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September 14 - September 23, 2018
One of the major points that Hadamard makes in his study of creative thinking is an impressive refutation of the thesis, so often still expressed, that verbalization is necessary for thought.
In order to become algorithms, they need to have an interpretation, i.e. it must be possible to decode the arrangements; and that will depend upon the ‘language’ in which the algorithms are written.
Sometimes people take the view that even with classical (or U-quantum) determinism there is no effective determinism, because the initial conditions cannot ever be well-enough known that the future could actually be computed. Sometimes very small changes in the initial conditions can lead to very large differences in the final outcome. This is what happens, for example, in the phenomenon known as ‘chaos’ in a (classical) deterministic system – an example being the uncertainty of weather prediction. However, it is very hard to believe that this kind of classical uncertainty can be what allows
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The same objection might be raised against my suggestion that a lack of computability might be intrinsic to the dynamical laws – now assumed to be non-algorithmic in character – rather than to our lack of information concerning initial conditions. Even though not computable, the future would, on this view, still be completely fixed by the past – all the way back to the big bang.
According to strong determinism, it is not just a matter of the future being determined by the past; the entire history of the universe is fixed, according to some precise mathematical scheme, for all time.
Recall that the brain is not really quite like a computer, but it is more like a computer which is continually changing.
consciousness is slow-acting, as compared with other mechanisms of the nervous system.
