[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Maybe we dont have free will but god does.
[/QUOTE]
I prefer to think we do, but God doesn’t. Vox populi.
Well, then. It’s time to go to the videotape! Er. Wikipedia. What the heck is this Free Will stuff, anyhow? Even if it’s not the most accurate definition, it’s a starting place… which is all you can trust Wikipedia to be.
Wiki has two seperate articles on it. One on theology, one not.
Theology
So, the ability to choose outside of, but influenced by, external conditions. Not a bad example, too.
Hm. I’ve got a game tonight, but I’m going to be thinking about this. And I’ll read it more later. Guys? Looks like we wandered into the high points here, especially insofar as determinism counts.
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
Well, then. It’s time to go to the videotape! Er. Wikipedia. What the heck is this Free Will stuff, anyhow? Even if it’s not the most accurate definition, it’s a starting place… which is all you can trust Wikipedia to be.
Wiki has two seperate articles on it. One on theology, one not.
Theology
So, the ability to choose outside of, but influenced by, external conditions. Not a bad example, too.
Hm. I’ve got a game tonight, but I’m going to be thinking about this. And I’ll read it more later. Guys? Looks like we wandered into the high points here, especially insofar as determinism counts.
[/QUOTE]
I thought about doing this too. At least the non-theological part. But it really struck me as a non-definition. It’s too indirect.
If you read closely, you’ll see that I didn’t merely mention “chaos”, as if throwing out a buzz-word to “explain” indeterminacy. I pointed out that Sensitive Dependence Upion Initial Conditions has been shown to derail even the most carefully managed of calculations. Without perfect knowledge of the situation, even in a classical system with no quantum terms or portions unknown for other reasons – exactly the sort of thing that determinists seem to assume – it is extremely easy for the situation to blur out knowledge of the initial state so that you effectively 'can’t go home again". See the Sci. am. article on Time’s Arrow and references therein. And it’s just as hard to go forward to a predictable future as it is to retreat to a known past. Even with a physical system that effectively contains all the “seeds” of that past state, you can’t gp backwards to that state because even what seem to be trivially unimportant factors – the gravitational pull of the moon and planets, for instance. Brownian motion and thermal effects, fior more realistic inputs – can disturb that perfect knowledge needed to recover the initial state. Even with a perfect computer, unless you really can include all the effects of all things to the last decimal place, you’re not going to be able to reproduce the past exactly or predict the future.
And if you could, quantum uncertainty and the other things I mention will be more tha enough to destroy that absolute determinism.
I seriously doubt that any physicist views the universe as deterministyic and predictable to that degree. Einstein to the contrary notwithstanding, we live in a probabilistic universe, even at the macroscopic scale.
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
If you read closely, you’ll see that I didn’t merely mention “chaos”, as if throwing out a buzz-word to “explain” indeterminacy. I pointed out that Sensitive Dependence Upion Initial Conditions has been shown to derail even the most carefully managed of calculations. Without perfect knowledge of the situation, even in a classical system with no quantum terms or portions unknown for other reasons – exactly the sort of thing that determinists seem to assume – it is extremely easy for the situation to blur out knowledge of the initial state so that you effectively 'can’t go home again". See the Sci. am. article on Time’s Arrow and references therein. And it’s just as hard to go forward to a predictable future as it is to retreat to a known past. Even with a physical system that effectively contains all the “seeds” of that past state, you can’t gp backwards to that state because even what seem to be trivially unimportant factors – the gravitational pull of the moon and planets, for instance. Brownian motion and thermal effects, fior more realistic inputs – can disturb that perfect knowledge needed to recover the initial state. Even with a perfect computer, unless you really can include all the effects of all things to the last decimal place, you’re not going to be able to reproduce the past exactly or predict the future.
[/quote]
But, barring quantum uncertainty, what you describe above only relates to our ability to predict the future, not whether it is deterministic or non-deterministic. Just because it is too difficult to calculate does not make it non-deterministic.
Whether we can predict it or not, if our environment is deterministic, then we don’t really have “free will” (at least based on what I think we mean by “free will”)
Quantum uncertainty is the only thing you mentioned that influences determinancy.
But the problem with quantum uncertainty, is that it’s random. This is still a problem for “free will.”
While it’s clear we do at the quantum level, are you saying that physicists believe that has an impact at the macro level? I thought I had read that most believed that the effects of quantum randomness were isolated to the quantum level and did not influence our environment.
[QUOTE=Stalky]
Well why don’t you illuminate us for the purposes of informed discussion?
One more thing, I think i’ve changed my mind on whether determinism plays an important role in our free will. Even if the entire universe were unordered semi-chaos, intelligence is an emergent complex ordered system, and therefore responds to external stimuli in a predictable way. Even in an infinate number of infinite universes (to use a ludicrous example straw-man analogous to certain quantum theories) it seems that we would still be a slave to stimuli. Can any of you “Free-Willies” explain objectively why we wouldn’t.
Oh, and i’m copyrighting the term “Free-Willies.” Use at risk of severe civil suits, or burns to the anus.
[/QUOTE]
[pedant]
I don’t believe the term “Free-Willies” is copyrightable, but you are free to apply for a trademark if you plan to use it in..um..trade.
[QUOTE=RaftPeople]
I thought I had read that most believed that the effects of quantum randomness were isolated to the quantum level and did not influence our environment.
[/QUOTE]
If God is Omniscient, he knows the origin and fate of every electron, the path of every neutrino to the end of time. I don’t know where he would keep all that information, but there clearly isn’t enough room for it in this universe.
[QUOTE=Squink]
If God is Omniscient, he knows the origin and fate of every electron, the path of every neutrino to the end of time. I don’t know where he would keep all that information, but there clearly isn’t enough room for it in this universe.
[/QUOTE]
He keeps it in the glove compartment.
If you were to ask me I’d tell you that everything is part of the innerworkings of God’s mind, and that it works off of itself to keep it going. Particles pop in and out of existence and bump into each other as a constant means of keeping track of everything.
But this is just a crazy crap shot at guessing how the universe works. But it’s always felt right to me.
Assuming there is a God that is.
[QUOTE=JoeSki]
If you were to ask me I’d tell you that everything is part of the innerworkings of God’s mind, and that it works off of itself to keep it going. Particles pop in and out of existence and bump into each other as a constant means of keeping track of everything.
But this is just a crazy crap shot at guessing how the universe works. But it’s always felt right to me.
Assuming there is a God that is.
[/QUOTE]
Well, it does seem like it would be the only way for him to be truly omnipresent, omniscient, ect. If this is the case however, what is the difference between believing in This God and being a theist, and trusting in Science and Epistimology and being an athiest. Seems like the Universal “theist” just has an extra arbitrary bit of nomenclature. Also Joeski, are you a Free Willy?
[QUOTE=Squink]
If God is Omniscient, he knows the origin and fate of every electron, the path of every neutrino to the end of time. I don’t know where he would keep all that information, but there clearly isn’t enough room for it in this universe.
[/QUOTE]
“I have a map of the United States…actual size. It says, ‘Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.’ I spent last summer folding it.
I also have a full-size map of the world. I hardly ever unroll it.” -Steven Wright
[QUOTE=Stalky]
Well, it does seem like it would be the only way for him to be truly omnipresent, omniscient, ect. If this is the case however, what is the difference between believing in This God and being a theist, and trusting in Science and Epistimology and being an athiest. Seems like the Universal “theist” just has an extra arbitrary bit of nomenclature. Also Joeski, are you a Free Willy?
[/QUOTE]
I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking in the first half of your post here, but I do not believe in free will. Whether or not there’s a God, I do believe in a future that’s set in stone, and that while we may feel like we can choose to do whatever we want, this is an illusion and everything is spoken for. If there is a God, I don’t believe he has made everything in an order we’d call “perfect”, but something that makes sense to him for whatever reasons a God might have. People are born to live, die, and have happy and misersable times in between. Or not. Your mileage may vary greatly one way or the other. Any “God made us in his image” nonsense is just an attempt to anthropomorphsize a perfect being. Or a very powerful being anyways.
Is there contradiction in the religious believing we were created with free will and then explaining a tragedy they survived as gods will.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
If the being living outside of time can see all future actions, maybe that just means the being doesn’t have free will. As we make our decisions, we affect possible future events. I randomly choose from a cans of peas and if I take can A (tainted with botulism), I’ll die shortly after tomorrow’s dinner. The helplessly omniscient creature sees my gory vomit-spewing demise. Spontaneously, though, I choose botulism-free can B. My revised future now involves becoming the first casualty of a tragic space elevator accident in 2059. The omniscient being sees the new future, and as far as it is concerned, that future is and always has been the only one (if concepts like “is” and “has been” have any meaning at all to a creature living out of time). Our free will causes destiny to perpetually rewrite itself. God is at our mercy, not the other way around.
[/QUOTE]
I didn’t see a response to this in all the quantum stuff, other than gonzomax’s post back there, which didn’t seem to address the issue (and which made my brain hurt with its syntax). Anyway, if this has already been addressed, then I apologise in advance.
For the purpose of this post, I’ll assume that if you had/have no other option than to carry out the actions you did/will, then you do not have free will. This covers most of the definitions of the term, I think. If one wishes, this can be expanded to include unintentional, unwilled, and quantum effects, without damageing the arguments.
The problem with your ‘spontaneous’ decision to pick can B, is that it invalidates the knowledge that the omniscient creature had back before you changed your mind. If they ‘knew’ you would choose can A, and you turned out not to, then they were wrong. By definition, an omniscient being cannot be wrong about anything. So, your scenario cannot occur.
The omnisicent creature is similarly unable to alter its own predicted choice of actions; to do so would demonstrate that it is not an omniscient creature. You could speculate about the existence of a creature that knew at all times what the state of the world would be after any set of actions on its own part, wherein it could make choices, and nobody else could; but that’s another matter entirely. A creature that can predict only itself is barely worthy of note as knowledge goes, except to note that contradictions would probably occur if that being should happen to interact with, including by observation, anything with “free will”.
As a final note, a creature that can inerrantly know the future disproves free will, even if the creature is not bothering to predict the events in question. The prediction is not the thing that eliminates free will, after all; it merely demonstrates that the free will was already absent. If there was free will, then prediction/omniscience would never be possible, by definition.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Is there contradiction in the religious believing we were created with free will and then explaining a tragedy they survived as gods will.
[/QUOTE]
There is no contradition there. If we were created with free will then God must not be omniscient, and at that point God can save whoever it wants with impunity.
(Unrelated questions for the quantum folks: it is the knowledge of, or the observation of, all the quantum states at once that’s impossible? And is it possible to know all the quantum information about a particle at some later point?)