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Determinism
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Post by
148723
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Well, if everything has already been determined, then there is no morality. Your choices have no choice, because they were already set into motion way back when. You were determined to give that dollar to that poor kid. You were determined to sleep with your friend's girl.
Exactly my point in the other thread. Any discussion of Right and Wrong becomes meaningless. The only things you can really speaking about are Is and Isn't.
Post by
720696
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Post by
Cambo
Compatibilism.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
You still haven't answered my question of what your view is. I'm confused because you seem to be playing devil's advocate, but I could have sworn you were Catholic.
The physical world is deterministic by nature, but every spiritual being has free will, and acts as a starting point for anything that happens in the world. While God - being outside of time - knows everything that has and will happen, he in know way interferes with the specific act of our willing, and so preserves our free will.
And no, I'm not playing the devil's advocate. In a purely deterministic system, there can be no morality; that's just a fact.
Post by
148723
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Post by
720696
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
720696
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Post by
Squishalot
You still haven't answered my question of what your view is. I'm confused because you seem to be playing devil's advocate, but I could have sworn you were Catholic.
The physical world is deterministic by nature, but every spiritual being has free will, and acts as a starting point for anything that happens in the world. While God - being outside of time - knows everything that has and will happen, he in know way interferes with the specific act of our willing, and so preserves our free will.
And no, I'm not playing the devil's advocate. In a purely deterministic system, there can be no morality; that's just a fact.
As much as I disagree with your interpretation of free will in conjunction with a deterministic world, I believe we've covered that enough in the past not to overwhelm this new thread.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
So the difference between predestination and determinism is that predestination is where God has determined everything and deterministic universes just have everything determined by nature or science or whatever?
Not quite. In predestination, God
wills
everything in the world to happen himself. It doesn't have to be deterministic system at all. It's just that he's the
free will
, not us.
Post by
148723
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Post by
Skreeran
Theoretically, free will does not exist. Every thought in your head is caused by a combination of chemical and electrical reactions that are a product of a long chain of evolution which was determined by our planets placement and the universes initial conditions in so on.
The thing is, every thought that you have, and every action you take in response to that thought, is a reaction. If a person commits a murder, it's because a reaction (many reactions, technically) occurred in their brain that made them do it. That reaction can be traced back to a number of events that can theoretically be traced back to the Big Bang.
To put it simply, on a macroscopic level (I'm not getting into quantum fluctuations right now), everything has a cause. If an asteroid flies into the Earth, it's not because it just appeared in space one day on a crash course for Earth (despite what some evangelicals might think), but because it was formed very slowly out of the particles left behind by supernovae which were in turn caused by stars, which were formed from the elementary particles created in the Big Bang.
As another example, I feel that I have free will now, because I am thinking of an argument to type onto my keyboard to post onto the internet. But I'm not truly free, because every thought I think while I type this of is caused by millions of reactions occurring in my brain in order to think of points to make in this thread, which I read because I came to the Wowhead forums, which was caused by my playing WoW, which was caused by Runescape's going down the toilet, which was caused by gold sellers... and so on.
So, since your thoughts are the product of physical reactions, it would theoretically be possible to predict every event that ever happened simply from the initial conditions. Including the actions of people, since the human brain is simply a logic machine; a very powerful computer that selects what it perceives as the best option available.
So, from a theoretical standpoint, free will is an illusion. Every reaction in our brain is caused by another reaction which was in turn caused by another and so on back to the Big Bang. However, from a practical standpoint, there's no point in worrying about that, because we don't have (and in all likelihood cannot obtain) enough data to actually predict every event in the universe (and even if we could, our prediction machine would have to predict its own creation, resulting in a recursive problem), so we actually do have free will in a practical sense.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Theoretically, free will does not exist. Every thought in your head is caused by a combination of chemical and electrical reactions that are a product of a long chain of evolution which was determined by our planets placement and the universes initial conditions in so on.
The thing is, every thought that you have, and every action you take in response to that thought, is a reaction. If a person commits a murder, it's because a reaction (many reactions, technically) occurred in their brain that made them do it. That reaction can be traced back to a number of events that can theoretically be traced back to the Big Bang.
To put it simply, on a macroscopic level (I'm not getting into quantum fluctuations right now), everything has a cause. If an asteroid flies into the Earth, it's not because it just appeared in space one day on a crash course for Earth (despite what some evangelicals might think), but because it was formed very slowly out of the particles left behind by supernovae which were in turn caused by stars, which were formed from the elementary particles created in the Big Bang.
As another example, I feel that I have free will now, because I am thinking of an argument to type onto my keyboard to post onto the internet. But I'm not truly free, because every thought I think while I type this of is caused by millions of reactions occurring in my brain in order to think of points to make in this thread, which I read because I came to the Wowhead forums, which was caused by my playing WoW, which was caused by Runescape's going down the toilet, which was caused by gold sellers... and so on.
So, since your thoughts are the product of physical reactions, it would theoretically be possible to predict every event that ever happened simply from the initial conditions. Including the actions of people, since the human brain is simply a logic machine; a very powerful computer that selects what it perceives as the best option available.
So, from a theoretical standpoint, free will is an illusion. Every reaction in our brain is caused by another reaction which was in turn caused by another and so on back to the Big Bang. However, from a practical standpoint, there's no point in worrying about that, because we don't have (and in all likelihood cannot obtain) enough data to actually predict every event in the universe (and even if we could, our prediction machine would have to predict its own creation, resulting in a recursive problem), so we actually do have free will in a practical sense.
Quickly before I go to to bed:
No, you're wrong. From a theoretical standpoint,
we cannot know
. There are internally consistent models that incorporate free will, and there are others that do not. I don't mind you presenting your theories all you want, but when you make a blanket assumption like that, you're straying a bit too far.
Post by
Skreeran
I have never heard of a (credible) theory that somehow avoids the assumption that brains operate the same way as any other physical process.
If you can explain to my scientifically how it is presumed to be done, I would appreciate it.
You know, avoiding such abstract constructions as
souls
or
human spirit
and the like.
Post by
451639
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
pezz
Well, if everything has already been determined, then there is no morality. Your choices have no choice, because they were already set into motion way back when. You were determined to give that dollar to that poor kid. You were determined to sleep with your friend's girl.
Exactly my point in the other thread. Any discussion of Right and Wrong becomes meaningless. The only things you can really speaking about are Is and Isn't.
There's still salutary and bad, just not under the labels of 'good' and 'evil'. Think of someone with some mental disorder than inhibits their capacity for moral thinking. We still
want
them to not do bad things, even if we don't hold them morally responsible (or completely morally responsible) for their actions.
Similarly, think of the earthquake in Haiti. We don't hold tectonic plates personally responsible and start suing them, but we still try to mitigate the effects of such natural disasters because we think the effects they have are bad.
I've always been partial to Hume's example of his friend he isn't just going to one day beat him over the head and steal his silver in broad daylight (despite the fact that it completely contradicted his refutation of causality, but that was a poor refutation anyway). The point was that people just
don't
one day, without any external factors such as sudden mental illness, decide to do things that are exactly opposite to their nature. In other words, free will is the freedom to act according to your own personality. I think each person's personality is causally determined by chains of events that began before they could possibly interfere with them.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
I have never heard of a (credible) theory that somehow avoids the assumption that brains operate the same way as any other physical process.
If you can explain to my scientifically how it is presumed to be done, I would appreciate it.
You know, avoiding such abstract constructions as
souls
or
human spirit
and the like.
Why are you holding people to materialism? That's one theory. There is also dualism, idealism, nominalism, realism, transcendentalism, and so many more internally consistent theories. And each one would have something different to say about will.
I agree with Skreeran. For free will to actually be free, it must not have any relation with the world, that is another system. Even if two completely separate systems exist, by their very nature of no mutual contact, what happens in one has no influence in another.
And that's dualism, again, one among many explanations.
There's still salutary and bad, just not under the labels of 'good' and 'evil'. Think of someone with some mental disorder than inhibits their capacity for moral thinking. We still want them to not do bad things, even if we don't hold them morally responsible (or completely morally responsible) for their actions.
Those are just labels that have no metaphysical significance within the deterministic system. What your doing in your example is transcending the determinism (embodied in the mentally ill person). If you want to transcend a deterministic system, then you need to answer a lot more questions before assigning labels like good or bad, such as whether the cause of the system had free will.
Similarly, think of the earthquake in Haiti. We don't hold tectonic plates personally responsible and start suing them, but we still try to mitigate the effects of such natural disasters because we think the effects they have are bad.
That's not bad. It's what
is
. Bad implies some sort of standard which can't exist if all there is is a chain reaction (unless you transcend the chain reaction, as I talked about above). You might label it bad, but that has no metaphysical significance. All it means is that you don't like it.
I've always been partial to Hume's example of his friend he isn't just going to one day beat him over the head and steal his silver in broad daylight (despite the fact that it completely contradicted his refutation of causality, but that was a poor refutation anyway). The point was that people just don't one day, without any external factors such as sudden mental illness, decide to do things that are exactly opposite to their nature. In other words, free will is the freedom to act according to your own personality. I think each person's personality is causally determined by chains of events that began before they could possibly interfere with them.
In that case nature is the determining cause, not some sense of morality. It's like a computer doing what it's programed to do, and if it gets a bug, its programming can get messed up. Either way, as far as the computer is concerned, there is no good or bad. There just is what is, and that's all that can or will happen.
Post by
Heckler
Quantum Theory starts with an assumption that nothing is deterministic, and no one's proved it wrong yet. Everything is probability, each event a single selection from a (usually) infinite number of possible eigenfunctions of that system's Schrödinger Equation solution (wave function);
which
eigenfunction isn't decided until a measurement of it is made (until it's forced to "pick" one, at which point, it does so following the probability function determined by its wave function). This thread seems to be more of a
meta
physical discussion so I won't go into more detail (and given that I've only read one textbook and taken one class, that's probably for the best), but in the physical world (according to quantum theory), determinism is simply a mythical figment of our extremely macroscopic observation scale causing probabilities
very
near 100% for every event.
There's multiple "proofs" of quantum indeterminacy, although there's also multiple "counter explanations" to those proofs, and more "proofs" that the counter explanations are not possible ("local hidden variable" throery, "many worlds" theory, etc). But, to any interested, here's my favorite:
The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) Paradox
-- Summary: Einstein didn't like the idea that a pair of electrons could "talk" to each other instantaneously over long distances (light years). An electron spin singlet (one up, one down) is produced from particle decay, the 2 electrons are allowed to travel 20 light years apart (one goes to Alice, one goes to Bob). Alice measures the Spin of her electron, and quantum theory demands a 50% chance of getting Up or Down. Whatever she gets, Bob now has a 100% chance of getting the other spin state -- his 50% chance changed to a 100% chance instantaneously when Alice's measurement was made 20 light years away. Einstein said that was nonsense, and put it forth as a proof that Quantum Theory was incomplete. The reason it's my favorite is because the various discussions/experiments/attempted resolutions to the paradox have become some of the strongest
affirmations
of Quantum Theory around.
To any interested, here's the book I read --
Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Griffiths
-- even if you lack the background in mathematics to follow the bulk of the content in this book (requires knowledge of calculus through partial differential equations and linear algebra), the Introduction and the Afterword are simply amazing, if you could find it in a library and just read those two chapters, I think you'd enjoy it.
Post by
451639
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
I've said it twice now:
The physical world is deterministic by nature, but every spiritual being has free will, and acts as a starting point for anything that happens in the world. While God - being outside of time - knows everything that has and will happen, he in know way interferes with the specific act of our willing, and so preserves our free will.
I can't really clarify it any further without a more specific question.
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