Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site spar.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!spar!ellis From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.religion Subject: Re: Self Imprisonment/Logic based on different sets... Message-ID: <181@spar.UUCP> Date: Mon, 15-Apr-85 14:10:24 EST Article-I.D.: spar.181 Posted: Mon Apr 15 14:10:24 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 17-Apr-85 00:59:35 EST References: <362@aesat.UUCP> <5272@utzoo.UUCP> <137@ubvax.UUCP> <5343@utzoo.UUCP> <341@boulder.UUCP> Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA Lines: 155 Xref: watmath net.philosophy:1657 net.religion:6654 >.. everyone is aware of the existence of randomness. Unfortunately >randomness is not useful for analyzing the concept of free will that >interests many of us (i.e. where it is the determiner of responsibility >/blame). > >If someone was discussing the difficulty getting to Finland, your response >is analagous to saying "but you're forgetting that you could just rent >a car !!". We're all aware that you can rent a car, but unfortunately, >the problem being discussed centered around how to cross the Atlantic, >for which the possession of a car is irrelevant. > Geoffery Clemm Please clarify -- I fail to understand this analogy, and I most definitely disagree with your conclusion! In the meantime, I'll expand my position, which is primarily directed at those who believe in a universe ruled by physical laws... ======================================================================== To date, I have heard NO arguments against free will except ones coming from those who accept the basic tenets and conclusions of science. Let's examine the scientific viewpoint in greater detail. In the one corner, we hear statements such as: > Those who advocate a notion of free will would claim that there is > something more, that allows a person, based on the same input in exactly the > same environment with the same current "brain state", to have some sort of > choice independent of those variables. I don't see any reason to believe > that. > Behavior is fully determined by one's chemicals Here we have the classical, mechanistic view of the universe which ascribes causal relationships between everything that happens. This view is very common today, given the overwhelming success of the western science. Some people find such a mechanistic viewpoint unsatifying, exemplified by statements such as: > Why love anyone? If you don't it is no reflection on you. > It is just what my chemicals make me do... > Why care about how elegant your code is? It is easier to be sloppy, and no > reflection on you if you are. You couldn't change it -- it is just how your > chemicals came out. I claim that the scientific worldview is hardly as depressing as the above statement would lead one to believe. In fact, such a viewpoint is profoundly unscientific, because of: 1. Quantum randomness -- not just loss of accuracy in measurement, but a total loss of definite meaning to such expressions as `the state of a particle at a moment in time' (check out any current discussion of `hidden variables'), the effect of which has been to limit causality such that the present no longer determines exactly what must happen in the future; instead, an infinite number of possible futures may arise from a given moment. The randomness IS NOT the randomness of a fully deterministic but unviewable world; it is the randomness of a world that will not, IN PRINCIPLE, allow the next moment to be derived from the present. Even hardcore believers in western science cannot escape the fact that this implies, philosophically: The scientific worldview is, by its own decree, incomplete. 2. The predominance of irreversible, nonlinear processes in our universe, having the property that an infinitesimal variation at time t0 can give rise to a large variation at time t0 + x. In human terms, this means that: * Single quantum events can and do cause macroscopic effects. The breakdown of causality is not confinined to the microscopic. * > The flapping of a single butterfly's wings may eventually result in > the change in global weather patterns everywhere. Thus, macroscopic events are unpredictable, nondeterministic, just as microscopic ones are. At every causal junction, there is inherent acausality. Whatever it is that `completes' the physical universe, it is not determined, it is not causal, it is not knowable. This randomness may or may not be of interest to the lover of free will. However, given the current primitive state of our knowledge of the brain, it is certainly too early to dismiss free will. More than ever before, science seems to allow a universe in which free will can exist; it demands that macroscopic, acausal phenomena must occur within the brain, as in everything. To those who find randamness unsatisfying in support of free will, I ask: `how else would free will manifest itself to a mechanistic viewpoint other than as random behavior?' ======================================================================== > Without evidence showing verifiable evidence of a thing's existence, or its > observed effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would generally > assume that it does not exist until evidence of a viable nature presents > itself. The *possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a > possibility evinces itself if and only if evidence is presented to support > it. Do you believe that you have thoughts? If so, why? Can you objectively demonstrate their existence? There is no way to objectively prove (or disprove) the existence of any subjective phenomenon. Sorry -- for us, the universe is forever split between the seen and the seer by our very nature as beings with outward-directed senses. Originally, the scientific viewpoint began as another way to see things. It developed into a powerful tool -- so powerful that nearly everyone who acquires this tool forgets that there is any other way to see things. It sounds as though you have irrevocably crossed outward and cannot get back in: > Rich, it is a very strange notion of ``I'' that you have that can exist > without a belief in free will. What does ``gain'' mean in the absense > of free will? what does ``enjoy'' mean? More importantly, what does > ``I'' mean? Very little, I would say. Regardless of how effectively objective analysis may describe HOW the chemicals in my brain may interact to behave as me, the analysis will forever be incomplete, since the description is inherently OBJECTIVE -- whereas I am at first principles a SUBJECTIVE phenomenon. If I behaved as Rich Rosen suggested -- if I denied everything that was unprovable by science -- in spite of the subjective facts -- would I not be any more foolish than those who deny everything not fitting into their religious dogma -- in spite of the objective facts? There are many things my mind can `feel' that science may never be able to explain, just as there are many things science can explain that my `spirit' will never be able to comprehend. Should I, as some suggest, discard evrything `unscientific', simply because it is not scientifically explainable today? If so, I must deny my passions, my inuitions, my thoughts, my self. I prefer to let my rationality and spirit each rule their appropriate realms in harmony. > Until recently...the external universe appeared to be an automaton > following deterministic causal laws, in contrast with the > spontaneous activity...we experience. The two worlds are now drawing > closer together -- Ilya Prigogine `Order out of Chaos' -michael