Three Arguments Against Determinism

[Knotted]

Well, imo the fact that there are situations rules out absolute freedom - Sartre then being wrong to say that freedom creates the obstacles that we use our freedom to overcome (say, the obstacle that I have to go to work on Monday). Infact, freedom takes up the history that freedom is offering, our freedom has a root in our social nature, which offer us solutions to a past that it overcomes e.g. having to work 5 days a week.

Agreed.

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding in that you all seem to beleive that freedom is about having a soul that is indpendent of physical events. Isn't it more to do with an event not entailing a succesive event

I have refered to the former (independent souls) as non-reductionism. I have refered to the latter (events not entailing successive events) as indeterminism. Maybe I'm using the wrong lingo, but it seems natural to interpret 'free will' as meaning the will is free from "something" at least or possibly everything at most. So there are three things (at least) that we are discussing here!

 

[118118]

Laws don't produce effects; laws are human attempts at understanding processes.

Laws exist because people make them up.

If laws are constant conjunctions, then surely they pre-exist our understanding.

Do you have a reference for this.



I mean, law statements are "linguitsic entities such as sentences of math formulae", whereas laws are "that which make law statements true/false - i.e. the actual regularity".

Those processes are laws, or constant conjunctions. I really think you shoul reply to this :x

 

[muser]

One cannot have freewill without also consciousness. And consciousness without freewill seems perverse, just an immobile witness to events.

Buddhism takes this view on the nature of consciousness. It is actually sought after in meditation practice to have that passive awareness of events.

 

[Knotted]

I once had a discussion with Violentpanda about the merits of objectivity over subjectivity. Unfortunately I wasn't as knowledgable as you, and kept blindly stating a fact that I thought was true but couldn't give appropriate reasoning for. Violentpanda to his credit did say that nothing could be wholy subjective. I did a quick wikipedia for Godel, but could you please tell me about the godel parodoxs, and is its use restricted to axioms or does it go further.

There are various versions of the Godel incompleteness theorems (which technically aren't paradoxes). The original version is not the easiest to understand or see the relevance of. An essential ingredient (of the 1st incompleteness theorem) is using a formal axiomatic system (F) to describe itself in order to come up with a ghost of the liar paradox something like:
"This statement is not provable in F"
cf liar paradox:
"This statement is not true."

An alternative version in computer science is that there is no algorithm that can test whether all algorithms terminate. This is know as the halting problem.

So what I suggest is that it seems likely that if there were a set of (presumably very complex) rules that could predict human behaviour, then 'human behaviour' - which presumably includes formulating these rules - could not decide whether certain consequences of these rules are true.

It all boils down to self-reference. So the 'will' might be ultimately free of human knowledge but not of the universe itself.

I should add a disclaimer that you need to be very careful when wielding Godel incompleteness theorems and I'm certainly not being careful here. I'm not proving anything, I'm just suggesting an idea.

 

[Jonti]

replying to #33

Yes, but the aboutness, the intentionality of mundane consciousness is still present.

There is intention, at the very least in the sense of implicit choice, even in the buddha consciousness. Or so I understand.

 

[Jonti]

Why would it have to be immobile

Poetic metaphor, really, from thinking of how the mind can 'freeze' sometimes (go slo-mo) during dramatic events. The thinking is it cannot impart motion for the reason that it has no motion of its own to impart. Yet the mind is not that like at all, for it's suffused in everything we see. Of course

 

[Jonti]

A scientific law is an expression of physical symmetry.

An emergent principle is the breaking of symmetry.

 

[Jonti]

If laws are constant conjunctions, then surely they pre-exist our understanding.

They could be ways of understanding.

 

[118118]

They could be ways of understanding.

Yeah. I think I need a reference to something to be convinced, that it is standard.

I should really know

 

[118118]

They could be ways of understanding.

Yeah. I think I need a reference to something to be convinced, that it is standard.

I should really know

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

If my rationality is consistently being fooled, does this mean that we are all mentally ill?

Not if the state of being fooled is the status quo.

 

[118118]

Not if the state of being fooled is the status quo.

Not to some people. Do you have a refernce or did you just make it up

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Not to some people. Do you have a refernce or did you just make it up

A reference to philosophical thought?

Are you telling me that none of your ideas here are original?

 

[muser]

A reference to philosophical thought?

Are you telling me that none of your ideas here are original?

Few ideas are ever original. Where do you stand on the matter of determinism, so far you've managed to attack those that have offered their opinion or sought to encourage us to find our own.

 

[118118]

d double post.

 

[118118]

A reference to philosophical thought?

Are you telling me that none of your ideas here are original?

Erm, yes. Anyone can place a few words together

Erm, htf are you going to know what the word law is supposed to signify, unless you read about it. I mean, basically your saying that you have a profound thought rolleyes: ), then just tell everyone about it an expect them to agree, with no proof, or no acquaitance with what is generally accepted as the case. Sounds like lunacy (I've probably got a classic accepted argument for why this is the case, lying around somewhere). Not to mention the fact that this forum is too slow to get a discussion started (e.g. do you accept that you have a mind (whether or not it is equivalent to a brain, yet?).

(lol)

No, I tend to invent some arguments, but not thoughts... I figured that would be very poor philosophy.

E.g. the bit about freedom offering freedom a history, is from merleau-ponty's phenomenology of perception. And I will be arguing for Merleau-Ponty's conception of stuff for a while - until I completely get it and discard it and switch to another philosopher. Talking about it is just so I can get the ideas systemized and understand which bits are useful.

 

[118118]

Poetic metaphor, really, from thinking of how the mind can 'freeze' sometimes (go slo-mo) during dramatic events. The thinking is it cannot impart motion for the reason that it has no motion of its own to impart. Yet the mind is not that like at all, for it's suffused in everything we see. Of course

Thats very well worder But, a hamster in a wheel has motion and can affect the outside world, yet the hamster is not free.

 

[Jonti]

A physical law, scientific law, or a law of nature is a scientific generalization based on empirical observations of physical behavior source

Sounds too simple, doesn't it

 

[118118]

so the question of the viewer being nowhere, somewhere or everywhere is only a bizzarre epistemological question

that makes it no less of a question.

 

[Jonti]

... a hamster in a wheel has motion and can affect the outside world, yet the hamster is not free.

It has very little space for its freedom, that is certain. That's not the same as being unable in principle to use freedom's space.

I like the idea from Merleau-Ponty, about freedom creating its own history. I'm reminded of the aphorism that, although one cannot change the past, one can change one's attitude towards it. That change will, in turn, affect one's present quality of experience. And so the future one makes for oneself.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Few ideas are ever original. Where do you stand on the matter of determinism, so far you've managed to attack those that have offered their opinion or sought to encourage us to find our own.

I'm a hard determinist, and have argued it many times in threads here.

 

[118118]

A physical law, scientific law, or a law of nature is a scientific generalization based on empirical observations of physical behavior source

Sounds too simple, doesn't it

I dunno, like, what do we call ordered physical behaviour, then? Surely it makes (slightly) more intuitive sense to say that an apple falling to the floor is an expression of a law, rather than the data we have of the apple falling to the floor is an expression of a law.

The latter does not account for any order that is mind-independent. Also, in an objectivst world view, there is no subject to impose order.

With no constant conjunctions between objects there is nothing to throw up data.

 

[118118]

That's not the same as being unable in principle to use freedom's space

So is a lack of free will a poditic? Johnny, I suppose that thats relevent to your position too. The fact that there are laws is not (I think) but is it a poditic that no will is possible without laws?

(lol)

I don't know if you can say that your account of laws, Johnny, is intentional-independent. Its not much of a leap to get to mind-independent. Sorry if #52 was stupid

 

[118118]

I'm a hard determinist, and have argued it many times in threads here.

An extreme view, yet you admit you have done no reading on the subject. Must be a knee-jerk reaction to something, then

 

[Jonti]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poditic

 

[118118]

Not if the state of being fooled is the status quo.

So, if 60% of the population has the plague, no-one is ill? Or, are you hard-nosed anti-psychiartry, too?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

So is a lack of free will a poditic? Johnny, I suppose that thats relevent to your position too. The fact that there are laws is not (I think) but is it a poditic that no will is possible without laws?

(lol)

I don't know if you can say that your account of laws, Johnny, is intentional-independent. Its not much of a leap to get to mind-independent. Sorry if #52 was stupid

Hey, a new word: poditic.

But I can't see how it's applicable here.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=poditic

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

An extreme view, yet you admit you have done no reading on the subject. Must be a knee-jerk reaction to something, then

Who says I've done no reading? I have a dual major bachelors degree, one of them being philosophy. In my final years, I did self-directed study courses directed to the issue of free will vs determinism. I've read a couple of things about it.

 

[118118]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poditic

lol "apodeictic". I think it just means logical necessity. Slightly unsure what that means, too, tbh.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

So, if 60% of the population has the plague, no-one is ill? Or, are you hard-nosed anti-psychiartry, too?

That's different. It's arguable that 'reality' is a construct. If we all agree on the construct, then it's not deviant etc even though the construct is in some way artificial.