Background.
B.S.E.E., MIT, 1968, Tau Beta Pi.
M.A., Physics/Materials Science, UC Berkeley, 1971.
J.D., UC Berkeley, 1974, Chairman, Moot Court Board.
Member, California State Bar.
Admitted to appear before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Elizabeth F. Boardman, a lifelong pacifist and Quaker, is suing the Commissioner of Internal Revenue (the IRS) for having discriminated against her on the basis of religion and for having burdened her religious practice of war tax resistance. The lawsuit is based on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits such discrimination and on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which prohibits the federal government from unnecessarily burdening a religious practice.
( ... ) Copy of the Complaint: Elizabeth F. Boardman v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, United States District Court, Eastern District of California, 2:12-cv-00639 MCE GGH (a .pdf file, 242 kB).)
( ... ) Additional information.
Please see (...), a separate web page discussing the essay.
Summary
"Free will" puzzles are failed attempts to make freedom fit into forms of science. The failures seem puzzling because of widespread beliefs that forms of science describe and control everything. Errors in such beliefs are shown by analysis of forms of "platonic science" that were invented in ancient Greece and that have developed into modern physics. Static and quasi-static forms provide fixed environments for placid equilibrium conditions and relaxation processes. Linear forms, abstracted from geometrical space, impose rigidity and continuity. Such spatial forms fail to describe muscular movements of animals that have actual life. Limitations of platonic science are overcome by means of new forms with the character of time, e.g., forms like repetitive musical beats and saccadic (jumpy) forms. New technologies of action and freedom generate and control temporal forms in proposed device models of brains. Some temporal forms have critical moments of transformation, e.g., a moment of overtaking during a footrace or a jury's moment of decision during a trial in court.
Copyright Litigation
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. et. al. v. Gary Fung and isoHunt Web Technologies, Inc.
Hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on May 6, 2011:
( ... ) Opening Brief on behalf of Gary Fung and isoHunt Web Technologies, Inc.
( ... ) Reply Brief on behalf of Gary Fung and isoHunt Web Technologies, Inc.
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. et. al. v. Justin Bunnell et. al., (prior Ninth Circuit appeal)
( ... ) Opening Brief on behalf of Justin Bunnell et. al.
Privacy Litigation
Justin Bunnell et. al. v. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) (prior Ninth Circuit appeal)
( ... ) Opening Brief on behalf of Justin Bunnell et. al.
In the new view, our brains generate "imagery" (a broad term) that we use to accomplish our purposes and to satisfy desires that have a starting point in hunger and that have grown in many directions. A single brain operates according to a single set of principles and generates both spiritual imagery and scientific imagery. A third kind of imagery is legal imagery used in courts of law. There are other kinds of imagery that are less intellectual, e.g., musical imagery and imagery of bodily movements, as in ballet and basketball. In the new view, all the images are generated by a brain according to a single set of principles. A foundational "cause" of such imagery is the person's felt need to accomplish certain purposes and to satisfy certain desires. Desires include appetites for such imagery. We cultivate desires for and attachments to certain kinds of imagery and we associate with others who share our desires and attachments.
In these pages, one of my chief purposes is to provide a new answer to the question "how do brains work?" The style of the new approach is constructional rather than theoretical, in contrast to other proposed answers such as "brains work like computers" or "brains work according to principles of darwinsism." In the new approach, principles are stated and developed in a context based on specific designs. There is anticipation that new designs will lead to modification of present principles and to new principles that overshadow present principles. Principles are provisional rather than authoritative.
In the new view, traditional mechanical principles apply to particular kinds of situations but not to "everything." They work with near-perfect exactitude in certain specific situations maintained in a laboratory or high-tech facility. Such situations are isolated and constrained and their chief features are sharply defined. "Outer space" devoid of substantial matter has a similar nature. However, in complex and interconnected situations, as in ecology and brains, mechanical principles lose the capacity to define or follow events with exactitude. When we have disputes with other persons, mechanical principles provide little guidance; but legal principles and spiritual principles are more useful. In similar ways, legal and spiritual principles each have a limited domain of application that is mostly separate from the others. Each kind of imagery is limited to certain situations. No principles apply to all situations. For further discussion, please see materials on Philosophy of Science below.
My approach takes the form of technological innovations, proposing and developing new classes of "devices." "Devices" is a broad term for technological innovations in the form of material objects with operational powers and capacities; and the term includes, as chief examples, steam engines, radios and computers. Such devices embody specific principles that have been stated in paradigms of mathematics and physics; for the chief examples, paradigms include the Carnot Ideal Heat Engine, Maxwell's Equations and the Universal Turing Machine. Quad Net devices were developed in 2005 and 2006 and make up a more general and abstract class of devices. Timing device models have been developed since 2006 and are simpler and specific. Timing devices began as a reduced form of Quad Nets but have since developed independently in fruitful directions.
Content in timing device systems resembles electrical signals in some respects. There is an important difference in that content in timing device systems is made up of pulses, where each pulse is an instantaneous package of action and all pulses are identical. Pulses closely resemble "spikes" or "action potentials" in brain signals.
As stated in a summational ( ... ) Remark in An Eye for Sharp Contrast:
Content in the timing devices system has a form that is distinctly different from the form of content used in computers and in physics systems of mechanics. The difference is of paramount importance. It is the difference between states and action.
In mechanics and computers, fundamental units are in the form of a state, which is a condition that persists without change for a duration of time, however short or long the duration. Any change is caused by an external influence. As a primal example, a particle governed by "inertia" expressed in Newton's First Law of Motion is in a state that persists until it is changed by a force. The same principle applies to computer programs and to data stored in computers, which remain fixed unless altered by command. In such systems, action is constructed from successions of states and transitions between states. One method of construction is through application of finite state machine principles that are embodied in computers. Another method uses differential calculus to calculate trajectories of particles moving through space; in this method, states and transitions become infinitesimally small. The principle behind such constructions is that action is "made of" states.
In timing devices, the construction principle is reversed. The fundamental unit is a unit of action, the pulse. Pulses are organized in higher forms of action called activities. Activities, including changes, are often happening "on their own," although changes may be subject to environmental influences.
( ... ) Opening Page
( ... ) A Kit of Parts
( ... ) An Eye for Sharp Contrast
( ... ) Eyes That Look at Objects
( ... ) An Ear for Pythagorean Harmonics
( ... ) A Procrustean Group of Harmonies
( ... ) Fundamentals of Timing Devices
( ... ) Author & History
In proposed designs, certain Quad Net device parts operate in a cyclical fashion where a Critical Moment occurs for a part of each cycle. During the Critical Moment, such a device part generates multiple activity patterns in the form of germinal units that compete with one another in a Field. There is an elimination tournament. As the cycle proceeds, one germinal activity pattern dominates the others and occupies the entire Field, an occupation that is maintained for another part of the cycle before the Field is emptied in preparation for a new Critical Moment: this is a process of cyclical selection. Shimmering Sensitivity occurs during the Critical Moment. While multiple activity patterns are competing, there is "shimmering" as first one pattern, then another, appears to be occupying the Field. As the process goes forward, the nature of the system and "sensitivity" to external influences leads to the domination of one pattern over all others.
I suggest that Shimmering Sensitivity is an embodiment of a new physical principle of freedom that is based on material processes. I suggest that each occurrence of Shimmering Sensitivity generates momentary experiences of a person in forms such as mental imagery, muscular movement, pain, desire and satisfaction. A momentary experience resembles a flicker of a flame that is immediately extinguished. A large system of device parts supports organized activities that generate streams of Critical Moments that arise in synchronized and coordinated cycles, sequences and combinations. Flickers of experience can unite into a controlled and continuing light that reaches through Shimmering Sensitivity into various parts of the person's environment and memory.
Suppose two Quad Net device parts are part of a unified assembly so that, during coordinated operations, they pass through Critical Moments together and in a synchronized way; then, Shimmering Sensitivity occupies the entire two-device assembly while it is occupying each of the two device parts. The two selections are made together and become unified.
The foregoing principles can extend to a large number of device parts. Designs suggest a very large structure of many device parts where, during a particular activity, a certain sub-structure is organized so that Shimmering Sensitivity occupies it in an ongoing way during synchronized cycling. Selections could become quite complex, with many possible choices and multiple possible external influences. Potential large-scale designs could perform functions resembling those of a large biological organism. Designs suggest that such large-scale Shimmering Sensitivity may provide a basis for investigations into consciousness.
( ... ) Quad Net web site separately organized.
( ... ) formal paper titled Quad Nets: Material Foundations for Thermal Device Models of Brains (.pdf format, 1.1 Mb).
( ... ) web page discussing the formal paper.
( ... ) informal discussion of "mechanical metaphors" for cyclical selection and Shimmering Sensitivity.
··· A Witness for Freedom (opening statement)
Pages
- ··· Body and Mind of Freedom
- ··· Personal Freedom vs. The Mechanical Cosmology
- ··· Vehicles of Freedom: Physical Science, Civil Law and the Christian Religion
- ··· My Personal Cosmology of Jesus Christ
- ··· Cultivating Spiritual Life and Power
- Action Yoga and the Sankhya Cosmology of Person and Matter
- ··· An Obsessive Compulsion I Call Freedom
Although atomic models are useful for many purposes, they cannot account for or track "irreversible phase changes" in materials such as those occurring during the production of snowflakes from water vapor (see below) or during the quenching of red-hot iron to make martensitic steel. In my view, an irreversible phase change generates consciousness in the brain of a person engaged in activity that involves an exercise of freedom. For example, during a checkers game, two or more possible "next moves" considered by the person turn into the single actual "next move" that the person makes. I suggest that an irreversible phase change occurs in the brain of the person while the person is making the "next move" and that the phase change is the physical basis for the person's action and experience.
"Energy" is a bricolage or thrown-together concept where different kinds of results are fiddled with until an appearance of psychologically-satisfying "conservation" is produced. The concept works best with imaginary "indivisible particles" and that is a major area of its employment. The imaginary systems are said to be "conservative," meaning that they satisfy a condition of energy conservation as part of the design. Difficulties arise when the concept is applied to large material bodies that are not "indivisible particles" and that are not "conservative systems." So that results show an approximation to "energy conversation," processes are constrained, e.g., so that the bodies remain "in equilibrium" or so that they are confined to "quasistatic" or incremental processes constructed from small, controlled steps. By such means, troublesome phenomena are excluded from consideration.
The conventional energy concept fails in important areas of investigation. For example, physical principles based on conservation of energy lose track of phenomena even with steady state systems, a simple step up from a fixed system. "Steady state" means that the energy content of a body of material is increased at a constant rate. (Proposed Quad Net devices and timing device systems are steady state systems.) For example, in water running down a slope, "physics" is unable to explain, account for or track the changes that occur as the slope grows steeper and the activity of the water changes over a range that begins at easily understood "laminar flow" (with smooth sheets or layers of moving water) and that becomes intractable wild "turbulence."
In my view, natural science is a disciplinary method of human intelligence and imagination that has had many successes. Other successful disciplinary methods of human intelligence and imagination include civil law and the Christian religion. All such successes are instructive. Each success has limitations. In each discipline, new concepts and methods have been developed to achieve greater success and to overcome limitations. E.g., relativity theory, constitutional rights and protestantism. I suggest that investigation into such disciplinary methods, developments, successes and limitations can lead to additional successful disciplinary methods – and also perhaps even lead to progress in our attempts to understand ourselves.
(...), "How to Solve Free-Will Puzzles and Overcome Limitations of Platonic Science," a .pdf file (1.4 MB), draft of an essay summarized (...) above.
( ... ) A Patchwork of Limits: Physics Viewed From an Indirect Approach (2000), is a formal paper available as a .pdf file (157 kB). The methods and conclusions of the paper provided guidance in developing Quad Nets and Timing Devices. The "alternative view of physics" developed in the paper contrasts Critical Point phenomena and theory (the basis for Shimmering Sensitivity) with the Ideal Gas, the point of origin of mechanical models of matter, chiefly Maxwell's and Boltzmann's versions of kinetic theory and Gibbs' statistical mechanics.
A separate ( ... ) web page, "Facts About Snowflakes," discusses the problem of accounting for the generation of snowflakes from gaseous water vapor. Snowflakes can be beautifully symmetrical. Physicists are unable to account for this phenomenon because the proposed atomic processes are independent of one another and separated by relatively huge distances. I argue that the attempt to explain the phenomenon by means of atomic processes is a failure. This failure is exemplary of the failures of physics to explain classes of phenomena of irreversible phase changes. I hold that important brain activities are irreversible phase changes and outside the reach of the Mechanical Cosmology.
A statement of my alternative view accessible to the lay reader, with a critical analysis of conventional physics, is set forth in "An Objective Kind of Freedom," an archival paper in the form of a ( ... ) .pdf file (618 kB.). The paper was published online in January of 2005 and the first six sections were foundational of my development of Quad Nets later in the year.
3/21/11
| Email should be directed to the address shown in the adjoining image. |
|