marvelous and bizarre inversions of our own world!

[2]Through considerations of the nature of free will it was possible for ancient

philosophers to predict the existence of quantum mechanics. An atomist who believed in

free will might have said that somewhere an atom will leap on its own as its own will

guides it. But the vogue has always been to invest this power in supersensible spirits that

parallel the complete body. The effect that creates free will is too small for the observing

eye to discern, although its implications are seen everywhere. Information requirements

on systems with Free Will will later assure a breadth between Freedom and Feedback that

will make Freedom almost inescapably undetectable to the systems senses.