Freewill

[Kuciwalker]

Sorry, but Chaos Theory pwns this assertion. Your data will not be without a small amount of error, and even tiny differences in the starting conditions in a system can produce drasically diferent results.

You're saying that what I proposed is not practical - and I agree. However, the point stands that the behavior of a system can (in principle) be predicted from and in fact is determined by its constituent parts and their arrangement.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Reductionism owns dualism.

And so does it own free will.

BS. Free will has nothing to do with my moral code.

So what? it doesn't mean that they (morality and free will) aren't related.

3° ideological positivism

WTF is that?

People who would say that semantic values of the discourse are absolute. Amongst others, such a theory would imply that people rationally pick ideologies from a preset pool. It's not like it's presented as such, but that's what some theories boil down to when you deconstruct them.

NWIH am I going to pay attention to a filosofer who tells me people don't have intent or beliefs. At that level of I.M. it becomes completely pointless.

Again you show how clueless you are. I never said that. Perhaps it would be because it's hard for someone like you to conceive that the word "problematic" does not necessarily mean "do people have it or not?".

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Having discovered the true signification of the word

Try "presented a reasonable definition".

A definition that you IGNORED yourself. When you say that "ultimately, people make their own decisions", it means that: ULTIMATELY. Not "somewhere down a chain of causality".

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
And so does it own free will.

So what? it doesn't mean that they (morality and free will) aren't related.

They're no more related than any other two things. Some moralities may include free will, but some moralities include race. So what?

People who would say that semantic values of the discourse are absolute. Amongst others, such a theory would imply that people rationally pick ideologies from a preset pool. It's not like it's presented as such, but that's what some theories boil down to when you deconstruct them.

WTF does that have to do with anything again?

Again you show how clueless you are. I never said that. Perhaps it would be because it's hard for someone like you to conceive that the word "problematic" does not necessarily mean "do people have it or not?".

Provide an example of some other [meaningful in real life] meaning.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Even today's computers are not "100% predictable", and their operations are far more protected from quantum uncertainties than are our brains.

The current generation uses 90nm (nanometer) - that means "lines" etched are 90nm in width. The next one is 65nm. I am not sure if our neurons are that small.

[Fake Boris]

The neurons are indeed much larger, but I guess the uncertainty resides in the subatomic particles flowing through them.

[Agathon]

It doesn't matter if mental processes are subject to indeterminacy. This doesn't equate to free will at all.

Many processes are subject to indeterminacy, but, if human decision making is subject to a similar kind of indeterminacy, it's nothing special and certainly doesn't distinguish human beings as possessors of something called free will.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The current generation uses 90nm (nanometer) - that means "lines" etched are 90nm in width. The next one is 65nm. I am not sure if our neurons are that small.

Our neurons depend on the actions of individual molecules (though large ones), though.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Agathon
It doesn't matter if mental processes are subject to indeterminacy. This doesn't equate to free will at all.

Many processes are subject to indeterminacy, but, if human decision making is subject to a similar kind of indeterminacy, it's nothing special and certainly doesn't distinguish human beings as possessors of something called free will.

You're getting it wrong. Free will is sentience.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Ok, if reductionism was correct, you could understand something by just knowing how the individual parts work and how the individual parts were put together, the problem is that some things only appear when the parts are together, you can't understand such a thing by just looking at it's parts.

No, you understand the thing by looking at the parts and how they're put together, as you said before. By definition, the thing is its parts, put together. Assuming you actually knew all the laws of physics and had a sufficiently large computer, you could use JUST the constituent parts of something and how they are put together to predict its behavior (or its probable behavior, because of ****ing quantum mechanics making me put these stupid disclaimers in).

Those disclaimers are the key. If the number of possible states is almost flatly spread out over billions of possibilities, then your probabilistic determinism , while utterly correct, certainly does not give the impression of determinism in the sense you get when you speak of today's computers.

It is my contention that free will should be defined as nothing more nor less than this dispersion of possible states from a known initial state.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


The current generation uses 90nm (nanometer) - that means "lines" etched are 90nm in width. The next one is 65nm. I am not sure if our neurons are that small.

They aren't. Neurons are not simple on/off switches on the other hand. They have a spectrum of possible outputs.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Agathon
It doesn't matter if mental processes are subject to indeterminacy. This doesn't equate to free will at all.

Many processes are subject to indeterminacy, but, if human decision making is subject to a similar kind of indeterminacy, it's nothing special and certainly doesn't distinguish human beings as possessors of something called free will.

Then it depends on the definition of "freewill."

In the contexts I have seen it used "freewill" is posited to be the opposite of "determinism." Thus, if it is used that way, indeterminacy is necessary (maybe even sufficient) for freewill.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Those disclaimers are the key. If the number of possible states is almost flatly spread out over billions of possibilities, then your probabilistic determinism , while utterly correct, certainly does not give the impression of determinism in the sense you get when you speak of today's computers.

It is my contention that free will should be defined as nothing more nor less than this dispersion of possible states from a known initial state.

My issue with that is that it applies equally to people as to electrons (well, not so much electons, since they have a manageable number of possible states, but definately to something like amoebae). Thus the free will = sentience claim. In addition, I think free will would exist in a purely deterministic world.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
They aren't. Neurons are not simple on/off switches on the other hand. They have a spectrum of possible outputs.

Weeeelllllllllll... that's sort of true and sort of false.

A nerve pretty much either fires or doesn't fire. The brain conveys intensity by the rate at which the nerve fires.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Then it depends on the definition of "freewill."

In the contexts I have seen it used "freewill" is posited to be the opposite of "determinism." Thus, if it is used that way, indeterminacy is necessary (maybe even sufficient) for freewill.

If it is used that way, then other non-mental processes are examples of "free will". Of course it is often defined oppositionally since there is no decent account of Free Will that makes any sense.

It's a waste of time: a pseudo-debate. The human mind operates according to the same causal principles as the rest of the universe. Just how is an interesting question for scientists, but that's about it.