Fate, Random chance, or Synchronicity?

[Solly]

There's no point going on about "choices" to allow the death penalty or not what happens regarding it is already set in stone! They just aren't choices.

[Drogue]

No, but how else would you explain something that we do not know what will be the outcome. In that system, there are 2 options, and I do not know which one will be chosen. Thus I use the word 'choice' to highlight this. Even being set in stone, since no person is able to say what will be the outcome, it is easiest to call it a choice to express it.

[Solly]

How about calling it a probability that society will take one particular outcome over the other.

[Drogue]

Ok, sounds good. Or I could just say there are 2 options.

[Solly]

That implies a form of free will. That we are free to choose...

[Drogue]

Bodds, I said we don't have free will, not that we cannot choose. We can choose, but it is that what we choose is determined by who we are, which is something beyond our control. Therefore we can choose, but that choice is determined by something beyond our control.

[Whaleboy]

Exactly Ben. However if it is proved either way, the views cease to be equally valid IMHO

The views cease to be equally valid in that context, not ultimately, or out of context. For example, in a court case, the validity of the defence or prosecution is determined by the "truth" of what actually happened. In another court case, the truth may be different, thus the opposite view may be valid. In the absense of anything to judge, all is equally valid.

The case for and against with regards to the Turin shroud are equally valid until proven otherwise, but that proof would only apply to that context.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Drogue
Bodds, I said we don't have free will, not that we cannot choose. We can choose, but it is that what we choose is determined by who we are, which is something beyond our control. Therefore we can choose, but that choice is determined by something beyond our control.

But as long we can choose, we still influence who we are. It´s not that we get a person who can choose at the age of let´s say 12, 18 or 21, and then we always act deterministic, according to our personal beliefs etc.

If this happens, it is an ongoing process. And when we can choose, "what we are" is not totally out of our control. It may be influenced by a lot of outside factors, but if we do not have the slightes piece of control about our decisions we cannot count as conscious beings any longer.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by BeBro

If this happens, it is an ongoing process. And when we can choose, "what we are" is not totally out of our control. It may be influenced by a lot of outside factors, but if we do not have the slightes piece of control about our decisions we cannot count as conscious beings any longer.

Lack of control does not equal lack of consciousness, at least not to me. I have no control over the direction a rollercoaster will take, but I am still aware of my self being rattled around by it.


I guess it depends on one's definition of consciousness.

[Whaleboy]

Only if you assume relativism

I do . My argument is only objective in that context, to other people, noteably absolutists and those that disagree, it is merely a subjective that disagrees with their own, however, objective to that, relativism applies (to which others may critique at that level, and so forth).

If I don't believe in relativism, then whether objective or not, I believe it is wrong

If you dont believe in relativism, you are an idiot jk

Objective does not mean right or best

I never said it did, given a certain context. In the context you specified, what is best is the economists view, but only because of the wildcards of that particular context! However, the method of judging and the validity of points of view, in and out of context is dictated by objectivity and in that case. Incidentally, what makes the economist in that case better is the fact that he is objective with regards to the wildcards themselves, but dont get me qualifying fractals here, its soo much easier to draw a purty picture!

IMHO not. I believe it is completely unpredictable, or more exactly, chaotic. Hence with perfect knowledge, it is perfectly predictable

Absolutely, my argument is based on chaos theory. However perfect knowledge means Transdimensional knowledge, as opposed to 4-d knowledge, in order to account for uncertainty principles.

Everything is in some context, when it is applied. Hence when you apply it, it cannot be backed up with exactly the same amount of logic. If something is true for that context, presuming that is the context of the argument, then it can be backed up with more logic than something that is false, for the context of that argument

My god Jim, he's starting to get it! jk

To avoid lexical ambiguity, when I say out of context, I mean a lack of (pseudo) objective judging, as opposed to n+2 dimensional context. An example would be a court where the truth to an event is unknown, perhaps a war againt a nation based on the subjective whims of another with no independent judge, or an argument between oranges and apples. With no-one to choose between them, with the wildcards of whether they like oranges or apples, both fruits are equally valid.

[Whaleboy]

Lack of control does not equal lack of consciousness

Thats a good way of looking at it, although a platonic idealist may argue by saying that because reality (and thus control) is all in the mind, it can in fact be controlled by at least that mind.

If we assume determinism, there are no choices.

But as far as we are concerned at X point in time, with only our incomplete knowledge of the past and present, determinism does not apply (in that context, n dimensional, with n+1, in which Drogue and myself are arguing, it does).

In other words, someone has to make those deterministic choices, and we dont have knowledge of what is writting in stone, only that they are set in stone. We dont have the benefit of a retrospectoscope in the present.

How about calling it a probability that society will take one particular outcome over the other

You still have two choices, any question of speculation about the probability of an event or its outcome preceeding the actual event is not relevant to determinism, perhaps, only to serve as a basis for our decision making.

That implies a form of free will. That we are free to choose...

As far as the individual at that point of making the choice is concerned, he is free to choose. Only looking back can we say that he was not, but at the actual event, we cannot know better.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Big Crunch


Lack of control does not equal lack of consciousness, at least not to me. I have no control over the direction a rollercoaster will take, but I am still aware of my self being rattled around by it.


I guess it depends on one's definition of consciousness.

But this is not something you have to decide by yourself. The rollercoaster has nothing to do with your own consciousness. It is - in this context - an outside effect, like eg. the weather. I am not saying we have to have (?) control over everything to be conscious. However, if all my _own_ decisions or actions are determined by something outside me I wouldn´t speak of consciousness (esp. not self-consciousness) anymore.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by elijah
Absolutely, my argument is based on chaos theory.

A traditional Chaotic system is still perfectly (traditionally) deterministic, so it cannot be the source of free-will.

(BTW, for 'free-will' I am using BeBro's definition above, whixh is a rather good one )

Originally posted by elijah
However perfect knowledge means Transdimensional knowledge, as opposed to 4-d knowledge, in order to account for uncertainty principles.

This sounds like complete bull! What is `Transdimensional knowledge', and what does it have to do with the uncertainty principle? If you are saying that the universe is unpredictable because one needs 'somewhere else' to calculate all the variables, I agree. But this has nothing to do with free-will and nothing to do with higher dimensions.

It seems clear to me that in order to have free-will in the universe, we need to have some weakly coupled system which is non-deterministic. It must be weakly coupled so that our physics experiments don't notice it, but our brains do. It must be non-deterministic (ie. inherently non-predictive - not just quantum mechanically non-predictive, since quantum mechanics, despite its bad press, is predictive) to provide the free-will bit. It is interesting to note that that implies that there is a part of us which is beyond the physical - or at least beyond the description of physics. Rather like a 'soul'....

As a side issue, if we don't have free-will, why would the quantum mechanical wavefunction collapse to an eigenstate when we look at it? Shouldn't we just be another part of the experiment? This is the old Schroedinger's cat problem. My take is that it is the non-predictive weakly coupled system (our 'free-will' if you like) that collapses the wavefunction.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
As a side issue, if we don't have free-will, why would the quantum mechanical wavefunction collapse to an eigenstate when we look at it? Shouldn't we just be another part of the experiment? This is the old Schroedinger's cat problem. My take is that it is the non-predictive weakly coupled system (our 'free-will' if you like) that collapses the wavefunction.

I really don't like that from an aesthetic point of view.

Free will (assuming it exists) is something that only comes about when you have a certain level of sophistication. Be it technological, biological or other. In your take on the situation there has to be a non-arbitrary point at which life on Earth gained the power of free will and hence the ability to collapse wavefunctions. If it takes a human-esque mind that means wavefunctions have only been collapsing for a few million years. If it merely needs a living organism that puts it at a few billion years. Either way this means that for the bulk of the universe's existence nothing possessed free will, and hence no wavefunctions collapsed.

In such a scenario you create considerable problems in explaining the evolution of the universe and the creation of a creature that has the free will to collapse the zillions of eigenstates from which it came into the single history from it could come. Or in other words, you are saying that if you don't observe a multistate universe it will create a creature that can observe itself, and in doing so will collapse it to a single state universe. That just doesn't sit right with me.

[Whaleboy]

What is `Transdimensional knowledge'

Dreadfully sorry, I wrote that with Drogue in mind, since he is familiar with my arguments.

Briefly, this universe, to use the Einsteinian constructs, is 4-dimensional, the spatial dimensions that we all know, and time. However, there are infinities in this universe, and factors that remain entirely random from this perspective, and where this is relevant includes such things as Heisenbergs theory, as well as Schrodingers (remember the cat?).

WIthout going into too many details, they state that even with total knowledge of this 4 dimensional universe at a given point, we can only know positions and not velocities, in complete and accurate proportion to position. As such, even with 100% knowledge of this universe, our accuracy of predictions will decrease exponentially from the epoch of complete knowledge, a sort of universal weather forecast-like situation.

By viewing the universe from a transdimensional (or in this case 5-14 dimensions depending on whether you include elements of string theory) perspective, ones perception of time is changed so that ours becomes a vector like length or depth. As such, Heisenbergs theory no longer exists, so chaos theory as we know it, assuming perfect knowledge kicks in.

Total knowledge of this 4-d universe is not infinite knowledge, required to make total, 100%, complete, unfettered determinism work.