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At 4/23/10 07:29 PM, thedo12 wrote: But the actors will can only come from either random chance or is caused by something else , if his will is random he can't assume responsibility , if his will is caused then again he can't assume responsibility.

Those are not the only possibilities. The universe itself is already non-deterministic. Rather it is probabilistic. Electrons are never in a single place, they are rather in a cloud of probable places. If Will is a force that is able to shift probabilities, effectively choosing one of a number of possible actions, then it is neither bound by determinism nor completely random.

At 4/23/10 08:28 PM, Ravariel wrote:
Those are not the only possibilities. The universe itself is already non-deterministic. Rather it is probabilistic. Electrons are never in a single place, they are rather in a cloud of probable places. If Will is a force that is able to shift probabilities, effectively choosing one of a number of possible actions, then it is neither bound by determinism nor completely random.

My question is how is that free will, unless your will is able to choose probabilitys , which is problematic in and of itself .

Also im rather skeptical of things like electrons being probabilistic, just because we cannot see the cause and effect relationship dosen't mean its not there.

At 4/23/10 02:03 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Discussing ideas is a game of semantics otherwise you wouldn't have defined an impossibility from the get go as your proof.

Looking back I see your point, I should have seen this coming .

The problem, as is with most people who argue against free will, is that you are defining "free will" as an incoherrent concept. You define "free will" as something that is not caused, but also not random, which is of course impossible. This definition makes no sense. If you argue against free will like this, you might as well be arguing against square circles.

A more accurate definition of free will, in the way people generally use the term free will, would be something close to: "the ability of a sentient being to act according to its desires or rational judgements"
You assume that free will is incompatible with a deterministic universe, which is incorrect. Are a person's actions caused by external and internal events? Of course. Acting according to randomness would hardly be free will. Are people still able to act according to their wants and desires? Yes; hence, free will.

At 4/23/10 08:28 PM, Ravariel wrote:

At 4/23/10 07:29 PM, thedo12 wrote: But the actors will can only come from either random chance or is caused by something else , if his will is random he can't assume responsibility , if his will is caused then again he can't assume responsibility.

Those are not the only possibilities. The universe itself is already non-deterministic. Rather it is probabilistic. Electrons are never in a single place, they are rather in a cloud of probable places. If Will is a force that is able to shift probabilities, effectively choosing one of a number of possible actions, then it is neither bound by determinism nor completely random.

But the question is, what is Will? Human beings are built up of the very electrons you are talking about. Where and how does Will arise out of these electrons that you propose Will is able to manipulate? If Will is ultimately built up of electrons, won't it just be electrons affecting other electrons? How is that different from, well, anything physical?

At 4/24/10 09:21 AM, IAmTheDarkWizard wrote:
You assume that free will is incompatible with a deterministic universe, which is incorrect. Are a person's actions caused by external and internal events? Of course. Acting according to randomness would hardly be free will. Are people still able to act according to their wants and desires? Yes; hence, free will.

A deeper question I still remain with is how the determinism of the universe affects each individual's choices. What system determines the girls you pick up and your fidelity towards them? What system determines that you follow your basic needs (like eating, sex, going to the toilet) at one time and allows you to ignore them at another time?
It is a fantastical thought that the position of the stars at this moment literally determine how you word your reply to this.

At 4/24/10 09:47 AM, RubberTrucky wrote:
A deeper question I still remain with is how the determinism of the universe affects each individual's choices. What system determines the girls you pick up and your fidelity towards them? What system determines that you follow your basic needs (like eating, sex, going to the toilet) at one time and allows you to ignore them at another time?
It is a fantastical thought that the position of the stars at this moment literally determine how you word your reply to this.

Are you arguing for astrology? I would say that most of that stuff is determined by genetics, previous life experiences and chemicals in the brain.

At 4/24/10 11:31 AM, MrHero17 wrote:

At 4/24/10 09:47 AM, RubberTrucky wrote:
A deeper question I still remain with is how the determinism of the universe affects each individual's choices. What system determines the girls you pick up and your fidelity towards them? What system determines that you follow your basic needs (like eating, sex, going to the toilet) at one time and allows you to ignore them at another time?
It is a fantastical thought that the position of the stars at this moment literally determine how you word your reply to this.

Are you arguing for astrology? I would say that most of that stuff is determined by genetics, previous life experiences and chemicals in the brain.

No but since all matter is replaced and reused as such. It's amazing how one of your hands is made from matter, that was in a star, billions of lightyears away from your other hand!

At 4/24/10 11:31 AM, MrHero17 wrote:

At 4/24/10 09:47 AM, RubberTrucky wrote:
A deeper question I still remain with is how the determinism of the universe affects each individual's choices. What system determines the girls you pick up and your fidelity towards them? What system determines that you follow your basic needs (like eating, sex, going to the toilet) at one time and allows you to ignore them at another time?
It is a fantastical thought that the position of the stars at this moment literally determine how you word your reply to this.

Are you arguing for astrology? I would say that most of that stuff is determined by genetics, previous life experiences and chemicals in the brain.

Actually, speaking in terms of physics, a human being is made of atoms that interact with their environment. Because of the deterministic nature (or semi, depending on quantum-relativity effects) of the universe, simple laws of nature dictate the interaction of these electrons/atoms/...
Hence every action should be based upon this very principle if you want to uphold basic universality of the laws of physics.

Free will is in fact nothing more than the interaction of a system subject to forces from outside, subject to a system of differential equations with as an imput the distribution of position and velocity of every particle in the universe.

there is a pretty well known mathematical field thats can be used to describe what many of you try

its is called chaos theory... this is taken right from wikipedia

Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, physics, and philosophy studying the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behaviour is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.

so clearly there are initial conditions we CAN NOT control (i.e. the big bang) but that does not mean we have no say from this point. atoms cannot control their existence, but humans have the ability to choose. so it's almost half and half... it is the initial conditions that make us choose... which affect the next set of conditions we must choose, for both ourselves and others. So outcomes are affected by our choices, and all other predetermined factors determined by other peoples choices.

and no one said freewill is random.... in fact I would argue it is not because people live by sets of standards

I always figured chaos theory is not so much a fundamntal question on nature, but rather an obstacle when it comes to measurement.

At 4/16/10 11:55 PM, thedo12 wrote: If are actions are not bound by some reason or "cause" , then they must necessarily be random .

All actions are bound to a reason or cause... we don't just do random things.

It's the ability to have multiple choices for each reason and/or cause and to choose any number of them that you see fit that allows free will.

I'm hungry, but I don't have to eat.

At 4/16/10 11:55 PM, thedo12 wrote: If are actions are not bound by some reason or "cause" , then they must necessarily be random .

If are actions are random then will cannot be the cause of our actions.

If will is not the cause of our actions then how can we have free will?

Also, I know this is a touchy subject but I think we should be able to discuss this in a mature manner.

It seems like you are presenting half of the Stoics dichotomy argument against free will.

The question is concerning how a free will decision is made. Is it made by some sort of rules, (i.e. take the square root of the total pleasure multiply it by difficulty, subtract the embarrassment etc.) or not? If it is, since I didn't make free choice in determining what rules determine the decision, is my will really free?

And if there are no rules, then its random and arbitrary, and your argument comes in.

At 4/28/10 06:44 AM, therealsylvos wrote: And if there are no rules, then its random and arbitrary, and your argument comes in.

As far as I can see it, it's just Hume's Causation. And Hume's Causation, doesn't work very well.

I wanted to wait for this to cool a bit before bringing it back up, to switch up who all was reading it. Pardon me for the resurrection, I at least have a somewhat decent reason.

So, having looked over the topic... I'd like to annotate the chaos theory's connection to free will. What caused me to make this post? What caused me to wait first? What caused me to put three questions in a row like this?
It all has to do with cause and effect. The cause, no matter how small or hard to recognize, comes before the effect. So I can answer those question, but once I do I then have to ask... What caused that?
What caused me to post this? I was bored. Why was I bored? I didn't have anything else to post in. Why did I not have anything else to post in? Because I got up early today and stayed on the computer all morning. Why did I do that? Because... Why? Because... Why?
You see, the pattern here progresses from now, to a moment ago, to this morning, to last night, and so on. Sooner or later, having asked the cause of my decision and the cause of that, and so on, I move slowly back through time all the way to the start of it. There is no effect without a cause, and no cause comes after the effect. Therefor, all causes, including my decisions right now, are an indirect effect of the starting points of energy packets in the very beginning of the universe.
By this logic, as cold as it seems, we have no free will. Nor is there such a thing as a random interaction, since the motions which cause that interaction are based on the original state of the universe.

yeah even though I still stand by my original statement I don't think I handled the topic as well as I could have . I don't regret it because I have learned a lot from the response here , and I have come to the conclusion that while determinism may not necessarily be true (although I think it's likely ) that free will is a fundamentally flawed concept.

We have no free will but we still have the freedom to make choice seems to be the summery from this.

At 5/5/10 06:48 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: We have no free will but we still have the freedom to make choice seems to be the summery from this.

Not really, no. Our choices are based on initial events, decided billions of years before we were ever born. It seems as if we have a choice, but the decision we make is always going to be what we would have made. No matter what you decide, it's ultimately based on the motions of atoms in your mind. Those motions were plotted and graphed from the very start, so though it feels and seems like you have a choice, you're ultimately going to make exactly the choice you were always meant to. Turn your head. The direction you just chose to turn was predetermined. You felt you had the choice, but it was based on something much, much older and usually quite difficult for people to wrap their head around. Especially if they don't want to in the first place. But, of course, that's your choice. *Grins at the paradox*

At 5/6/10 12:08 PM, JeremieCompNerd wrote:

At 5/5/10 06:48 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: We have no free will but we still have the freedom to make choice seems to be the summery from this.

Not really, no. Our choices are based on initial events, decided billions of years before we were ever born. It seems as if we have a choice, but the decision we make is always going to be what we would have made. No matter what you decide, it's ultimately based on the motions of atoms in your mind. Those motions were plotted and graphed from the very start, so though it feels and seems like you have a choice, you're ultimately going to make exactly the choice you were always meant to. Turn your head. The direction you just chose to turn was predetermined. You felt you had the choice, but it was based on something much, much older and usually quite difficult for people to wrap their head around. Especially if they don't want to in the first place. But, of course, that's your choice. *Grins at the paradox*

How can you claim that when you can't trace that back to the initial event. Yes I understand the laws of physics but they aren't really laws.

Science operates on the basis of contingent truths as well as an assumption based on an empirical perspective of the nature of the world. You cannot claim that everything has it's initial cause if you cannot refer back to the initial cause itself.

You know this also implies a creator when it becomes the only inference of explanation that there must be an initial cause. I believe this one requires the total energy applied to form all the causes we see today. So no, that's not a paradox. If anything it's a mere assumption drawn from the principle of causation. Although yes, we can infer our understanding of the universe, they are not justified true beliefs tied in reality (minus the necessary existence of mathematics).

Not only that but your ideas of atoms predetermining everything to explain the concept of how we feel when we see something happen. Let's imagine a granny got hit by a bus, the way the mind works in a basic sense is that we are being fed the impression of the granny being hit by a bus. From this impression we have the two complex concepts of a granny, and a bus, which then lead to our ultimate understanding of the idea of a granny being hit by a bus.

How we react to this is determined by a chemical reaction justified by the brains electrical response to the sense data. But then that leaves the question, why did the brain generate that electrical response? What is it about that collision of atoms which happened lets say 400 metres away, that had no physical effect on us whatsoever, that caused our minds to tick and generate those electrical impulses. With this hole in your idea of 'atomic predetermination', we can no longer use your theory to determine any causation afterwards that event, because we have had no evident physical relationship with the initial 'atomic cause'. We see the event and feel. Oh no that's terrible. But why did we feel that?

It's because of characteristics such as this one, and the one I posted earlier, that make the idea of "causation means we have no free will" appear so in-falsifiable, yet is again so flawed. Claiming causation only assumes our arrogance for our understanding of the world. It would be just as reasonable to claim that the magic pixie faeries sprayed there sad dust all over everybody who witnessed the horrible crash.

Even if the atomic predetermination idea made it so that we MUST see the granny be hit by the bus, to express any emotions felt as a cause of the granny being hit by the bus, we must then justify each and every stage of the atomic relationship between those emotions felt, and we can't do this where there is no nano physical connection (except relative velocity perhaps to the extent of how well I know physics) between you, and the granny herself.

Because as according to causation, every action that takes place as a cause of that particular emotion must also have it's initial cause.

At 5/6/10 01:54 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: we can't do this where there is no nano physical connection (except relative velocity perhaps to the extent of how well I know physics) between you, and the granny herself.

If there is no nano-physical connection other than relative velocity then how do you see her?

At 5/6/10 01:59 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 5/6/10 01:54 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: we can't do this where there is no nano physical connection (except relative velocity perhaps to the extent of how well I know physics) between you, and the granny herself.

If there is no nano-physical connection other than relative velocity then how do you see her?

The idea is that you feel terrible about what has happened, and you don't even have to see her for this to be possible. It could be on TV for all the argument cares, and she could be on the other side of the world. You see her with your sense data, and what I believe is just artificial light (in a basic sense) being projected from the TV screen into your eyes.

At 5/6/10 02:06 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: The idea is that [...]

And none of that is nano-physical?

At 5/6/10 02:09 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 5/6/10 02:06 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: The idea is that [...]

And none of that is nano-physical?

Well it's about the brain responding to the circumstances of the event. Not as much how, but why the atomic level would have any connection between you being able to concieve the granny being hit by a bus, and you feeling about the granny being hit by a bus. More, why may we have a natural sympathy for others, and why that natural sympathy is associated with the circumstances outside (the 'bad' things we see, and what makes them 'bad'). If we can draw that down to it's initial cause then I quite happily recount my argument.

Also the atomic idea doesn't seem 'to me' to be able to explain the illustration I posted on the first page about being torn up between two things and being forced to make a decision not based upon passions, or desires (where you have an equal passion for the two things).

At 5/6/10 02:20 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: Well it's about the brain responding to the circumstances of the event. Not as much how, but why the atomic level would have any connection between you being able to concieve the granny being hit by a bus, and you feeling about the granny being hit by a bus. More, why may we have a natural sympathy for others, and why that natural sympathy is associated with the circumstances outside (the 'bad' things we see, and what makes them 'bad').

Are you asking for a purpose?

If we can draw that down to it's initial cause then I quite happily recount my argument.

You don't need to know the initial condition to extrapolate determinism from materialism. In fact, there's no guarantee there is such an initial condition.

At 5/6/10 02:25 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: Also the atomic idea doesn't seem 'to me' to be able to explain the illustration I posted on the first page about being torn up between two things and being forced to make a decision not based upon passions, or desires (where you have an equal passion for the two things).

I take it you're emphasizing passion and desire as they are things we consider generally out of our conscious control?

At 5/6/10 02:26 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 5/6/10 02:20 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: Well it's about the brain responding to the circumstances of the event. Not as much how, but why the atomic level would have any connection between you being able to concieve the granny being hit by a bus, and you feeling about the granny being hit by a bus. More, why may we have a natural sympathy for others, and why that natural sympathy is associated with the circumstances outside (the 'bad' things we see, and what makes them 'bad').

Are you asking for a purpose?

Pretty much. I probably won't get one, I'm moreover asking for an explanation, because the atomic causation if it were to be true must explain these associations. Any biologists/psychologists out there I wonder!

If we can draw that down to it's initial cause then I quite happily recount my argument.

You don't need to know the initial condition to extrapolate determinism from materialism. In fact, there's no guarantee there is such an initial condition.

Then how can there be a determiner? I see that the only other way that we can accept causation is to assume that it stretches on to infinity, but that then makes the idea of determinism seem more of a phenomena, since the idea of everything having a cause contradicts itself.

As for the woman and the bus, There might be some interaction between the EMW of an event and the way such waves propagate through brain matter reaching the part that is responsible for vision and that for emotion. I do wonder though if, from a physics point of view EMW from a woman hit by a bus is that much different than that of a hammer hitting a nail.

But in the material point of view, I'm still wondering how an animal or other biological life clings so hard to survival. It can be shown that the death state is much more natural than the alive state, for instance, dying is an irreversible process. So according to physics the perturbation should relax to equilibrium. But biologic life forms actively bend the basic laws of physics in order to stay in a non-equilibrium state. Something particles would never do.

At 5/6/10 02:33 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 5/6/10 02:25 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: Also the atomic idea doesn't seem 'to me' to be able to explain the illustration I posted on the first page about being torn up between two things and being forced to make a decision not based upon passions, or desires (where you have an equal passion for the two things).

I take it you're emphasizing passion and desire as they are things we consider generally out of our conscious control?

Yup! Hume once said that "Reason is the slave of passions". Here is another illuistration. Ahem.

Take Oppenheimer for instance, the scientific persuit for progress that him and his merry men undertook, driven scientists to develop nuclear fusion, and with it, the Atomic Bomb. Nothing within the reasoning behind the development of the atomic bomb however, dictated how it should be used. They were faced with an extreme emotional conflict, between using the technology, or preventing it's once untold destructive power.

It was reason, which allowed for the development of such atomic forces, yet it was only the scientists so called, natural sympathy, for mankind which lead to attempts to prevent the use of what I think was the Manhattan Project.

(a bit off topic but just some personal notation for fun and games) It is widely speculated that this lead to the grim reality, the death of many many people. But the fact of the matter is, there is no 'grim reality'. Our perception of the event, lies within us, and nobody else. There is nothing, but general perception, or that natural sympathy which labels the event as 'Bad'. But in the physical world, there is no sort of flashing sign above the event which blinks 'Bad'. That is to again claim the concept of bad, exists within us.

At 5/6/10 02:37 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: Pretty much. I probably won't get one, I'm moreover asking for an explanation, because the atomic causation if it were to be true must explain these associations. Any biologists/psychologists out there I wonder!

First off, an imbued purpose is in no way the responsibility of science. Let me ask you, why, as oppose to how, do we have opposable thumbs?

Then how can there be a determiner? I see that the only other way that we can accept causation is to assume that it stretches on to infinity, but that then makes the idea of determinism seem more of a phenomena, since the idea of everything having a cause contradicts itself.

Actually, infinite regression is the solution to the paradox of causation. It's a finite beginning that violates the idea that everything must have a cause.