Choice in Static Spacetime

What is choice? May seem straightforward, but it is anything but.

Standard definition of "choice" is the act of "choosing" (circular thinking, anyone?) and "to choose" is "to select from a number of possibilities".

Here I will demonstrate that there never is a number of possibilities. There is but one actuality. I will do this by demonstrating that the opposite - the existenece of "choice" makes no sense.

If there is indeed a phenomenon such as choice, it derives some of its meaning from choicelessness - people can choose what to have for breakfast, but planets do not choose how to proceed along their orbits around a star, nor do atoms choose in any relevant sense whether to interact electromagnetically or not. So far so good.

Next, is choosing something akin to consciousness - a continious process with no clear beginning or end; or is it a binary characteristic - either an entity can choose or it is bound by physical laws? It seems to me there can not be a sort-of choosing, there can not be a almost choosing. Again, in a breakfast scenario, it seems inconsistent to claim that, for example, yes, having breakfast itself and the choice of cereal was dictated by the physical interactions in a brain, but that, ultimately, which cereal was chosen was left up for free choice. There is no reason to draw an arbitrary line of choice here - all activities, even the purported choosing from alternatives in a brain followed physical laws. While the brain can imagine uncertainty, there really is none. A system either follows physical laws to the letter (think of a star) and has no choice on any matter, or it hovers somewhere outside of physical reality. Naturally, claiming that choice process is outside physical reality would land us in a laughable position of supernaturality and we'd be bound to start a religion and give up on trying to explain anything. No. If there is indeed choice, it is a natural process, perhaps, a higher-order phenomenon than the four basic interactions, but reliant upon them nonetheless.

It seems to me that to be able to choose, an entity must be capable of spatial cognition - construing consequences, imagining a future; or as Dennett has claimed - capable of acting differently in different circumstances. Then, this entity has to have control over whether to proceed according to stimuli or not. Put simply, a choosing entity has to be capable of at least two possible actions (or of action an inaction) in response to stimulus, hence the need for a control mechanism (another way to have two possible actions could be to be able to react to two distinct types of stimulus, but then there would be no choice - one stimulus would provoke one action all the time and the other stimulus another reaction). Thus I posit that an entity capable of choice must be capable of at least two reactions and has to have a control mechanism. Such an entity can be called a "choice block". 

Let's look at a conceptual representation of choice to see why it is likely that a choice block would conform to such characteristics.

As I have attempted to show in the awful paint image above, the only way for a choice block to execute Action 2 (A2) is to delay the execution of Action 1 (A1) (assuming that performing A1 resets the level of stimulation to zero). This is where the control mechanism comes in, but here is a problem - why would it? How would a control mechanism discriminate whether to suppress A1 or not? Again, it itself could rely on separate a stimulus to guide its action, but that would complicate things again. 

We can then come up with a design challenge: what is the minimal energy and specific characteristics of a choice block?

Here we already have some constraints - we know that single molecules have no choice and that animal brains are capable of generating similar behaviors to those which in humans are called choice. It would seem reasonable to me to pick either of two strategies - start with a brain and keep reducing it until choosing disappears or take some molecules and increase their number and structure until choice occurs. I might be wrong on this point, but it seems to me that the elusive entity capable of choice (or something like it) that we would arrive at would be a cell or some sort of electric circuit with logic gates and data storage. Assuming that both in cells and electric circuits charge is the relevant stimulus and that it is mitigated through the actual presence of various ions, it could be conceived that the control mechanism is an integrated into the parts performing A1 and A2 and triggers whenever a certain condition is met (e.g. when A1 has been triggered two times in a row and needs to rest up).

That's it! With an ample supply of choice blocks like this and according variation of actions (realized through muscle cells) one could construct the most complex (illusory) choice systems. This illustrates how any form of restraint would have to be learned - a fresh choice block would always proceed to A1, since control mechanism has no reason to trigger - an animal would first go for the food and only suppress the desire after being shocked. Hence also the ability to learn and change according to circumstances (but not before them) - as massive a system as a human brain can hold millions of choice blocks of varying complexity and stages of excitement, each new action feeding into the stimuli for other blocks - an evolutionary feedback loop. The examples looked at here are mostly idealized, in reality it is likely that cells' level of stimulation can be dynamic - some may fall over time, while others' rise sharply due to differences in size, chemicals used etc even without actions per-se, merely due to passage of time.

Here is how a purely deterministic system can exhibit choice, indeed, how only a deterministic system can exhibit choice, since a probabillistic system would be detrimental to structure (imagine a choice block with probabilistic control mechanism - best case scenario: it fires when not needed and a sub-optimal action obtains, worst case: it does not fire when needed and the system break down due to overload).

Here I am reminded of a lecture video on SisyphusRedeemed youtube account, the idea being to shift the attention from whether actions are free or not, but whether individuals had control over their (un)free actions, which ir reminiscent of the bullocks Supers used to say when first confronted with neuroscientific evidence that indications of a decision being made are there in the brain seconds before the decision is made conscious: "Ok, we may not be able to control what we want to do, but we can choose to stop an unwanted action." A conscious veto vote. A cranial handbrake. Nonsense!

Whether free or not, control over a choice is just the other side of the coin. I maintain that the coin flies and falls according to physical laws, whatever they might turn out to be.

As a last nail in the coffin, consider this. With the Big Bang all of the universe came into existence. We, mere post-apes, perceive the world in 3D and somewhat time-ish. But the fact is, if we exist, we exist in an already existing and unchanging timespace. The only parts of the universe still under construction are the parts time has not yet flown to, which it does at the speed of light. The universe is a real-time simulation of itself. To say that something is free from that is to claim that the universe "actually simulated something other than what it did in fact simulate". Exactly!

Cheers!