Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by M.I.D, Oct 2, 2018.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Bohm's "Guiding Equation"
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Ahh yes, from that perspective, you're right.
    Grist for thought. (using an incongruent conflation")
    http://www.conflations.com/pages/incongruent.html
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2018
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  5. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    So does a brick floating in space. Not in the supernatural sense, of course - in the engineering sense.
    They certainly are able to highlight the process that we call "choosing" or "making a decision", but they simply don't speak to whether it is actually free, only to the appearance of being free. Until you can explain how something that is chained to a certain course of action, even though we are unaware of being so, is actually free, then you may be able to offer something. Until then all you seem to have is notions based on the appearance of being free.
    All our actions are necessarily closed. Otherwise you are arguing for us being an indeterministic system, and you'd need to offer something that supports the notion of an indeterministic system being created from strictly deterministic interactions. You would then, after all the last 30-odd pages, finally be denying one of the premises of the argument as initially formulated: specifically you would be denying that a deterministic system that is built from deterministic interactions is itself deterministic.
    Are you denying this?
    Human beings only appear to be open in as much as it seems to them that their decisions are based only on that aspect of the system that they are aware of. If you are only aware of part of the closed system then it might appear open, and being open it is capable of appearing indeterministic, i.e. the same considered inputs to the decision can lead to different outcomes.
    Yawn. This has been responded to almost ad nauseam in the previous 30 pages. I suggest you simply re-read any one of those responses.
    My apologies, I thought you had an understanding of physics? If something is 100 light years away it can not have an impact on me for at least 100 years. This is commonly understood with the notion that information can not travel faster than light.
    Eh? You stated "the decision is not set in stone in the decider" (post #705). I commented that you must therefore think that the decider sits outside of reality - the clarification by me being that the reality of a strictly deterministic universe is that everything is set in stone. There is no place that it is not. It is just that the decider is unaware that it is, and they believe they are free.
    So the conclusion to draw is that you think the decider, where the decision is not set in stone, sits outside of reality, where the decision is set in stone.
    Simples, really.
    And that decision, in the strictly determined universe, is predetermined by preceding events. There is no actual decision being taken, only the appearance and belief, by the decider, that a decision is being taken.
    Answered above.
    There is no handwaving on my part, just the following of the logic. You, however, continue to wave supposed replicable research reports that demonstrate that the will in operation is an actual case of being able to do otherwise, rather than merely the appearance of being able to do otherwise. I'm still waiting for the links.
    How are those terms handwaving? Do you not understand what "predetermined" means? Do you not know what the idiom "set in stone" means? What vagueness is there to the notion that everything is fixed. The only handwaving here is in your accusations of me handwaving, a diversionary tactic on your part.
    Again your misunderstanding. There is no bottom up causality being assumed, delusion or otherwise. I consider the holistic state, as explained, and my argument is consistent with this.
    Even though this decision was set in stone well before the decision appeared to be made? So you consider something set in stone is free?
    While you seem to grasp that in a strictly deterministic universe things would run exactly the same if re-run from the beginning, and you thus state that if the decision was re-run in the lab with the same inputs then you would get the same output, you don't seem to be grasping the predetermined nature of the universe and the implications. If the output of the decision was determined aeons ago, how is it free? How is there in the decider an actual ability to do otherwise, rather than just the appearance (e.g. by lab testing) or belief by the individual that they can do otherwise?
    The theoretical capability to do otherwise when we aren't aware of the inputs (because we only consider an open system and not the necessarily closed system governing the decision) is not in question. So your bleating on about the lab testing really is irrelevant. It only speaks to the existence of a process and the appearance of the nature of process.
    I'm sure we all believe that we have the ability to do otherwise. You are simply asserting that the belief equates to reality. You are asserting that the appearance of being able to otherwise is an actual ability to do otherwise, and despite the explanations for this (that we are only considering an open system and not the closed one that governs the decision) we can come to the conclusion that, at least as far as we can tell, we are free.
    So you keep saying.
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    How does the universes galaxies and stars etc determine our choices?
    By what means?
    How does solar radiation effect our freedom to choose?

    How does determinism stack up in physics?
    What method, means or other is the causality that is so often referred to by determinsts?
     
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Comes to mind a few immediate causalities.
    The galaxies and stars and especially their demise gave birth to the sun and the earth in its orbit and provided the biochemistry that allowed life to evolve from inanimate matter. Job well done.
    Abiogenesis.
    Cannot choose to not get sunburned after long exposure. Eventually you must seek shelter, or die. The desert is full of carcasses of warm blooded mammals. They had no choice in the matter.
    OTOH, cold blooded reptiles are only able to move during the day. They have no choice in the matter.
    If this-->Then that?
    If this-->Then that. It isn't complicated.

    There is no instance of If this-->Then not that.
    Causality always precedes Effect. Effect always follows Causality.

    IMO, the mathematics of any and all universal physical events are causal and deterministic to the result. It seems an inescapable (deterministic) function to me.

    Just a few random thoughts on this grand question......

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    Last edited: Dec 15, 2018
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Orders of magnitude less, on a different logical level, not involving (for example) information.
    A human being makes decisions - a brick does not.
    The consistent overlooking of logical levels is one of the crippling effects of adopting bottom up determinism, btw.
    They observe degrees of freedom, and they do not require them to be supernatural to be "actual". That's your criterion, and it doesn't bear on the matter at hand.
    None of them are. Human beings take in information continually.
    The smallest closed system in a deterministic universe is the entire universe.
    Now you are mistaking open for indeterminate. I am not. Any small system defined and thereby separated from the rest of a deterministic universe is necessarily open - that doesn't make it indeterminate.
    You keep making arguments that make no sense otherwise, as above (trying to equate the degrees of freedom of a brick with those of a human decision, for example). When listing determining factors, the highest pattern level you came up with was molecules - in the context of a conscious human decision, even. That's striking.
    Yep. You are overlooking the manner in which it is set. Logical levels, patterns in substrates, etc.
    And notice how easily you slipped from an appearance of freedom to an appearance of decision. Not only is the freedom mere appearance, the decision itself does not "actually" happen - and that transition is taken for granted, sets off no alarms.

    At what level of pattern in substrate do the patterns stop being "actual" and become mere appearances? You listed atoms and molecules as actual things whose status determined events - so up to the pattern level of molecules we have actual events. The patterns that form in the substrate "molecules", now - are they mere appearances?
    - - - -
    You are denying that a driver approaching a traffic light has the ability to decide whether to stop or go, depending on the color of the light. Reductio ad absurdum.
    You are denying the nature of the system you continue to label a human being.
    You aren't paying attention to the physical mechanisms you are invoking, for starters. You have no clear idea how high level patterns of events are determined in your deterministic universe, how the entities emergent from fifteen billion years of evolutionary pattern complexification function. So you decide classifying something as "predetermined" excludes the very mechanisms that are determining it.
    It is the nature of the process.
    Belief is not involved, in the research. We can demonstrate it. Change the color of the light, and record the change in the decision.
    There is no closed system involved, short of the universe entire. You cannot define one for the example at hand, notice.
     
  10. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    But of course you realize that every effect is also a cause and every cause is also an effect.....
     
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  11. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    It just keeps rolling , rolling along.

    In 14.5 billion years and continuation of possible cause/effect events by an unimaginable amount of matter, all possible things will come to pass eventually.
     
  12. Speakpigeon Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry, I'm not actually free to make any comment.
    Oops, too late. I just did it. Sorry!
    Still, I'm sure it was nothing actually free.
    EB
     
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  13. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Yep... an even after supposedly readin this thred it seems that even the brightest among us ant able to understand that

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  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Apparently you were in fact compelled to make this humorous remark......

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  15. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    I'm sure you think it is. But given that I'm not adopting bottom-up determinism, it's not actually relevant.
    They observe degrees of freedom in an object in space. But it is not free. In a strictly deterministic universe it does nothing more or less than what it has been predetermined to do. Just like a person. Just like any other object in the universe. Irrespective of what that object might think.
    So what? The closed system for any given decision is as I've already explained.
    Only if one is considering the entire timeframe of the universe. If one looks at the system relating to a decision to be made in 10 seconds time then the closed system is 10 light-seconds from the point of the decision being made. This volume necessarily includes all the information that could possibly be pertinent to that decision. No information can be lost from it, or added to it, that could affect the decision. As such it can be considered closed.
    No, I'm not. An open system in this regard is one where not every relevant input is considered. A deterministic process can thus appear indeterministic as a result. An indeterministic system can also be closed, but not in a strictly indeterministic universe, because in such a universe every process is deterministic, and something can only appear to be indeterministic due to not ever relevant input being considered (hence open).
    Not with regard the information necessary for the decision in question, as already explained.
    [/quote]- that doesn't make it indeterminate.[/quote]I didn't say it did make it indeterministic. I said that if one is not considering all the inputs to a system then the system can appear indeterministic, even though the system itself is deterministic. Just take the system of driver, lights, car... same input (light colour) can result in the driver either carrying on or stopping. This would thus appear to be an indeterministic system.
    They do make sense, just not to you it seems. Try looking at things not as bottom up or top down but simply as the entirety of state A being the input. Thus patterns do not determine substrates, substrates do not determine patterns, but both patterns and substrate determine the pattern and substrate. It's really no more complex than that.
    Because I'm not making any assumption as to top-down or bottom-up. I could have easily just have said quarks, electricity, neurons, and the patterns thereof.
    The manner in which it is set is irrelevant. If something is set in stone then it is set in stone. All our decisions, in a strictly deterministic universe, were set in stone before the first life developed on the planet. Before the planet was formed. Before our sun was even formed. What manner of setting things in stone do you think I am overlooking that has any bearing on whether or not something is set in stone?
    If everything is already predetermined then the "decision" is simply a process that our brain goes through. It is not free. So it's not saying anything different whether one says that the decision doesn't happen (if one means by that a "free" decision) or that it does happen but is not free. So no, the transition sets of no alarms as it's saying the same thing.
    The patterns are actual as soon as they emerge.
    I can list anything and everything in the universe as things whose status determines events. So I wouldn't take the list I did provide as exhaustive by any means.
    No, they are actually there.
    I am saying that the outcome of their decision was set in stone. They still have to go through the process of "deciding", but that process, and the ultimate decision is not free; it was set in stone aeons ago. If you want to view that as me saying that they have no ability to decide, well, that's your interpretation.
    No, I'm not. I'm merely understanding it differently to you. And I don't look at the conclusion of an argument and then use that to claim the argument flawed.
    In a strictly deterministic universe (i.e. the scenario under consideration here) it is enough to know that those mechanisms are strictly deterministic. That is all that is required.
    It's not necessary for the argument. To require that level of detail is a red-herring. It is enough to know they are strictly deterministic, that the state of the universe at any point in time is determined from any point in the past.
    Again, it is not necessary.
    No, I am classifying something as predetermined because, in a strictly deterministic universe, everything really is predetermined.
    To be indeterministic? In a strictly deterministic universe? So you disagree with the premise of the initial formulation that says that a process made up of strictly determined interactions is itself deterministic?
    Change the temperature of a room and watch the thermostat click on/off. The observation of a process in operation is not evidence of that process being free.
    I already have defined one, you're just choosing to ignore it. The system for a given decision in x seconds time will be a volume x light-seconds in radius. This volume includes every possible thing that could affect that decision.
    I am not referring to open/closed with regard a perpetual system but with respect to a specific decision, and "closed" as in there can be no loss of, or additional information necessary for the decision than that which is contained in the volume. As such, one could argue that the closed system that we each have for the duration of our lives, covering all our individual decisions, is one that is a radius from our brain/body that starts at x light-years radius (x being our lifespan) when we are born and which decreases at the rate of 1 light-year per year.
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, just found a comprehensive summation of viewpoints from a variety of authoritative sources, which set my original thinking back a few notches.
    http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/physics/

    This article describes several perspectives from renowned scientists. Good stuff.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That includes information generated by the entire universe from its beginning.

    It includes patterns that are not mutually visible - the decision is being affected by factors not visible to each other, and unpredictable by each other, meeting for the first time ever at the decision time and place.

    And measuring it at an instant assumes the ability to make an instantaneous observation of direction of change, which is theoretically impossible. That is: if you are talking about predetermination, things set in stone from the beginning, you are talking about all the changes that take place over the time scale in which they take place at the logical level in which they take place from the beginning. There may be patterns in there whose "phase settings" play out discontinuously over millions of years, and are invisible to each other as well as any observation on any shorter time interval.

    In what sense is that either "closed" or a "system"?

    Or from the other direction: let's give you the handwave, and say you have somehow defined a "closed system" smaller than the universe - it's nowhere near the size of a human being. The system "human being" is open.
    - - - -
    It has degrees of freedom. The thermostat has the ability to click on or off and still be a working thermostat.
    If this concept is extrapolated or extended to logical levels of pattern at which events such as "human being making decision" exist, what would they be?

    They would include dreams, for example, in some extension of the way that a thermostat includes a spring or solenoid or transistorized circuitry.
    ---- - - -
    Not to me. None of these processes appear indeterminate to me - I automatically assume that all inputs, observed or unobserved, are natural and follow the laws of physics etc.
    Not if you are trying to discuss the concept of degrees of freedom in a working system at the logical level of the human mind.
    Your understanding is in conflict with itself. For one thing, you can't have a human being making a decision on one hand, and a system having no degrees of freedom - no ability to do otherwise - on the other. You can't use a claim of "holistic" determinism to slough off the problems with bottom up causality, and then label examples of high level top down causation - such as the decision making abilities of the human mind - "illusion" because they are not bottom up causation.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2018
  18. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I just wanna know how determinsm can force a decision on any one..... I would then sell it to either of the worlds super powers for a tidy sum as they would just love to be able to "mind control" a human being.
    Lets face it, that is exactly what the determinist is suggesting... mind control. Either by a divine being or some butterfly flapping it's wings at the dawn of time....
     
  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Sleepwalking is an expression of free will or free choice? Clearly it is a free physical ability.

    Is there a difference between free will function and automotor function?
     
  20. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I would say yes

    If you are running on autopilot so to speak nothing about will of any flavour involved

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  21. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly, it is purely deterministic chemistry......

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  22. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    With the lot of determined physics if you step into the air at the top of the staircase

    I'm still working on a response to the thread in general

    But laziness, just back from 3 weeks holiday, and repacking for March holiday, arranging who to meet and for how long with a sore back at times in the forefront keeping me busy

    Along with general living

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  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    If you're packing three months in advance, you may want to reconsider your priorities...

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