(Mar 12, 2017 07:54 PM)Syne Wrote: There's a vast difference between those who intuitively believe in things like free will and god and those who have the intellectual wherewithal to challenge the prevailing secular beliefs of others (which even if they do believe in such things, they don't really care whether the belief is justified).
You believe in both, free will and god, right? How do you justify your belief?
"While many otherwise rational people believe in the supernaturalism of free will, no rational person believes in fatalism. It is only used as a "straw man": by accepting the false premise that fatalism is the only alternative to free will, one can discard both fatalism and determinism without further thought, and comfortably assume that free will is proven.
Fortunately, fatalism is neither the logical extension of determinism nor the only alternative to free will. Determinism holds that human thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors are just as much a part of the natural universe as thunderclouds. They can be seen as either results of previous conditions or causes of subsequent conditions, but the fact is that they are part of a larger process that began with the big bang and will continue for the life of the cosmos."[1]
SyneMar 13, 2017 02:31 AM (This post was last modified: Mar 13, 2017 02:34 AM by Syne.)
I've already justified both, both here and elsewhere. If you wish to engage specific points of those arguments, I'd be happy to expound.
And the bare assertion that determinism doesn't require fatalism belies the definition of either. You have to add indeterminism to avoid a sense of predestination.
(Mar 13, 2017 02:31 AM)Syne Wrote: I've already justified both, both here and elsewhere. If you wish to engage specific points of those arguments, I'd be happy to expound.
And the bare assertion that determinism doesn't require fatalism belies the definition of either. You have to add indeterminism to avoid a sense of predestination.
Okay.
If what they’re saying is true. If we don’t have free will then there is no escaping the Matrix. Determinism states that we’re a part of the unfolding Matrix, but supernaturalism and fatalism regard humans as existing outside of this system. You're always calling everyone a science denier, and yet, here you are doing the same thing. Remember, you liked Jerry Coyne when he supported your views on sexual dimorphism.
Let’s look as superdeterminism, though, shall we? It takes us further down the rabbit hole where gets a little creepier. It basically says that we’re only tricked into seeing random behavior, but first, let’s address your indeterminism and "outside of the universe" shit. Oh, and C C’s compatibilism.
I think nearly all of us agree that there’s no dualism involved in our decisions: they’re determined completely by the laws of physics. Even the pure indeterminism of quantum mechanics can’t give us free will, because that’s simple randomness, and not a result of our own “will.”
So although most of us are pure determinists about our behaviors, and reject the libertarian we-could-have-done-otherwise brand of free will embraced by most people and nearly all religionists, many of us are still compatibilists. By and large, compatibilists reject dualism and embrace determinism (and the randomness of quantum phenomena), but still say that humans have “free will”. (What is deemed “compatible” is determinism and some notion of free will.) To do that, they simply redefine the classical notion of dualistic free will so that it means something else: the lack of constraint by others, the evolved complexity of our brain that processes a variety of inputs before spitting out a “decision,” and so on.
And now let's go further down the rabbit hole, shall we?
While a logical loophole in quantum theory may not be grounds for worrying you’ve unknowingly outsourced your apparent free will to the Matrix, this stuff actually keeps scientists and philosophers up at night. In fact, it motivated my colleagues—Jason Gallicchio at the University of Chicago and David Kaiser at MIT—and I to devise an experiment with the potential to close this so-called “free will” loophole once and for all, as much as the cosmos will permit. The trick, it turns out, is to use nearly the entire history of the universe.
Another connection to free will hinges on the phenomenon of entanglement. Does the spookily coordinated behavior of quantum particles reflect a nonlocal connection between them or, alternatively, some built-in cheat sheet that allows them to arrange their answers in advance? In the 1960s the Irish physicist John Bell devised an experiment to decide between these possibilities.
“There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it involves absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the ‘decision’ by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster-than-light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already ‘knows’ what that measurement, and its outcome, will be.”—John Stewart Bell
Thus, it is conceivable that freedom of choice has been restricted since the beginning of the universe in the Big Bang, with every future measurement predetermined by correlations established at the Big Bang. This would make superdeterminism untestable, since experimenters would never be able to eliminate correlations that were created at the beginning of the universe: the freedom-of-choice loophole could never be completely eliminated.
A debate that has gone on for millennia has flared up again in recent years.
"Superdeterminism is extremely troubling, because if true it would pull the rug out from under empirical science. If measurement outcomes depended on our experimental choices, we could never conduct a controlled experiment. All the laws of physics would be illusions. And if we couldn’t trust quantum mechanics, why would we bothering with this discussion to begin with? The very idea of superdeterminism is self-negating."
John Wheeler said that it begins to look as if we ourselves, by a last minute decision, have an influence on what a photon will do when it has already accomplished most of its doing…we have to say that we ourselves have an undeniable part in shaping what we have always called the past. The past is not really the past until it has been registered. Or to put it another way, the past has no meaning or existence unless it exists as a record in the present.
WTF? Can our choice really effect how a particle acted in the past?
"While delayed choice experiments have confirmed the seeming ability of measurements made on photons in the present to alter events occurring in the past, this requires a non-standard view of quantum mechanics. If a photon in flight is interpreted as being in a so-called "superposition of states", i.e. if it is interpreted as something that has the potentiality to manifest as a particle or wave, but during its time in flight is neither, then there is no time paradox."
That sounds inaccurate, though if—as in the thought experiment, the photons were already past a quasar.
Abstract
The counterintuitive features of quantum physics challenge many common-sense assumptions. In an interferometric quantum eraser experiment, one can actively choose whether or not to erase which-path information (a particle feature) of one quantum system and thus observe its wave feature via interference or not by performing a suitable measurement on a distant quantum system entangled with it. In all experiments performed to date, this choice took place either in the past or, in some delayed-choice arrangements, in the future of the interference. Thus, in principle, physical communications between choice and interference were not excluded. Here, we report a quantum eraser experiment in which, by enforcing Einstein locality, no such communication is possible. This is achieved by independent active choices, which are space-like separated from the interference. Our setup employs hybrid path-polarization entangled photon pairs, which are distributed over an optical fiber link of 55 m in one experiment, or over a free-space link of 144 km in another. No naive realistic picture is compatible with our results because whether a quantum could be seen as showing particle- or wave-like behavior would depend on a causally disconnected choice. It is therefore suggestive to abandon such pictures altogether. [source]
I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable, though. Free will is a major component of the self. If the self and free will is an illusion then this splash of truth destroys my beautiful wickedness. I’m melting, melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!
(Mar 13, 2017 02:31 AM)Syne Wrote: I've already justified both, both here and elsewhere. If you wish to engage specific points of those arguments, I'd be happy to expound.
And the bare assertion that determinism doesn't require fatalism belies the definition of either. You have to add indeterminism to avoid a sense of predestination.
Okay.
If what they’re saying is true. If we don’t have free will then there is no escaping the Matrix. Determinism states that we’re a part of the unfolding Matrix, but supernaturalism and fatalism regard humans as existing outside of this system. You're always calling everyone a science denier, and yet, here you are doing the same thing. Remember, you liked Jerry Coyne when he supported your views on sexual dimorphism.
And? Only an appeal to authority would compel anyone to agree with EVERYTHING someone else said. As I've demonstrated elsewhere, his claim that "brain scans can predict our choices several seconds before we're conscious of having made them" (Libet experiment) is only true of trivial random choices...having no bearing on significant free will.
And no, fatalism isn't dualistic ("regard humans as existing outside of this system"). Fatalism claims all actions are determined to the point of effectively being predetermined.
Quote:Let’s look as superdeterminism, though, shall we? It takes us further down the rabbit hole where gets a little creepier. It basically says that we’re only tricked into seeing random behavior, but first, let’s address your indeterminism and "outside of the universe" shit. Oh, and C C’s compatibilism.
What "outside of the universe"? There is no "outside of the universe".
Quote:If the two are somehow synchronized, that might produce the illusion of nonlocality.
"Somehow synchronized" is, ATM, just wishful thinking.
Quote:Thus, it is conceivable that freedom of choice has been restricted since the beginning of the universe in the Big Bang, with every future measurement predetermined by correlations established at the Big Bang.
Conceivable, but not the least bit evidenced.
Quote:The delayed choice quantum eraser experiment was first proposed as a thought experiment by John Wheeler.
John Wheeler said that it begins to look as if we ourselves, by a last minute decision, have an influene on what photon will do when it has already accomplished most of its doing…we have to say that we ourselves have an undeniable part in shaping what we have always called the past. The past is not really the past until it has been registered. Or to put it another way, the past has no meaning or existence unless it exists as a record in the present.
WTF? Can our choice really effect how a particle acted in the past?
There are some arguments against it.
"While delayed choice experiments have confirmed the seeming ability of measurements made on photons in the present to alter events occurring in the past, this requires a non-standard view of quantum mechanics. If a photon in flight is interpreted as being in a so-called "superposition of states", i.e. if it is interpreted as something that has the potentiality to manifest as a particle or wave, but during its time in flight is neither, then there is no time paradox."
I don’t know about this, though. It sounds inaccurate, if—as in the thought experiment, the photons were already past a quasar.
No, there's no backward causation because there's zero reason to believe a photon is not in a superposition of states while in flight.
Quote:Abstract
The counterintuitive features of quantum physics challenge many common-sense assumptions. In an interferometric quantum eraser experiment, one can actively choose whether or not to erase which-path information (a particle feature) of one quantum system and thus observe its wave feature via interference or not by performing a suitable measurement on a distant quantum system entangled with it. In all experiments performed to date, this choice took place either in the past or, in some delayed-choice arrangements, in the future of the interference. Thus, in principle, physical communications between choice and interference were not excluded. Here, we report a quantum eraser experiment in which, by enforcing Einstein locality, no such communication is possible. This is achieved by independent active choices, which are space-like separated from the interference. Our setup employs hybrid path-polarization entangled photon pairs, which are distributed over an optical fiber link of 55 m in one experiment, or over a free-space link of 144 km in another. No naive realistic picture is compatible with our results because whether a quantum could be seen as showing particle- or wave-like behavior would depend on a causally disconnected choice. It is therefore suggestive to abandon such pictures altogether. [source]
I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable, though. Free will is a major component of the self. If the self and free will is an illusion then this splash of truth destroys my beautiful wickedness. I’m melting, melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!
Delay-choice quantum eraser experiments do nothing to disprove free will, so I don't understand your trepidation over this result. They actually demonstrated that there is no deterministic communication under the limits of relativity.
I think it's a little over your head. Maybe you should stick with your discussions on homosexuality.
Indeterminism of quantum mechanics doesn’t support the traditional idea of free will because your mental processes would have no influence on the probabilistic outcomes.
So, what evidence do you have to support free will, other than your little 'feelings'?
(Mar 22, 2017 07:25 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I think it's a little over your head. Maybe you should stick with your discussions on homosexuality.
Indeterminism of quantum mechanics doesn’t support the traditional idea of free will because your mental processes would have no influence on the probabilistic outcomes.
So, what evidence do you have to support free will, other than your little 'feelings'?
I get that you're trolling me over discussions you cannot participate in, because you were banned. Try to stay on-topic.
I didn't say indeterminism, alone, supports free will, so that's a sad straw man argument. You conveniently ignored my earlier explanation that trying to refute free will solely with determinism or indeterminism is foolish in a world where both occur. Go look up what I've already said in this thread. Otherwise I can only assume you're not interested in an intellectually honest discussion.
And it's a joke for you to say things are over someone's head after you just flubbed the definition of fatalism and completely misjudged the results of a relativity-constrained delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment.
(Mar 22, 2017 08:47 PM)Syne Wrote: I get that you're trolling me over discussions you cannot participate in, because you were banned. Try to stay on-topic.
You’re such a smartass. You’ve had those same discussions here, as well. AND stop doing that. It’s making me cringe. I have highly sensitive mirror neurons and I’m embarrassed for you.
Syne Wrote:I didn't say indeterminism, alone, supports free will, so that's a sad straw man argument. You conveniently ignored my earlier explanation that trying to refute free will solely with determinism or indeterminism is foolish in a world where both occur. Go look up what I've already said in this thread. Otherwise I can only assume you're not interested in an intellectually honest discussion.
Okay.
There was this…
People like to deny free will based on either solely deterministic or solely indeterministic grounds. They seem to forget that thought is a global, aggregate process. Some of the neural inputs can be amplified, quantum indeterminacy, and some of them macro determinism based on external stimuli and stochastic activity. The aggregate is not only composed of these, but also the congruent history, which is completely subjective.
And then this…
Like I said, "People like to deny free will based on either solely deterministic or solely indeterministic grounds." "If a person's action is, however, only result of complete quantum randomness" is solely indeterminsitic grounds. These are weak arguments that seek to segregate the universe into isolated deterministic and indeterministic camps, since it is a false dilemma that it can only be one or the other.
Personally, I find that the compatibilist/incompatibilist distinction doesn't cover enough philosophical territory. Incompatibilists deny that either free will, determinism, or both (indeterminists) exist. Compatibilists just redefine free will in a way that effectively makes it meaningless. Denying that free will, determinism, or indeterminism exist seems like a false dilemma. Classical physics demonstrates determinism, and quantum physics demonstrates indeterminism, each within their own domains. To deny either seems foolish, and to deny that either is universally applicable is equally so. Our everyday experience seems to demonstrate free will. And if our agency were moot, why would anyone fret over any choice to the extent that they should have physiological reactions or consequences?
Why can't metaphysical freewill exist (libertarianism) and be expressed through a physical (determined and/or stochastic) emergence?
And then you said this…
People want to make the whole brain out to be either macroscopically determined or microscopically indeterminate. This 'one or the other' scheme generally works well in the typical fields of physics, but the brain may be one of the very few places where these interact. Since quantum decoherence, especially in a warm, wet environment like the brain, would seem to deny the brain working as a quantum computer, it seems unlikely that the brain can be wholly reduced to stochastic quantum processes...not that free will can be recovered from wholly random (probabilistic) events. At the size of neuron activity, it's also unlikely that the brain is wholly a macroscopic, deterministic process.
So the brain is likely to work in an analogous way to how quantum measurements occur. There are several equally real probable outcomes, and deterministic processes, akin to consistent subjective history, contribute to the choice of measurement. And if that were the end of it, most people would be happy calling that determinism. But this occurs, on average, 200 times a second, for each of 100 billion neurons. IOW, choice of measurement is occurring in such a vast number of neurons at the same time that no physically deterministic history could hope to account for the overall outcome.
Just as we perceive ourselves to have freedom of choice in which complimentary quantum property we wish to measure, we have this perceived freedom in such abundance within the brain that true free will is all but a given. In such a system, there is no reason to expect consistent behavior...yet people seem to have very stable traits and motivations.
BFD! That’s just like saying since there’s 100 different flavors of ice cream, there’s such an abundance that true free will is all but a given.
Syne Wrote:And it's a joke for you to say things are over someone's head after you just flubbed the definition of fatalism and completely misjudged the results of a relativity-constrained delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment.
No, I didn't.
"In his book, The Moral Landscape, author and neuroscientist Sam Harris also argues against free will. He offers one thought experiment where a mad scientist represents determinism. In Harris' example, the mad scientist uses a machine to control all the desires, and thus all the behavior, of a particular human. Harris believes that it is no longer as tempting, in this case, to say the victim has "free will". Harris says nothing changes if the machine controls desires at random - the victim still seems to lack free will. Harris then argues that we are also the victims of such unpredictable desires (but due to the unconscious machinations of our brain, rather than those of a mad scientist). Based on this introspection, he writes "This discloses the real mystery of free will: if our experience is compatible with its utter absence, how can we say that we see any evidence for it in the first place?" adding that "Whether they are predictable or not, we do not cause our causes." That is, he believes there is compelling evidence of absence of free will."
"Some, like Dennett, when defending free will are referring to our capacity for voluntary, reasons-guided choice-making and behavior. We are free when acting sanely on our own and perhaps others’ behalf, so long as we’re not subject to coercion or manipulation. Such free will – being in sane control of one’s actions – is compatible with determinism. We’d be acting freely in this sense even if it’s the case that our behavior is fully a function of antecedent causes, including our neurally-realized beliefs and desires. Even if, in actual situations (as opposed to counterfactual), we couldn’t have done otherwise due to iron-clad determinism, our actions would still be up to us: we’d be controlling them, not someone else. Since we’re usually in control of our behavior, to tell folks they don’t have free will in this compatibilist sense would be false. So don’t do that.
Others, like scientists Anthony Cashmore, Jerry Coyne and Sam Harris, when denying free will are usually referring to a purportedly contra-causal capacity for choice and action, such that we could have done otherwise in a way that’s deeply up to us as a situation played out. Such freedom, incompatible with determinism, obviously makes the human agent more of an originator – somewhat of a first cause – since choices and actions aren’t fully traceable to antecedent conditions. An exact replay of the situation up to the moment of choice might have turned out otherwise.
However, there’s little evidence to support the claim we are free in this libertarian, contra-causal sense. Libertarians such as philosophers Robert Kane(link is external) and Mark Balaguer(link is external), and neuroscientist Peter Tse(link is external), have floated various proposals for how this sort of free will might work. But it hasn’t yet been made clear to most philosophers’ and scientists’ satisfaction how indeterminism makes an agent more responsible – more of an originator – than under determinism."
(Mar 22, 2017 08:47 PM)Syne Wrote: I get that you're trolling me over discussions you cannot participate in, because you were banned. Try to stay on-topic.
You’re such a smartass. You’ve had those same discussions here, as well. AND stop doing that. It’s making me cringe. I have highly sensitive mirror neurons and I’m embarrassed for you.
You're so full of shit. You wouldn't even know if I've had "those same discussions here" if you weren't keeping up elsewhere. AND you've commented on discussions you're banned from participating in before. Being banned, you're irrelevant to those discussions, so you can have whatever mirror neuron response you imagine.
Quote:
Syne Wrote:I didn't say indeterminism, alone, supports free will, so that's a sad straw man argument. You conveniently ignored my earlier explanation that trying to refute free will solely with determinism or indeterminism is foolish in a world where both occur. Go look up what I've already said in this thread. Otherwise I can only assume you're not interested in an intellectually honest discussion.
Okay.
There was this…
People like to deny free will based on either solely deterministic or solely indeterministic grounds. They seem to forget that thought is a global, aggregate process. Some of the neural inputs can be amplified, quantum indeterminacy, and some of them macro determinism based on external stimuli and stochastic activity. The aggregate is not only composed of these, but also the congruent history, which is completely subjective.
And then this…
Like I said, "People like to deny free will based on either solely deterministic or solely indeterministic grounds." "If a person's action is, however, only result of complete quantum randomness" is solely indeterminsitic grounds. These are weak arguments that seek to segregate the universe into isolated deterministic and indeterministic camps, since it is a false dilemma that it can only be one or the other.
Personally, I find that the compatibilist/incompatibilist distinction doesn't cover enough philosophical territory. Incompatibilists deny that either free will, determinism, or both (indeterminists) exist. Compatibilists just redefine free will in a way that effectively makes it meaningless. Denying that free will, determinism, or indeterminism exist seems like a false dilemma. Classical physics demonstrates determinism, and quantum physics demonstrates indeterminism, each within their own domains. To deny either seems foolish, and to deny that either is universally applicable is equally so. Our everyday experience seems to demonstrate free will. And if our agency were moot, why would anyone fret over any choice to the extent that they should have physiological reactions or consequences?
Why can't metaphysical freewill exist (libertarianism) and be expressed through a physical (determined and/or stochastic) emergence?
And then you said this…
People want to make the whole brain out to be either macroscopically determined or microscopically indeterminate. This 'one or the other' scheme generally works well in the typical fields of physics, but the brain may be one of the very few places where these interact. Since quantum decoherence, especially in a warm, wet environment like the brain, would seem to deny the brain working as a quantum computer, it seems unlikely that the brain can be wholly reduced to stochastic quantum processes...not that free will can be recovered from wholly random (probabilistic) events. At the size of neuron activity, it's also unlikely that the brain is wholly a macroscopic, deterministic process.
So the brain is likely to work in an analogous way to how quantum measurements occur. There are several equally real probable outcomes, and deterministic processes, akin to consistent subjective history, contribute to the choice of measurement. And if that were the end of it, most people would be happy calling that determinism. But this occurs, on average, 200 times a second, for each of 100 billion neurons. IOW, choice of measurement is occurring in such a vast number of neurons at the same time that no physically deterministic history could hope to account for the overall outcome.
Just as we perceive ourselves to have freedom of choice in which complimentary quantum property we wish to measure, we have this perceived freedom in such abundance within the brain that true free will is all but a given. In such a system, there is no reason to expect consistent behavior...yet people seem to have very stable traits and motivations.
BFD! That’s just like saying since there’s 100 different flavors of ice cream, there’s such an abundance that true free will is all but a given.
No, it's not, deary. It's not solely about quantity, it's about nature.
It a QM measurement, the measurement device itself becomes entangled with the quantum system being measured.
Any elements that decohere from each other via environmental interactions are said to be quantum entangled with the environment. The converse is not true: not all entangled states are decohered from each other.
Any measuring device or apparatus acts as an environment since, at some stage along the measuring chain, it has to be large enough to be read by humans. It must possess a very large number of hidden degrees of freedom. In effect, the interactions may be considered to be quantum measurements. As a result of an interaction, the wave functions of the system and the measuring device become entangled with each other. Decoherence happens when different portions of the system's wavefunction become entangled in different ways with the measuring device.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_de...ce_picture
Any quantum process in the brain acts as a quantum measurement, the quantum system becoming entangled with the deterministic macro brain physiology. So just like we have not been able to disprove our freedom in selecting experimental setup, this occurs 200 times a second, for each of 100 billion neurons. Unless you're keeping some actual evidence of superdeterminism a secret, that weighs heavily in favor of actual free will.
Quote:
Syne Wrote:And it's a joke for you to say things are over someone's head after you just flubbed the definition of fatalism and completely misjudged the results of a relativity-constrained delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment.
No, I didn't.
You said:
"Determinism states that we’re a part of the unfolding Matrix, but supernaturalism and fatalism regard humans as existing outside of this system."
You obviously don't know what fatalism means if you're defending this nonsense.
"While the terms are often used interchangeably, fatalism, determinism, and predeterminism are discrete in stressing different aspects of the futility of human will or the foreordination of destiny. However, all these doctrines share common ground." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism#D...eterminism
And following a delayed-choice quantum erasure paper that just guaranteed Einstein locality (demonstrating the lack of deterministic cause between measurement and remote result):
"I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable, though. Free will is a major component of the self. If the self and free will is an illusion then this splash of truth destroys my beautiful wickedness. I’m melting, melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!"
Maybe this comment was either non-sequitur to the paper just cited, or you failed to comment on that paper at all, and this was just a general comment. So either you misunderstood that paper, or you just seemingly threw it in to sound smart...and failed.
Quote:"In his book, The Moral Landscape, author and neuroscientist Sam Harris also argues against free will. He offers one thought experiment where a mad scientist represents determinism. In Harris' example, the mad scientist uses a machine to control all the desires, and thus all the behavior, of a particular human. Harris believes that it is no longer as tempting, in this case, to say the victim has "free will". Harris says nothing changes if the machine controls desires at random - the victim still seems to lack free will. Harris then argues that we are also the victims of such unpredictable desires (but due to the unconscious machinations of our brain, rather than those of a mad scientist). Based on this introspection, he writes "This discloses the real mystery of free will: if our experience is compatible with its utter absence, how can we say that we see any evidence for it in the first place?" adding that "Whether they are predictable or not, we do not cause our causes." That is, he believes there is compelling evidence of absence of free will."
He's just playing infinite regress (homunculus fallacy) by removing free will from the victim to the mad scientist, which always requires a further mad scientist...never arriving at a justification for the premise. He also relies heavily on Libet-type experiments that do not demonstrate what they purport to.
Quote:However, there’s little evidence to support the claim we are free in this libertarian, contra-causal sense. Libertarians such as philosophers Robert Kane(link is external) and Mark Balaguer(link is external), and neuroscientist Peter Tse(link is external), have floated various proposals for how this sort of free will might work. But it hasn’t yet been made clear to most philosophers’ and scientists’ satisfaction how indeterminism makes an agent more responsible – more of an originator – than under determinism."
Again, why the false dilemma that indeterminism alone must allow for free will?
(Mar 23, 2017 12:55 AM)Syne Wrote: You're so full of shit. You wouldn't even know if I've had "those same discussions here" if you weren't keeping up elsewhere. AND you've commented on discussions you're banned from participating in before. Being banned, you're irrelevant to those discussions, so you can have whatever mirror neuron response you imagine.
You've been popping off in here about homosexuality every chance you get. You were just capping on MR.
Syne Wrote:You said:
"Determinism states that we’re a part of the unfolding Matrix, but supernaturalism and fatalism regard humans as existing outside of this system."
You obviously don't know what fatalism means if you're defending this nonsense.
"While the terms are often used interchangeably, fatalism, determinism, and predeterminism are discrete in stressing different aspects of the futility of human will or the foreordination of destiny. However, all these doctrines share common ground." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism#D...eterminism
Determinism holds that every thing and event is a natural and integral part of the interconnected universe. From the perspective of determinism, every event in nature is the result of (determined by) prior/coexisting events. Every event is a confluence of influences. While determinism regards humans as "one with" the unfolding matrix of the natural universe, supernaturalism and fatalism regard humans as existing outside of this system.
Most humans are supernaturalists; they believe that humans have "free will" which causes events in the natural world but is not caused by them. And most humans will defend their "free will" without second thought to the evidence for (or benefits of alternative explanations.
Fatalism too is a supernatural belief system which holds humans outside the natural matrix. In direct contrast to the most common form of supernaturalism (belief in free will), however, fatalism holds that the natural world causes events in human life but is not itself influenced by human will or behavior. No matter what you do, the same things will happen to you.
The fatalist position is that "if I do not have free will, then my life is totally determined by the outside world, therefore my beliefs and desires have no effect on the outside world, and therefore no matter what I do the same things will happen to me". Of course, it is empirically demonstrable that our behavior affects the environment and thus what happens to us.
And from your Wikipedia link: Fatalism, by referring to the personal "fate" or to "predestined events" strongly imply the existence of a someone or something that has set the "predestination." This is usually interpreted to mean a conscious, omniscient being or force who has personally planned—and therefore knows at all times—the exact succession of every event in the past, present, and future, none of which can be altered.
Syne Wrote:And following a delayed-choice quantum erasure paper that just guaranteed Einstein locality (demonstrating the lack of deterministic cause between measurement and remote result):
"I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable, though. Free will is a major component of the self. If the self and free will is an illusion then this splash of truth destroys my beautiful wickedness. I’m melting, melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!"
Maybe this comment was either non-sequitur to the paper just cited, or you failed to comment on that paper at all, and this was just a general comment. So either you misunderstood that paper, or you just seemingly threw it in to sound smart...and failed.
I didn't misunderstand it.
They said:
Any explanation of what goes on in a specific individual observation of one photon has to take into account the whole experimental apparatus of the complete quantum state consisting of both photons, and it can only make sense after all information concerning complementary variables has been recorded. Our results demonstrate that the viewpoint that the system photon behaves either definitely as a wave or definitely as a particle would require faster-than-light communication. Because this would be in strong tension with the special theory of relativity, we believe that such a viewpoint should be given up entirely.
I said that there were some arguments against it, listed two of them, and then said I don't know, but it makes me uncomfortable.
I just don't think you're smarter than Jerry Coyne, that's all. Peter Tse was my last hope. I'm reading his book again and doing a lot of thinking. Something that you should be doing in regards to your views against homosexuality, which really makes me doubt almost everything and anything that you say.
Mar 13, 2017 01:59 AM
Can our choice really effect how a particle acted in the past? 
