Three Arguments Against Determinism
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Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Knotted said:
It's not projection, since I couldn't explain the interrelationship between gravity and the second law of thermodynamics.
But even if I could, I wouldn't insert it holus bolus into a philosophical discussion about determinism.
Johnny Canuck2 said:
Well if someone expresses increduility that our everyday world is predicted by ordinary physical laws stemming from unspecial initial conditions, then its nice for them to know that their increduility is not misplaced because according to cosmologists the initial conditions of the universe are mindbogglingly improbable because they were uniform.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Knotted said:
Aside from the fact that the cosmologists are talking theory and therefore might be incorrect.
I think I have broken one of the cardinal rules of philosophy. Never discuss actual physics when discussing metaphysics.
Well if entropy always increases, then the distant past must have had very low entropy indeed considering that the present has remarkably improbable things like cups waiting to fall off tables thus increasing the entropy in the universe. There needs to be some explanation for this even if the theory is incorrect.
Johnny Canuck2 said:
Well if entropy always increases, then the distant past must have had very low entropy indeed considering that the present has remarkably improbable things like cups waiting to fall off tables thus increasing the entropy in the universe. There needs to be some explanation for this even if the theory is incorrect.
muser said:Please allow me to ask nicely.
If you could harness the energy the energy of a black hole it would be far in excess of the system's energy before the creation of the black hole. Is this a spurious breaking of the second law of thermodynamics.
What you've actually described here is the breaking of the first law of thermodynamics - the conservation of (heat) energy. The second law describes how energy tends to be distributed over time - it passes from a warm body to a cold body.
However the question is still valid! The first law is still a law. The formation of a black hole converts a lot of matter into energy. Einsteins famous equation E=mc^2 describes this. Essentially you get a lot of energy for the quantity of matter.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Knotted said:
What does this have to do with determinism?
Knotted said:
I knew cutting class would prove costly. Is it a 'pure' conversion, i.e. 100%. It fascinates me that there is energy everywhere, though no way of converting the majority of it. I think it was jonti, a few post back, who stated that to be free of the system you would have to be outside it. In a psychological sense that would be nibbana depending on your beliefs.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
muser said:
But an existence outside the 'energy sphere' would be physical extinction, not psychological extinction.
I don't suppose someone could explain what a law is? JohnnyCannuck2 - you seem to be saying that we create laws, but they are mind-independent - I assume that you mean a "physical fact of the geometry of matter-energy in space-time". Could you explain why you are not saying that our thoughts determine the geometry of space time, here?
Cheers
Cheers
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
118118 said:
Friend, it's the end of the day here, and my brain simply cannot be dragged into consideration of Kant's concepts of noumena and phenomena right at the moment. For the love of god....
But later....
I can't find the post, but someone made the observation about microtubules and whether determinism existed or didn't at the quantum level. If we interact with the quantum vacuum via our microtubules and that in turn play a part in our thought process, couldn't it be argued that the vacuum (although not always) is independent of deterministic forces (or at least as envisage by us).
I saw this link a year ago, and lost it and couldn't find it until now.
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/
I saw this link a year ago, and lost it and couldn't find it until now.
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
muser said:
I know there must be a simple explanation for this, but if random events occur at the micro level, why don't they also occur at the macro, physical level, like a tree disappearing in front of your eyes?
If this microrandomness allegedly presages our free will, then it should also be demonstrable in the physical world as well.
Johnny Canuck2 said:
It has something to do with the collapsing of the wave function in quantum mechanics. Einstein's theory describes the physical world as we experience it while string theory, QFT, the world we cannot see (at least with the naked eye).
I think I'm right in saying that in special relativity there is an axiom whereby a shattered plate will reassemble itself as if the event had never occurred, but the probability are so remote that no one has witnessed it.
Stretching credibility? It's the reason physics has so many detractors.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
muser said:
No, what I said was that 'laws' are the human attempts at description of natural 9r physical processes. Go back and check my earlier post.
Jonti
what the dormouse said
This is very thought provoking stuff, and well worth taking seriously, imho. After all, who better than an Anesthesiologist to discuss the material grounds of consciousness?muser said:
However, in terms of the debate between freewill and determinism, the theories of Hameroff and Penrose are determinist. Although they seek a physical explanation of consciousness, they do not seek to define and physically characterise freewill (qua the reality of choice).
Philosophically, one cannot exercise choice without being conscious. To put it in psychological terms, choice is the only mental process that absolutely demands consciousness as a correlate. Contrariwise, a consciousness that does not make choices does nothing -- it is a passive and silent witness with no Natural function or meaning. And for an organism to choose, it must have some means of adding information into its functional structures.
Anyway, as we have seen, the notion of absolute determinism leads one into fantastic difficulties, as indeed does the more obviously incoherent notion of unconstrained freewill. Ultimately, absolute determinism can only push the problems of our real knowledge of the world, and ability to act on the basis of that knowledge, way back into the past, to the moment of Creation. All very well, if that's your bag. But really, "It's all down to the Initial Conditions" is hardly better than "It's God wot dun it." One has been offered an explanation that is as complex (or worse) than the thing to be explained.
What we do know, is that random inputs plus selection of outputs can, does, give rise to something new. Leibniz did not know this. He did not know the world can elaborate itself in ways which are coherent with past states, yet which are not uniquely determined by them (in the sense that a number of different elaborations of the present are possible -- but not all of them need come to fruition).
muser said:
I don't know whether it is a 100% conversion. Black holes are very extreme things. Its an open question whether there is a singularity at the centre of a black hole but if there is I wonder whether any description of the material at the singularity would make any sense at all.
Jonti said:This is very thought provoking stuff, and well worth taking seriously, imho. After all, who better than an Anesthesiologist to discuss the material grounds of consciousness?
If I remember rightly, one of the things that Hameroff claims is that anaesthetics works via quantum process rather than chemical processes. I've no idea whether this is true but it seems quite extraodinary if he's right.
Jonti said:
I really don't think that questions of freewill and determinism matter one way or the other with Hameroff and Penrose. It is not a theory based on quantum randomness nor is it based on a deterministic alternative (I don't think that they claim 'orchestrated objected reduction' should be either deterministic or non-deterministic). It is a theory based on new as yet undiscovered non-computational physics involving a phenonmenon called quantum coherence. Now quantum coherence is the phenonmenon underlying superconductors, and most comentators are extremely skeptical that warm, wet brain matter can produce quantum coherence on any scale. All in all these theories should be treated with extreme scepticism. And I say that as someone very sympathetic to what they are trying to do.
I should add that its fair to characterise the Penrose/Hameroff scheme as reductionist, which is why there is no attempt to explain qualia etc.
Penrose describes himself as a physicalist. Hameroff describes himself as a panpsychist. There's a curious identity of the opposites...
Penrose describes himself as a physicalist. Hameroff describes himself as a panpsychist. There's a curious identity of the opposites...
Jonti
what the dormouse said
Actually, it's not at all extraordinary. When one is dealing with interactions betwen molecules, one is (of course!) into things at the scale of quantum phenomena. Even quite large molecules exhibit quantum effects. And chemical bonds themselves are mediated by electrons taking up "orbits" which are described in terms of QM.Knotted said:
But it does go a little further than that. From here ...
StunningHameroff said:
stuff, eh?
Jonti
what the dormouse said
What problem of nature is this interpretation or philosophy trying to solve? It seems to be trying to deal with the fact that many, many, many (for the largest possible value of many) futures can flow the QM description of, uhh, the now. Every possible one, they say.Knotted said:
If that's right, it's very odd, for theoretical physicists tend to be heavily into determinism. Yet they end up imagining an infinite range of futures, all flowing from the present (the now). Each of those futures looks inevitable to itself, but "really" they are all possibilities that come true, somewhere in the multiverse.
Jonti
what the dormouse said
No, me neither. But they are118118 said:
You are asking about the ontological status of natural law, and in asking that, you are also asking the fundamental epistemological question "How is knowledge possible?". No one knows the answer, and delighted as I am to see JC2 cornered, I think it's only fair to cop to that.
Knowledge is something consciousness has, about the world. To understand knowledge one must first understand consciousness and its world.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Jonti said:No, me neither. But they are
You are asking about the ontological status of natural law, and in asking that, you are also asking the fundamental epistemiological question "How is knowledge possible?". No one knows the answer, and delighted as I am to see JC2 cornered, I think it's only fair to cop to that.
Knowledge is something consciousness has, about the world. To understand knowledge one must first understand consciousness and its world.
Who's cornered?
He's asking if laws are noumena or phenomena, as I pointed out yesterday.
Depending on the semantics being employed, I believe that the physical processes that we describe and thereafter label as laws, are noumena.
Not to say that we always get it right, ie in describing the natural world, but that the natural world does exist as noumena.
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