Moral consquences of determinism

[littlebabyjesus]

Assuming that the development of a moral consciousness is that gradual I don't see the value in arguing that its root lies in admonishment of children by their parents, any more than the root of language lies in children being taught to speak by their parents.

I think I'd need to do some study before I could answer this.

The best way to address questions regarding the development of culture is to examine the full range of cultures that are available to us to study. In this case, I'd want to look at the codes of morality of hunter-gatherer tribes, among others.

 

[Santino]

I think I'd need to do some study before I could answer this.

The best way to address questions regarding the development of culture is to examine the full range of cultures that are available to us to study. In this case, I'd want to look at the codes of morality of hunter-gatherer tribes, among others.

I suppose I'm wary of constructing a Just So story or a founding myth to explain the development of a fundamental aspect of human existence.

 

[Knotted]

Will Betelgeuse explode tommorrow? This is indeterminate ie. we don't know and can't possibly tell. Did Betelgeuse explode yesterday? This is exactly as indeterminate for exactly the same reasons. The idea that there is a special form of indeterminacy for the future is quite odd. When something is indeterminate it means we don't know. The indeterminacy of an event is relative to the observer, it is not a physical fact it is a statement about what somebody knows.

Of couse it is impossible to predict human behaviour completely, but it seems reasonable to suggest that any particular human action could be predicted at least in principle.

I don't know whether determinism is true or not in terms of physics. I don't think it is possible to tell either way. It might even be that the very question is misconceived. It seems reasonable to assume determinism for everyday life. We can explain most things in terms of cause and effect if necessary. However we very rarely need to explain things in terms of cause and effect. This is only one way to understand our world and it's a particularly poor way to understand how people work. So yes determinism is true for all practical purposes but the question focuses our attention in the wrong way.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I suppose I'm wary of constructing a Just So story or a founding myth to explain the development of a fundamental aspect of human existence.

The bit about children and their parents, I will admit, needs justification that I currently don't have. I do, however, believe that the general thrust of what I said is not only plausible but has explanatory power.

 

[8ball]

Self-awareness – consciousness – seeds the norm. The ability to see (or at least the appearance of it) that we make choices when we act widens the range of our possible actions.

Hmmm. I'm not convinced you'd get a social taboo in that case, just a rule of thumb that something is harmful, like 'the fire is pretty but it's not nice when I stick my hand in it'. I think taboos probably come from somewhere deeper.

Sorry, I know you don't like provisional ideas . . .

I like provisional ideas but I'm wary of taking a small string of propositions and trying to make it into an explanation for a vast array of phenomena.

Or, to put it another way, if I suddenly found myself convinced I could fly, I'd try taking off from the ground rather than field-testing the idea by jumping off a tall building.

 

[8ball]

I don't know whether determinism is true or not in terms of physics. I don't think it is possible to tell either way. It might even be that the very question is misconceived.

This seems plausible to me.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Hmmm. I'm not convinced you'd get a social taboo in that case, just a rule of thumb that something is harmful, like 'the fire is pretty but it's not nice when I stick my hand in it'. I think taboos probably come from somewhere deeper.

Taboos arise precisely where no immediate harm is likely to be caused to the individual by their actions, I would have thought. Where the good to be protected is a wider one than can be seen by the individual at the time, that is where a taboo is needed rather than a rule of thumb.

You say somewhere 'deeper', but where is that?

 

[Jonti]

Will Betelgeuse explode tomorrow? This is indeterminate ie. we don't know and can't possibly tell. Did Betelgeuse explode yesterday? This is exactly as indeterminate for exactly the same reasons. The idea that there is a special form of indeterminacy for the future is quite odd. When something is indeterminate it means we don't know. The indeterminacy of an event is relative to the observer, it is not a physical fact it is a statement about what somebody knows.

...

But this is to beg the question. I would say it is the idea that the future is ontologically the same as the present that is really rather odd. The future does not yet exist, and many different futures are compatible with the present.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Will Betelgeuse explode tommorrow? This is indeterminate ie. we don't know and can't possibly tell. Did Betelgeuse explode yesterday? This is exactly as indeterminate for exactly the same reasons. The idea that there is a special form of indeterminacy for the future is quite odd. When something is indeterminate it means we don't know. The indeterminacy of an event is relative to the observer, it is not a physical fact it is a statement about what somebody knows.

Indeed. I also agree that the question is probably ill-conceived.

 

[Knotted]

But this is to beg the question. I would say it is the idea that the future is ontologically the same as the present that is really rather odd. The future does not yet exist, and many different futures are compatible with the present.

I pick on something cosmological because it brings relativity in to play. Talking about "the present" suggests there is an absolute clock giving an absolute time. There really isn't an ontological difference between not knowing about something in the past or the present and not knowing about something in future. One is not more indeterminate than the other. Quantum physics, if you interpret it as indeterministic, is just as indeterministic about events in the past or the present as it is about events in the future.

 

[Jonti]

Well, indeed, relativity gives the same ontological status to the future as to the present or the past; not only is it a determinate science, like that of Newton, but it sees the universe as a finished book whose pages we merely turn as we travel (we are told helplessly, and with deluded and pointless effort) through life.

How does this meaningless fatalism map onto the lived now of people in a world where there is everything to play for, and everything to lose?

 

[Knotted]

I tend to think of living organisms as locally self-perpertuating organisation. Whereas the overall tendency of the universe is to greater disorganisation, life locally resists or reverses this trend. I think this is why we remember the past rather than the future. We organise ourselves based on past events (although we consume highly organised energy in order to be able to do this). This is why it seems odd to say that the past is indeterminate or that the future is determined. But really as I've argued before the past is more indeterminate than the future. Think of a golf ball in a hole. You cannot derive the past tradgectory of the golf ball from the position it is now in.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

But this is to beg the question. I would say it is the idea that the future is ontologically the same as the present that is really rather odd. The future does not yet exist, and many different futures are compatible with the present.

We're back to Special Relativity here, though, aren't we? It doesn't really mean anything to talk of what is happening on Betelgeuse today because the information originating from Betelgeuse that is reaching us today (the only 'now' we have of that place) we take to have originated on Betelgeuse many years ago. Using that logic, for all we know, Betelgeuse exploded last year. Essentially, the concept of distance makes no sense when not accompanied by the concept of the time in which that distance can meaningfully exist.

Now if an entangled pair of electrons, one here and one on Betelgeuse, were to become disentangled today by the interaction of one of them with something on Betelgeuse, we'd be affected here to the extent that certain qualities of the other electron here would now be fixed. We'd have no way of knowing that this was the reason the electron here is as it is, though, since those possibilities are simply a narrower range taken from the possibilities that existed before. The only way we could find out would be to be sent the information from Betelgeuse, in which case, we'd find out some years into the future – we'd see the information of the change at the same time as we see the change happen on Betelgeuse (if we had means of seeing it), which is as if this one event has affected us twice.

This action at a distance seems to violate relativity, but I can't see any point at which it contradicts any feeling of the continuity of time at one place. I think it is better instead to think of the entangled particles as not really existing as particles at all until they become disentangled. As far as I know, no entangled particle can interact with anything without becoming disentangled. As soon as they are disentangled, they enter the realm in which relativity applies. When they are entangled, they cannot affect that realm. I'd be interested if anyone could verify this point – it is my understanding of quantum entanglement that what I say above is true, but then the idea of quantum teleportation suggests that it may not be the whole story.

 

[Jonti]

Why such complication?

You are led to wonder why we do not remember the future because you assume the future is already fully formed, and because your physics offers no way of understanding your experience of the present moment.

 

[8ball]

Taboos arise precisely where no immediate harm is likely to be caused to the individual by their actions, I would have thought. Where the good to be protected is a wider one than can be seen by the individual at the time, that is where a taboo is needed rather than a rule of thumb.

No, where the good to be protected is a wider one than can be seen by the individual at the time you get things like social conventions, speed limits and the like.

Also, some taboos make no sense at all in a practical way.

 

[8ball]

But this is to beg the question. I would say it is the idea that the future is ontologically the same as the present that is really rather odd. The future does not yet exist, and many different futures are compatible with the present.

I agree with this.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Also, some taboos make no sense at all in a practical way.

Such as?

 

[Knotted]

This action at a distance seems to violate relativity, but I can't see any point at which it contradicts any feeling of the continuity of time at one place. I think it is better instead to think of the entangled particles as not really existing as particles at all until they become disentangled. As far as I know, no entangled particle can interact with anything without becoming disentangled. As soon as they are disentangled, they enter the realm in which relativity applies. When they are entangled, they cannot affect that realm. I'd be interested if anyone could verify this point – it is my understanding of quantum entanglement that what I say above is true, but then the idea of quantum teleportation suggests that it may not be the whole story.

That's about right. Quantum mechanics is compatable with special relativity. You can give quantum mechanics a relativistic correction and you come up with quantum field theory (Dirac). So there is no contradiction with relativity even if there seems to be an action at a distance ie. there is no super-luminal signaling.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I agree with this.

Isn't Knotted's point that many different pasts are compatible with the present.

 

[Jonti]

The apparent action at a distance of entangled particles may seems to violate relativity, but it does not.

No information can be transmitted by way of QM entanglements -- the co-ordination of events does not imply there must be communication between those events. The challenge is more that classical physics now has to recognise that there is such a thing as absolute simultaneity across cosmic distances.

 

[Knotted]

Why such complication?

You are led to wonder why we do not remember the future because you assume the future is already fully formed, and because your physics offers no way of understanding your experience of the present moment.

Do we experience the present moment? Don't we really experience it a fraction of a second later? If you are making a big ontological difference between the present and the future, bare in mind that we only really ever experience the past. We never experience the present just like we never experience the future.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Do we experience the present moment? Don't we really experience it a fraction of a second later? If you are making a big ontological difference between the present and the future, bare in mind that we only really ever experience the past. We never experience the present just like we never experience the future.

Strictly speaking this is true.

 

[Knotted]

Isn't Knotted's point that many different pasts are compatible with the present.

I didn't make the comment about the possibility of the question of determinism being misconceived with this in mind.

 

[Jonti]

If many different pasts are compatible with the present, and also many different futures, then surely determinism has been utterly lost in all the confusion!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

No information can be transmitted by way of QM entanglements

That point is disputed among physicists, isn't it?

Certainly it makes things easier to square if it is true.

 

[8ball]

Such as?

People being scared of the word 'cunt'.
People being scared of actual cunts (see the masses of restrictions that Judaism has on what women do during their blobby week).
All manner of relgious nonsense, actually.
No one being allowed to see a woman's bare ankle in Victorian England.
Miscegenation taboos.
Talking about cancer.
Same re: mental illness.
Same re: Holocaust figures.

etc etc etc etc

 

[littlebabyjesus]

If many different pasts are compatible with the present, and also many different futures, then surely determinism has been utterly lost in all the confusion!

Isn't the point that with incomplete information, many different pasts/futures are compatible. Then the question becomes 'What constitutes complete information?'

 

[Jonti]

Why such complication?

You are led to wonder why we do not remember the future because you assume the future is already fully formed, and because your physics offers no way of understanding your experience of the present moment.

Do we experience the present moment? Don't we really experience it a fraction of a second later? If you are making a big ontological difference between the present and the future, bare in mind that we only really ever experience the past. We never experience the present just like we never experience the future.

Your physics offers no way of understanding your experience of the present moment, true.

That is exactly why I am sceptical of its insistence that past, present and future are essentially all the same.

 

[Knotted]

Your physics offers no way of understanding your experience of the present moment, true.

That is exactly why I am sceptical of its insistence that past, present and future are essentially all the same.

Well really that was a point about biology. If you hit your thumb with a hammer it will take a small amount of time before you will experience the pain of hitting your thumb with a hammer. The signal has to travel along the nerves. There is no present moment that we experience to understand.

 

[Jonti]

One can -- and sometimes should -- play the language game of doubt and the fallibility of human knowledge. We are fallible and liable to make errors however we interpret scientific theories.

But there is no great reason to think that our knowledge, or lack thereof, has any cosmological significance. The completeness or otherwise of our information has no necessary relation with the question as to whether many different futures can flow from the present state of the world.