Could we exist in a Newtonian world?

[Aeson]

We can understand enough about how we work to come to useful conclusions. For example, having a full frontal lobotomy is going to change the way you function. So is injecting various chemicals into your body. Understanding that allows us to make choices that conform more to our motivations.

The illusion of free will isn't necessary. All it does in fact is cloud the issue more than is necessary. If we assume free will is the explanation, or a good enough explanation, then there's no further knowledge to be had about how we function and about how we can set ourselves up to achieve our goals. That would be a very sad thing indeed.

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Conversely, if it is free will then we don't have to waste time trying to figure out what influences us. We can just choose properly without any real work involved.

[Lancer]

Old age and death are any person's greatest challenges. The less they think so the younger they are. The thing about old age that I can tell is that I tend to lose the here and now beneficial effect of "those things along the way which can prepare us for the challenges ahead". In other words the storage device for these events tends to degrade. I see the growth which these events brought about imprinting itself on who I am though, my soul. This is the traveling I see us as making, and why we never reach a final destination. What we have begun learning in this life is carried to eternity not in memories which are fleeting, but in a more basic existance existance itself.

Unless all the memories come back, as some have seen their lives pass before their eyes and lived to tell the tale. I wonder if those people's memories have been restored to them to some small degree.

"having a full frontal lobotomy is going to change the way you function."

No ****. That's in the cards for many of us. What really matters in the end is that Elvis loved me the most.

[chequita guevara]

Aeson, the question here isn't how we come to our decisions, but rather, whether we make decisions at all. Whether we do or don't, we must act in the world as if we do, and therefore, the answer is meaningless.

[Aeson]

There's nothing incompatible between choices and determinism. It's very clear that we make choices. Even computers make choices. That's not really a question. At best it's a semantic squabble.

The question in this regard is about how we come to them. (And what consciousness/self is.) And the answer to that is hardly meaningless.

But even if we ignore that, the question of whether we make decisions or not is not meaningless either. Knowing that means we have a better understanding of ourselves and others. Determinism or not, the better we understand the mechanics involved, the more likely we can come to agreeable outcomes.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Lancer


What part of Jersey are you in? I grew up in Bergen County.

Che, thats one of those things I've spent some time thinking about. Decided that if whatever conclusion that I reached thinking about it had already been reached, might as well go have a beer. I'd already decided to have the beer I know, but it still tastes good either way.

Hamilton

[Lancer]

Originally posted by SpencerH


Hamilton

Huh?

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Lancer



Huh?

Hamilton is a town outside of Trenton.

[Lancer]

Better than having a snake named after one I suppose.

Debatable sure.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Aeson
There's nothing incompatible between choices and determinism. It's very clear that we make choices. Even computers make choices. That's not really a question. At best it's a semantic squabble.

The question in this regard is about how we come to them. (And what consciousness/self is.) And the answer to that is hardly meaningless.

But even if we ignore that, the question of whether we make decisions or not is not meaningless either. Knowing that means we have a better understanding of ourselves and others. Determinism or not, the better we understand the mechanics involved, the more likely we can come to agreeable outcomes.

You're not getting it. This isn't about determinism ala response to stimuli in the environment. This is about a deeper determinism, at the subatomic level, wherein the motion of all particles was imparted at the beginning of time with the expansion of the universe from the big bang.

Either our lives are simply watching predetermined events unfold before us, in which case, actual understanding does not exist, or there is some property of matter which allows conscious thought to overcome the laws of conservation of motion. Either way we have to act as if matter has this property, that free will is real. So the answer is meaningless either way.

If the answer is negative, we don't have free will, then our lives are already laid out from beginning to end, and we have no control. So the answer is meaningless.

If the answer is positive, it changes nothing, since we have to act as if we were in control anyway. So the answer is meaningless because it adds nothing to our lives.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles
You're not getting it.

I understand it far better than you do. Your conclusion that it's meaningless is simply wrong. Knowledge and understanding have meaning (and in fact are meaning), even in a predetermined state.

Either our lives are simply watching predetermined events unfold before us, in which case, actual understanding does not exist, or there is some property of matter which allows conscious thought to overcome the laws of conservation of motion.

Understanding exists either way. Like I said previously, at best you have a semantic argument where you're trying to take words like "understanding", "meaning", and "decisions/choice" and pretend like they have a meaning (or lack thereof) other than what they actually mean.

"Understanding" in this sense is a reasonable and accessible representation within a consciousness of how/why/what/where/when X. It obviously is something that exists.

And we are not simply watching events unfold around us. Even in a predetermined state, we are obviously actors, part of the whole. We experience what happens, and affect what happens. Just what "we" are is something other than what your ego seems to require it to be defined as. We become algorithms with inputs and outputs.

I personally find that comforting, it gives my algorithm the possibility to better route the input into output which (as input or affecting future input) satisfies my nature more fully.

Either way we have to act as if matter has this property, that free will is real. So the answer is meaningless either way.

No, thankfully we don't have to act that way. Maybe you were predetermined to have to act that way... I have been predetermined to act in a different way.

If the answer is negative, we don't have free will, then our lives are already laid out from beginning to end, and we have no control. So the answer is meaningless.

No, the answer isn't meaningless. Because all meaning in that case is simply what is predetermined... and it still exists. You act like if it's predetermined for someone to like butter pecan ice cream that they have to pretend like it wasn't predetermined that they would enjoy it.

Personally I think that we are products of our environment. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy laying in a hammock and staring up at the sky, even though rationally I understand that I didn't rise above the laws of physics and choose to do so. I simply am what I am, and enjoy what I enjoy... and don't need to pretend I am otherwise to enjoy what I enjoy.

That sort of rationality does help me to deal with other issues. Sure, I was predetermined to deal with those other issues that way, but it doesn't change the fact that it's good for me to do so (in the way I was predetermined to view "good"). And a big part of the mechanism by which I am able to do so is the understanding that exists about the influence of various factors on my state of being.

I don't need to have free will for my state of being. I don't think it exists either. And I get along just fine without pretending I have free will. (Much better than when I did pretend so in fact.)

If the answer is positive, it changes nothing, since we have to act as if we were in control anyway. So the answer is meaningless because it adds nothing to our lives.

No, if the answer is free will we can ignore all factors that would be otherwise assumed to affect our decision making, because our decision making would have to exist independent of those influences for it to qualify as free will.

It also means that people are what they choose. A person who chooses good is good, a person who chooses evil is evil. Neither is under any outside influence to choose one way or the other. It makes a big difference in how we would approach teaching morals, ethics, and even how laws, rehabilitation, and many other social constructs are implemented (or not). (In large part, they have been constructed upon the the premise that free will exists.)

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles This isn't about determinism ala response to stimuli in the environment. This is about a deeper determinism, at the subatomic level, wherein the motion of all particles was imparted at the beginning of time with the expansion of the universe from the big bang.

If you go back and read the OP, it is a question of high level interaction (consciousness, free will vs determinism).

Particles do not have free will that we have been able to observe. A discussion of whether they have free will or not would be silly.

You said the question of whether we have free will or not is meaningless. It is not.

[Lancer]

Check PMs Aeson. (assuming they exist)

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles
If the answer is negative, we don't have free will, then our lives are already laid out from beginning to end, and we have no control. So the answer is meaningless.

A scenario where we don't have free will doesn't automatically mean we live a predetermined existence.

[chequita guevara]

Reread the OP and then join the discussion. Newton was only able to escape what he felt the trap of predestination in his theories by saying that God grants us free will.

If an object at rest remains at rest and an object in motion remains at motion, unless interacted with by a force, and our bodies are nothing more than a collection of atoms and molecules (which certainly lack free will) and thus can only be acted upon by forces and particles already in motion, then, given sufficient information, we ought to be able to trace the path of every particle back to its creation in the big bang, and conversely, trace it forward into the future. Thus, everything is pre-determined. That is the Newtonian trap that was at issue in the OP.

We aren't talking about other types of determinism, despite Aeson's attempt to take us off track.

[Dauphin]

Oh, have you solved the n-body problem?