Is free will possible in a deterministic universe?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Sarkus, Jun 7, 2019.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    But that is a false equivalence.
    In reality the energy of the white ball would be transferred at exact mathematical angles and momentum and no spontaneous deviation is physically possible, but to obey what the mathematics determine.
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2019
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Come to think of it, anything that has mathematical values and/or functions, is by nature deterministic, both causally and resultant.

    As everything in the universe has mathematical properties, everything in the universe is mathematically deterministic.

    Is there more?
     
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  5. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Except when it hits a human who does his own maths and uses other retained and gathered energies to set his own vector... lol
     
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  7. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And asks for an ambulance ...

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    Determinism resolved by Hospitalization........

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    Last edited: Sep 13, 2019
  8. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    or has a heap of fun...


    Capitalizing on the energy imparted by a trampoline, using the humans own energy, mathematics, right or wrongly.... lol
     
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  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    A dictation of one moment to the next is not a script, and the attempted analogy has muddled the discussion.
    Yes. By definition.
    Water has no will. It lacks the necessary logical level of organization.
    That is false, as the example of chaotic amplification posted above illustrates.
    For starters, there is no such thing as "complete knowledge" of any momentary state of the universe as a whole - it's a contradiction in terms, theoretically impossible, meaningless combination of words, etc.
    Second, the momentary state does not determine the subsequent states of the universe. One must measure over time - not at an instant or "moment" - to enable even approximate predictions.
    They are not billiard balls, and they don't behave like billiard balls. They are not material entities, and they do not "collide" as material entities do.
    That human beings have established their theoretical impossibility - by mathematical proof, among other means - does negate their theoretical possibility.
    It led you to make false statements. Your point was invalid.
    Nobody is ascribing freedom of will to "chemistry and physics".
    One investigates the various freedoms of human will by measuring and recording and analyzing the relevant behaviors of the human brain/mind - an entity that has a will in the first place - among other methods.
     
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  10. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    When you assert self determinism you imply freedom from universal determinism. Since you are composed of universally determined elements, and exist in an environment composed of the same, there is no independent self to determine its actions.
    An implicit order that dictates that a given universal momentary state will determine the state of the following universal momentary state does amount to a script. The determined past deterministically authors the future, that’s the essence of determinism.
    In the same way that the constituents of a hurricane are thought to belong to the hurricane, even though the hurricane is actually just a manifestation of oceanic and atmospheric dynamics. Just as the hurricane is an effect of that dynamic mix, humans too are an effect of their environmental dynamics.
    Water does what it does because of its relationship with its environmental elements, the same goes for the behavior of humans. If you want to label that dynamic as will for humans, you must also do the same for water and any other universal element. And if the self is composed of a collection of individually willed elements, where does that leave the self? Mob rule? Anarchy?
    Chaos is essentially undefinable cause and effect that results from incomplete knowledge.
    As theoretically impossible as infinity? Yet infinity is an accepted theoretical standard. If one can postulate the infinite, then infinite knowledge becomes a theoretical possibility.
    Time is a collection of moments, therefore the concept of one moment determining the next is definitionally an expression of time. Additionally, complete knowledge implies total understanding of the behavior of universal elements, which allows for a determination of past and future universal states.
    I didn’t say that quarks behave like billiard balls, or that chicken eggs behave like billiard balls, but only that all material entities do behave in sequentially determined fashion.

    Apparently you still haven’t bothered to review you knowledge of quarks, because just like other material entities such as billiard balls, they do materially collide with other material elements.

    During proton collisions, quarks and gluons interact –they brush past each other or collide. Head-on collisions usually produce sprays of highly energetic collimated particles called hadronic jets. The patterns of hadronic jets in such collisions could provide the first indication of whether quarks are complex objects.

    https://atlas.cern/updates/physics-briefing/are-quarks-fundamental-particles

    You can mathematically postulate countless theoretical possibilities that can’t be empirically demonstrated. Like I mentioned earlier, if infinity can be theoretically postulated, then so can infinite knowledge.
    But all of the subject material in your analysis are manifestations of determined chemistry and physics, where there is no presumed freedom of anything. So where does this freedom of behavior originate in regards to the bag of chemistry and physics we call the brain?
     
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  11. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I do not... It is your lack of understanding that infers freedom to be the outcome. In the context of your post , there is no freedom with in a deterministic universe, none, nada, zilch...
    But of course you will still state that if that is the case then there can be no self determinism... this is because you automatically and incorrectly equate self determinism with freedom. Your problem not mine...

    Self determination is not freedom.
    Humans have no choice but to self determine if they wish to live. NO choice, totally compelled to self determine. Humans have no freedom from the need to self determine to stay alive.

    Freedom is merely a subjective quality that is ascribed to the ability to self determine by humans. The quality or value "Freedom", in itself has no material implications.
    There is no freedom from a deterministic universe.
    But there can be self determination with in a deterministic universe as evidenced abundantly.
     
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2019
  12. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    there is no freedom of the self from the self... duh!
    Just like there is no freedom from your heart or your liver or your kidneys either.
    But they are YOUR organs and you are the sum of what they do or not do.
    It is that SUM of all you are that self determines..
    Do you know how important the spinal column is to the SUM of your being? ( rhetorical)
     
  13. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    The basic premise if universal determinism implies that determinism is a product of the entire collective. When you propose that an isolated aspect of that collective self determines its fate, it implies freedom of determination from the collective.
    What you are describing as self determined behavior is actually a result of universal determinism. All of the qualities of the self are created and manipulated by the universal collective, so how can the self be credited with any independent degree of determinism? If the universe is determining the behavior of the self, then definitionally there is no self determination.
    If there is no freedom from universal determinism, then the universe does all of the determining, which leaves no room for actual cases of self determination.
    It’s not the self that is responsible for the determined behavior of the chemistry and physics that govern the behavior of the self. The self is an expression of that chemistry and physics, not the master of it.
    The sum of all that you are is a product of the universally determined chemistry and physics that defines your every elementary action. There is no you that exists separately from the universe that expresses it.
     
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  14. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    And how does the universal collective do this miraculous feat?
    By what method is the human being controlled?
    How are we humans attached to the universal collective?
    Please explain How your theory is able to work...
     
  15. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    You're starting at the wrong end - assuming free will is the default and asking how it is suppressed.

    The key to this puzzle is not by looking at it from the top down, but from the bottom up.


    We are only made of atoms. An atom does not have free will to act as it pleases; it is bound by the very limited set of physics laws that determine how atoms behave.
    Molecules do not have free will to act as they please; they are bound by the laws of physics of atoms.
    Cells do not have free will to act as they please; they are bound by the laws of chemistry of molecules.
    Organs do not have free will to act as they please; they are bound by the laws of molecules.

    Wherein exactly does an organism - made up of uncountable building blocks that are bound by a small set of physics laws - acquire the ability to not obey the straightforward chemistry that determines its (albeit very complex) course?

    And before you slap on a label like 'emergent behavior', try to describe how that can result in free will.

    It is not the same as 'one million ants have more complex behavior than any individual ant'. Complex ant colony behavior gives the illusion of intelligence. In the same way vastly complex human cognition gives the illusion of free will.
     
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  16. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    How does anyone know what "will?"
     
  17. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    A good post, Thanks.
    No, I am not starting from the top down, I am starting from observable, demonstrable empirical evidence, that self determination, self animation, exists and they are no illusion.
    I premise my rational on attempting to understanding that which is scientifically observed.
    That a man can and does work with, make use of and counter those determining laws of nature you refer to every day of his life.
    Gosh, we even flew to the moon and landed on it.... How many laws were manipulated to do that?
    It is clearly observed that humans demonstrate self determination.
    I have yet to read one single argument that can logically refute that observation. ( unless you wish to consider religious or fatalism arguments as rational)


    So compare a lump of carbon stationary on a table somewhere and ask yourself:
    How do I get it to move on it's own? ( to become self animated)
    ....and realize that you are asking how to grant it the capacity to self determine that you already have.

    Is human self animation an illusion as well?
     
  18. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I could just as easily argue, using that same strategy as determinist, that the universes apparent lack of animation., life and self determination is an illusion.
    After all why do you consider a theorized atom as being dead to begin with?
    Why do you think that the theoretical atom is not self determined or self animated? ( but uses a different time scale ie. millions of years to be so)
    It would be relatively easy to argue that if human self determination is an illusion then the entire universe could be as well which reduces the argument about freewill to be totally nonsensical to begin with.

    Challenge:
    When science can rationally explain the paradoxical properties of liquid water ( H2O ) properly then maybe you will have the logic to work out "What is life? What is will ? and what is death?
    Until then we are merely speculating in ignorance.
     
  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Question: in a Deterministic universe is the script not already written? Bohm's Implicate. That would make each moment a moment in the running script, no?
    I submit, water does not have the required rigidity for logical organization. It is a great mixing medium......

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    That is a futile question. You cannot make a lump of carbon self animated.
    A single celled organism is self-animated. Do bacteria have free will? How and what granted that freedom?
    It is the same question as above.

    One might say that "goal orientated action" contains a measure of free will, but "goal orientation" is deterministic causality, no?
     
  20. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    perhaps you could offer a definition of freedom first so we have something other than a "leaf in the wind" to discuss.
     
  21. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    In context of free will, freedom merely indicates an ability of choosing from a range of various causal actions. The choice itself, from among other choices, is deterministic.

    This is not as simplistic as it sounds. Insects have no choice at all over anything. Their program allows only for a few purely very specific reactions. It's all hardwired.

    OTOH, a herd of cattle may stampede over a cliff. They had a choice, but did not realize it. In this case the "flight instinct" overrides all other considerations and results in death.

    But gently lead a cow to a cliff and it will not fall if it is able to see the empty space ahead.
    Still deterministic but now the circumstances result in life........

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    Now apply this to your example.
    Either way it's deterministic.......

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    Last edited: Sep 16, 2019
  22. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I have agreed many times:

     
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  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I believe this is the definition of determinism.
    But that would suggest incomplete knowledge of all mathematical factors, no?

    However I do agree that at certain scales it is impossible to know, let alone apply all mathematical values, functions, and external potentials present, it is impossible to gather all the necessary data.
    https://www.britannica.com/topic/determinism

    I like the rational part.......

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    Last edited: Sep 16, 2019

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