On Determinism and Free Will

       I haven't read this whole thread, but I'm amazed that it survived this far. Finally. A thread with some teeth. Like optimissed, I'd have to come to this thread when I'm well rested. I thought it was a Spike Williams thread. I hope he police'se it to keep the trolls out.

Yeah... tiring stuff indeed :)

<<<But there are certain things you need for descriptions of anything to even make sense or be anything. I feel like indeterminism can even be self-refuting, because whatever indeterministic mechanism you describe itself can't have any nature because by being indeterministic it can't even conform to the descriptions you gave to it. And you might say, well that's what you would expect from indeterminism -- well, first of all, that's the same thing as describing the nature of indeterminism, deterministically, and second of all, even if that wasn't a problem, all that would say is that if indeterminism is true, then indeterminism is true; it doesn't get us anywhere but tell us something we already knew. Whatever indeterministic mechanism there is, we can never come to understand it, probably because it has nothing to do with describing worlds>>>

Yes I agree with that but BUT ... we're hitting against the debate betweeen ontology and epistemology here. We certainly cannot describe reality because not only it hasn't been figured out, we can't figure it out because our minds operate by reacting to stimuli that are obvious and yet, where whatever is "real" regarding the operation of how the universe works is concerned, we can't really grasp it. So this is why some cosmologists are obsessed with, for instance, multiverses or detecting mini black holes. Multiverse theory is just as much fantasy-land as goblin-theory and elvishness, except it's backed up with the deliberate illusion of a bit of maths that's really irrelevant to any such idea. Just like you can't prove that fairies exist by using mathematics, you can't prove that a multiverse exists.

I have this discussion with my son occasionally, who has a masters in maths and a doctorate in theoretical physics. He's starting to come round to my way of thinking, somewhat. His field isn't bosons but the other ones. Hadrons? No it's fermions. Depicting magnetism using the fermions of spins. No, the spins of fermions, that's the one. The basic equation has 96 operators, apparently. Took him 6 months just to write it down, initially. And if it's accurate it still only half-describes the basic theory, which then has to be approached by changing all the operators around. So yes, reality does recede from human description.

I know why.

           Actually, we are discusing God. But a rose by any other name is still a rose.

In any event, I'm not entirely convinced of your position, optimissed, but I do have more respect for it now :) I do get that humans have a huge urge to categorize and systematize things sort of arbitrarily at times. We feel like giving names to everything, and making things have granular, well defined properties, when the real world is probably much more analog in nature. And then we complain when something or someone acts uncharacteristically to the rigid, simplistic properties we ascribed to them. But what can we expect when we use imprecise methods to characterize things.

It might be worth pointing out, too, that the whole "past to future states..." stuff even makes some assumptions about time. I mean for all we know what we call time is just another sort of description of how our reality works. Even our ability to distinguish between our subjective experiences of the past, present, and future might require some sort of deterministic understanding.

        ...Can you be a bad guy in the past, and a good guy in the future??

Huh?

We have the experience of making choices.  When faced with options we must make the effort of deciding.

It may be that the decision process is entirely determined by the laws of physics, manifested through the 100 billion or so neurones that make up the brain, and that what eventually is presented to consciousness is the result of a deterministic process that is beyond conscious control.  It might be that the entire history of the Universe was determined at the time of creation. 

Then again, it might be something else entirely.  It would be the height of hubris (though unsurprising) for anyone to imagine that our present theories are the be-all and end-all of our knowledge.

As for the existence of an all powerful, all knowing God.  Of course it is a logical possibility that cannot be proven false.  Unfortunately, and despite the mental gymnastics and contortions of some very clever people over the centuries, the existence of God cannot be proven by the simple exercise of logic.  What is more there is no good evidence for "his" existence, only what a court would call "hearsay". 

It is also philosophically respectable to take the position that only consciousness exists and that everything else is built on it.  But even philosophers that seriously subscribe to such a view must admit that the mechanistic view of the Universe as the playing out of the possibilities inherent in matter/energy is what has led to all the technological marvels that make our lives more comfortable and full of wonder than anything our ancestors knew.

There is nothing to prevent anyone from choosing to believe what they find congenial, but I do object to those people that would like to kill me because I do not subscribe to their brand of theology.

I believe in what is true, not what is convenient, and I like there to be some evidence for my beliefs.

Black makes his first move and it’s already a Sicilian.

I disagree with all of it. Everything you said. Where should I start?