According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[bilby]

But if we are to imagine the ball on the top of the hill in a depression, and the hill itself is now made to vibrate gently, but at a frequency that will not allow a ball to settle in that depression suddenly the system works much more smoothly and reliably.

WWII era mechanical computers used 'jitter' in exactly this way, after it was found that a navigation computer installed in a bomber didn't work on the ground with the engines shut down, but started working once they took off. It became common practice to make such mechanisms vibrate (usually by simply attatching a motor spinning an unbalanced weight), but as they were made obsolete by electronic computers, and were mostly highly classified designs before they became obsolete, the use of mechanical jitter never became widespread.

The word has since been re-purposed to refer to variations in timing signals in electronic devices.

 

[pood]

Orchestrated objective reduction wherein it is claimed that brains exploit quantum mechanics and could provide a basis to support not just free will (libertarian?) but also resolve the hard problem of consciousness,

QM might add unpredictability to a brain's outputs, but this is absolutely unrelated to any kind of free will, unless we are claiming that a brain can alter the quantum behaviour of its component atoms, which is both implausible and unnecessary.

I am also seeing no way to use QM to get any kind of handle on the 'hard problem'.

Penrose seems to be using 'quantum' to mean 'magic', and to be using it to solve a set of problems that don't exist - first and foremost being the "problem" that brains are incapable of processing thought via the interactions of networks of neurons. There is exactly zero evidence that brains cannot do this, and stacks of good evidence that this is in fact exactly what brains do.

I wasn’t invoking QM to justify free will. I think it is not needed for that. I was contesting the claim that QM has no impact on biological structures or macro structures, made earlier.

 

[Jarhyn]

Orchestrated objective reduction wherein it is claimed that brains exploit quantum mechanics and could provide a basis to support not just free will (libertarian?) but also resolve the hard problem of consciousness,

QM might add unpredictability to a brain's outputs, but this is absolutely unrelated to any kind of free will, unless we are claiming that a brain can alter the quantum behaviour of its component atoms, which is both implausible and unnecessary.

I am also seeing no way to use QM to get any kind of handle on the 'hard problem'.

Penrose seems to be using 'quantum' to mean 'magic', and to be using it to solve a set of problems that don't exist - first and foremost being the "problem" that brains are incapable of processing thought via the interactions of networks of neurons. There is exactly zero evidence that brains cannot do this, and stacks of good evidence that this is in fact exactly what brains do.

I wasn’t invoking QM to justify free will. I think it is not needed for that. I was contesting the claim that QM has no impact on biological structures or macro structures, made earlier.

This is fair, however, I find it kind of justifying of the experiment I described in light of this revelation to me:

But if we are to imagine the ball on the top of the hill in a depression, and the hill itself is now made to vibrate gently, but at a frequency that will not allow a ball to settle in that depression suddenly the system works much more smoothly and reliably.

WWII era mechanical computers used 'jitter' in exactly this way,

In fact, I am kind of giddy that this comes up in large scale systems operation.

How many sodium ion connections exist along the ion channel at its narrowest point? Can we be sure each ion in such a "narrow" channel will promptly be re-aligned in a chaotic enough and high enough frequency to be assured no region acts as a full insulator?

I get this weird idea of like, a science fiction shield, but patchy. The patches "shift" with particular kinds of quantum events causing the proteins forming the ion channel change their electron configurations, or the protein physically wiggles, or both (these might be the same thing!). If a patch ever runs all the way around, it would block firing for stupid reasons and maybe even cause cellular damage as the electrical force builds up and eventually arcs itself through in ways that produce reactive oxygen species.

Adding jitter would keep the whole thing from binding or locking up as the events that rotate the states around don't happen often enough to ensure prompt clearance of the issue, without the need for more reliable ion channel proteins to evolve.

I have called it the "stir stick effect" or even "donkey dicking", after the effect of the colloquial name of a concrete vibrator.

I legitimate want to see someone actually answer this question though, by figuring out a way to damp out or stop the nanotube vibration and then seeing what effect this has on chemistry in the cell.

One thing to note too is the evolutionary element of this, because biology usually ends up "just barely good enough", and only occasionally ever getting better directly; often it's something indirect that solves an earlier issue, too.

If adding old-school mechanical jitter to a system is what allows a lot of really half-assed shit to work decently smoothly, and it also happens to create structure and maybe even forcing vibrations in certain frequencies in certain structures to facilitate seeking and mapping behaviors of chemicals, then that's what's going to happen, and things won't change much.

 

[bilby]

Orchestrated objective reduction wherein it is claimed that brains exploit quantum mechanics and could provide a basis to support not just free will (libertarian?) but also resolve the hard problem of consciousness,

QM might add unpredictability to a brain's outputs, but this is absolutely unrelated to any kind of free will, unless we are claiming that a brain can alter the quantum behaviour of its component atoms, which is both implausible and unnecessary.

I am also seeing no way to use QM to get any kind of handle on the 'hard problem'.

Penrose seems to be using 'quantum' to mean 'magic', and to be using it to solve a set of problems that don't exist - first and foremost being the "problem" that brains are incapable of processing thought via the interactions of networks of neurons. There is exactly zero evidence that brains cannot do this, and stacks of good evidence that this is in fact exactly what brains do.

I wasn’t invoking QM to justify free will. I think it is not needed for that. I was contesting the claim that QM has no impact on biological structures or macro structures, made earlier.

This is fair, however, I find it kind of justifying of the experiment I described in light of this revelation to me:

But if we are to imagine the ball on the top of the hill in a depression, and the hill itself is now made to vibrate gently, but at a frequency that will not allow a ball to settle in that depression suddenly the system works much more smoothly and reliably.

WWII era mechanical computers used 'jitter' in exactly this way,

In fact, I am kind of giddy that this comes up in large scale systems operation.

How many sodium ion connections exist along the ion channel at its narrowest point? Can we be sure each ion in such a "narrow" channel will promptly be re-aligned in a chaotic enough and high enough frequency to be assured no region acts as a full insulator?

I get this weird idea of like, a science fiction shield, but patchy. The patches "shift" with particular kinds of quantum events causing the proteins forming the ion channel change their electron configurations, or the protein physically wiggles, or both (these might be the same thing!). If a patch ever runs all the way around, it would block firing for stupid reasons and maybe even cause cellular damage as the electrical force builds up and eventually arcs itself through in ways that produce reactive oxygen species.

Adding jitter would keep the whole thing from binding or locking up as the events that rotate the states around don't happen often enough to ensure prompt clearance of the issue, without the need for more reliable ion channel proteins to evolve.

I have called it the "stir stick effect" or even "donkey dicking", after the effect of the colloquial name of a concrete vibrator.

I legitimate want to see someone actually answer this question though, by figuring out a way to damp out or stop the nanotube vibration and then seeing what effect this has on chemistry in the cell.

One thing to note too is the evolutionary element of this, because biology usually ends up "just barely good enough", and only occasionally ever getting better directly; often it's something indirect that solves an earlier issue, too.

If adding old-school mechanical jitter to a system is what allows a lot of really half-assed shit to work decently smoothly, and it also happens to create structure and maybe even forcing vibrations in certain frequencies in certain structures to facilitate seeking and mapping behaviors of chemicals, then that's what's going to happen, and things won't change much.

At the molecular scale, I don't think QM is needed to provide mechanical jitter (though of course, that doesn't mean it's not doing so); Heat should be more than sufficient to do that. At 310K or so, everything is jiggling around pretty fast on that scale.

 

[bilby]

When it comes to biological systems, QM seems to be a solution desparately searching for a problem.

 

[Jarhyn]

Orchestrated objective reduction wherein it is claimed that brains exploit quantum mechanics and could provide a basis to support not just free will (libertarian?) but also resolve the hard problem of consciousness,

QM might add unpredictability to a brain's outputs, but this is absolutely unrelated to any kind of free will, unless we are claiming that a brain can alter the quantum behaviour of its component atoms, which is both implausible and unnecessary.

I am also seeing no way to use QM to get any kind of handle on the 'hard problem'.

Penrose seems to be using 'quantum' to mean 'magic', and to be using it to solve a set of problems that don't exist - first and foremost being the "problem" that brains are incapable of processing thought via the interactions of networks of neurons. There is exactly zero evidence that brains cannot do this, and stacks of good evidence that this is in fact exactly what brains do.

I wasn’t invoking QM to justify free will. I think it is not needed for that. I was contesting the claim that QM has no impact on biological structures or macro structures, made earlier.

This is fair, however, I find it kind of justifying of the experiment I described in light of this revelation to me:

But if we are to imagine the ball on the top of the hill in a depression, and the hill itself is now made to vibrate gently, but at a frequency that will not allow a ball to settle in that depression suddenly the system works much more smoothly and reliably.

WWII era mechanical computers used 'jitter' in exactly this way,

In fact, I am kind of giddy that this comes up in large scale systems operation.

How many sodium ion connections exist along the ion channel at its narrowest point? Can we be sure each ion in such a "narrow" channel will promptly be re-aligned in a chaotic enough and high enough frequency to be assured no region acts as a full insulator?

I get this weird idea of like, a science fiction shield, but patchy. The patches "shift" with particular kinds of quantum events causing the proteins forming the ion channel change their electron configurations, or the protein physically wiggles, or both (these might be the same thing!). If a patch ever runs all the way around, it would block firing for stupid reasons and maybe even cause cellular damage as the electrical force builds up and eventually arcs itself through in ways that produce reactive oxygen species.

Adding jitter would keep the whole thing from binding or locking up as the events that rotate the states around don't happen often enough to ensure prompt clearance of the issue, without the need for more reliable ion channel proteins to evolve.

I have called it the "stir stick effect" or even "donkey dicking", after the effect of the colloquial name of a concrete vibrator.

I legitimate want to see someone actually answer this question though, by figuring out a way to damp out or stop the nanotube vibration and then seeing what effect this has on chemistry in the cell.

One thing to note too is the evolutionary element of this, because biology usually ends up "just barely good enough", and only occasionally ever getting better directly; often it's something indirect that solves an earlier issue, too.

If adding old-school mechanical jitter to a system is what allows a lot of really half-assed shit to work decently smoothly, and it also happens to create structure and maybe even forcing vibrations in certain frequencies in certain structures to facilitate seeking and mapping behaviors of chemicals, then that's what's going to happen, and things won't change much.

At the molecular scale, I don't think QM is needed to provide mechanical jitter (though of course, that doesn't mean it's not doing so); Heat should be more than sufficient to do that. At 310K or so, everything is jiggling around pretty fast on that scale.

Well, my point would be that if the activity isn't sufficient to modify the action of the ion channel in a way so as to provide jitter over other situations, it's most certainly not enough to provide reliable switching "decision making" action so as to act as a cosmic soul antenna.

 

[DBT]

We are not talking about software engineering. The subject is the question of free will.

That seems quite the assertion, that a free will is somehow distinct in a meaningful way from a program unobstructed from the conditions that lead it to a clean exit code.

I strongly suggest you study signal processing so you can at least understand your ignorance about the topic.

I strongly suggest that you put aside your ''noise overcomes signal'' explanation and study the implications of determinism as compatibilists define it to be in relation to how they define free will. A hint, it has nothing to do with ''noise overcoming signal.''

You have yet to explain how that aids decision making by the brain or how it relates to free will.

Noise doesn't help the process. Which is why compatibilists relate their definition to determinism, not random events or ''noise.''

 

[DBT]

Pragmatic is my middle name.

Regardless of convoluted long running philosophical debates over thousands of years we are faced with a reality as it is not what we want or imagine it to be.

We have to make decisions. What to do fora living, grocery shopping, who to vote for.

Determinism is a brief as is a religious belief.

Pragmatically we have free will, our choices are not forcibly coerced. At least in western liberal democracies.

Pragmatically endless debate for pleasure over free will and determinism on the net 24/7 is a modern luxury.

Yet the world is sufficiently determinist to enable us to predict events when sufficient information is available, calculate orbits, place landers on Venus, Mars, Titan, predict the return of comets, etcetera.....

At least, as some compatibilists define it, Adequate Determinism

''Adequate Determinism is the kind of determinism we have in the world. It is the determinism of Newtonian physics, capable of sending men to the moon and back with astonishing accuracy. It is the determinism of those physiologists who think that quantum uncertainty is insignificant in the macromolecular structures of cell biology.
We are happy to agree with scientists and philosophers who feel that quantum effects are for the most part negligible in the macroscopic world. We particularly agree that they are negligible when considering the causally determined will and the causally determined actions set in motion by decisions of that will.''

Plants use quantum physics to survive.

How does that relate to free will? QM is not the decision maker. That is the role of a brain. Decisions are not based on QM probability, decay or chance, but a brain that has the ability to acquire and processes information and respond in a rational manner, evolution and neural architecture.

How would quantum physics enable free will anyway? It wouldn't be compatibilist free will. And how Libertarian free will is supposed to work is anyone's guess.

 

[Jarhyn]

A hint, it has nothing to do with ''noise overcoming signal

Dude, of you can't see the "noise" and the "signal" in "an object moves freely towards its trajectory until constrained by an outside force", I have the greatest pity for you.

 

[Jarhyn]

DBT I just cannot understand how you can claim to want to be taken seriously on this topic when the study of "organized behavior in abstract" is something you absolutely refuse to actually study as the discipline exists today.

I strongly recommend that if this is really a passion you will spend years thinking about, you at least get the background necessary to prevent those years from being wasted effort.

Of all the educated disciplines of the world, the one most directly involved in crafting, executing, and discussing behavior on a low level is "software engineering".

The discussion about free will is about the process of how behavior comes to be formed and performed; it is clearly entirely within that wheelhouse of software engineering especially since it is the only discipline that deals with directly and demonstrably deterministic systems every day.

Continually refusing to learn this to a precise and useful extent seems to me more defensiveness than anything else.

 

[steve_bank]

Pragmatic is my middle name.

Regardless of convoluted long running philosophical debates over thousands of years we are faced with a reality as it is not what we want or imagine it to be.

We have to make decisions. What to do fora living, grocery shopping, who to vote for.

Determinism is a brief as is a religious belief.

Pragmatically we have free will, our choices are not forcibly coerced. At least in western liberal democracies.

Pragmatically endless debate for pleasure over free will and determinism on the net 24/7 is a modern luxury.

Yet the world is sufficiently determinist to enable us to predict events when sufficient information is available, calculate orbits, place landers on Venus, Mars, Titan, predict the return of comets, etcetera.....

At least, as some compatibilists define it, Adequate Determinism

''Adequate Determinism is the kind of determinism we have in the world. It is the determinism of Newtonian physics, capable of sending men to the moon and back with astonishing accuracy. It is the determinism of those physiologists who think that quantum uncertainty is insignificant in the macromolecular structures of cell biology.
We are happy to agree with scientists and philosophers who feel that quantum effects are for the most part negligible in the macroscopic world. We particularly agree that they are negligible when considering the causally determined will and the causally determined actions set in motion by decisions of that will.''

Plants use quantum physics to survive.

QM s a human created model, plants do not 'use' QM. QM is used in part to model photosynthesis.

 

[steve_bank]

Pragmatic is my middle name.

Regardless of convoluted long running philosophical debates over thousands of years we are faced with a reality as it is not what we want or imagine it to be.

We have to make decisions. What to do fora living, grocery shopping, who to vote for.

Determinism is a brief as is a religious belief.

Pragmatically we have free will, our choices are not forcibly coerced. At least in western liberal democracies.

Pragmatically endless debate for pleasure over free will and determinism on the net 24/7 is a modern luxury.

Yet the world is sufficiently determinist to enable us to predict events when sufficient information is available, calculate orbits, place landers on Venus, Mars, Titan, predict the return of comets, etcetera.....

At least, as some compatibilists define it, Adequate Determinism

''Adequate Determinism is the kind of determinism we have in the world. It is the determinism of Newtonian physics, capable of sending men to the moon and back with astonishing accuracy. It is the determinism of those physiologists who think that quantum uncertainty is insignificant in the macromolecular structures of cell biology.
We are happy to agree with scientists and philosophers who feel that quantum effects are for the most part negligible in the macroscopic world. We particularly agree that they are negligible when considering the causally determined will and the causally determined actions set in motion by decisions of that will.''

I think I know what you are saying, I disagree on how you frame it.

There are mathematical deterministic functions, meaning given all variables but one, the unknown variable is deterministically defined.

For integers a = b + c is deterministic. True regardless if the inverse itself is philosophically deterministic or not.

Rolling dice at a craps table is not mathematically deterministic. It is probabilistic.

There are technical problems which are neither deterministic nor probabilistic . They are solved by trial and error, often called a solver. Spreadsheets have a simple on, a goal seeker. You get answers with a range of uncertainty.


All of it with the causalities known.

 

[steve_bank]

Bsilv

More wordy talking around an issue. You claimed a connection between Buddhism and determinism, present it.

Christians quote 'Christian scholars'. They abound with an array of interpretations, inventions, and they do not all agree.

As with Jesus there are no contemporaneous accounts of an historical Buddha and who he was. The main story is anecdotal.

Steve, I previously provided my explanation of the claimed connection between Buddhism and determinism, along with citation to the Repetti article. It is post Number 1,133 in this thread, which is addressed to you and posted at 8:25 p.m. three days ago.

You can read it at https://iidb.org/threads/according-...ill-does-not-exist.27739/page-57#post-1316238.

In your post from earlier today, you also did not ask me to explain the claimed connection between Buddhism and determinism (which I already had done 3 days earlier). Rather, you simply made the following declarative assertions (among others):

As to Buddhism and determinism you would have to quote chapter an verse and authorship.

Over here in the USA identifying as Buddhist has very little meaning. Many identify for different reasons.

You would have to show the 'scholars' you refer to and what their lineage is. In traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism lineage of a teacher or author is important.

I expressed agreement with everything you stated in your post, writing "Not arguing with anything you wrote."

I then volunteered the identity of two scholars, whose work draws a connection between Buddhism and Determinism (as previously discussed at length in my post from earlier in the week), and I then offered some general observations about scholarship, in general.

I fail to understand how my relatively brief post that replied to a post of yours that did not ask any question is "More wordy talking around an issue."

Oh well, c'est la vie (whether it must be so or simply will be so).

Okey dokey,if it works for you then good for you.

To me it is all in brain, so to speak. My imaginary cat Arnold is all I need .... no cat food and kitty liter required.

I wiil add one thing. The difference between Christianity and Buddhism is that Buddhism has a clearr set of rules for behavior.

As a Buddhist do you live by the basic rules of Buddhism, a rhetorical question as s I do not exp[ect a response.

 

[BSilvEsq]

As a Buddhist do you live by the basic rules of Buddhism, a rhetorical question as s I do not expect a response.

I understand that you do not expect a response, but I thought I would respond anyway, because your question contains a demonstrably false premise. I am NOT a Buddhist. I do, however, respect Buddhism as a philosophy, and I have an affinity to some, but not all, of the teachings of Buddhism.

As I previously responded to you on Saturday morning in post #1,242 when you previously wrote that I had said that I am a Buddhist:

First, I did not say that I am Buddhist. I said only the following about my respect or affinity for Buddhism (in two separate posts):

Within Buddhism (which I respect as a philosophy, but do not practice as a religion), there is a doctrine known (in English) as "Dependent Origination" or "Dependent Arising."

and

I begin by saying that I have studied Buddhism from an academic standpoint, I have an affinity to the the teachings of Buddhism as I understand them, and I have a spiritual practice that incorporates aspects of Buddhism along with aspects of other philosophies and religions. I am not, however, a practicing Buddhist in a formal sense.

I also respect and have an affinity for some of the tents of many mainstream religions, but I do not practice any of those religions.

I will add that I am mainly interested in the supermundane metaphysics of Buddhism, and far less so in the mundane "basic rules" of behavior promoted by Buddhism.

Having studied Buddhism at an academic level (and tried to study at a Buddhist Temple, but got nothing out of it), I remain unclear about whether Siddhartha Gautama (who I do take to have been a real person, without regard to whether the teachings ascribed to him are accurately described, and who I do not take to truly have been a Buddha, which to me is not more real than a unicorn) and his disciples (over many generations) (i) first constructed the supermundane metaphysics of Buddhism and then derived the mundane standards of conduct / ethics promoted by Buddhism, or (ii) began with the mundane standards of conduct / ethics Buddhism promotes and then invented a supermundane metaphysics to justify the standards of conduct / ethics. The same questions can be asked about most religions.

Personally, I try to learn things by beginning with overarching concepts and then working to specific details, as opposed to beginning with details to build up a concept. In reality, it may be impossible to accomplish that sort of compartmentalization (especially when we can never truly examine anything from a perfectly clean slate), but I try to do so (or at least act under the delusion that I am doing so), nonetheless.

With respect to Buddhism, it is said that Siddhartha utilized "skillful teaching" in which his lessons were adapted to the student in order to best communicate his message. Thus, it has been argued both (i) that Siddhartha developed a supermundane metaphysics that he viewed to be too complex for most others to understand, and so he developed mundane instructions that he believed could be understood and followed by the average pupil, which Siddhartha believed would, when practiced rigorously, lead to the ability to understand and appreciate the supermundane metaphysics Siddhartha believed to be beyond the view and understanding of the average person, and (ii) that Siddhartha developed an ethics that he believed would serve all people well to adopt, and he developed the supermundane metaphysics of Buddhism as a mythology to provide a reason for people to adhere to his ethics. Again, the same divide runs through most religions -- i.e., (i) they can be viewed as genuinely held beliefs about the supernatural, which provide guidance for hot to live in harmony with the supernatural, or (ii) they can be viewed as Machiavellian means of controlling others -- i.e., the opiate of the masses.

It also has been argued (and I tend to agree) that only a devoted / devout practitioner of Buddhism (or any other religion) can truly understand Buddhism, such that an academic understanding can never be sufficient. This conceptualization runs so deep in Islam that it is said that the Qur'an can be understood only by a true adherent of Islam and even then only when heard recited in the melody prescribed by Muhammad (as it was taught to him by Allah), and even then there is a dispute within Islam over the question of whether the Qur'an can properly be taught / recited by descendants of Muhammad. In a sense, these notions are akin to the saying of St. Thomas Aquinas, "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

I do tend to believe that we must be ever skeptical of what our senses (including instrumentality and also logic, math and science) teach us, because we run the risk of being misled by false sensations and/or analyses. By saying that, I do not discount what seem to be beneficial consequences of accepting what seems correct or right, but I always think about the possibility that our focus on what appears to be the physical world could deny us the ability to interact with the spiritual world, which may or may not exist and may or may not be more significant to us in the grand scheme of things. I suppose that is the divide between the scientific world and the religious and/or spiritual world-- which are not necessarily incompatible with one another.

 

[bilby]

How does that relate to free will? QM is not the decision maker. That is the role of a brain. Decisions are not based on QM probability, decay or chance, but a brain that has the ability to acquire and processes information and respond in a rational manner, evolution and neural architecture.

Exactly.

So you are now a compatibilist?

 

[steve_bank]

My imaginary cat Arnold tells me I now know all I need to know about free will versus determinism.

Don’t know what I would do without Arnold to tell me what to do.

Some post as if they are writing a masters or PHD thesis. It is after all the philosophy forum, but I wonder what it would be like to actually have a face to face regular conversation.

May the wisdom of Arnold be upon you.

 

[BSilvEsq]

The discussion in this thread reminds me why I switched my studies from pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree to a Bachelor of Arts degree in college.

When I began college, I had thoughts of becoming a doctor. I signed up for multiple science-related classes in my freshman year, and I quickly came to realize that theories and beliefs were being taught as if they were necessary truths. Don’t get me wrong, the theories and beliefs were robust and practical and have led to many things that are considered to be improvements to the human condition. But science classes were not taught that way, and I had a difficult time accepting what I viewed to be the dogma of science that was no more certain than the dogma of religion.

During my freshman year of college, I also took an introductory philosophy course and an introductory theology course. I was struck by the fact that the courses were honestly taught as presenting ideas that may or may not have practical value and which may or may not correlate to reality. Amazingly (to me, at least), even the theology professor, who was a minister, taught about religion as a paradigm that has no greater or lesser claim of truth (i.e., representative of reality) than science or any other paradigm. Indeed, that was the theme of one of the texts used in that course, which was “Myths, Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion” by Ian Barbour. By way of background, Barbour has a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago (where he was a teaching assistant to Enrico Fermi) and a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale’s University of Divinity School.

For the most part, I found the science classes to be closed-minded and narrow in focus and the Philosophy and Theology courses open-minded and broad. So, I gave up my thoughts of becoming a doctor, declared a major in Philosophy (in which I later graduated with honors) and set my sights on becoming a lawyer (at which I excelled), because it is too difficult to make a living as a Philosophy professor. Over the years, I found that many of the best lawyers with whom I have worked have Philosophy backgrounds, which is great preparatory education for law school, as it teaches how to think outside the box, which is critical to being a good lawyer.

What surprises me about the discussion in this thread is that it is dominated by scientific and engineering concepts when the thread is within a forum titled “Philosophy” with a subforum of “Other Philosophical Discussions.” A minority of the contributions in this thread are written from the standpoint of Philosophy, and I find those contributions to be both thoughtful and inviting of dialogue. Other contributions, however, are focused on scientific and engineering analysis and are written as if the authors know better than others, whose views some of the authors denigrate with terms such as “absurd” “meaningless” and “useless” among others.

This board reconfirms to me what a great decision it was (for me, at least) to abandon pursuit of a Bachelor of Science degree in college and pursue instead a Bachelor of Arts Degree with a major in Philosophy.

 

[pood]

Myself, I am doing pure philosophy.

All these terms are being batted about as in a badminton game — radical fatalism and fatalism (is there a difference?), pre-determinism and determinism (is there a difference? Yes) and so on,

I am trying to discover what the argument for fatalism is. It eludes me.

It goes back at least to the ancient Greeks with the Idle Argument and the sea battle problem.

Today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle. Therefore, there must be a sea battle, and no one can avoid it.

Does this argument go through?

No.

If today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then there will be a sea battle. So? The mistake is to suppose that there MUST be a sea battle.

If there is no sea battle, then a DIFFERENT prior proposition would be true — today it is true that tomorrow there will be NO sea battle.

The truthmaker for the prior proposition clearly is whether a sea battle occurs — or not.

There is no fatalism here.

And, once again, the fact that no one can change the future any more than they can change the past is irrelevant to the point. A fixed history is not the same as fatalism, and free will does not require anyone to change anything.

You can easily empirically test this. Try to change the present. If I lift my arm, I have not changed the present. I have made it be, what it is.

To change the present I would have to both lift, and not lift, my arm — a violation of the Law of Noncontradiction.

 

[BSilvEsq]

Myself, I am doing pure philosophy.

All these terms are being batted about as in a badminton game — radical fatalism and fatalism (is there a difference?), pre-determinism and determinism (is there a difference? Yes) and so on,

I am trying to discover what the argument for fatalism is. It eludes me.

It goes back at least to the ancient Greeks with the Idle Argument and the sea battle problem.

Today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle. Therefore, there must be a sea battle, and no one can avoid it.

Does this argument go through?

No.

If today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then there will be a sea battle. So? The mistake is to suppose that there MUST be a sea battle.

If there is no sea battle, then a DIFFERENT prior proposition would be true — today it is true that tomorrow there will be NO sea battle.

The truthmaker for the prior proposition clearly is whether a sea battle occurs — or not.

There is no fatalism here.

And, once again, the fact that no one can change the future any more than they can change the past is irrelevant to the point. A fixed history is not the same as fatalism, and free will does not require anyone to change anything.

You can easily empirically test this. Try to change the present. If I lift my arm, I have not changed the present. I have made it be, what it is.

To change the present I would have to both lift, and not lift, my arm — a violation of the Law of Noncontradiction.

I appreciate the post.

My response is that the logical argument you are proffering is based on the foundational premise being that something will occur in the future, and not based on the foundational premise that something necessarily will occur tomorrow without the possibility of something else occurring (including whatever that something is not occurring). Once again, I have no idea whether the universe does (or even can) operate in a manner in which all activity that has not yet occurred is inexorably fixed, predetermined, fated (or any other word you might want to use to describe a future that necessarily will occur in a specific way and no other way, with that necessity existing before the activity occurs).

To say that it is a fallacy to state the possibility of a predetermined future is like stating that it is a fallacy to posit that there are not and cannot be any black swans. If you accept that there are no black swans as a foundational premise, you an logically conclude that (i) something that is black must be something other than a swan, (ii) the swan my son has found and is bringing home with him is not black, and (iii) there is not a black swan at the zoo. A logical fallacy would occur if I were to say that I know that there can be no black swans because every swan I have ever seen is white. And, the posited fact that there are no black swans would demonstrably incorrect by producing a black swan. But, there is no fallacy involved in simply positing that there are not and cannot be any black swans. That is equally true of positing that the future is inexorably predetermined by antecedent activity.

Based on the foregoing, I would readily agree that there is not likely to be a valid argument that also is necessarily true that has as its conclusion (as contrasted with a posited premise) that the future is inexorably predetermined by antecedent activity. I also agree that there is no existing proof that the future is inexorably predetermined by antecedent activity, and I would go so far as to say that it is not even theoretically possible for such proof to exist.

Nor, however, can anyone falsify and/or empirically refute the posited premise that the future is inexorably predetermined by antecedent activity. Sure, it seems like I can lift my arm or not lift my arm a moment from now, and sure it feels like I am making a decision to do one or the other of things. But the fact that something feels a certain way does not make it so, unless you adopt as a foundational premise that all things that feel like a decision are by necessity actually a decision -- a premise that I submit is improbable to be accurate (as exemplified by the phenomenon of a phantom limb, by way of just one simple example).

Nor does the fact that you can't change the past or even the present (as it occurs) provide any support for the proposition that the future is not fixed and includes multiple potentials unless and until is occurs. I concur that it cannot be deduced that the future was inexorably fixed in advance of its occurring from the fact that future will be fixed after it occurs. I have never suggested, much less stated, otherwise. That the future will be fixed and unchangeable after it occurs is a non sequitur with respect to the question of whether the future is inexorable fixed in advance of it occurring -- which, again, is a foundational premise of a fatalistic paradigm, and not a logical conclusion.

Finally, the sea battle argument is already addressed in the paragraphs above, and the idle argument is simply illogical. If the future is inexorably fixed in advance of it occurring, that mechanism of the universe (if that is the mechanism) would not result in people being idle out of a realization that nothing matters, because there would be no realization beyond that which is fixed by antecedent activity, and that fixed activity will be whatever it will be. Ultimately, the idle argument suffers from the same contradiction that dooms traditional compatibilism -- namely, it assumes free will to be idle while purporting to accept an inexorably fixed future that precludes the existence of free will to make that choice.

 

[steve_bank]

There is no special engineering or science logic per se. Deductive and inductive reaoning is the same however it is applied.

Science is tied to unambiguous defined physical units of measures.

Therrer are basic principles like conservation and causality.

In philosophy obvious in this thread terms are never precise, there is no agreed upon definition of free will and determinism.

So it becomes if this definition then that means ….

My response will be if this detestation how would it play out in reality if it is true, with examples. If not then it is just fanciful daydreaming.

As Hercule Poirot would say, exercising the little grey cells. Pretty much why I parachute on on the philosophy forum from time to time. I heard it said the best entertainment is leaning something new.

In his book on QM David Bohm made a passing reference to an uncertainty principle of the mind. Paraphrasing as I remember it the more you try to increase the precision the more dispersed the thinking becomes.