“Reality Goes Beyond Physics,” and more

[DBT]

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

Of course it's possible for it not to have happened!

I got into this conversation because of a post from DBT, and I shouldn't have, because I expected people to actually follow the thread.

Given determinism, despite appearances and that different events happen all around us, there can only be one possible outcome in any given circumstance or event.

That is how determinism is defined. It's not probabilistic. It's not random. You don't get multiple realisable actions in any given instance.

 

[WAB]

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

Of course it's possible for it not to have happened!

I got into this conversation because of a post from DBT, and I shouldn't have, because I expected people to actually follow the thread.

Given determinism, despite appearances and that different events happen all around us, there can only be one possible outcome in any given circumstance or event.

That is how determinism is defined. It's not probabilistic. It's not random. You don't get multiple realisable actions in any given instance.

I misread the post of yours I originally quoted, DBT. So never mind. Apologies to you and pood.

 

[DBT]

No harm done.

 

[peacegirl]

My question is: Where does compatibilist free will enter into it? There is no compatibility here that gives this type of free will a pass. As you correctly said, neurons don't think or have a sense of self where they have the free will to do other than what they are programmed to do.

I do not think the neuron-wetness matter was intended as giving "free will a pass." I think it was more like a way of pointing out the incompleteness - the inadequacy - of using a neuron as a basis for denying or establishing free will. Anyhow, that was my impression.

I agree. I think it's an all-out effort of compatibilists to find anything that would make free will appear compatible with determinism, which we know is a contradiction because we CANNOT NOT have done otherwise and CAN have done otherwise in the same breath.

 

[peacegirl]

does not permit alternate actions

Look to your left. There is an action there.

Look to your right. There was a different action there.

Clearly reality is full of alternate actions.

Oh, boy.....you must realize that alternate action in relation to determinism does not mean that different can't happen, but that there is no possible alternate action for anything that does happen.

Naturally, once something does happen it could not have happened differently. If that's your view of determinism then I happily agree. ???

A contingent event could have happened differently. It remains the case that Oswald did not HAVE TO shoot JFK, more than 60 years on. History could always have been different, it just wasn’t.

WRONG! You can never prove that it could have been any different than what it was. You can surmise but that's about it.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

Of course it's possible for it not to have happened!

I got into this conversation because of a post from DBT, and I shouldn't have, because I expected people to actually follow the thread.

Given determinism, despite appearances and that different events happen all around us, there can only be one possible outcome in any given circumstance or event.

That is how determinism is defined. It's not probabilistic. It's not random. You don't get multiple realisable actions in any given instance.

And yet there is no conflict between this and the real existence of alternatives, because alternatives do not have to exist at the same point in space and time to exist at all.

Yet again, trying to claim that they must is a logical error because even with an extra spatial dimension, the events still would not exist at the same coordinates, and it would still technically be deterministic.

Still, you see *literally infinite* realizable actions in every given instance because each given instance realizes an infinite number and variance of events.

Compatibilism recognizes that possibilities are about discussing what happens to things "in general" rather than what happens to things *right here and now*, and the process of taking a different sort of reference frame in the first place.

Much like (perhaps "exactly because"?) you can identify that if something is of some group kind that it has knowable properties and these properties imply algebras which do or do not apply in the transformation of that group, you can look at something, determine whether it has a property, and know what outcomes can arise from various 'outer' contexts presented to the finite inner context holding the property.

We know this is true and good and correct because this action let's us effectively plan for the future.

Planning for the future works, therefore we can plan for the future, and have regulatory control and responsibilities for having those plans as those plans act as the very algorithm that is impugned in the creation of the result.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

ETA: which is just a convoluted way of saying it is not possible to change the past. But it remains true that events in the past could have been different.

Some years ago I spent too many months of my life on this:

If there is infinite possibilities for the future because of indeterminism and time-reversed particle action, then the past is just as uncertain as the future. The intuition of multiple futures leads to an unavoidable intuition about multiple pasts:

If two futures can proceed from one past, two different pasts can probably cavort similarly to create the same future, too, from the acceptance of time-reversed particle action.

This would imply that it would be entirely possible for the past to be changed, but just not to anything that couldn't still cause the present.

In such a system, both the past and future could be in flux.

This is one of the reasons why I leverage observably deterministic systems when discussing compatibilist free will, to avoid such silliness and complication.

 

[bilby]

There is no absolute time. Observers with differing velocity can disagree about which events are 'future' and which 'past'; We like to think of past and future as objectively different, but in fact these are subjective terms in which we all agree only because we are all inhabiting much the same reference frame.

Any philosophy that assumes a qualitative difference between past and future is observably incorrect as regards the reality we inhabit.

However, this in no way affects compatibilism. I could do something different tomorrow, but will not. I equally could have done something different yesterday, but did not. Compatibilism is a variant of determinism, and any effort to disprove, discredit, or deny compatibilism by showing the past and/or future to be immutable is wasted effort.

Compatibilists agree that both past and future are immutable. For that matter, physicists mostly agree that this is the case - certainly they agree that they are identical and indestinguishable in their behaviour, so the future is exactly as flexible or inflexible as the past.

The point - the entire point - of compatibilism, is that an immutable and deterministic reality can and does contain decision making entities, whose existence and microscopic behaviour is entirely deterministic, but which nevertheless make choices at the macroscopic level, and that saying "Well, they don't really choose, because the underlying subatomic interactions are deterministic according to physical law" is as daft as saying "Well, I can walk through walls, because all of the particles in my body are capable of quantum tunnelling".

What is true of the parts need not be true of the whole. The universe is made up of subatomic particles (quarks and leptons) that may well behave entirely deterministically, but which can do all kinds of counterintuitive stuff, like getting from one place to another without passing through the intervening space; These particles aggregate in clumps of ~10⁴⁰ or so that we call 'people', and those people make decisions about how to behave, and cannot get from one place to another without passing through the intervening space.

People don't obey physical law; They obey biological law. Which is theoretically derived from physical law, but cannot be thus derived by any practical means.

It's not UNTRUE to say that a particular decision I made was unavoidable. It's just FUTILE and USELESS to note that fact, in the context of deciding whether responsibility for that act lies with me as a person, or with the universe at large.

That's your compatibilism, right there.

 

[Jarhyn]

but cannot be thus derived by any practical means.

I think it's even harder than that: physics has elements which are complete in a way not even a Turing machines is... Like the floating point/continuous math version rather than binary.

If this is the case, the universe can support simulation of literally any other physics possible under the universe's metaphysics.

If this is the case and the universe can simulate an infinite number of other systems, it's a lost cause trying to tie biological realities to basic physical ones, since physics allows the expression of arbitrary sub-physics.

Trying to say "biology is X because physics is Y" is not going to pan out. At best you can say it's in the family of whatever machine is the analog successor to the Turing machines.

It's not merely impractical, it's undecidable. You have to go the other way and reverse engineer it.

 

[DBT]

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

Yes! But once he did shoot Kennedy, it is impossible for that not to have happened. That's what I thought DBT was saying, that once something DOES happen, it is impossible for it not to have happened, which sounds absurdly obvious.

I beg to differ — it IS possible for it not to have happened. It is just not possible NOW, that it did not happen THEN.

Of course it's possible for it not to have happened!

I got into this conversation because of a post from DBT, and I shouldn't have, because I expected people to actually follow the thread.

Given determinism, despite appearances and that different events happen all around us, there can only be one possible outcome in any given circumstance or event.

That is how determinism is defined. It's not probabilistic. It's not random. You don't get multiple realisable actions in any given instance.

And yet there is no conflict between this and the real existence of alternatives, because alternatives do not have to exist at the same point in space and time to exist at all.

The point of freedom of choice is that you can take any option at any given time a number of options are presented.
Yet if determinism is true, only of the options being presented is realizable, the determined action, a selection fixed by antecedents, proclivity, the information state of the brain in the moment of decision making.

Which clearly is not a matter of free will, and the point of the no choice principle of determinism

Yet again, trying to claim that they must is a logical error because even with an extra spatial dimension, the events still would not exist at the same coordinates, and it would still technically be deterministic.

I am merely pointing out the terms and conditions of determinism as defined by compatibilists, and the reason for the failure of their definition of free will

Still, you see *literally infinite* realizable actions in every given instance because each given instance realizes an infinite number and variance of events.

That doesn't relate to anything I have said.

Compatibilism recognizes that possibilities are about discussing what happens to things "in general" rather than what happens to things *right here and now*, and the process of taking a different sort of reference frame in the first place.

Compatibilism defines free will as acting without being forced, coerced or unduly influenced.

The compatibilist definition of free will does not include ''a lot of different things can happen in the world.''

That is your category error.

 

[Jarhyn]

The point of freedom of choice is that you can take any option at any given time a number of options are presented

And you *can* it's just that you *won't*.

We have discussed this thousands of times now: can means there are "possibilities" that you can observe, not "actualities". "Possibilities" are always "events that happen if/where/when..."

The compatibilist definition of free will does not include ''a lot of different things can happen in the world.''

Nope, it does, because a lot of different things can and do happen in the world. At Tom's diner, we can see someone being stiffed, only getting half a coffee, whereas in Marvin's diner we can see something different happening involving a gun toting psychopath.

Clearly different things happen in different places.

In fact, this would necessarily have to be the interpretation of "possibility".

This is because libertarians are defining it that way too just along a different spatial dimension.

If it's OK to recognize possibilities at different locations in (n + 1) dimensions, it's OK to recognize it at different locations in ( n ) dimensions. The math doesn't change in structure adding or removing dimensions, really, as long as you still have at least one dimension on the input.

 

[peacegirl]

The point of freedom of choice is that you can take any option at any given time a number of options are presented

And you *can* it's just that you *won't*.

We have discussed this thousands of times now: can means there are "possibilities" that you can observe, not "actualities". "Possibilities" are always "events that happen if/where/when..."

WTF! Possibilities are not thrown out. We all consider possibilities, damn it! No one is saying otherwise! It’s a damn lie!

The compatibilist definition of free will does not include ''a lot of different things can happen in the world.''

Nope, it does, because a lot of different things can and do happen in the world. At Tom's diner, we can see someone being stiffed, only getting half a coffee, whereas in Marvin's diner we can see something different happening involving a gun toting psychopath.

Clearly different things happen in different places.

In fact, this would necessarily have to be the interpretation of "possibility".

This is because libertarians are defining it that way too just along a different spatial dimension.

If it's OK to recognize possibilities at different locations in (n + 1) dimensions, it's OK to recognize it at different locations in ( n ) dimensions. The math doesn't change in structure adding or removing dimensions, really, as long as you still have at least one dimension on the input.

The rest of your expose is pure science fiction

 

[Jarhyn]

The point of freedom of choice is that you can take any option at any given time a number of options are presented

And you *can* it's just that you *won't*.

We have discussed this thousands of times now: can means there are "possibilities" that you can observe, not "actualities". "Possibilities" are always "events that happen if/where/when..."

WTF! Possibilities are not thrown out. We all consider possibilities, damn it! No one is saying otherwise! It’s a damn lie!

The compatibilist definition of free will does not include ''a lot of different things can happen in the world.''

Nope, it does, because a lot of different things can and do happen in the world. At Tom's diner, we can see someone being stiffed, only getting half a coffee, whereas in Marvin's diner we can see something different happening involving a gun toting psychopath.

Clearly different things happen in different places.

In fact, this would necessarily have to be the interpretation of "possibility".

This is because libertarians are defining it that way too just along a different spatial dimension.

If it's OK to recognize possibilities at different locations in (n + 1) dimensions, it's OK to recognize it at different locations in ( n ) dimensions. The math doesn't change in structure adding or removing dimensions, really, as long as you still have at least one dimension on the input.

The rest of your expose is pure science fiction

"To be damned by the devil is to be truly blessed"

 

[peacegirl]

The point of freedom of choice is that you can take any option at any given time a number of options are presented

And you *can* it's just that you *won't*.

We have discussed this thousands of times now: can means there are "possibilities" that you can observe, not "actualities". "Possibilities" are always "events that happen if/where/when..."

WTF! Possibilities are not thrown out. We all consider possibilities, damn it! No one is saying otherwise! It’s a damn lie!

The compatibilist definition of free will does not include ''a lot of different things can happen in the world.''

Nope, it does, because a lot of different things can and do happen in the world. At Tom's diner, we can see someone being stiffed, only getting half a coffee, whereas in Marvin's diner we can see something different happening involving a gun toting psychopath.

Clearly different things happen in different places.

In fact, this would necessarily have to be the interpretation of "possibility".

This is because libertarians are defining it that way too just along a different spatial dimension.

If it's OK to recognize possibilities at different locations in (n + 1) dimensions, it's OK to recognize it at different locations in ( n ) dimensions. The math doesn't change in structure adding or removing dimensions, really, as long as you still have at least one dimension on the input.

The rest of your expose is pure science fiction

"To be damned by the devil is to be truly blessed"

Switches, free wills, and subsets, OH MY!

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Any philosophy that assumes a qualitative difference between past and future is observably incorrect as regards the reality we inhabit.

I do not know what was the intended meaning for "qualitative", but the quoted sentence seems very similar to what in a rather common philosophical manner would be expressed as "Any philosophy that assumes [an ontological] difference between past and future is observably incorrect as regards the reality we inhabit."

In any event, the future is not observable. Maybe it is most correct to say that the future has never been observed from any present. This is not the case with regards to the past. We have recordings of the past, and, in addition, we say that in the present we see stars and galaxies (as they were) in the past. The asymmetry in observability appears to render as false the notion that any philosophy which assumes an ontological difference between past and future is observably incorrect.

Then there is the matter of something else we observe. Observable in experience is reality seeded with occasions of indeterminateness as constituents of reality. Such experience is the basis for a particular subset of acts with that subset containing such notions/terms as decide, select, and choose. One factor that distinguishes this subset from the larger set of acts/actions is indeterminateness as a necessary condition for the terms of that subset to be applied correctly/accurately. And that is to say that it is (at least semantically) incoherent to assert that decisions and choices occur/obtain/are actual while concurrently holding that there never is actual indeterminateness subject to decision, choice, and the like. That is an incoherence which is wholly unnecessary - even if some means for alleviating the incoherence are cumbersome.

 

[Jarhyn]

I do not know what was the intended meaning for "qualitative"

Well, for what it's worth, I gathered that much to mean that if there's some dimension of quantum variance, like instead of 4d block space-time, a 5d block qm-space-time. It would imply multiple pasts, presents, and futures.

If people want to imply "multiple possibilities at this point in space/time" would necessarily imply some hidden dimension of variance, and this dimension would extend from every point in spacetime uniformly.

You can't have multiple possible futures at this point in spacetime without implying that they do happen at different a "QM coordinate": sure, x,y,z,t are known and the same but q (and possibly q1 and q2..) is going to have to also exist and be different, and then you have to expand your statement because then you would have to assert multiple possibilities at the same point in qm-space-time to escape a block view and thus determinism...

Which is exactly why I assert different events at different points in spacetime are the reification of "alternate possibilities".

 

[pood]

Any philosophy that assumes a qualitative difference between past and future is observably incorrect as regards the reality we inhabit.

I do not know what was the intended meaning for "qualitative", but the quoted sentence seems very similar to what in a rather common philosophical manner would be expressed as "Any philosophy that assumes [an ontological] difference between past and future is observably incorrect as regards the reality we inhabit."

I believe he is deriving the equivalency of the past, present and future by appealing to the theory of relativity, which is a perfectly sensible thing to do, while always bearing in mind that since we do not have at present a way to reconcile the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics, if and when we do get such a reconciliation we may have further surprises in store with regard to time and space.

But, yes, the theory shows that my present could be in your future, for instance. This is readily displayed in Einstein’s original book on the matter, with the example of a train with a passenger rushing past an observer on the embankment. The ground observer sees two lightning flashes simultaneously, the train passenger seems them sequentially. From this we can dervice Minkowski’s block world and the fixity of the future as well as the past.

But even if the blockworld is false, a modal analysis of Aristotle’s problem of future contingents shows that there can be facts about the future which are true now, without in any way obviating compatibilism.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

I believe he is deriving the equivalency of the past, present and future by appealing to the theory of relativity, which is a perfectly sensible thing to do ...

I understand all that. However, all that is a matter rightly assigned to possibly true rather than actually true. My remarks about observability are still germane and still hold. Therefore, the jump to "observably incorrect" is unsupported. The derived equivalency viewpoint can be held concurrently as possibly true and possibly not true, and the semantic analysis (in the possibly true context) indicating incoherence still holds.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

If people want to imply "multiple possibilities at this point in space/time" would necessarily imply some hidden dimension of variance, and this dimension would extend from every point in spacetime uniformly.

The topic of "points" is interesting in its own right, but that is not what I wish to address. I have described experiences in terms of there being mind-independent indeterminateness out there in reality beyond the experiencing self, because I have a hunch that description seems most likely the way individuals register the experience (upon analysis). But, maybe there is no such mind-independent indeterminateness; instead, maybe there is a plasticity to reality which can be manipulated by certain life forms in certain conditions. After all, conceptualizing or being in some other way aware of what gets experienced as indeterminateness is an ability that develops during a lifetime. I currently prefer to address the experience in terms of mind-independent indeterminateness, but, even then, if that indeterminateness is actual, there is still the matter of how awareness of that indeterminateness gets developed and honed. Of course, that development and that honing would essentially be the same process whether the indeterminateness is mind-independent or a matter regarding a certain plasticity of reality. But, as I said, I currently prefer to address the indeterminateness at issue as if it were mind-independent.

 

[pood]

I believe he is deriving the equivalency of the past, present and future by appealing to the theory of relativity, which is a perfectly sensible thing to do ...

I understand all that. However, all that is a matter rightly assigned to possibly true rather than actually true. My remarks about observability are still germane and still hold. Therefore, the jump to "observably incorrect" is unsupported. The derived equivalency viewpoint can be held concurrently as possibly true and possibly not true, and the semantic analysis (in the possibly true context) indicating incoherence still holds.

Sure, the block world maybe possibly false or true, but from my perspective it doesn’t really matter. A proposition about the future can be true even in advance of the event it describes happening, so there are now a vast number of true statements about the future, even if we don’t know what they are. For me the main point, as I have discussed, is that the future can be as fixed as the past, without curtailing compatibilist free will.