[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Krsqk]

This is all interesting, but we're still don't have any working definitions. I'll start the ball rolling (and you all can kick it straight back in my face ):

Free will--the ability of an organism to make a decision independently of outside factors, including prior experience, available data, and previous input (training, education, etc). Free will acknowledges the influence of both internal and external factors, but reserves the responsibility of choice to the organism in question.

Determinism--the principle that thought and decision processes are predetermined by prior scientifically explainable physical or chemical processes. Determinism holds that the entire future of the universe was determined at the beginning of time, and the concept of free will is an illusion derived from the complexity of the physical forces involved.

Do those sound like good working definitions? Or should we make some changes/scrap and start over?

[Jack Simth]

Those are decent working definitions for now.

[dogscoff]

quarian: your emergent properties would still result from physical laws. The fact that no human could ever collect enough data to apply those laws and make a prediction is irrelevant. it's stilldetermined.

acording to a determinist...

just for the record, I'm not a determinist. I prefer to believe in the quantum stuff. God does play dice.

Krsqk: Your definitions fit nicely.

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Also, what are you referring to about the speed of light? All of the reports I've seen were basically media-hyped illusions.

I was referring to the fact that the theory of relativity does not apply to anything going past lightspeed. Physical(?) laws after that point would be qualitatively different.

Originally posted by dogscoff:
quarian: your emergent properties would still result from physical laws. The fact that no human could ever collect enough data to apply those laws and make a prediction is irrelevant. it's stilldetermined.

Perhaps, I was pointing out that the sometimes drastic changes that occur with emergent properties would nullify previous predictions based on the prior qualities. For example, projections based on the entropic qualities of quantities of matter are moot when said quantities acquire the anti-entropic qualities of life.

Perhaps this would be a better argument against prophecy. As complex systems grow in complexity they inevitably qualitatively change, thus nullifying existing predictions. Determinism is a little more annoying since it relies on supernatural influence (whether it be a god, a set of laws, etc.) and so is exempt from most rational arguments (it can always claim omniscience).

[Suicide Junkie]

I was referring to the fact that the theory of relativity does not apply to anything going past lightspeed. Physical(?) laws after that point would be qualitatively different

Ok, but I don't see what you're getting at...

[Krsqk]

Perhaps this would be a better argument against prophecy. As complex systems grow in complexity they inevitably qualitatively change, thus nullifying existing predictions. Determinism is a little more annoying since it relies on supernatural influence (whether it be a god, a set of laws, etc.) and so is exempt from most rational arguments (it can always claim omniscience).

Although, that would make prophecy under a free-will system all the more remarkable. BTW, I don't see the existence of the supernatural as contradictory to the operation of free will; they operate in different spheres (although supernatural could override/negate the effects of free will if necessary).

[Kamog]

There seems to be at least two points of view in regards to how our thoughts originate. (1) There is the biochemistry view that says thoughts are a result of chemical reactions in the brain; i.e. the different chemical and electrical processes are what thought is. If this is so, free will would be an illusion. (2) Another view is that we have a soul or spirit which is separate from physical matter. Thoughts originate from this non-physical spirit, and the chemical processes in the brain are a secondary phenomenon caused by the thought. Then free will is possible because thoughts can originate independently of the arrangement of chemicals and atoms in the physical brain.

Even if quantum mechanics allow random processes to occur, that does not necessarily mean that we can have free will. If the reactions in the brain occur randomly, then we don't have a choice as to what the outcome is, and therefore we are not in control. Our thoughts would be a consequence of random quantum fluctuations, not a result of free will.

[dogscoff]

thus nullifying existing predictions.

Quarian, you're still not getting it it. The predictions are irrelevant. Under determinsism, you are just a bunch of particles bouncing around, following the only path through history they possibly could have from their random creation in the Big Bang. The universe doesn't care whether you "predict" or "know" things or not, because your "knowledge" is just a complex pattern of matter in your "brain", which itself is nothing more than a bunch of atoms that happen to be hanging out together for a while because physics put them there.
Under determinism, you have no free will because in any given set of circumstances your atoms can only take one path- the path determined by the laws of physics. There is no possible alternative, no choice, no decision and no free will.

Determinism is a little more annoying since it relies on supernatural influence

No it doesn't. It absolutely does NOT. Determinism is the absolute extreme non-spiritual, absolutely physical view of the universe. It is the logical extreme of the assumption that everything in the universe is governed by a set of utterly consistent physical laws and nothing else- an assumption that has been central to science for centuries. The introduction of any supernatural presence would mean something affecting events from outside those laws, and so introduce unknown variables and screw everything up.

As for the speed of light, even if the way things react to circumstances change under those conditions, they will still be bound by a set of consistent rules.

Quantum mechanics introduces doubt to the determinist argument by taking the "utterly consistent" out of the physical laws. That's why it's so contraversial and ground-breaking. It still doesn't necessarily introduce a god or soul, although it doesn't rule them out completely either.

EDIT: I hadn't read Kamog's post. Good point.

[ March 21, 2003, 08:57: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Chronon]

I have to admit that I'm highly dubious of the extreme determinist position. Here are my two cents (or eurocents):

I'll grant that natural law (genetics, physics, etc.) does have some effect on basic human function, personality and so on. What I look like, how my body has developed, and my basic temperment does seem to have been imposed by natural law. After seeing the development of my daughter and her friends, I would agree that natural law does play a significant role (I used to be more of an extremist on the nurture side in the "nature versus nurture" debate).

But, I don't see how natural law makes me stay up too late working on the frigate design for my ship set, or dictates which type of cereal I eat in the morning.

So, the way I see it, natural law dictates a certain range of behaviors on the macro level, but free will has everything to do with decisions on a micro level. Perhaps quantum mechanics and Newtonian physics are indeed a good analogy. Newtonian works for large bodies, but fails for small ones, just in the same way that natural law works for the general parameters of life, but not for determining what one eats for breakfast.

[dogscoff]

I have to admit that I'm highly dubious of the extreme determinist position. Here are my two cents (or eurocents):

I agree with you, but I'm playing devil's advocate here, so...

So, the way I see it, natural law dictates a certain range of behaviors on the macro level, but free will has everything to do with decisions on a micro level.

But the macro level is just a manifestation of events on the micro level. In fact, there *is* no macro level- that's just an abstraction made up by our puny mortal minds that, for some obscure reason, find it easier to process the concept of "a lump of wood" than "a hundred squillion carbon, hydrogen and assorted other atoms in a particulr arrangement."

I'll grant that natural law (genetics, physics, etc.) does have some effect on basic human function, personality and so on. What I look like, how my body has developed, and my basic temperment does seem to have been imposed by natural law. After seeing the development of my daughter and her friends, I would agree that natural law does play a significant role (I used to be more of an extremist on the nurture side in the "nature versus nurture" debate).

It's not nature vs nurture- nature and nurture are *both* within the realm of cause and effect. I'll explain after another quote or two...

But, I don't see how natural law makes me stay up too late working on the frigate design for my ship set, or dictates which type of cereal I eat in the morning.

Let me put it this way: Your every decision and your every involuntary process is a result of who You are. (Note the capital letter) If you stay up all night on your shipset, it's because there are factors at work in You stronger than your urge to sleep. There's no mystery to it- A desire for completion, a desire to impress your peers, the fact that you had a nap just after lunch and aren't too tired... Dozens of conflicting factors that all combine to make Your behaviour. The question is, who are You?

The trouble is, you can't let go of this idea that You are any less a pile of atoms than your breakfast cereal or your desk. Your brain and body constitute a hugely complex pattern of matter, but it is still just a finite lump of matter.

The pattern your matter-lump now happens to occupy is You. Your entire state of mind and personality, your memories and emotions, all of it down to every Last tiny detail is encoded in the exact, unique arrangement of nerves and cells and tissues and chemicals that make up your brain and body at this exact moment. In a micro second it will be changed- gone forever, replaced by a slightly different You.

The important thing is that all those factors I mentioned earlier, the ones that decide whether or not you go to bed, those things are encoded in your current pattern as well. Your creative urge is a particularly complex budles of nerves somewhere in your head. Your tiredness is a build up of chemicals in your nervous system. Which one is stronger? Your decision to stay up or go to bed is determined by the interaction of this physical matter in You- your "pattern", as I keep calling it.

has everything to do with decisions on a micro level.

But the micro-level physical matter that is You is still subject to physical laws. If you were to look at any particle in your body at any given moment in time (for example the crucial atom in your brain that can tip the balance between you going to bed or not), if you looked at it you would see that it does not have a choice about what happens to it next. Physics (ignoring quantum stuff) only allows one possible course of action. There is only one thing it can do, so you WILL go to bed or you WILL stay up.

And all of this holds for every single one of your atoms and protons and neutrons and whatever-elsons, and all the other particles in the universe, all the time, and it has done since the Big Bang, and shall be ever thus until the entire universe crumples into itself in a great big entropic heap.

Extrapolate this process backwards through your life, with the state of your physical being at any given moment being the inevitable result of the state it was in an instant before, and you see that you have no free will. You just think you do, atom-bag.

[ March 21, 2003, 16:25: Message edited by: dogscoff ]