How can science accommodate the supernatural?

Libertarian free will exists in the same way any other abstraction exists. It's just a way of saying that there are mental processes that operate independently of the forces normally involved in market interactions.

There's a famous circuit diagram that's facetiously said to possess free will. The oscillating current running through the apparatus cannot be predicted by the laws of electronic engineering from first principles - the design makes either of two paths equally suitable, and "random" environmental affects determine which way the current flows at any given time. No one actually believes this setup is liberated from the laws of physics, but for all practical purposes, it has "free will".

For all practical purposes, at least at the time the philosophy was first put into words, humans have "free will".
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
No, but I see no reason simply to accept the concept.
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You don't accept the concept itself, or you don't accept that the concept describes a "real" thing?

I don't believe that such "supernatural entities" are actually real myself, but I'm certainly willing to believe in their concept, in the same way I believe in the concepts of elves and fire-breathing dragons. I can't explain how a dragon breathes fire -- in fact, I strongly believe that no fire-breathing dragons actually exist. I can however, recognize that my failure to understand how such a creature could exist has no causal effect. I might be wrong.

In the specific case of "libertarian free will," there is is far too much philosophical, theological, and metaphysical discussion of the concept for me to dismiss it out of hand simply because I can't produce an underlying mechanism.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
But that's just what a set of consistent logical rules is, don't you think?
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Ah, but the important thing is the acceptance of the idea that there is an accurate consistent set of logical rules. Any number of consistent rule sets are present in pure Chaos, but none (or all) of them are true. We don't live in Chaos - and it's possible for there to be an accurate description of the world.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
But that's just what a set of consistent logical rules is, don't you think?
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Only if the nature of the world is itself consistent. That's part of what we're discussing here. Something that is inconsistent would (of course) not be describable by a set of consistent logical rules, and hence supernatural. Rejecting the inconsistent is therefore rejecting the supernatural (and vice versa).

It's an inviting assumption to reject the inconsistent, and one I myself make. But it's still an assumption. I'm not even sure what framework you would use to prove the statement "the world is consistent" -- and, again, I'd love to see your grant proposal....
 
Mel said:
Libertarian free will exists in the same way any other abstraction exists. It's just a way of saying that there are mental processes that operate independently of the forces normally involved in market interactions.
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That is compatibilist free will. Libertarian free will is defined to be some sort of decision making that involves something other than determinism and randomness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_free_will

I believe it is fair to say that people assume god has libertarian free will, although how this works with omniscience I have no idea.

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
That is compatibilist free will. Libertarian free will is defined to be some sort of decision making that involves something other than determinism and randomness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_free_will

I believe it is fair to say that people assume god has libertarian free will, although how this works with omniscience I have no idea.
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Let me put it this way: no intelligent libertarian asserts the existence of such a thing. Good Lord, Rand herself would strike such a person dead for letting that pass their lips.
 
Drkitten said:
You don't accept the concept itself, or you don't accept that the concept describes a "real" thing?
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I have not heard a coherent definition of libertarian free will.

I don't believe that such "supernatural entities" are actually real myself, but I'm certainly willing to believe in their concept, in the same way I believe in the concepts of elves and fire-breathing dragons. I can't explain how a dragon breathes fire -- in fact, I strongly believe that no fire-breathing dragons actually exist. I can however, recognize that my failure to understand how such a creature could exist has no causal effect. I might be wrong.
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The idea of a fire-breathing dragon is coherent. Not so for libertarian free will, as far as I can tell.

In the specific case of "libertarian free will," there is is far too much philosophical, theological, and metaphysical discussion of the concept for me to dismiss it out of hand simply because I can't produce an underlying mechanism.
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Hey, there is a lot of discussion of epiphenomenalism and the Knowledge Argument, too, but I dismiss both of those. :D

~~ Paul
 
Mel said:
Let me put it this way: no intelligent libertarian asserts the existence of such a thing. Good Lord, Rand herself would strike such a person dead for letting that pass their lips.
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Hey, don't pollute my thread with politics!

~~ Paul
 
Drkitten said:
It's an inviting assumption to reject the inconsistent, and one I myself make. But it's still an assumption. I'm not even sure what framework you would use to prove the statement "the world is consistent" -- and, again, I'd love to see your grant proposal....
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Agreed, which is why Axiom 1 is an axiom.

But we're still waiting for some Kansan to explain how it is we're going to study the inconsistent supernatural with science.

~~ Paul
 
Mel said:
Relax, Paul. It's reason, which is about as far from politics as you can get.
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Huh? Then I don't understand what political Libertarianism has to do with free will.

(In other words: Was it a joke? :wide-eyed)

~~ Paul

Edited to add: Yes, it was a joke. Sorry, slow today.
 
Here's a quote from Dennett on libertarian free will. It is from his book, Freedom Evolves, p. 98:

"Libertarianism: We do have free will, so determinism must be false; indeterminism is true. Since, thanks to quantum physicists, the received view among scientists is that indeterminism is true (at the subatomic level and, by implication, at higher levels under various specifiable conditions), this can look like a happy resolution of the problem, but there is a snag: How can the indeterminism of quantum mechanics be harnessed to give us a clear, coherent picture of a human agent exercising this wonderful free will?

This meaning of libertarianism, by the way has nothing to do with the political sense of the term..."
 
Drkitten said:
Nor have I. I'll let you know when my poor hearing rises to the level of a logical argument. Otherwise, it's simply argument by incredulity.....
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Sorry man, I just don't get where you're coming from. It's not just poor hearing; I've actively listened. You seem to be saying "Millennia of philosophy just can't be wrong, so I'm going to accept a concept I can't even define." It's not even lack of evidence, it's lack of definition! Should I be sure to accept every other concept I can't define, too?

~~ Paul

Edited to add: Or are you suggesting there is a coherent definition of libertarian free will that's just being kept a sooper sekrit?
 
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Dennett said:
"Libertarianism: We do have free will, so determinism must be false; indeterminism is true. Since, thanks to quantum physicists, the received view among scientists is that indeterminism is true (at the subatomic level and, by implication, at higher levels under various specifiable conditions), this can look like a happy resolution of the problem, but there is a snag: How can the indeterminism of quantum mechanics be harnessed to give us a clear, coherent picture of a human agent exercising this wonderful free will?
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Libertarians don't just want indeterminism, they want decisions made by some method other than determinism and randomness, which they call desire or need or want. From the Wikipedia article:

"The major objection to libertarianism is that it remains a mystery why an agent makes the choice she does - any explanation of the choice (beyond a probabilistic one) would seem to make it determined. However, according to David Hume, if a choice is not determined then it is simply a random event, which is problematic since such a choice would lack purpose. Attempts to deal with this tend towards dualism, in which mental events, such as choices, are independent of physical causes."

And even that doesn't address the question of mental causes.

~~ Paul
 
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Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Sorry man, I just don't get where you're coming from. It's not just poor hearing; I've actively listened. You seem to be saying "Millennia of philosophy just can't be wrong, so I'm going to accept a concept I can't even define." It's not even lack of evidence, it's lack of definition! Should I be sure to accept every other concept I can't define, too?
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Let me put it to you this way, then. What's your coherent definition of "random"?

The reason I ask : I've been professionally working with statistics since approximately the invention of dirt. I have high-end Ph.D.s in statistics just down the hall -- and never have I seen such a coherent definition that they (and I) will accept.

You claim that "libertarian free will" mans "neither random nor determined"; a definition with which I can work. But if this is the case, you need to tell me exactly what "random" means in this context. Otherwise, you're merely objecting to one poorly-defined term using a completely undefined one.

Wordnet offers an interesting definition: "lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance." Under this definition, anything purposeful is not random, but neither is it determined unless there is no uncertainty involved at all. Wikipedia offers a similar definition: " the word random is used to express apparent lack of purpose or cause. This suggests that no matter what the cause of something, its nature is not only unknown but the consequences of its operation are also unknown." Again, something purposeful is not random -- but neither need it be determined.

By contrast, another common defiinition is "lack of predictibiliity." This definition is obvoiusly, tragically, heinously, wrong -- it's a statement of my incapacity to predict, not a statement about the "random" object itself. If I can't predict something, but you can, then it's random to me but not to you -- which makes "random" not a property, but a relation. Doesn't work in this context. So let's go with the "purpose" definition.

What you're really asking, then, is "what is the cause of purpose?"

In this context, that's not relevant. Purpose exists. We can both agree on that. I need not provide an explanation for where a phenomenon comes from in order to observe it. I need only point out that you do not have a water-tight explanation for where purpose comes from either. If you want to claim that purpose is itself a deterministic consequence of some other aspect of the natural world -- well, that's a claim. Lots of neuroscientists would agree. Lots of neuroscientists would also disagree.

Where does "mass" come from? Where does "energy" come from? How about "information"? Perhaps "purpose" is another fundamental defining aspect of the universe, akin to mass and energy -- and under this analysis, "purpose" might be THE supernatural aspect of the world.
 
drkitten said:
That's the very definition of "argument from ignorance," isn't it?
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No. Libertarians make assertion A. Either they must show that A proceeds from logical principles, or that A is necessary to accomodate observations. If it were somehow possible to demonstrate that the behavior of individuals was neither random nor determined, we could name whatever was responsible "free will", and we could therefore at least discuss it without knowing anything more about its properties. If we could establish a collection of properties and assign the name "free will" to the category, we could then argue about whether the category is logically valid and whether it can be said to exist.

Without either, we can do nothing.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
But surely he operates by some laws, no? All the religious works of history claim that he does. He is lawful enough to interact with the world, which does follow laws. If he does not operate by laws, please explain how he does operate.
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The Bible, at least the old testament part, doesn't say that. The Greeks got involved and messed everything up, but if you read Genesis, God gives laws to people, but it doesn't say anything about him following those laws himself. The God of Genesis is arbitrary. He makes mistakes. He decides to wipe out people You can argue with him, and sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't.


Job tried to argue with God, saying God had broken the laws, and God told him, (paraphrasing) "Shut up. Where were you when I made the Heavens and Earth? If I want to kill your wife, children, and kine, I can, because I'm God. I wanted to make a point with Satan, and that's all you need to know. Now, worship please!"

An observation. It is said that man makes God in his own image. When people think of God, they think of someone kind of like themselves, but much smarter and more powerful. Belief in ID is found much more commonly among engineers than among scientists. I don't think that is coincidence. Engineers are people who want to build things. The laws of nature are tools, but the building is the important part. So, they tend to fashion a God who is also a builder, a creator, a designer.

Scientists almost never accept ID, and are much more likely to be atheist. They spend their time trying to find the way things work. The goal is not so much invention, but discovery. What are the laws? What are the principles? If God can come along and just willy nilly break all those laws, you would have to put an asterisk next to all of them. F=ma*

* (unless God intervenes)

That doesn't sit well with scientists. Now Deism sits very well with scientists, because they get their world that operates according to natural laws, but they get God, too. Better yet, by studying the laws, they are learning the nature of God.




But sure, you could summarily reject Axiom 1. The question remains: How would science study god?
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Science cannot study God, directly. He isn't subject to experimentation. Christianity quotes Jesus as saying "Thou shalt not put the Lord, thy God, to the test."

I prefer the Buddhist explanation, myself. If God exists, he is infinite. Your mind is finite. You cannot comprehend anything about an infinite being, including whether or not he exists. So, don't worry about it.

On the other hand, you could study the effects of God, but there has to be an asterisk involved there, too. You could study the circumstances under which spousal salinification occurred, and try to spot trends. If you noted that it tended to be shortly after their husbands reported, "God told us not to turn around, but she did, and she became a pillar of salt," you can then speculate about the existence of a supernatural entity that turns people into a pillars of salt. There is no actual way to test whether or not it was really God who did it, though. Maybe it was Loki playing tricks. (Hey, I snuck out of Asgard last weekend, got a little drunk, and needed something for my Margarita, so I used this old guy's wife, and told them God did it.) There would be no way to know if it were "really" God. The best you could do is say, "I don't know whether or not it's really God, but things could get awfully salty around here if I don't go along."


Again, from the Buddhist perspective, you wouldn't need to know the nature of God, just what is real and what isn't. If you observe spousal salinification, then it is real.

What stops us from rolling the "will of the spirit" in with the other natural laws? Explain how that will operates, if not by additional laws.
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From a major league monotheist (Christianity, Islam, and the lesser followed variations that started out with the Hebrew writings) perspective, that's what Job tried. He couldn't grasp what was happening, so he asked God why. He was disappointed, God didn't feel the need to explain. From a Buddhist perspective, try all you want, but the "laws" that govern an infinite being can't be comprehened by a finite mind.


Are you suggesting that when someone finally comes forward who can consistently read my mind, we won't be able to tease out the new natural laws that govern this ability?
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I am saying that we may or may not be able to. I am saying it is possible that there are no laws. Right now, the laws as we understand them say that it can't happen. We'll reevaluate when we see something like that. Randiisn't going to give up the milliion unless it appears someone has successfully violated natural law. After Randi forks over the million, we can search to see if we just missed a law. And we may never know. If something appears to violate the laws, is it because there are no laws that apply, or is it because we don't know the laws?
 
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