Presuppositions and Free Will

[paultrr]

There were a series of causes for you to eat a tuna fish sandwich. Among them, you were hungry, it was available, it was time to eat, you had not had an unpleasant experience with tuna fish, your knowledge of food and nutrition was a factor, your genetic ability to digest, chew, etc... and the environmental situation -- preparation, service, etc... Under the exact same conditions, you would do exactly the same thing.

 

I disagree with that and find such a very poor argument even for a determinist. I can think of a lot of things I like and can digest. But I do not make the same choices everytime anymore than anyone else ever does. Perhaps you live you're life as robotic like that. But I'd be willing to bet most people on that issue would see things vastly different.

 

Another falsehood in that assumption is that conditions could be the same to begin with. I'm reminded of the butterfly effect when it comes to conditions ever being the same. But even given they where which no statistical system could ever really show that I still doub't everyone would choose the same every time.

[paultrr]

Steven Hawking: Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes.

 

"I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes.

 

"If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our Universe, but in a mangled form, which contains information about what you were like, but in an unrecognisable state."

 

Bohm & Hiley (1993:321) (Bohm, David, and Hiley, Basil J. (1993). The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory. Routledge: London and New York.)

 

"t is evident that there is no way to prove that any particular aspect of our knowledge is absolutely correct."

 

Einstein on Science and the Mind:A. Einstein and L. Infeld. The Evolution of Physics (Simon & Schusterm, New York 1938)

 

"Science is not just a collection of laws, a catalogue of unrelated facts. It is a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented ideas and concepts. Physical theories try to form a picture of reality and to establish its connection with the wide world of sense impressions. Thus the only justification for our mental structures is whether and in what way our theories form such a link... The psychological subjective feeling of time enables us to order our impressions, to state that one event precedes another. But to connect every instant of time with a number, by the use of a clock, to regard time as a one- dimensional continuum, is already an invention. So also are the concepts of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, and our space understood as a three-dimensional continuum. Physics really began with the invention of mass, force, and an inertial system. These concepts are all free inventions."

 

 

Erwin Schrodinger, What is Life? 1967

The question is only whether from now on we shall have to refrain from tying description to a clear hypothesis about the real nature of the world. There are many who wish to pronounce such abdication even today. But I believe that this means making things a little too easy for oneself. ... The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.

The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists. (Erwin Schrodinger, 1967)

 

Lee Smolin:

 

It can no longer be maintained that the properties of any one thing in the universe are independent of the existence or non-existence of everything else. It is, at last, no longer sensible to speak of a universe with only one thing in it.(Lee Smolin, 1997)

 

But in spite of the obvious effectiveness of mathematics in physics, I have never heard of a good a priori argument that the world must be organised to mathematical principles. (Lee Smolin, 1997)

 

Gottfried Leibniz:

 

Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. ... It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions (principles). This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty. ... I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is a fact in nature. (Gottfried Leibniz, 1670)

 

Darwin, Charles

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.

 

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, John Murray, London, 1859.

 

Eddington, Sir Arthur

(1882-1944) b. England

For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.

 

Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1958, pp 9-10.

 

Eddington, Sir Arthur

(1882-1944) b. England

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations:

(1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long.

(2) All sea-creatures have gills.

These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it.

 

In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science.

 

An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. "Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, "what my net can't catch isn't fish." Or--to translate the analogy--"If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah!"

 

Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1958, p 16

 

Hawking, Stephen W.

(1942-) b. Oxford, England

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

 

Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam, NY, 1988, p 174.

 

Isaac Asimov

 

I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties; that no matter how much we learn; whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret of the Universe.

 

There are many aspects of the universe that still can’t be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance implies only ignorance that may some day be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature up to this time, and it remains premature today.

 

Francis Bacon

 

 

the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument.

 

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

 

True science suppresses nothing, but goes on searching, and is undisturbed in looking straight at things that it does not yet understand.

 

Jacob Bronowski

 

 

Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

 

Jacob Bronowski

 

 

The society of scientists must be a democracy. It can keep alive and grow only by a constant tension between dissent and respect, between independence from the views of others and tolerance for them.

 

Sebastian Castellio

 

 

To seek truth and to utter what one believes to be true can never be a crime. No one must be forced to accept a conviction. Conviction is free.

 

We can live together peacefully only when we control our intolerance. Even though there will always be differences of opinion from time to time, we can at any rate come to general understandings, can love one another, and can enter the bonds of peace.

 

W. K. Clifford

 

 

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

 

 

That last part about sums it all up. We have sufficient evidence in the form of the records stored within this planet that evolution does exist. We have sufficient evidence that cause and effect generally works at the macro level of existance we find ourselves in daily. We have sufficient evidence for a lot of things we have learned by scientific methods. But it cannot be said that we have abolsute evidence or even sufficient evidence that free will does not exist. That type of belief is founded upon insufficient evidence.

[paultrr]

Hawking's findings on the possible non-loss of information which was something a lot had suspected for a bit and the fact that such information even though it returns is mangled to the point that one can not predict or observational determine its past condition rather flys in the face of absolute determinism itself. That in itself, while not directly related to free will rather points to aspects of nature that simply defy one's ability to fully understand the original source or cause in its entire nature which would be required on any real pure deterministic approach or method. It does not negate the fact that there was some prior cause. It simply translates to us never being able to fully ascertain the whole picture of every last cause. That I also believe constitutes another limit nature itself seems to impose upon science. While we can understand the process by which this information becomes scrambled. We cannot hope to put that full picture of what was scrambled fully back together.

 

The reason I mention this is the general view of the evolution of the cosmos is that it too started with a singularity. There may have been that hidden information sometimes spoken of in quantum theory already present in that singularity. That hidden information may or may not guide the forces that have molded this universe and us. But we cannot ever hope to fully unscramble that information fully. Without that ability its simply just possible to state that everything seems to be the product of natural process. Indeed, the singularity itself would be natural thing. So what if there is order in this universe. One can generate order out of chaos. I still see no absolute reason to invoke God into the equation nor any absolute proof that free will does not exist either.

 

Yes, I want answers too just like anyone else. But I want consistant answers that don't rely upon faith alone no matter its source.

[Biochemist]

Steven Hawking...Bohm & Hiley...Einstein...Erwin Schrodinger...Lee Smolin...Gottfried Leibniz...Darwin, Charles...Eddington, Sir Arthur...Isaac Asimov...Francis Bacon...Jacob Bronowski...Sebastian Castellio...W. K. Clifford...

This was a remarkable post, Paultrr.

[paultrr]

This was a remarkable post, Paultrr.

 

I think the point I was trying to get across to you is that not every scientists fully believes everything is 100% deterministic. At the same time most of those quotes rather point out exactly how we do see and approach things in general. The same would go for the absolute determinist point of view. That's not the absolute rule when it comes to how scientists actually view things. Yes, we do not tend to believe in the validity of scripture. Yes, we tend to see everything as a product of natural process. Science is not by nature atheist based. A lot of those in that camp favor and use science a lot as a tool to prove their points. It actually at its heart does not support any God anymore than it actually supports a full lack of one. Its designed as a tool to understand nature.

 

If, and I say that word with strong emphesis, there is a God who created it all by studying nature we are simply studying something he or she created. We're not looking for God, nor do we by now expect to actually find him or her. God as the creator of something would by rights be beyond its creation. The evidence I can personally gain from out of science does not favor the existance of God. But if God does exist and he or she is beyond what I can really study then I cannot in right conscience make the proclaimation that he or she does not actually exist either. I just find it useless to worry about something I cannot observe or measure. Einstein once pronounced the death of the terrible infant, the Aether. Yet, he latter as he watched his empty universe or vacuum fill back up said, long live the aether. It really does boil down to one's perspective. To the religious the order in creation argues for design. To the athiest the cause and effect relationship's argue for no God. To most of the rest of us we really do not care if there is or is not a God. We are not out to study God. For that type of study there are plenty of religious books in the world and plenty of examples of religious people. We teach what we know and what we know is evolution and science.

[infamous]

Sure. Unless I was in the mood for pastrami. :xx:

 

Ah....., but me thinks that you were predestined to eat tuna fish Biochemist.

[Biochemist]

Ah....., but me thinks that you were predestined to eat tuna fish Biochemist.

Perhaps. But if that is true, then right this very minute I am predestined to have a nice brewski. Oh, Look! Nature is calling me to the refrigerator!! :xx:

[infamous]

Perhaps. But if that is true, then right this very minute I am predestined to have a nice brewski. Oh, Look! Nature is calling me to the refrigerator!! :xx:

 

Break time; Sounds like a good idea Biochemist. Have one for me too buddy.

[infamous]

When I was stationed in Europe during my stay in the military, my favorite brew was Becks Dortmuender Beer. Whats you brand???

[infamous]

One note of caution; I wouldn't advise drinking that brew after eating that tuna fish sandwich!!!!

[bumab]

Actually, in accepting determinism you yourself at some point in you're life exercised free will as most of us tend to see it. Your senses, your training, your experience, the environmental factors, all sorts of things may have come into play. But boil it all down and you made the conscious decision at some point that this was the correct path. Its that choice which we tend to believe you had the fully ability to either make or not make. That's what free will by definition actually is. Now does that violate anything sacred as far as science goes?

 

That, in conjunction with the other thread on this topic, was my main contention for bringing up this subject.

 

Science as a process relies on objectivism. We must remain objective in light of the evidence. But as you say- without free will, there is no such thing as "objective." You will believe whatever it is you were fated to believe, simply because you are at the end of the casual chain. I think Linda would agree with that.

 

The problem is- objectivity thus ceases to exist. Objectivity requires freedom from that casual chain, and I would argue that objectivity cannot exist WITHOUT free wil for those reasons. If we can't choose to think apart from the system, then we cannot be objective within the system.

 

Facinating!

[infamous]

That, in conjunction with the other thread on this topic, was my main contention for bringing up this subject.

 

Science as a process relies on objectivism. We must remain objective in light of the evidence. But as you say- without free will, there is no such thing as "objective." You will believe whatever it is you were fated to believe, simply because you are at the end of the casual chain. I think Linda would agree with that.

 

The problem is- objectivity thus ceases to exist. Objectivity requires freedom from that casual chain, and I would argue that objectivity cannot exist WITHOUT free wil for those reasons. If we can't choose to think apart from the system, then we cannot be objective within the system.

 

Facinating!

 

Very persuading argument; On the other hand, because I'm of the derterministic persuasion, I might suggest that we re-examine what it means to be objectiive. I'll not relinquish this position for the soul sake of semantics.

[paultrr]

That, in conjunction with the other thread on this topic, was my main contention for bringing up this subject.

 

Science as a process relies on objectivism. We must remain objective in light of the evidence. But as you say- without free will, there is no such thing as "objective." You will believe whatever it is you were fated to believe, simply because you are at the end of the casual chain. I think Linda would agree with that.

 

The problem is- objectivity thus ceases to exist. Objectivity requires freedom from that casual chain, and I would argue that objectivity cannot exist WITHOUT free wil for those reasons. If we can't choose to think apart from the system, then we cannot be objective within the system.

 

Facinating!

 

While I personally support casuality as science tends to see it as cause and effect I also outright reject absolute determinism as some tend to understand it. In general, I personally do uphold the idea of our ability to make a choice and do not see us as complete bio-chemical robots, as some tend to call humans. I think, like Hawking, that we are more than the sum of our parts. From that perspective I think we human's can be objective very well. But I could well ask the same question of those who believe everything is based upon determinism. I could also ask the believers if their personal faith and whatever experiences that faith has brought them fully allows them to be objective also. Most believers accept the scriptures as the word of God to begin with. Some even go so far as to find it the ultimate authority. Given that kind of enclosure is it actually possible for someone who believes that way to be fully objective even if there is evidence out there that runs contrary to that Bible and possible their belief system.

 

One reason I ask this is that let's suppose that after man lands on say Mars we discover something there akin to our own records of primitive life. Let's suppose that record follows a simular pattern as ours does, up to say a point way before land animals evolved. We're talking sea creatures. Now while the scriptures to my knowledge never forbid life on other worlds, there is a strong special place given in them to man and the earth. Also at this point we'd then have two sets of records showing life starting as simple and evolving towards the more complex. How objective could those who believe be at that point?

 

Even a worse speculative case, given we've been looking at ways for eventual travel to the stars how objective would most believers be if say 10 years from now a craft lands next to the White House and a humonoid alien walks out of that craft. Granted that sounds SF. But given if evolution is true anything could be possible. I won't even go into how they got here. Let's just assume it was something we have yet to discover. What after learning to fully communicate we discover they have their own version of evolution for there home world to explain where they came from. Let's assume they are different genetically from us, perhaps something more akin to early reptiles here. How objective would most believers be?

 

The general answer I used to get out of believers on that last one is they attribute such to the devil and perhaps these where demons taking bodily form to mislead the masses. That to me is about as unobjective as they tend to see the determinist.

[Biochemist]

When I was stationed in Europe during my stay in the military, my favorite brew was Becks Dortmuender Beer. Whats you brand???

Given my tendency toward free will, I change favorites regularly. My current favorite brewskis are: 1) Dos Equis amber, San Miguel dark (although al ittle hard to find these days) and Negra Modelo.

 

But I am really pretty flexible. Becks (particularly Becks dark) is a great beer.

[maddog]

An objective decision should not be debatable. Anyone with the propper knowledge should reach the same objective decision as anyone else. Subjective decisions OTH have much more personal influence, but I do not think that given identicle backgrounds two individuals would have different subjective results. Objective decisions are independent of the one decidining. Subjective decisions depend on the one deciding to bring in certain influence.

To debate is to have a disagreement of opinion. Then I would say you do not

understand SR (Special Relativity). Two observers with rods and clocks where one is

moving in a constant velocity and direction from the other. Both are objective

observers with minimal bias. If one observer is moving significantly faster than the

other with also a sufficiently accurate clock. There clocks will not agree. Knowing

Relativity we would expect that. Yet you no objective decision could be debatable.

Until they reconcile knowledge or not they will have to analyze the results and figure

out why their clocks don't agree. Sounds like a flaw to me.

 

Maddog

[maddog]

Those examples have nothing to do with the subject. Determinism is an event-driven mechanism. "Notions" are not events.

Are we saying our thought cannot be deterministic. Then can we choose our

thoughts or do our thoughts choose us ?

 

Maddog

[maddog]

I'm curious how you can seperate objective decisions made inside your mind and subjective decisions inside your mind. To evaluate them, you must have free will. Otherwise, it's just a "cascade of impluses" that follow some predetermined path inside your brain, and there is no way to evaluate which is more correct then the other.

I am currently curious of this as well. Both objective/subjective decisions are decisions.

To be a cascade of impulses, then your thought think you and not the other way.

 

Maddog