Science and free will

[UndercoverElephant]

Let's make it simple, UE: is "not caused" the opposite of "caused" ?

That's right, yes. It does not follow that "random" is the opposite of "determined."

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I noticed you dodged those points, UE.

There is no point in me trying to have a debate with you if you are defining "random" to be the opposite of "determined." I fully accept that once this definition/premise is accepted, your conclusion follows from it. I don't accept this definition/premise because I believe it is possible for something to be the cause of something else, for that thing not to be caused by anything else, but for that thing also not to be random, because it is intentional. In other words, for me, the opposite of "determined" is "non-determined", where "non-determined" can mean either random or an intentional act of will. Within the scope of the rest of my belief system, this makes perfect sense. It doesn't make sense to you because you are a materialist and materialism has no place for "intentional acts of will." Under a materialistic ontology there can be no such thing.

It's as simple as that. You are trying to define free will out of existence and I am refusing to accept your definitions. There is nothing else to discuss or dodge.

 

[yy2bggggs]

I'm sorry, but you'll need to translate that into English for me, because I don't know what your symbols are supposed to mean.

T(X) means the time at which X occurs. B is the action, A is you, C is what determines you.

I don't need QM to provide the mechanism. I only need QM to not rule it out.

Alright... this implies that you're not supported by QM. That would mean you need support--in this case, I'm only asking for a very basic level of support--what problem it actually solves. Why do you need retrocausality in the first place--what does it specifically get you?

You seem to be saying that no current interpretation of QM actually specifies a mechanism for free will, but that it's not impossible that some future version could.

That is not the case--you're confusing your own case for retrocausality with free will. What I am saying is that you are lacking in a reason to appeal to retrocausality in the first place. With regards to QM, there's no specific support--just a possibility. With regards to information transfer, there's no current reason to suspect that it is happening. With respect to your argument for free will, we're lacking a problem that it solves.

In other words, there doesn't seem to be any useful reason to introduce retrocausality--it doesn't derive from observation, and it doesn't solve any real problem. At best, it's simply a shoehorn to fit some speculation into, pending any explanation you've yet to give.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

An indetermined event, or whatever, cannot exhibit a definite order in any way, shape or form. Because that definite order in and on itself asserts some sort of cause, asserts that there are dependencies. If you want to have an ordered sequence of numbers and the principle by which they are ordered is "from smallest to largest" you'll get 123456789...



And with your purpose or intention ... There is always something which has the intention so-and-so. Or conversely, the intention so-and-so is held by something. You have no such something:

How can someting be non-determined and non-random? It can be so if it is an originatory act of will. It's non-random because it was intentionally willed, NOT because it was made inevitable by antecedent causes, and it's non-determined because it was not inevitable.​

"It" is originatory. "It" is also intentionally willed. By? Oh, sorry, "It" is originatory. Watch where you tread. Just stuffing the word "intention" or "will" in there somewhere doesn't get you anywhere.

Something can have the intention so-and-so. The intention so-and-so does then depends on the something, though.

If some intention is said to be my intention, then that intention better depend on anything that I am. If that intention is not a consequence of anything that I am, then I claim no property. If I am not the cause of my intention the I can claim no property.

I think I've mentioned this before but there is a double-meaning to the word "I" here which is causing a problem. "I" can be taken to mean "my body", "my mind" or "my I". Usually it doesn't matter. In this case it absolutely matters, because the intention in question when we are talking about free will is only "my" intention if we are talking about the last of these forms of "I". If the "I" is understood as "my body" or "the content of my mind" (i.e. "my thoughts") then it isn't free will. It's unfree will. For it to be free will, the intention has to be "owned" by the "I", not the mind/body. If you think about the religious connotations of free will, the above should make perfect sense. It is nonsense from a materialistic point of view. Some materialists don't even acknowledge the existence of mind, so "I" has to always mean "my body" to those people. Those quasi-dualistic materialists who acknowledge they have minds do not acknowledge the existence of any metaphysical "I" or human subject.

So you both claim ownership of this intent and don't claim ownership depending on what you mean by "I".

On top of that, there are usages of the word random where it does mean exactly the same as indetermined. What else do you think makes quantum events random?

I don't believe they are truly random. I think they are being determined via hidden mechanisms/variables. My worldview is consistent with there being no such thing as true randomness.

What else do you think makes a fair coin toss random?

Well, since coin tosses are determined by the laws of physics, I don't really see how this supports your case.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

T(X) means the time at which X occurs. B is the action, A is you, C is what determines you.

Alright... this implies that you're not supported by QM. That would mean you need support--in this case, I'm only asking for a very basic level the same--what problem it actually solves.

No problem which exists for you. It solves some problems I have in accounting for all of the evidence available to me.

Why do you need retrocausality in the first place--what does it specifically get you?

I don't "need" retrocausality. I have witnessed retrocausality. Had I not witnessed it, it probably would not appear in any of my speculations.

In other words, I am not really introducing retrocausality as the solution to a problem at all. I'm introducing it because I think I've directly experienced it, and because those experiences also had connections with concepts like free will and paranormal phenomena. The only connection with QM is that it is QM which leaves the door open for retrocausality to exist at all. If physics ruled it out, and I had experienced it, then I'd currently be facing a belief-system-crisis.

That is not the case--you're confusing your own case for retrocausality with free will. What I am saying is that you are lacking in a reason to appeal to retrocausality in the first place. With regards to QM, there's no specific support--just a possibility. With regards to information transfer, there's no current reason to suspect that it is happening. With respect to your argument for free will, we're lacking a problem that it solves.

You are lacking a problem that it solves.

In other words, there doesn't seem to be any useful reason to introduce retrocausality--it doesn't derive from observation...

It does for me.

 

[yy2bggggs]

No problem which exists for you. It solves some problems I have in accounting for all of the evidence available to me.

I have the right to think you're full of it until you show me otherwise. What problem does it solve?

I don't "need" retrocausality. I have witnessed retrocausality.

Did you even read my post?

You are lacking a problem that it solves.

And lacking that, I officially claim that you're full of it. Now I'm officially asking you to prove that I'm an idiot for claiming that.

It does for me.

Now those are weasel words. Your entire last response would have been better not posted--there was essentially no information in it.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I don't "need" retrocausality. I have witnessed retrocausality. Had I not witnessed it, it probably would not appear in any of my speculations.

In other words, I am not really introducing retrocausality as the solution to a problem at all. I'm introducing it because I think I've directly experienced it,

How can you honestly be so confident in something because "you think you've directly experienced it"?

Would you apply that same criteria to "thinking you saw a shadow" on a night when you had a couple drinks, or "thinking you heard a creepy whisper in the bathroom" when you just came home from seeing a scary movie?

 

[yy2bggggs]

How can you honestly be so confident in something because "you think you've directly experienced it"?

I don't know... I'm starting to think there might be something to his retrocausality. Maybe UE's theory makes successful postdictions.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I think I've mentioned this before but there is a double-meaning to the word "I" here which is causing a problem. "I" can be taken to mean "my body", "my mind" or "my I". Usually it doesn't matter. In this case it absolutely matters, because the intention in question when we are talking about free will is only "my" intention if we are talking about the last of these forms of "I". If the "I" is understood as "my body" or "the content of my mind" (i.e. "my thoughts") then it isn't free will. It's unfree will. For it to be free will, the intention has to be "owned" by the "I", not the mind/body. If you think about the religious connotations of free will, the above should make perfect sense. It is nonsense from a materialistic point of view. Some materialists don't even acknowledge the existence of mind, so "I" has to always mean "my body" to those people. Those quasi-dualistic materialists who acknowledge they have minds do not acknowledge the existence of any metaphysical "I" or human subject.

So you both claim ownership of this intent and don't claim ownership depending on what you mean by "I".

I am not so sure if you mean it, but a lot of that sounds as if you were busily distributing property rights to certain terminology. It is not as if free will were owned by the religious, or something.

I don't believe they are truly random. I think they are being determined via hidden mechanisms/variables. My worldview is consistent with there being no such thing as true randomness.

I agree in as much that they wouldn't be truly random if there were such hidden variables.

Well, since coin tosses are determined by the laws of physics, I don't really see how this supports your case.

Oh, when I speak of coin tosses I have more of a statistical (or stochastic?) conception in mind. Not coin tosses that happen in the real world, but coin tosses that serve as illustration in statistical problems. And such a fair coin toss has a probability of 1/2 for either side, and there is nothing that affects this. By definition. Sometimes I point out what I have in mind, sometimes I sweep it under the rug.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I have the right to think you're full of it until you show me otherwise. What problem does it solve?

Did you even read my post?

And lacking that, I officially claim that you're full of it. Now I'm officially asking you to prove that I'm an idiot for claiming that.

This is also getting silly. I believe I have witnessed something that most people here would classify as paranormal and don't believe happens (they're skeptics, after all.) I am not claiming I can prove that this happened, since it was a subjective experience in the first place and I can't recreate/repeat it anyway. If you want to call me "full of it" for saying this then that is your business. What do you expect me to do in response? Refuse to believe my own experiences?

I only bother mentioning things like this because I get repeatedly asked to explain why I believe what I believe. I always make it clear that I realise that this is subjective evidence and no use in either scientific or philosophical arguments which would depend on it being objective evidence.

You are a skeptic. That is fine. That means that you don't believe that what I experienced was real: either I'm lying or I'm deluded. All I am going to say in response to you is that you don't have any grounds for being absolutely certain that I'm lying or deluded. What I am suggesting breaks no laws of physics and does not involve any logical contradictions. What it does suggest is that the materialistic/skeptic/deterministic way of looking at things is an incomplete picture of reality.

Why can't you just agree to disagree with me? PixyMisa has answered this question in the past by saying that my beliefs are harmful both to myself and society. I had you down as somewhat less extreme than this.

Until it happened to me, I wouldn't have believed it either. I don't think you are unreasonable because you are skeptical. All I ask is that I be allowed to believe in the validity of my own personal experiences provided they don't contradict science or other things that I have previously stated that I believe.

 

[Belz...]

That's right, yes. It does not follow that "random" is the opposite of "determined."

Then I suppose the question becomes: what do YOU mean by "random" and what do you mean by "determined".

I believe it is possible for something to be the cause of something else, for that thing not to be caused by anything else, but for that thing also not to be random, because it is intentional.

That doesn't make any sense to me. What do you mean by "intent" if not a previous cause ?

In other words, for me, the opposite of "determined" is "non-determined", where "non-determined" can mean either random or an intentional act of will.

Yes, I understand that. It's also incoherent, because whenever you tried to describe what an act of will is, you invariably refer to caused and uncaused events.

Within the scope of the rest of my belief system, this makes perfect sense. It doesn't make sense to you because you are a materialist and materialism has no place for "intentional acts of will." Under a materialistic ontology there can be no such thing.

What a surprise. You didn't read what I said.

It has NOTHING to do with materialism. Get that through your head.

You are trying to define free will out of existence

I am not defining anything. "P or NOT P" is NOT a definition.

 

[Belz...]

This is also getting silly. I believe I have witnessed something that most people here would classify as paranormal and don't believe happens (they're skeptics, after all.) I am not claiming I can prove that this happened, since it was a subjective experience in the first place and I can't recreate/repeat it anyway. If you want to call me "full of it" for saying this then that is your business. What do you expect me to do in response? Refuse to believe my own experiences?

Yes, actually, that is exactly what you should be doing, and refusing to do so is precisely the root of the argument, here.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I am not so sure if you mean it, but a lot of that sounds as if you were busily distributing property rights to certain terminology. It is not as if free will were owned by the religious, or something.

Libertarian free will has always been associated with religion.

I'm not associating property rights to certain terminology. I am associating agency with certain classes of ontological entities.

If you pick up some new age mystical title like "The Power Of Now" you will find chapters called something like "You are not your mind".

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...lamkAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

The purpose is to lead people to distinguish between the ever-changing content of their mind and the ever-present, never-changing "I" which observes that content. When you ask "how is this intentional act mine?" then the difference is crucial. Free will is owned by you, not your mind. That is why it is free. If it was owned by your mind then it would not be free - it would be the prisoner of your thought processes. Many spiritual practices are deliberately designed to help people become more aware of these distinctions.

Oh, when I speak of coin tosses I have more of a statistical (or stochastic?) conception in mind. Not coin tosses that happen in the real world, but coin tosses that serve as illustration in statistical problems. And such a fair coin toss has a probability of 1/2 for either side, and there is nothing that affects this. By definition. Sometimes I point out what I have in mind, sometimes I sweep it under the rug.

That's a different sort of randomness. It's a compatibilist version of randomness because it is compatible with determinism.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

How can you honestly be so confident in something because "you think you've directly experienced it"?

For exactly the same reason you can honestly be so confident when you say "I have a splitting headache!"

Would you apply that same criteria to "thinking you saw a shadow" on a night when you had a couple drinks, or "thinking you heard a creepy whisper in the bathroom" when you just came home from seeing a scary movie?

The "think" was only there out of convention. I know damned well I experienced it. It was a poor use of language, actually. It would have been better without the "think."

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't know... I'm starting to think there might be something to his retrocausality. Maybe UE's theory makes successful postdictions.

I'm not sure it even qualifies as a theory. It's little more than vague speculation.

For quite a while, it just seemed like various weird things were happening to me. But the weird things built up to a sort of crescendo and eventually I experienced some stuff which was an order of magnitude more weird. It was those extreme events which led me to believe in the existence of macroscopic retrocausality, and why I now believe the preceeding, less weird stuff was also connected to retrocausal effects.

 

[yy2bggggs]

This is also getting silly.

Yes it is. Thanks for realizing it.

You're claiming something about free will, and your defense is this drivel, which is so disconnected from the topic and what I've been asking you as to qualify perfectly as "evasion".

I believe

Don't care. Pay attention to this thread.

I am not claiming I can prove that this happened,

Don't care. Pay attention to what I'm asking for, and your claims in this thread.

If you want to call me "full of it" for saying this then that is your business.

Evasion.

What do you expect me to do in response?

I have no expectations. But I clearly stated what I'm looking for. Your defense isn't an explanation of why retrocausality has anything to do with free will.

Do you still misunderstand what I'm saying with the symbols? Fine, I'll use words. The fact that the time of the act occurs before the "initiation" of the act by the actor has nothing whatsoever to do with whether, or not, the actor himself was predisposed.

Refuse to believe my own experiences?

You fail to understand what the issue is. You're trying to explain free will using retrocausality. Your explanation in itself is impotent

All I am going to say in response to you is that you don't have any grounds for being absolutely certain that I'm lying or deluded.

That's perpetually true about everything, and is also perpetually useless.

What I am suggesting breaks no laws of physics and does not involve any logical contradictions.

You forget that it also does not explain anything.

What it does suggest is that the materialistic/skeptic/deterministic way of looking at things is an incomplete picture of reality.

Irrelevant. Your explanation is also incomplete. It's missing a problem you're solving.

Why can't you just agree to disagree with me?

Because you've yet to give me something to disagree with, and you seem to refuse to do so. You're distracting yourself around the question. I'm not asking you for evidence... I'm asking you for coherency--a connection at all.

You believe that retrocausality explains something about free will. For the sake of "Bob", could you please tell me what it is?

All I ask is that I be allowed to believe in the validity of my own personal experiences provided they don't contradict science or other things that I have previously stated that I believe.

All I ask for is that if you place something into a public forum, you recognize that you are implicitly subjecting it for comments and criticism, and allow me to comment and criticise it. And frankly, even if you don't allow it, you don't quite have a choice anyway.

ETA: I also would love for you to criticize my criticism. Please, I'm begging you, criticize me!

 

[paximperium]

For exactly the same reason you can honestly be so confident when you say "I have a splitting headache!"

The "think" was only there out of convention. I know damned well I experienced it. It was a poor use of language, actually. It would have been better without the "think."

UE: Why don't you just stop there? Stop with the nonsensical philosophy and sad attempts at logic?

What you have basically constructed is a rather blatant apologetic for something you are well aware is so unique as to be unreal, so out there that no one(unless they already believe) would believe you and can never be proven and yet has some major foundation to your beliefs.

You can quote philosophers all day long but in the end, you believe because you believe. End of story. Your rationalization is dishonest to yourself and to others.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Then I suppose the question becomes: what do YOU mean by "random" and what do you mean by "determined".

"Determined" means that something has been caused by something else.

"Random" has two meanings. One is the compatiblist sort of randomness that Lord Emsworth refered to: fair dice throws. I'm no more interested in that than I am in compatibilist free will. The second meaning of "random" is metaphysical and it refers to quantum events - or at least it would refer to quantum events if those events really are determined by absolutely nothing at all, as some people believe. NOTE: "will" is NOT an event. It is a cause, but not an event. A non-physical cause. My own position on metaphysical randomness is that it might exist - it may be the case that some quantum events aren't determined by anything at all - but it may also be the case that there is no such thing as metaphysical randomness because every single quantum event is determined by something, even if we can't ever tell what it was. That something can include will as well as physical states.

That doesn't make any sense to me. What do you mean by "intent" if not a previous cause ?

I mean exactly what is happening when the suicidal jumper finally jumps. You, being a determinist, believe that this moment is determined by previous physical states (or possibly by quantum randomness if you are an indeterminist who doesn't believe in free will.) I don't accept this. I am saying that the moment is (or at least can be) determined by the free will of the jumper - by the intent of the agent of free will.

Why doesn't that make sense to you? The only reason it could not make sense to you is that you are a materialist - that you don't have any concept of an agent of free will which is capable of intent. You can't define "intent" or "will" in terms of anything else. It can't be reduced, either linguistically or metaphysically, to anything else.

Yes, I understand that. It's also incoherent, because whenever you tried to describe what an act of will is, you invariably refer to caused and uncaused events.

NO I DON'T. I don't refer to anything except intent/will. I do NOT try to define it in terms of either caused or uncaused previous events. I have repeatedly explained this to you. It is you who need to define it in terms of caused or uncaused events, not me. Why? Because you are a materialist.

 

[Belz...]

For exactly the same reason you can honestly be so confident when you say "I have a splitting headache!"

Sounds like an Arnold Schwarzenegger quote.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes, actually, that is exactly what you should be doing, and refusing to do so is precisely the root of the argument, here.

The it comes down to a disagreement over freedom of religion: you are trying to demand that I deny the validity of my own religious experiences. What is your ethical justification for such a radical demand?

And YES that is exactly what is at the root of the argument. My complaint against people like Dawkins and Randi is that they go too far. They aren't content with their own skepticism and atheism. They are trying to extinguish religion completely and I do not believe they are justified in trying to do so. Nobody has the right to expect me to deny my own religious experiences, especially not a bunch of philosophically-naive ideological extremists.