A truly terrifying thought!

Open Forum in English
121

Aineko,

may I ask you what your professional background is? You seem very much interested in the topic.

The article gives a nice overview of the entire range of opinions on the subject, from a soul-like free will to no free will at all. The quotes you gave above lean towards little free will but still some. I guess if you’d ask most people they would think they have 100% autonomy in their decisions, like the notion of the eternal soul put into a body, and so did I when I was younger. What I find depressing is the notion of a 100% absence of free will.

The article talks about emergence, meaning a new “quality” that could enter the scene when systems become complex, like our brain (you alluded to the complexity issue in your previous posts). However we don’t know yet if that is the case. There is still a possibility for 100% determinism including all we are, our subconsciousness and the perceived free will. And this would have of course ethical implications, as the article also pointed out.

I am sorry if I missed any of your questions, if I missed them before it wasn’t out of ill intent. Did you like the article?

A final question: what languages are you learning?

122

Dooo said: “In the above scenario, you are recognising the “processes in your brain weighing the evidence”. You are perceiving the perceived choice. There is, and always will be a point of recognition in which the assumption of free will is implied.”

As a materialist you can argue that EVERYTHING that ever was and ever will be including every thought that every human being has ever had and will ever have is nothing more than deterministc interactions, albeit complex ones of elementary particles governed by a set of simple physical laws. Once the universe is set in motion, EVERYTHING in it including our thoughts unfolds deterministicly.

123

Dooo,

I am not saying it is like that, I am just stating what the scenario of 100% determinism would look like.

124

"may I ask you what your professional background is? You seem very much interested in the topic.”
molecular genetics (molecular signaling, more precisely). I am very interested in the topic, partly because I have a lot of interest in evolution, philosophy, human behaviour, primates etc. - all being topics related to what we are talking about. (I do not work in these topics, except evolution)

“The article gives a nice overview of the entire range of opinions on the subject, from a soul-like free will to no free will at all.”
however, none of them denies the existence of perception of free will and the importance of it - the thing I see as crucial for human society (while you do not seem to agree).

" I guess if you’d ask most people they would think they have 100% autonomy in their decisions"
this just points out how little people tend to think through their opinions. I honestly cannot understand how it would be possible that I make a decision independent from what I am. where is that decision coming from then?

"What I find depressing is the notion of a 100% absence of free will. "
again and again - which free will? :slight_smile: there is no free will in ‘magical’ terms. everything is influenced by everything, everything is determined by laws of nature. but somehow (and this is the crucial point and one of the reasons why I’m interested in human evolution), within that operational space we got this notion that we are responsible for our decisions, and that helped us make civilisation. and that notion exists and works, you cannot deny that.

"The article talks about emergence, meaning a new “quality” that could enter the scene when systems become complex, like our brain (you alluded to the complexity issue in your previous posts). However we don’t know yet if that is the case. "
there are two possibilities here: one, something in the quantum world have a final say and the reality indeed works in a way that cannot be predicted, or, two - ‘emergence’ or ‘synergy’ are just another words for ‘to many variables to predict the final result’. and then:
“There is still a possibility for 100% determinism including all we are, our subconsciousness and the perceived free will.”
isn’t everything already determined by laws of nature (regardless of which of the two statements above is true)? what else is out there to be determined/caused by? however, if you want to say that everything is already ‘prewritten’, there are again two things: first, I do not know how laws of quantum mechanics deal with the prewritten world (is it possible or not - and I don’t know if anyone knows. and were would it be ‘written’, btw? if everything would be prewritten, wouldn’t that mean that everything have already happened? just some philosophical questions…) and second: at our current state of consciousness where we are not able to perceive the future, the answer to question ‘is it prewritten or not?’ is absolutely irrelevant, as said in the article - we do not perceive it that way. for us - it’s a whole new world at every moment. that is why I don’t think we should be to concerned about what those emergences are - for us they are the unpredictable outcomes. (this may lead to a very philosophical question: what would happen if we would be able to perceive the reality as prewritten? wouldn’t than our consciousness of it influence the ‘prewritteness’ of the reality? - but as I said, these are purelly hypothetical questions and irrelevant for the main discussion of the topic). at some point in the future we may know better, but by the time we arrive there we will be very different from what we are now, simply because our knowledge influence our perception of ourselves and this perception influence how we see the world and who we are.

yes, I liked the article.

“A final question: what languages are you learning?”

well, at the moment obviously none - I’m spending my time discussing the ‘42’ question… :smiley:

Spanish and Russian (intermediate) and Mandarin (very, very beginner. plan to concentrate on it through next year). Arabic is on a list, as well.

125

there something else I want to say about people’s lamenting over non-existence of absolute free will, absolute power over our lives, over possibility that we live in some kind of prewritten reality we cannot even begin to perceive… - we are not ‘gods’ (whatever they are). that is to say, if you would compare us to some hypothetical higher beings possibly existing in a universe (and I do not mean in a religious way, more in a Star Trek and Babilon5 way :slight_smile: ), we might be as limited in our lives as a plant put next to the light seems limited to us. What I find surprising is that people are shocked every time when science offer a new empirical evidence of our limitations. in my opinion, this is coming from our anthropocentrism - we just don’t get the idea that universe (nature) is so much greater than us, that we are just one ephemeral biological species on one one tiny planet etc. no, we would like an absolute power, please, with two spoons of sugar, and we get truly depressed if we are denied of it :slight_smile:

126

Aineko,

when I say “100% determinism” I mean that the universe evolved and still is evolving AS IF it were pre-written. The inital conditions of the universe plus the laws of physics would lead it down one deterministic path, like a clockwork. This would include all there ever is including each and every thought we have ever had and ever will have.

Of course it would be impossible to ever gather all the information necessary plus the computing power necessary to calculate the universe’s evolution and predict the future. But that would not change the inherent deterministic nature of the universe (if the assumption is correct).

You’re right, in a sense the future would already be certain and, in a way, would already have happened. BTW, it is still a great mystery of physics why we perceive time as flowing by like a film. In a way general relativity treats all points in time equally and suggests a “coexistance” of past, now and future, but that is another deep, deep topic.

You said:
“there is no free will in ‘magical’ terms. everything is influenced by everything, everything is determined by laws of nature. but somehow (and this is the crucial point and one of the reasons why I’m interested in human evolution), within that operational space we got this notion that we are responsible for our decisions, and that helped us make civilisation. and that notion exists and works, you cannot deny that.”

I don’t think I disputed the subjective perception of free will. But if the universe is a predetermined clockwork with a quasi pre written history, our perceived freedom to make decisions was just an illusion and the operational space is in fact no real space at all.

Since I asked you questions about you, I should also give you some background info about myself: I have a Ph.D in physical chemistry and I work for the automotive industry, currently in China. I have always been fascinated with topics much bigger than myself such as cosmology and particle physics, not so much with philosophy though. I wish you good luck with your Chinese studies, you sure didn’t pick an easy language!

127

"I don’t think I disputed the subjective perception of free will. But if the universe is a predetermined clockwork with a quasi pre written history, our perceived freedom to make decisions was just an illusion and the operational space is in fact no real space at all. "

the crucial question for human depression about this topic is:

if a) we can’t do absolutely anything about it, b) we are not only unable to perceive it that way, but at the contrary, our perception is telling us the opposite and c) even if it is true, we just can’t prove it; then - is it really something to be terrified by at this moment? isn’t it something like being terrified that you might be eaten by a space monster - space monsters are allowed by the laws of physics and they also fulfil those three conditions (we can’t do anything about them, our perception is telling us they are not here and we can’t prove at the current stage of science if they exist or not exist)? I think this is why you’ve been told that you are making to much fuss about something that doesn’t really deserve that much fuss (it deserves scientific investigation, but current results do not deserve much fuss).

you may now argue that it matters to us if there is some big catastrophe awaiting human species in this ‘prewritteness’, BUT - it would only matter if we would be able to prove it as a prewritten (otherwise it would just be our world happening to us. and also then would come the question of if we would be able to prove/perceive the ‘prewritteness’ of space-time, would it be affected by our consciousness of it, since it would essentially be the ‘prewrittenes’ becoming conscious of itself and we know what happened last time when one creation of natural laws became conscious of itself etc…). as you can see, at the current stage, it’s all just space monsters… and being terrified by space monster and telling people that they should also be truly terrified of a space monster provokes the reactions like at this topic.

as you can see, at current stage this is a philosophical question as well, not only a scientific one.

128

Aineko said:
“I think this is why you’ve been told that you are making to much fuss about something that doesn’t really deserve that much fuss”

There a many people including me who are dying to find out about the origins of the universe and that question certainly fulfills your conditions a) to c). The question of whether there is alien life in the universe is another question in that category. It is our nature as humans to ask these questions, because answers to these questions shapes our self image, tells us who and what we are.

129

“As a materialist you can argue that EVERYTHING that ever was and ever will be including every thought that every human being has ever had and will ever have is nothing more than deterministc interactions, albeit complex ones of elementary particles governed by a set of simple physical laws…”

@Rohr

A materialist can argue it if s/he likes. How does the assertion that materialists can do this answer my above assertions?

130

I had to scroll up, I guess your objection was this:

“There is, and always will be a point of recognition in which the assumption of free will is implied”

I don’t know if I can be clearer, but I’ll try: Let’s assume the entire history of the universe is pre determined, as if it were pre-written, down to every detail including any recognition/decision point inside our brains. In this case history can only go down one path even if we feel we could take it down another path when we get to a decision point.

If I still don’t make sense to you, may it is because I did not really understand your question after all, but hey, English is not my mother tongue.

131

“Let’s assume the entire history of the universe is pre determined, as if it were pre-written”

Then how can anybody make scientific claims about the truth value of anything?

I repeat: to make scientific claims implies an unquestioned assumption of free will. Therefore scientific inquiry into the extent of free will is necessarily begging the question.

I think our communication problem has more to do with your impressive dedication to science than anything else.

132

"Then how can anybody make scientific claims about the truth value of anything? "

The reasoning of every scientist including his findings would of course also be part of the pre written history of the universe. An objective observer from outside the universe might still conclude that humans came to the right conclusion about the evolution of the universe.

I give you another example: would you assign free will to a computer program? A computer program can still analyse phenomena, for example data, and reveal a certain truth about them even if it is not a living being with no free will.

133

Dooo,

I actually had to look up the expression “begging the question”, guess what, they have an article about it on wikipedia.

I watched your Youtube introduction video, it’s nice to hear the real voice of other forumites. Do you teach only English or also other languages? Do you teach adults or children?

134

SPSS, SAS, R , and so forth cannot analyze data, and they are not foolproof tool.

135

tool → tools

136

Ilya, should I remind you that quantum mecanics is not The Ultimate Rule For All The Subjects Of Our Universe, to which every photon must obey, but just more or less exact an approximation? If you think that it fully describes something, tell me, relying on its wavefunction, when a single atom will decompose and in which directions the parts will go?

137

"would you assign free will to a computer program? A computer program can still analyse phenomena, for example data, and reveal a certain truth about them "

Rohr

This is a false analogy. Computers analyse data because they were designed to do so by a human.

138

@ Dooo, who responds to Friedemann’ s : (1). “Let’s assume the entire history of the universe is pre determined, as if it were pre-written”

with the characteristic ( 2) “Then how can anybody make scientific claims about the truth value of anything?” .

Edward, I believe your sentence (2) as such, even without complicating it with the thoughs on free will, is a big philosophical question which science alone cannot, now or forever, answer. To me it would be wery intersting to discuss (2) also, may be re-formulated like.

"What is meaning of [true?] understanding of the Universe by biological mashines, which are but small part of the Universe. Would you like to discuss this? BTW Edward, I tried to subscribe to an English lang conv. via LingQ with you - unfortunately you are seemingly not offering them now, aren’t you?

@ Friedemann’s : “The reasoning of every scientist including his findings would of course also be part of the pre written history of the universe. An objective observer from outside the universe might still conclude that humans came to the right conclusion about the evolution of the universe.”

I think you’d better off the meaning of "true conclusion " without appealing to “the objective observer outside the universe”, as you no dout understand that the objective observer is outside science.

@

139

@ Aineko: I agreed with you Aineko after your first comments (on my anti - reductionism) but forgot to say it immediately. The analysis in your last post is very intersting. I just

@everybody; It is great that the thread is going on. We have even forgotten Benny for a wile. It is indeed difficult and not always interesting to follow and remembereverything what somebody have said . Let us not be that sensetive to everything, do not switch to personalities, and accept we have a free will to skip s-thing.

140

Sorry Friedemann, I wanted to say is "It’d be better if you could express yorself without without appealing to “the objective observer outside the universe”, as you no doubt understand that the objective observer outside universe is beyound sicience.

It is indeed difficult to follow everything, but language learning takes time. I like Steve’s blog and his manner, but it remains, and must remain,IMO. outside the current discussion. Sorry for typing everything in a hurry :slight_smile: