Compatibilism: What's that About?

[pood]

Lecture notes on free will and determinism, by Norman Swartz. It is very much worth a read regardless of which side you fall on this debate.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Entanglement is not two separate particles receiving the same effect far apart and being in two different conditions. It is the same particle going back and forth through the fourth spatial dimension at the square of the speed of light.

"The same particle going back and forth through the fourth spatial dimension" is an intriguing speculation; maybe somebody could work that up into a theory and get a quantitative prediction out of it.
"At the square of the speed of light" is empty-headed gibberish; you might as well say the particle is going back and forth at 37 kilograms per volt.

Through That Dimension, We Can Transmit to Alpha Centauri in 15 minutes

You must not believe in the possibility of an outside universe, or else you'd be willing to accept that the maximum velocity there is different from what it is here. Logic prevents entanglement from being two particles, so it can only seem that way if the one particle changes so fast that it seems to be two different particles. Of course, it is also irrational to think it is the same particle being in two places at once.

 

[DBT]

Origination Argument;

1. An agent acts with free will only if she is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
2. If determinism is true, then everything any agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances outside her control.
3. If everything an agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances beyond her control, then the agent is not the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
4. Therefore, if determinism is true, then no agent is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true, no agent has free will.

Item 1 is question-begging. It assumes as true the very thing that is under discussion.

No, it's not begging the question.

1- If determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent, as a matter of choice, why call it determinism?

I don't understand your response (it doesn't appear to address my criticism).

Marvin has not suggested (or implied) that "determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent".

Marvin is expressing philosophical compatibilism. I am arguing for incompatibility. Giving the reasons why compatibilism fails. It fails because it tries to define free will into reality by ignoring the implications of determinism, that simply calling something free will does not make will free, which makes it a word game.

And I am pointing out as a software engineer that your efforts to use physical determinism to attempt to hand-wave concepts of contention over executiveness which arise over the activity of disparate reference frames with incomplete information of the state of outside frames.

You are engaging in just as much of a word game, ignoring that there are abstract systems of order that arise within ANY deterministic system of sufficient complexity.

you have not answered in any sufficient manner my explanations of the concept from the perspective of software engineering: a system being deterministic does not change the truth of priority levels nor of contention

I am engaging with the standard incompatibilist argument against compatibalism/ free will, which gives valid reasons why the term "free will" does not relate to determinism, the nature of thought, decision making or human behaviour.

I haven't engaged with you because time constraint does not allow me to deal with multiple posters or numerous points, which are usually repetitive.

The argument against free will is clear and relates to determinism, brain function and behaviour, while compatibilism does not, simply pasting a label on a select set of behaviors and declaring this is free will.

 

[Jarhyn]

Origination Argument;

1. An agent acts with free will only if she is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
2. If determinism is true, then everything any agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances outside her control.
3. If everything an agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances beyond her control, then the agent is not the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
4. Therefore, if determinism is true, then no agent is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true, no agent has free will.

Item 1 is question-begging. It assumes as true the very thing that is under discussion.

No, it's not begging the question.

1- If determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent, as a matter of choice, why call it determinism?

I don't understand your response (it doesn't appear to address my criticism).

Marvin has not suggested (or implied) that "determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent".

Marvin is expressing philosophical compatibilism. I am arguing for incompatibility. Giving the reasons why compatibilism fails. It fails because it tries to define free will into reality by ignoring the implications of determinism, that simply calling something free will does not make will free, which makes it a word game.

And I am pointing out as a software engineer that your efforts to use physical determinism to attempt to hand-wave concepts of contention over executiveness which arise over the activity of disparate reference frames with incomplete information of the state of outside frames.

You are engaging in just as much of a word game, ignoring that there are abstract systems of order that arise within ANY deterministic system of sufficient complexity.

you have not answered in any sufficient manner my explanations of the concept from the perspective of software engineering: a system being deterministic does not change the truth of priority levels nor of contention

I am engaging with the standard incompatibilist argument against compatibalism/ free will, which gives valid reasons why the term "free will" does not relate to determinism, the nature of thought, decision making or human behaviour.

I haven't engaged with you because time constraint does not allow me to deal with multiple posters or numerous points, which are usually repetitive.

The argument against free will is clear and relates to determinism, brain function and behaviour, while compatibilism does not, simply pasting a label on a select set of behaviors and declaring this is free will.

Except that it is exactly the thing people generally engage with in philosophical discussions of free will.

Your mistake is that you are failing to see that there are two machines at play.

The first set of machines are the physics engines themselves: put in two quarks, plus virtual event, and you get whatever as a combined object.

Then there are machines made of those machines. The claim that one machine's deterministic flow prevents meaningfulness of the discussion of a set of machines that have private contexts within the substrate and their interaction of contention over goals and subjugation of intent is silly and nonsense.

Will you be so bold as to declare "the discussion of flow control, mutex, priority levels, and interrupts is meaningless, computers are deterministic!"

Of course the universe is deterministic. That doesn't change the worth of metagaming.

Free will is not a concept of physical rules, it's a concept of metagaming. The existence of rules invalidated the value of meta just about NEVER.

 

[steve_bank]

Energy is always proportional to a magnitude squared.

E =-.5 MV^2 kinetic energy
E = MC^2 atomic energy

So C^2 does have a meaning.


A cosmology book I had used unversed for the observable universe and Universe for all that exists. Anything that exists is by definition part of the Universe whether we see it or not.

'Other dimensions' is mostly colored by scfi plot devices. Along with time travel. FTL. Universal translator implants. Sub Space. Aliens who speak English. Mater energy transport.

If you wat to sink your teeth into a newer speculation there is String Theory. Fully mathematically developed.

String theory - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.

String theory is a broad and varied subject that attempts to address a number of deep questions of fundamental physics. String theory has contributed a number of advances to mathematical physics, which have been applied to a variety of problems in black hole physics, early universe cosmology, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics, and it has stimulated a number of major developments in pure mathematics. Because string theory potentially provides a unified description of gravity and particle physics, it is a candidate for a theory of everything, a self-contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter. Despite much work on these problems, it is not known to what extent string theory describes the real world or how much freedom the theory allows in the choice of its details.

String theory was first studied in the late 1960s as a theory of the strong nuclear force, before being abandoned in favor of quantum chromodynamics. Subsequently, it was realized that the very properties that made string theory unsuitable as a theory of nuclear physics made it a promising candidate for a quantum theory of gravity. The earliest version of string theory, bosonic string theory, incorporated only the class of particles known as bosons. It later developed into superstring theory, which posits a connection called supersymmetry between bosons and the class of particles called fermions. Five consistent versions of superstring theory were developed before it was conjectured in the mid-1990s that they were all different limiting cases of a single theory in 11 dimensions known as M-theory. In late 1997, theorists discovered an important relationship called the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence), which relates string theory to another type of physical theory called a quantum field theory.

One of the challenges of string theory is that the full theory does not have a satisfactory definition in all circumstances. Another issue is that the theory is thought to describe an enormous landscape of possible universes, which has complicated efforts to develop theories of particle physics based on string theory. These issues have led some in the community to criticize these approaches to physics, and to question the value of continued research on string theory unification.

 

[Bomb#20]

"At the square of the speed of light" is empty-headed gibberish; you might as well say the particle is going back and forth at 37 kilograms per volt.

Through That Dimension, We Can Transmit to Alpha Centauri in 15 minutes

You must not believe in the possibility of an outside universe, or else you'd be willing to accept that the maximum velocity there is different from what it is here.

Of course that's a possibility; no one said otherwise. The problem is "the square of the speed of light" is not a velocity; therefore the maximum velocity in that hypothetical outside universe can't be that.

Energy is always proportional to a magnitude squared.

E =-.5 MV^2 kinetic energy
E = MC^2 atomic energy

So C^2 does have a meaning.

Of course it does; but having a meaning isn't enough for it to be what a particle is going back and forth at. "Kilograms per volt" has a perfectly sensible meaning too: it describes the lifting capacity of an electromagnet. The square of the speed of light is 9x10¹⁶ square meters per second per second -- it's the derivative of the rate at which something's area is increasing. You could quantify deforestation of the Amazon basin with it, not particle velocity in an outside universe.

 

[Bomb#20]

Does Carroll's book explain how MWI would result in a typical observer measuring 96 transmitted photons for every 4 reflected by a glass surface? The vast majority of explanations of MWI simply skip over that question as though it had never occurred to their authors to wonder.

I would urge you not to arrive at a conclusion about Sean Carroll's approach to QM from my description of it, since I am not a physicist. Rather, I would direct you to his own publications on the subject and let you draw your conclusions from the source. ...

Fair enough.

Sean Carroll has also addressed this.

Thanks; I took a look.

In fact let’s just focus on a simple special case, where

a = b = 1 / sqrt(2) .

If we can prove that in this case, the probability of either outcome is 50%, we’ve done the hard part of the work — showing how probabilistic conclusions can arise at all from non-probabilistic assumptions. Then there’s a bit of mathematical lifting one must do to generalize to other possible amplitudes, but that part is conceptually straightforward.

Yeah, that's about what I expected. The question was how unequal amplitudes lead to unequal frequency, and Carroll answers, just as practically every other popularizer of Many-Worlds answers, "Let me show you how equal amplitudes lead to equal frequency." He does the part that's already intuitively obvious, he claims he did the hard part, and he calls the part that's utterly mystifying "conceptually straightforward" as his explanation for why he isn't giving an explanation. He's a South Park underpants gnome.

 

[DBT]

Causal necessity creates everything, us, our will, shape, form, function and expression. Will has no say in the matter. That is determinism in action.

That is called a "reification fallacy". Causal necessity is not an entity that goes about in the world creating things. Causation itself never causes anything. Determinism itself never determines anything. Yet you have transferred our control to these imaginary entities.

Nope, it's called determinism; where all events are fixed as a matter of natural law. I work with the given definition making no attempt to redefine or soften its definition.

The fact is that our own brain evaluates our circumstances and, if a decision is required, our own brain chooses what we will do. That chosen intent then motivates and directs our subsequent actions, so, choosing what we will do has the actual control.

As far as I know, nobody has said or suggested that determinism ''controls'' us against our will. That's not how determinism works.

And yet that is precisely what you just said. You have "determinism in action". You have causal necessity "creating everything". Basically, you've turned these abstract concepts into gods.

No, determinism is what it is by definition. There is no wriggle room or attempt at softening the consequences of determinism through sophistry.

To say that to act freely, without coercion or force applies to all events within a determined system. Actions are performed freely, but there is no could have done otherwise.

Again you ignore the evidence. You're driving down the road and you see a red traffic light up ahead. Will it remain red, forcing you to stop? Or, will it turn green just as you arrive, allowing you to continue through the intersection? Not knowing what "will" happen, you imagine what "can" happen, to prepare for what actually "does" happen. As you get closer you slow down, but then the light changes to green, so you drive on through. If it were true that the light "could not" have remained red, then why did you slow down? The meaning of "could have" exists only in the context of uncertainty. "Could have" refers to something that may happen, but then again it may never happen. This is very different from something that "will" happen. Something that will happen certainly will happen.

Hard determinists have unfortunately conflated what "can" happen with what "will" happen. They insist that there is only one possibility, AS IF a possibility were the same thing as an actuality. But they are not the same. All possibilities exist solely within our imagination. We cannot drive a car across the possibility of a bridge. We can only drive across an actual bridge. However, we cannot build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge.

Are you getting any of this?

It's been explained that what the light does is determined and fixed as a matter of natural law, that our limited perspective forces us to consider what may happen based on our past experience with traffic lights. We understand through past experience that lights change at regulated intervals to enable efficient traffic flow, and that sometimes traffic light malfunction, etc, etc,....our view is probabilistic, yet what the lights actually do is determined, fixed - by defintion - as a matter of natural law

 

[DBT]

A person is choosing for themselves? True as a trivial observation but does not account for the means of decision making or the elements that necessitate it. The world acts upon the brain, that within a determined system produces an inevitable result, a result that was neither consciously decided or freely willed. The brain is constrained by its own architecture and the information that acts upon it.

Ironically, it is causal necessity that turns out to be the triviality. It is always true of every event. What I will inevitably do is exactly identical to me just being me, choosing what I choose, and doing what I do. And that is not a meaningful constraint. It is not something that anyone can, or needs to be, free of.

As to the "means of decision making or the elements that necessitate it", that turns out to be me. My brain is the means of my decision making. My own thoughts and feelings, beliefs and values, and all those other things that make me who and what I am, are "the elements that necessitate" my choice. So, however you slice it up, the causal determinant remains "me" all the way down.

As to my brain being "constrained by its own architecture", well, that's a very perverse and delusional way of looking at it. Isn't it rather the case that my brain's architecture is not that which "constrains", but rather that which "enables" my imagination, my evaluation, my choosing, and all of my deliberate actions?

Some

Origination Argument;

1. An agent acts with free will only if she is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
2. If determinism is true, then everything any agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances outside her control.
3. If everything an agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances beyond her control, then the agent is not the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
4. Therefore, if determinism is true, then no agent is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true, no agent has free will.

Item 1 is question-begging. It assumes as true the very thing that is under discussion.

No, it's not begging the question.

1- If determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent, as a matter of choice, why call it determinism?

I don't understand your response (it doesn't appear to address my criticism).

Marvin has not suggested (or implied) that "determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent".

Marvin is expressing philosophical compatibilism. I am arguing for incompatibility. Giving the reasons why compatibilism fails. It fails because it tries to define free will into reality by ignoring the implications of determinism, that simply calling something free will does not make will free, which makes it a word game.

And I am pointing out as a software engineer that your efforts to use physical determinism to attempt to hand-wave concepts of contention over executiveness which arise over the activity of disparate reference frames with incomplete information of the state of outside frames.

You are engaging in just as much of a word game, ignoring that there are abstract systems of order that arise within ANY deterministic system of sufficient complexity.

you have not answered in any sufficient manner my explanations of the concept from the perspective of software engineering: a system being deterministic does not change the truth of priority levels nor of contention

I am engaging with the standard incompatibilist argument against compatibalism/ free will, which gives valid reasons why the term "free will" does not relate to determinism, the nature of thought, decision making or human behaviour.

I haven't engaged with you because time constraint does not allow me to deal with multiple posters or numerous points, which are usually repetitive.

The argument against free will is clear and relates to determinism, brain function and behaviour, while compatibilism does not, simply pasting a label on a select set of behaviors and declaring this is free will.

Except that it is exactly the thing people generally engage with in philosophical discussions of free will.

Your mistake is that you are failing to see that there are two machines at play.

The first set of machines are the physics engines themselves: put in two quarks, plus virtual event, and you get whatever as a combined object.

Then there are machines made of those machines. The claim that one machine's deterministic flow prevents meaningfulness of the discussion of a set of machines that have private contexts within the substrate and their interaction of contention over goals and subjugation of intent is silly and nonsense.

Will you be so bold as to declare "the discussion of flow control, mutex, priority levels, and interrupts is meaningless, computers are deterministic!"

Of course the universe is deterministic. That doesn't change the worth of metagaming.

Free will is not a concept of physical rules, it's a concept of metagaming. The existence of rules invalidated the value of meta just about NEVER.

There is no mistake. What you say, not being related, does not establish free will. If the world is determined everything proceeds according to initial conditions and natural law, no deviations, no second options, no freedom to do otherwise. Simply declaring action that is not coerced to be free will is not sufficient because everything that happens is necessitated, that events once in motion proceeds without impediment. How things go/fixed is neither ''willed'' or chosen. Free will is incompatible with determinism.

 

[DBT]

Origination Argument;

1. An agent acts with free will only if she is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
2. If determinism is true, then everything any agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances outside her control.
3. If everything an agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances beyond her control, then the agent is not the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
4. Therefore, if determinism is true, then no agent is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true, no agent has free will.

Item 1 is question-begging. It assumes as true the very thing that is under discussion.

No, it's not begging the question.

1- If determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent, as a matter of choice, why call it determinism?

I don't understand your response (it doesn't appear to address my criticism).

Marvin has not suggested (or implied) that "determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent".

Marvin is expressing philosophical compatibilism. I am arguing for incompatibility. Giving the reasons why compatibilism fails. It fails because it tries to define free will into reality by ignoring the implications of determinism, that simply calling something free will does not make will free, which makes it a word game.

And I am pointing out as a software engineer that your efforts to use physical determinism to attempt to hand-wave concepts of contention over executiveness which arise over the activity of disparate reference frames with incomplete information of the state of outside frames.

You are engaging in just as much of a word game, ignoring that there are abstract systems of order that arise within ANY deterministic system of sufficient complexity.

you have not answered in any sufficient manner my explanations of the concept from the perspective of software engineering: a system being deterministic does not change the truth of priority levels nor of contention

I am engaging with the standard incompatibilist argument against compatibalism/ free will, which gives valid reasons why the term "free will" does not relate to determinism, the nature of thought, decision making or human behaviour.

I haven't engaged with you because time constraint does not allow me to deal with multiple posters or numerous points, which are usually repetitive.

The argument against free will is clear and relates to determinism, brain function and behaviour, while compatibilism does not, simply pasting a label on a select set of behaviors and declaring this is free will.

Except that it is exactly the thing people generally engage with in philosophical discussions of free will.

Your mistake is that you are failing to see that there are two machines at play.

The first set of machines are the physics engines themselves: put in two quarks, plus virtual event, and you get whatever as a combined object.

Then there are machines made of those machines. The claim that one machine's deterministic flow prevents meaningfulness of the discussion of a set of machines that have private contexts within the substrate and their interaction of contention over goals and subjugation of intent is silly and nonsense.

Will you be so bold as to declare "the discussion of flow control, mutex, priority levels, and interrupts is meaningless, computers are deterministic!"

Of course the universe is deterministic. That doesn't change the worth of metagaming.

Free will is not a concept of physical rules, it's a concept of metagaming. The existence of rules invalidated the value of meta just about NEVER.

There is no mistake. What you say, not being related, does not establish free will. If the world is determined everything proceeds according to initial conditions and natural law, no deviations, no second options, no freedom to do otherwise. Simply declaring action that is not coerced to be free will is not sufficient because everything that happens is necessitated, that events once in motion proceeds without impediment. How things go/fixed is neither ''willed'' or chosen. Free will is incompatible with determinism.

 

[DBT]

It is head-spinning to know where to respond, because the indeterminism and compatibilism threads keep going over the same ground.


If I choose x, it’s simply not true that I could not have chosen y. What seems to be true — though obviously this is not an experiment we can ever run — is that if we rewound the tape of history so that all antecedent events were identical up to my choice of either x or y, then I would again choose x, for why in the world would I choose differently? But it simply does not follow as a matter of logic that I could not have chosen otherwise, just that I would not.

Determinism by definition does not allow multiple choices in any given instance in time. The decision you make in a given instance is the only possible decision you can make in that instance in time, events brought you to that point and determine what happens. Different conditions, different results. Alternate universes/many worlds allow different options to be realized, the world splits and every combination is realized by multiple 'you's.'

 

[Marvin Edwards]

No, determinism is what it is by definition. There is no wriggle room or attempt at softening the consequences of determinism through sophistry.

Ironically, I need no wriggle room at all. Every event is reliably caused by prior events. Every event is always causally necessary/inevitable from any prior point in eternity. So what? What does this change? Nothing.

The only useful information we obtain from reliable causation comes from knowing the specific causes of specific effects. Consider the Covid-19 pandemic. (1) We know that it is a disease caused by a virus. (2) We know that the body's immune system can be primed to destroy a virus by vaccination. (3) We now know of several specific vaccines that can accomplish this. With this knowledge of the specific causes we have begun to control this disease, and free ourselves from its harmful effects.

And what does universal causal necessity/inevitability tell us? Only that each event in this process was causally necessary/inevitable from any prior point in time. That is not useful information. There is no meaningful or relevant information added by this logical fact.

Now, consider free will. Free will distinguishes an act caused by someone's deliberate choice, from an accident, from a coerced choice, and from behavior caused by significant mental illness. Knowing the specific causes of harmful behavior guides our efforts to correct that behavior. If the cause of the bank robbery was someone rationally deciding that robbing the bank was a quick way to get some cash, then we need to change their way of thinking through penalty and rehabilitation. But if the offender was only participating because his family was being held hostage, and the kidnapper was threatening to kill them if he did not participate in the crime, then the offender is easily corrected by simply removing that threat to his family. Or, if the robber's behavior was instead caused by a significant mental illness then we correct the behavior by treating him medically and psychiatrically in a secure psychiatric facility.

Knowing the specific causes of the person's illegal behavior guides our efforts to correct the behavior and rehabilitate the offender.

The fact that the person's behavior was causally necessary/inevitable, from any prior point in eternity, tells us nothing useful. And if we misguidedly think that it does, and try to use it to excuse the offender for his deliberate act, then we also must excuse the judge who hung him for his crime, regardless of the specific cause.

Universal causal necessity/inevitability is a logical fact. It is derived from the assumption of a world of reliable cause and effect. But it is never in itself a meaningful or relevant fact. All of the utility of the notion of reliable causation comes from knowing the specific causes of specific effects.

And the hard determinist keeps sweeping these specific causes under the rug of universal causal necessity.

It's been explained that what the light does is determined and fixed as a matter of natural law, that our limited perspective forces us to consider what may happen based on our past experience with traffic lights. We understand through past experience that lights change at regulated intervals to enable efficient traffic flow, and that sometimes traffic light malfunction, etc, etc,....our view is probabilistic, yet what the lights actually do is determined, fixed - by defintion - as a matter of natural law

The fact that the traffic light was determined, from any prior point in eternity, to change to green just as our car arrived, would have been useful knowledge. If we knew that fact as we arrived then we would not have slowed down. But we did not have certain knowledge of that fact. When we do not know what "will" happen, we imagine what "can" happen, to better prepare for what "does" happen.

The reason we slowed down was because we had certain knowledge that "the light could remain red" even though it didn't. We did not have certain knowledge of what "would" happen. But we did have certain knowledge of what "could" happen. The light could remain red was true, and the light could change to green was also true. So, it was wise to slow down, in case the light remained red.

 

[Jarhyn]

Origination Argument;

1. An agent acts with free will only if she is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
2. If determinism is true, then everything any agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances outside her control.
3. If everything an agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances beyond her control, then the agent is not the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
4. Therefore, if determinism is true, then no agent is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true, no agent has free will.

Item 1 is question-begging. It assumes as true the very thing that is under discussion.

No, it's not begging the question.

1- If determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent, as a matter of choice, why call it determinism?

I don't understand your response (it doesn't appear to address my criticism).

Marvin has not suggested (or implied) that "determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent".

Marvin is expressing philosophical compatibilism. I am arguing for incompatibility. Giving the reasons why compatibilism fails. It fails because it tries to define free will into reality by ignoring the implications of determinism, that simply calling something free will does not make will free, which makes it a word game.

And I am pointing out as a software engineer that your efforts to use physical determinism to attempt to hand-wave concepts of contention over executiveness which arise over the activity of disparate reference frames with incomplete information of the state of outside frames.

You are engaging in just as much of a word game, ignoring that there are abstract systems of order that arise within ANY deterministic system of sufficient complexity.

you have not answered in any sufficient manner my explanations of the concept from the perspective of software engineering: a system being deterministic does not change the truth of priority levels nor of contention

I am engaging with the standard incompatibilist argument against compatibalism/ free will, which gives valid reasons why the term "free will" does not relate to determinism, the nature of thought, decision making or human behaviour.

I haven't engaged with you because time constraint does not allow me to deal with multiple posters or numerous points, which are usually repetitive.

The argument against free will is clear and relates to determinism, brain function and behaviour, while compatibilism does not, simply pasting a label on a select set of behaviors and declaring this is free will.

Except that it is exactly the thing people generally engage with in philosophical discussions of free will.

Your mistake is that you are failing to see that there are two machines at play.

The first set of machines are the physics engines themselves: put in two quarks, plus virtual event, and you get whatever as a combined object.

Then there are machines made of those machines. The claim that one machine's deterministic flow prevents meaningfulness of the discussion of a set of machines that have private contexts within the substrate and their interaction of contention over goals and subjugation of intent is silly and nonsense.

Will you be so bold as to declare "the discussion of flow control, mutex, priority levels, and interrupts is meaningless, computers are deterministic!"

Of course the universe is deterministic. That doesn't change the worth of metagaming.

Free will is not a concept of physical rules, it's a concept of metagaming. The existence of rules invalidated the value of meta just about NEVER.

There is no mistake. What you say, not being related, does not establish free will. If the world is determined everything proceeds according to initial conditions and natural law, no deviations, no second options, no freedom to do otherwise. Simply declaring action that is not coerced to be free will is not sufficient because everything that happens is necessitated, that events once in motion proceeds without impediment. How things go/fixed is neither ''willed'' or chosen. Free will is incompatible with determinism.

Then you DO claim that software engineering is meaningless because software execution systems are deterministic, so concepts of contention and "flow control" don't need to happen?

 

[Marvin Edwards]

And I am pointing out as a software engineer that your efforts to use physical determinism to attempt to hand-wave concepts of contention over executiveness which arise over the activity of disparate reference frames with incomplete information of the state of outside frames.

You are engaging in just as much of a word game, ignoring that there are abstract systems of order that arise within ANY deterministic system of sufficient complexity.

you have not answered in any sufficient manner my explanations of the concept from the perspective of software engineering: a system being deterministic does not change the truth of priority levels nor of contention

...
I haven't engaged with you because time constraint does not allow me to deal with multiple posters or numerous points, which are usually repetitive.

DBT, you might avoid burn out by being selective in the comments you respond to. I'm certainly doing that myself, for the same reason. But it's your call.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Energy is always proportional to a magnitude squared.

E =-.5 MV^2 kinetic energy
E = MC^2 atomic energy

So C^2 does have a meaning.


A cosmology book I had used unversed for the observable universe and Universe for all that exists. Anything that exists is by definition part of the Universe whether we see it or not.

'Other dimensions' is mostly colored by scfi plot devices. Along with time travel. FTL. Universal translator implants. Sub Space. Aliens who speak English. Mater energy transport.

If you wat to sink your teeth into a newer speculation there is String Theory. Fully mathematically developed.

String theory - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.

String theory is a broad and varied subject that attempts to address a number of deep questions of fundamental physics. String theory has contributed a number of advances to mathematical physics, which have been applied to a variety of problems in black hole physics, early universe cosmology, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics, and it has stimulated a number of major developments in pure mathematics. Because string theory potentially provides a unified description of gravity and particle physics, it is a candidate for a theory of everything, a self-contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter. Despite much work on these problems, it is not known to what extent string theory describes the real world or how much freedom the theory allows in the choice of its details.

String theory was first studied in the late 1960s as a theory of the strong nuclear force, before being abandoned in favor of quantum chromodynamics. Subsequently, it was realized that the very properties that made string theory unsuitable as a theory of nuclear physics made it a promising candidate for a quantum theory of gravity. The earliest version of string theory, bosonic string theory, incorporated only the class of particles known as bosons. It later developed into superstring theory, which posits a connection called supersymmetry between bosons and the class of particles called fermions. Five consistent versions of superstring theory were developed before it was conjectured in the mid-1990s that they were all different limiting cases of a single theory in 11 dimensions known as M-theory. In late 1997, theorists discovered an important relationship called the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence), which relates string theory to another type of physical theory called a quantum field theory.

One of the challenges of string theory is that the full theory does not have a satisfactory definition in all circumstances. Another issue is that the theory is thought to describe an enormous landscape of possible universes, which has complicated efforts to develop theories of particle physics based on string theory. These issues have led some in the community to criticize these approaches to physics, and to question the value of continued research on string theory unification.

Inhibited Escapists

The very reason that the Postclassical gurus didn't use the extra-dimensional explanations for quantum physics was that, decades earlier, it had acquired a bad reputation when fantasists made it the home of ghosts, demons, or even God. That just shows the low character of nerds that they would let the reputation created by people even weirder than they are determine their science. I'm not going to use the "I know, but..." hedge. Anyone who associates an idea with what Hollywood projects about it is being dishonest and can't offer any rational objections.

 

[steve_bank]

One of the first experimental demonstrations of QM, quantum meaning quantized, was Einstein's Photo Electric Effect. It demented light was quantized. That is what got AE known, not relativity at first.

For science to become accepted it must be shown experimentally. Classical mechanics did not explain observation. String theory was rejecd by some as science because there was no way to test it, although that may have changed. More philosophy than science.

QM evolved as an experimental explanation of why classical mechanics did not explain observation like black body radiation. What woud the usefulness be of other dominions? Is there something lacking within the bounds of QM?

QM is mechanics at the small particle scale. It is mainstream science and is routinely used in electronics in the design of things like lasers, transistors, solar cells, and integrated circuits. It is no more mysterious or spooky than Newtonian mechanics. Students at the technician level in electronics are exposed to it. People turn it into a type of mysticism based largely on scifi.

If you invoke other spatial dimensions you then have to derive an experiment that can bear that out.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Energy is always proportional to a magnitude squared.

E =-.5 MV^2 kinetic energy
E = MC^2 atomic energy

So C^2 does have a meaning.


A cosmology book I had used unversed for the observable universe and Universe for all that exists. Anything that exists is by definition part of the Universe whether we see it or not.

'Other dimensions' is mostly colored by scfi plot devices. Along with time travel. FTL. Universal translator implants. Sub Space. Aliens who speak English. Mater energy transport.

If you wat to sink your teeth into a newer speculation there is String Theory. Fully mathematically developed.

String theory - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.

String theory is a broad and varied subject that attempts to address a number of deep questions of fundamental physics. String theory has contributed a number of advances to mathematical physics, which have been applied to a variety of problems in black hole physics, early universe cosmology, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics, and it has stimulated a number of major developments in pure mathematics. Because string theory potentially provides a unified description of gravity and particle physics, it is a candidate for a theory of everything, a self-contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter. Despite much work on these problems, it is not known to what extent string theory describes the real world or how much freedom the theory allows in the choice of its details.

String theory was first studied in the late 1960s as a theory of the strong nuclear force, before being abandoned in favor of quantum chromodynamics. Subsequently, it was realized that the very properties that made string theory unsuitable as a theory of nuclear physics made it a promising candidate for a quantum theory of gravity. The earliest version of string theory, bosonic string theory, incorporated only the class of particles known as bosons. It later developed into superstring theory, which posits a connection called supersymmetry between bosons and the class of particles called fermions. Five consistent versions of superstring theory were developed before it was conjectured in the mid-1990s that they were all different limiting cases of a single theory in 11 dimensions known as M-theory. In late 1997, theorists discovered an important relationship called the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence), which relates string theory to another type of physical theory called a quantum field theory.

One of the challenges of string theory is that the full theory does not have a satisfactory definition in all circumstances. Another issue is that the theory is thought to describe an enormous landscape of possible universes, which has complicated efforts to develop theories of particle physics based on string theory. These issues have led some in the community to criticize these approaches to physics, and to question the value of continued research on string theory unification.

Inhibited Escapists

The very reason that the Postclassical gurus didn't use the extra-dimensional explanations for quantum physics was that, decades earlier, it had acquired a bad reputation when fantasists made it the home of ghosts, demons, or even God. That just shows the low character of nerds that they would let the reputation created by people even weirder than they are determine their science. I'm not going to use the "I know, but..." hedge. Anyone who associates an idea with what Hollywood projects about it is being dishonest and can't offer any rational objections.

You guys should start a thread on string theory.

 

[steve_bank]

"At the square of the speed of light" is empty-headed gibberish; you might as well say the particle is going back and forth at 37 kilograms per volt.

Through That Dimension, We Can Transmit to Alpha Centauri in 15 minutes

You must not believe in the possibility of an outside universe, or else you'd be willing to accept that the maximum velocity there is different from what it is here.

Of course that's a possibility; no one said otherwise. The problem is "the square of the speed of light" is not a velocity; therefore the maximum velocity in that hypothetical outside universe can't be that.

Energy is always proportional to a magnitude squared.

E =-.5 MV^2 kinetic energy
E = MC^2 atomic energy

So C^2 does have a meaning.

Of course it does; but having a meaning isn't enough for it to be what a particle is going back and forth at. "Kilograms per volt" has a perfectly sensible meaning too: it describes the lifting capacity of an electromagnet. The square of the speed of light is 9x10¹⁶ square meters per second per second -- it's the derivative of the rate at which something's area is increasing. You could quantify deforestation of the Amazon basin with it, not particle velocity in an outside universe.

I was being pedantic for no good reason....you are right.

 

[DBT]

No, determinism is what it is by definition. There is no wriggle room or attempt at softening the consequences of determinism through sophistry.

Ironically, I need no wriggle room at all. Every event is reliably caused by prior events. Every event is always causally necessary/inevitable from any prior point in eternity. So what? What does this change? Nothing.

The only useful information we obtain from reliable causation comes from knowing the specific causes of specific effects. Consider the Covid-19 pandemic. (1) We know that it is a disease caused by a virus. (2) We know that the body's immune system can be primed to destroy a virus by vaccination. (3) We now know of several specific vaccines that can accomplish this. With this knowledge of the specific causes we have begun to control this disease, and free ourselves from its harmful effects.

I feel that I have given the reasons why this is insufficient to establish the principle of 'freedom of will' too many times

For now, I'll just quote a good summary of the inadequacy of compatibilism.

''Compatibilists are unable to present a rational argument that supports their belief in the existence of free will in a deterministic universe, except by defining determinism and/or free will in a way that is a watered down version of one or both of the two concepts.

As I understand it, Determinism (which I take to be Causal Determinism) posits that all activity in the universe is both (i) the effect of [all] prior activity, and (ii) the only activity that can occur given the prior activity. That is what is meant by saying that everything is “determined” — it is the inexorable consequence of activity that preceded it. In a deterministic universe, everything that has ever occurred, is occurring, and will occur since the universe came into existence (however that might have occurred) can only occur exactly as it has occurred, is occurring, or will occur, and cannot possibly occur in any different manner. This mandated activity necessarily includes all human action, including all human cognition.

As I understand the notion of Free Will, it posits that a human being, when presented with more than one course of action, has the freedom or agency to choose between or among the alternatives, and that the state of affairs that exists in the universe immediately prior to the putative exercise of that freedom of choice does not eliminate all but one option and compel the selection of only one of the available options.

Based on the foregoing, if Determinism is true, human beings lack the ability to think in a manner that is not 100% caused by prior activity that is outside of their control, and thereby lack Free Will. By the same token, if human beings have Free-Will, they are capable of thinking in a manner that is not 100% caused by prior activity that is outside of their control, which rules out Determinism.

As I understand the two concepts, Determinism and Free Will are irreconcilably incompatible unless (i) Determinism is defined to exclude human cognition from the inexorable path of causation forged through the universe long before human beings came into existence, and/or (ii) Free Will is defined to be include the illusion of human cognition that is a part of the path of Determinism.

When all is said and done, all arguments for compatibilism suffer from a stubborn refusal to come to grips with the true and complete nature of the two incompatible concepts.'' Bruce Silvertein - B.A. Philosophy & Professional Writing, Beaver College (1983) - Quora.

 

[DBT]

Origination Argument;

1. An agent acts with free will only if she is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
2. If determinism is true, then everything any agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances outside her control.
3. If everything an agent does is ultimately caused by events and circumstances beyond her control, then the agent is not the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
4. Therefore, if determinism is true, then no agent is the originator (or ultimate source) of her actions.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true, no agent has free will.

Item 1 is question-begging. It assumes as true the very thing that is under discussion.

No, it's not begging the question.

1- If determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent, as a matter of choice, why call it determinism?

I don't understand your response (it doesn't appear to address my criticism).

Marvin has not suggested (or implied) that "determinism allows multiple options to be realized by an agent".

Marvin is expressing philosophical compatibilism. I am arguing for incompatibility. Giving the reasons why compatibilism fails. It fails because it tries to define free will into reality by ignoring the implications of determinism, that simply calling something free will does not make will free, which makes it a word game.

And I am pointing out as a software engineer that your efforts to use physical determinism to attempt to hand-wave concepts of contention over executiveness which arise over the activity of disparate reference frames with incomplete information of the state of outside frames.

You are engaging in just as much of a word game, ignoring that there are abstract systems of order that arise within ANY deterministic system of sufficient complexity.

you have not answered in any sufficient manner my explanations of the concept from the perspective of software engineering: a system being deterministic does not change the truth of priority levels nor of contention

I am engaging with the standard incompatibilist argument against compatibalism/ free will, which gives valid reasons why the term "free will" does not relate to determinism, the nature of thought, decision making or human behaviour.

I haven't engaged with you because time constraint does not allow me to deal with multiple posters or numerous points, which are usually repetitive.

The argument against free will is clear and relates to determinism, brain function and behaviour, while compatibilism does not, simply pasting a label on a select set of behaviors and declaring this is free will.

Except that it is exactly the thing people generally engage with in philosophical discussions of free will.

Your mistake is that you are failing to see that there are two machines at play.

The first set of machines are the physics engines themselves: put in two quarks, plus virtual event, and you get whatever as a combined object.

Then there are machines made of those machines. The claim that one machine's deterministic flow prevents meaningfulness of the discussion of a set of machines that have private contexts within the substrate and their interaction of contention over goals and subjugation of intent is silly and nonsense.

Will you be so bold as to declare "the discussion of flow control, mutex, priority levels, and interrupts is meaningless, computers are deterministic!"

Of course the universe is deterministic. That doesn't change the worth of metagaming.

Free will is not a concept of physical rules, it's a concept of metagaming. The existence of rules invalidated the value of meta just about NEVER.

There is no mistake. What you say, not being related, does not establish free will. If the world is determined everything proceeds according to initial conditions and natural law, no deviations, no second options, no freedom to do otherwise. Simply declaring action that is not coerced to be free will is not sufficient because everything that happens is necessitated, that events once in motion proceeds without impediment. How things go/fixed is neither ''willed'' or chosen. Free will is incompatible with determinism.

Then you DO claim that software engineering is meaningless because software execution systems are deterministic, so concepts of contention and "flow control" don't need to happen?

How exactly is ''flow control'' related to determinism, compatibilism, brain function, decision making, behaviour and the concept of free will?

How do you relate ''flow control'' to ''free will?''