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Dawkins vs Sartre/ existentialism vs biological determinism

24

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    roosh wrote: »
    I'm moving this from the bottom because I think it is critical to either my point, or my understanding the error in my thinking and I don't want it to get lost among the other points:


    OK, so the change in colour on the detector plate would not occur without the particle. How does the particle cause this change in colour on the plate? What does the particle do to cause this change or how do the plate and the particle interact to cause the change in colour?
    Quantum Theory doesn't give a mechanical account like you want since it seems not to be mechanical. The device has some degree of freedom which can become correlated with the particle. The event occurs when a property of the device has been what is called superselected, but superselection itself is not a mechanical process.
    This would just seem to point to an incompleteness in the theory
    In any theory. Remember this comes from the Bell inequality violating nature of Non-Boolean events which is just a fact. This isn't some deficiency in QM, no logical or mathematical account is going to be able to close this gap.
    in our discussion on time you referred to the success of QFT as evidence for the validity of the Einsteinian interpretation of time. Am I correct in saying that this discussion on freedom of choice relates directly to QFT?
    QFT is a quantum theory so it is present there as well.
    I would suggest a potential issue with the paper is something that the authors themselves allude to.

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.05684.pdf
    I won't pursue this because you seem not to understand what they mean. I can only retain a hold on so many tangents without the posts getting too long. Priming doesn't really relate to the issue here. The people could be completely primed to the point where they are drugged into picking one option specifically and it wouldn't affect the point QM is making. It's not really going to be possible to discuss this here as you don't know what Contextuality is as this whole priming stuff doesn't matter in relation to it.

    In a simplified form it does not matter if people can be primed or controlled, as long as there is freedom of choice in measurement settings. Priming as such removes choice in controlled conditions, but that doesn't imply its absence in general.
    Thank you. This is another piece of information which will help me to do some research. I'll try and put this to a proponent of Superdeterminism and see what response they give.
    Most people who talk about superdeterminism online are not physicists and don't fully understand the term. They usually think it is absolute determinism like you did.
    I know that I might come across as a science denier but I wouldn't class myself as such. There are certain conclusions within scientific theories that I would question and challenge on the basis of reason and logic
    But why? They have enormous amounts of evidence, the evidence matching predictions flow naturally from their assumptions. What's really the rational motivation here? I don't think there is one. Just like in the Relativity thread you seem to think the world simply "must" be a certain way and will look for any angle where by possibly that way isn't utterly disproven. You at least have to admit your case is way way weaker than the standard one. Considering the standard one has no logical flaws or evidential gaps to me there is no actual reason to question these conclusions except that you place your own gut intuition over scientific accounts. Which to me is a form of science denial.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    Quantum Theory doesn't give a mechanical account like you want since it seems not to be mechanical. The device has some degree of freedom which can become correlated with the particle. The event occurs when a property of the device has been what is called superselected, but superselection itself is not a mechanical process.
    It's not that I want a mechanical account of what happens, I'm trying to get a handle one what QM tells us and what it doesn't tell us, to see if there are any inferences we can make.

    So, the device becomes correlated with the particle and this causes the colour to change on the plate. Prior to becoming correlated does the particle exist in the Universe in some sense?

    Fourier wrote: »
    In any theory. Remember this comes from the Bell inequality violating nature of Non-Boolean events which is just a fact. This isn't some deficiency in QM, no logical or mathematical account is going to be able to close this gap.
    And no logical or mathematical account is being proposed to close this gap by way of offering a description of free will. The argument is that there is an absence of free will so, if this is true, no logical or mathematical account could offer such a description.

    Further, this "freedom of choice" is allegedly something which we all possess and we all exercise on a regular basis. Therefore, we don't need a logical or mathematical account of it, we can explore it ourselves experientially and offer a description of it. Not based on logic or mathematics but based on applying conceptual labels to brute facts about experience. For example, we have labels such as "thought" to describe a mental phenomenon with which we are all familiar. This isn't a logical deduction, it's simply applying conceptual labels to experience.

    Fourier wrote: »
    QFT is a quantum theory so it is present there as well.
    And so this is pertinent to our discussion on time.

    Fourier wrote: »
    I won't pursue this because you seem not to understand what they mean. I can only retain a hold on so many tangents without the posts getting too long. Priming doesn't really relate to the issue here. The people could be completely primed to the point where they are drugged into picking one option specifically and it wouldn't affect the point QM is making. It's not really going to be possible to discuss this here as you don't know what Contextuality is as this whole priming stuff doesn't matter in relation to it.
    That's fair enough. I would contend that the issues I highlighted with the study remain:
    • the authors point out their difficulty in ascertaining the cuase behind participants choices
    • they pick very simplified substitutes for the variables in the QM experiment which I don't think is fully representative of the decision in which freedom of choice is in question.

    If, as you say, this whole priming stuff doesn't matter in relation to QM, then QM must have a very different notion of freedom of choice which is wholly unrelated to the notion of free will because priming certainly has very real implications for the notion of "freedom of choice" which is associated with "free will.


    In a simplified form it does not matter if people can be primed or controlled, as long as there is freedom of choice in measurement settings. Priming as such removes choice in controlled conditions, but that doesn't imply its absence in general.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Most people who talk about superdeterminism online are not physicists and don't fully understand the term. They usually think it is absolute determinism like you did.
    I haven't found many proponents on forums like these but Sabine Hossenfelder is pretty active on twitter and Gerard t'Hooft is surprisingly responsive to email.

    Fourier wrote: »
    But why? They have enormous amounts of evidence, the evidence matching predictions flow naturally from their assumptions. What's really the rational motivation here? I don't think there is one. Just like in the Relativity thread you seem to think the world simply "must" be a certain way and will look for any angle where by possibly that way isn't utterly disproven. You at least have to admit your case is way way weaker than the standard one. Considering the standard one has no logical flaws or evidential gaps to me there is no actual reason to question these conclusions except that you place your own gut intuition over scientific accounts. Which to me is a form of science denial.
    I completely accept that my case/position is far far weaker than the accepted, mainstream interpretation. My reason for questioning such things is because of the representation of some of the physical theories in popular literature and videos. I know your position on those, but that is how I initially began to consume physics content as it was the most accessible to me.

    That lead me to start a thread in the philosophy forum on the question of "the present moment" to which another active poster from the physics section [who was also party to that other thread with us] responded citing relativity. Our discussions went on for quite a long time mostly with me thinking I had found a contradiction in relativity and him pointing where I was going wrong. I have since learned and accepted that relativity is completely internally consistent, I just question some of its unwritten assumptions and conclusions.

    That same poster was, at the time at least, a proponent of the Block Universe, saying that it was a necessary conclusion of relativity - which I am inclined to agree. I know that you don't, and that is a point I would like to raise in that other thread. But, that poster was a staunch proponent of it and our discussion went into great depth and the issues as I see them, were not satisfactorily resolved - that issue is how such a block universe could not give rise to the observation of relative motion.

    There are further issues, as I raised, which I have never really received a satisfactory answer to, which is why I maintain the position I do.


    With regard to free will, I certainly am not alone in my questioning of it. Are you familiar with any of Sam Harris's work on the topic?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    roosh wrote: »
    It's not that I want a mechanical account of what happens, I'm trying to get a handle one what QM tells us and what it doesn't tell us, to see if there are any inferences we can make.

    So, the device becomes correlated with the particle and this causes the colour to change on the plate. Prior to becoming correlated does the particle exist in the Universe in some sense?
    It depends on what you mean by in the universe. It is not in spacetime, which makes it difficult to discuss "prior" for the particle.
    roosh wrote: »
    And no logical or mathematical account is being proposed to close this gap by way of offering a description of free will.
    Of course, as I said an explanation of free choice it is outside the theory. It's a gap you cannot close.

    I'm being genuinely honest here, but this is a repeated pattern where you seem to have a problem following an argument. My entire point is that nothing is going to close the gap as it is due to the Non-Booleanity, to then turn around and say "no account is being proposed" as some kind of counterpoint is nonsensical as there being no account is the point. I noticed this by reading over discussions with Morbert where you seemed to not follow him at all. It is very tiresome to make precise points only for the other person to forget the point at one post's depth.
    That's fair enough. I would contend that the issues I highlighted with the study remain:
    • the authors point out their difficulty in ascertaining the cuase behind participants choices
    • they pick very simplified substitutes for the variables in the QM experiment which I don't think is fully representative of the decision in which freedom of choice is in question.
    "Simplified substitutes for the variables in QM"? Do you actually understand what the paper is doing? Do you know what contextuality is? This makes little sense to me. As I said this is not going to be productive since you seem to not grasp the actual theory here.
    If, as you say, this whole priming stuff doesn't matter in relation to QM, then QM must have a very different notion of freedom of choice which is wholly unrelated to the notion of free will
    It's not wholly unrelated, it's just that the existence of priming doesn't affect it.
    I just question some of its unwritten assumptions and conclusions.
    Why though? It's internally coherent and matches experiment. What's the reason for questioning these things? Outside of it just not matching your intuition/being a satisfying account what's the actual rational reason?
    That same poster was, at the time at least, a proponent of the Block Universe, saying that it was a necessary conclusion of relativity - which I am inclined to agree. I know that you don't, and that is a point I would like to raise in that other thread. But, that poster was a staunch proponent of it and our discussion went into great depth and the issues as I see them, were not satisfactorily resolved - that issue is how such a block universe could not give rise to the observation of relative motion.
    I've read Morbert's posts and this is quite a distortion of them. He said that the block universe is the cleanest representation of the formalism of relativity alone. I agree with him on that.

    Your points that the block universe cannot give rise to relative motion are nonsensical. Sorry but they're just mathematically false. It's an example of the kind of thing where I don't understand how you are even reaching your conclusion.
    There are further issues, as I raised, which I have never really received a satisfactory answer to, which is why I maintain the position I do.
    The problem is I'm not sure what a satisfactory answer involves to you. I've had students ask me similar questions, raise a few objections and then within about half an hour at most "get it". You have taken ten years. Some of the stuff on the relativity thread is very difficult to understand genuinely especially the relative motion in the block universe stuff. I've shown it to a few people and even they cannot understand it.

    Genuinely I think you just have a problem moving past your intuitions.

    Here is my major issue and can you please answer it. Why don't you just learn the theories? Why do you start with philosophical prejudices and quote mining. Why not learn the theory and then discuss its philosophy. What you're doing is like trying to discuss flaws in compiler design without knowing how to program. You're claims of not needing to actual know about Non-Booleanity are just to be honest arrogant: "I can discuss and dismantle this stuff without knowing it".


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    Let me put this in a simpler way. Forget David Blane, Sam Harris and whoever and every other philosophical preconception.

    QM says that the choice of experimental settings ultimately cannot be explained. That's part of QM.

    You want to ditch this and say the choice is predetermined.

    From Bell's theorem we know that a deterministic account of certain multiparticle experiments must involve superdeterminism.

    Thus the alternative to free choice is superdeterminism. There is no way out of that. You are either proposing free choice or superdeterminism.

    Superdeterminism has several consequences with no evidence and requires ludicrous fine tuning and there is no working superdeterministic theory.

    Thus we should go with free choice and regular QM. There's no rational reason to prefer superdeterminism here outside of pre-existing philosophical prejudice.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    It depends on what you mean by in the universe. It is not in spacetime, which makes it difficult to discuss "prior" for the particle.
    As stated, "in the Universe" simply means that it exists in some sense and is part of the Universe. There is no need to refer to spacetime with respect to its basic existence.

    I would contend that it must exist in some sense in the Universe because if it was completely non-existent then it couldn't correlate with anything.

    Would you accept this?

    Fourier wrote: »
    Of course, as I said an explanation of free choice it is outside the theory. It's a gap you cannot close.

    I'm being genuinely honest here, but this is a repeated pattern where you seem to have a problem following an argument. My entire point is that nothing is going to close the gap as it is due to the Non-Booleanity, to then turn around and say "no account is being proposed" as some kind of counterpoint is nonsensical as there being no account is the point. I noticed this by reading over discussions with Morbert where you seemed to not follow him at all. It is very tiresome to make precise points only for the other person to forget the point at one post's depth.
    The point I was making is that I am not trying to close the gap, certainly not with a logical or mathematical account, so I'm not sure why you needed to state that.

    I interpreted your statement to mean that you believed I was trying to close the gap using a logical account of free will. I would argue that the there can be no logical account because free will/freedom of choice doesn't exist - which is our point of contention.

    Fourier wrote: »
    "Simplified substitutes for the variables in QM"? Do you actually understand what the paper is doing? Do you know what contextuality is? This makes little sense to me. As I said this is not going to be productive since you seem to not grasp the actual theory here.
    I'm interpreting the term contextuality from this part of the paper:
    [quote=Snow Queen is Evil and Beautiful: Experimental Evidence for Probabilistic Contextuality in Human Choices[/quote]
    It is commonplace to say that human behavior is context-dependent. What is usually meant by this is that one’s response to stimulus S (performance in task S) depends on other stimuli (tasks) S0. Asked to explain the meaning of LINE, one’sanswer will depend on whether the word is preceded by CHORUS or OPENING[/quote]

    Which I believe sounds remarkably close to what is described in Thinking, fast and slow
    “What is the first word that comes to your mind when you hear the word DAY?” The researchers tallied the frequency of responses, such as “night,” “sunny,” or “long.” In the 1980s, psychologists discovered that exposure to a word causes immediate and measurable changes in the ease with which many related words can be evoked. If you have recently seen or heard the word EAT, you are temporarily more likely to complete the word fragment SO_P as SOUP than as SOAP. The opposite would happen, of course, if you had just seen WASH. We call this a priming effect and say that the idea of EAT primes
    the idea of SOUP, and that WASH primes SOAP

    This, to my mind, appears like a very different aspect of priming - yes, that is what it appears they are testing, based on what they have outlined - which is not representative of the decision an experimenter would make when choosing the settings in an experiment. It sounds more like an issue pertaining to how certain words are interpreted or the propensity to recognise certain characteristics when subjects have been primed.

    It appears to ignore all other and more significant manifestations of priming which results from every single aspect of our lives, from the family we are born into, the language we learn, the culture we grow up in, our education, our personal experiences, and myriad other influences from our everyday environment.

    Fourier wrote: »
    It's not wholly unrelated, it's just that the existence of priming doesn't affect it.
    Priming affects the decisions people make without people realising it has affected them. That is, decisions they believe they have made freely have been directed by some priming factor in their environment, unbeknownst to them. In this respect it is very pertinent to the question of freedom of choice. Perhaps not the "freedom of choice" that QM incorporates but certainly the freedom of choice that people supposedly exercise when making decisions and choices.

    This extends beyond matching the characters in a story with their characteristics and there is no "correct" answer.

    I may not have fully understood the papers, but this is how it appears to me based on the similarities to cases I am familiar with.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Why though? It's internally coherent and matches experiment. What's the reason for questioning these things? Outside of it just not matching your intuition/being a satisfying account what's the actual rational reason?
    With regard to relativity, the reasons have been alluded to here. With regard to free will, the incoherency of the concept and the absence of it upon investigation.

    Fourier wrote: »
    I've read Morbert's posts and this is quite a distortion of them. He said that the block universe is the cleanest representation of the formalism of relativity alone. I agree with him on that.
    Have you read Morbert's posts from ca. 10 years ago.
    Fourier wrote: »
    Your points that the block universe cannot give rise to relative motion are nonsensical. Sorry but they're just mathematically false. It's an example of the kind of thing where I don't understand how you are even reaching your conclusion.
    Mathematics can't rescue motion from the block Universe. It is a particular interpretation of the mathematics which leads to the concept of the block universe in the first place.

    In the block universe, objects exist as worldlines, where all points on the worldline co-exist within the block structure and are equally real. This means, for you and I, what we consider as our "past" is still where it was and our future is already written, so to speak. All those moments from birth to death co-exist within the block structure. This is true for all objects in the Universe. The key issue is that all of these worldlines are frozen within the block. The worldlines do not move.

    An analogy that is often used is that of a roll of movie film, where each moment exists as a frame on the roll of film. Every object could be represented in this way, including ourselves. Here is the issue:

    Imagine putting yourself into one of those frames, one of those single moments on your worldline. What happens? The answer is nothing, because that moment is frozen on the worldline, just like all the other moments for everything in the Universe. There can be no relative motion in such a structure.

    Mathematics cannot rescue this situation because we arrive at this structure by way of a particular interpretation of the mathematics.

    Did you read Morbert's proposed solution to this?


    Fourier wrote: »
    The problem is I'm not sure what a satisfactory answer involves to you. I've had students ask me similar questions, raise a few objections and then within about half an hour at most "get it". You have taken ten years. Some of the stuff on the relativity thread is very difficult to understand genuinely especially the relative motion in the block universe stuff. I've shown it to a few people and even they cannot understand it.

    Genuinely I think you just have a problem moving past your intuitions.
    A satisfactory answer would be one that can account for relative motion in a block universe.

    I think part of why it is difficult to understand is because it is completely counter-intuitive to anyone for whom relativity has become intuitive.

    Morbert was certainly able to understand it as he attempted to formulate a solution to it, which sounded plausible but wasn't.


    Fourier wrote: »
    Here is my major issue and can you please answer it. Why don't you just learn the theories? Why do you start with philosophical prejudices and quote mining. Why not learn the theory and then discuss its philosophy. What you're doing is like trying to discuss flaws in compiler design without knowing how to program. You're claims of not needing to actual know about Non-Booleanity are just to be honest arrogant: "I can discuss and dismantle this stuff without knowing it".
    I started where I started because of the sequence of events that lead me to where I was. My starting position was a reflection of the philosophical influences up to that point. I started a thread on here which brought me into contact with relativity. At the time, learning the theory in any formal sense wasn't an option and it hasn't really been a viable option in the meantime.

    Believe it or not, I have learned an immense amount from all the discussions I've had, and from Morbert in particular, to the point where I feel I would be able to identify when someone is making the same mistake I was, with regard to length contraction and time dilation, and would possibly be able to explain where they are - where I was - going wrong.

    As I said, I no longer argue against the self-consistency of relativity.

    Fourier wrote: »
    QM says that the choice of experimental settings ultimately cannot be explained. That's part of QM.
    That we cannot explain how we arrive at a decision, on which experimental settings to choose does, not mean that WE freely choose those settings.
    Fourier wrote: »
    You want to ditch this and say the choice is predetermined.
    We don't have to go that far yet. We can start by asking the question, how is the decision arrived at? I'm not asking you to quote QM on this because we know that QM says it cannot be explained, I'm asking you as an experimenter, what the process is, that leads you to choosing those settings. This we can drill down on and this we don't need QM to tell us what is and what isn't possible. You can observe this process within yourself and explain it, as far as you can.
    Fourier wrote: »
    From Bell's theorem we know that a deterministic account of certain multiparticle experiments must involve superdeterminism.
    Are we considered multi-particle experiments? Can we not explore the notion of free will separately from QM and see if it still stands?
    Fourier wrote: »
    Thus the alternative to free choice is superdeterminism. There is no way out of that. You are either proposing free choice or superdeterminism.
    A key aspect to the idea of free will and free choice is that we are the ones who make the decision i.e. the decision is a result of our will. What is the process by which such decisions are made? Again, I'm not asking for what QM says, because obviously QM says that it cannot be explained. But when you, as an experimenter, choose something, how do you go about making that decision?


    We can use the simple experiment suggested earlier:

    While paying attention to the process:
    Think of a movie and post the name here.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Superdeterminism has several consequences with no evidence and requires ludicrous fine tuning and there is no working superdeterministic theory.
    Could you suggest any resources on this (that I will inevitably butcher :pac:) just to try and get an idea of it. I've heard that backwards causality is one such aspect that gets cited, but I know that some superdeterminists dispute this.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Let me put this in a simpler way. Forget David Blane, Sam Harris and whoever and every other philosophical preconception.
    I find Sam Harris to be a very cogent speaker on many issues, not least the subject of free will. He also comes at it from the first-person empirical approach and I find his explanation of the decision making process to be quite accurate.

    With regard to Derren Brown and Keith Barry, if they do influence people in the way they claim to, then it certainly has repercussions for free will.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    roosh wrote: »
    As stated, "in the Universe" simply means that it exists in some sense and is part of the Universe. There is no need to refer to spacetime with respect to its basic existence.

    I would contend that it must exist in some sense in the Universe because if it was completely non-existent then it couldn't correlate with anything.

    Would you accept this?
    Yes it exists.
    I interpreted your statement to mean that you believed I was trying to close the gap using a logical account of free will. I would argue that the there can be no logical account because free will/freedom of choice doesn't exist - which is our point of contention.
    This is very garbled. If freedom of choice doesn't exist then you should be able to close the gap by explaining how the experimental setting was arrived at.
    QM says you won't be able to close that gap because of freedom of choice.

    Do you see? The gap to be closed here is how the experimental setting gets chosen. QM says you can't do this due to freedom of choice. If you remove freedom of choice you should be able to explain the ultimate origin of the setting and close the gap.
    Have you read Morbert's posts from ca. 10 years ago.
    Yes.
    Did you read Morbert's solution to this?
    Yes. And I cannot understand your objection
    A satisfactory answer would be one that can account for relative motion in a block universe.
    I guess I just don't see what's wrong with Morbert's answer. The 4D block is isomorphic to a foliation of 3D surfaces. That explains it for me.
    We don't have to go that far yet. We can start by asking the question, how is the decision arrived at? I'm not asking you to quote QM on this because we know that QM says it cannot be explained, I'm asking you as an experimenter, what is the process that leads you to choosing those settings. This we can drill down on and this we don't need QM to tell us what is and what isn't possible. You can observe this process within yourself and explain it, as far as you can.
    Nobody has done so. Looking deep down enough will terminate in QM.

    The path you're ultimately aiming for is that psychology or just personal introspection will contradict QM. This immediately implies (and you have no way out of this) that a human could be used in switch settings on an Aspect experiment to violate QM's correlation bounds.

    I'll believe it when I see it. From experimental evidence, not from arguments from TV magicians or introspection or philosophical Aristotelian exhaustion techniques. Until then I believe QM more, not a possible future superdeterministic theory.
    Could you suggest any resources on this (that I will inevitably buther :pac:) just to try and get an idea of it. I've heard that backwards causality is one such aspect that gets cited, but I know that some superdeterminists dispute this.
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1355219804000048
    https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.4119

    Let me just ask the basic question: Do you ultimately think the world is deterministic. Forget about Free Will and all that. Let's just take the basic point of determinism.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    Yes it exists.
    So, we have the detector plate prior to correlation with the particle and we have the plate post correlation which has changed colour.

    Is the change in colour caused by the correlation with the particle?

    Fourier wrote: »
    This is very garbled. If freedom of choice doesn't exist then you should be able to close the gap by explaining how the experimental setting was arrived at.
    QM says you won't be able to close that gap because of freedom of choice.

    Do you see? The gap to be closed here is how the experimental setting gets chosen. QM says you can't do this due to freedom of choice. If you remove freedom of choice you should be able to explain the ultimate origin of the setting and close the gap.
    Yes, but it doesn't require a logical or mathematical explanation. Ultimately, no conceptual explanation can account for what is experiential. Again, the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. All that can be done is point in the direction of an experience so that it becomes a shared experience. Just as no logical or mathematical account can substitute for the experience of tasting honey.

    Again, we can try that simple experiment:

    While paying close attention to the process - think of a movie and post the name.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Yes.


    Yes. And I cannot understand your objection


    I guess I just don't see what's wrong with Morbert's answer. The 4D block is isomorphic to a foliation of 3D surfaces. That explains it for me.
    Did you read his solution that relied on human consciousness to account for the apparent motion that we observe? Meaning that motion itself is just a fabrication of the mind?

    The issue with this foliation of 3D surfaces is that these too are frozen in the block structure. The experience we have of "time advancing from moment to moment" does not happen in this structure.

    Again, we can bring it back to a very simplified example of universe which consists solely of two objects moving relative to each other. Let's say that it's you and I. In this block Universe our worldlines are stretched out through the block with every moment of our lives on that worldline. Each of those moments are frozen, they do not move in the 4D structure. Our worldlines are at angles to each other.

    This is where we can use the roll of film analogy. Our worldlines are stretched out through the block like a roll of film stretched out. Every moment on our worldline is represented as a frame on the roll of film - static and not moving.

    Jump into one of those frames on the film, representing a moment in your life. You would be frozen in that moment. There would be no experience of aging and no experience of motion.

    This can be foliated into a series of 3D slices but it doesn't change the fact that one each of those slices you and I are both frozen and unmoving.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Nobody has done so. Looking deep down enough will terminate in QM.

    The path you're ultimately aiming for is that psychology or just personal introspection will contradict QM. This immediately implies (and you have no way out of this) that a human could be used in switch settings on an Aspect experiment to violate QM's correlation bounds.

    I'll believe it when I see it. From experimental evidence, not from arguments from TV magicians or introspection or philosophical Aristotelian exhaustion techniques. Until then I believe QM more, not a possible future superdeterministic theory.
    That's the beauty of it, you can see it. In fact, only you can see it for yourself. No one can reason it out because no amount of logic or mathematics can give rise to what is something that can only be experienced through first-person empiricism.

    Buddhist philosophy has a lot to say on this and sets out first-person empirical practices for observing it.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Again,very much appreciated!
    Fourier wrote: »
    Let me just ask the basic question: Do you ultimately think the world is deterministic. Forget about Free Will and all that. Let's just take the basic point of determinism.
    At the fundamental level of reality, the reality behind the veil to paraphrase d'Espagnat, I'm not sure concepts such as determinism and indeterminism apply.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    roosh wrote: »
    So, we have the detector plate prior to correlation with the particle and we have the plate post correlation which has changed colour.

    Is the change in colour caused by the correlation with the particle?
    It would not occur without the particle. If you mean that by "caused" then yes. But there is no spatiotemporal process.
    Yes, but it doesn't require a logical or mathematical explanation. Ultimately, no conceptual explanation can account for what is experiential. Again, the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. All that can be done is point in the direction of an experience so that it becomes a shared experience. Just as no logical or mathematical account can substitute for the experience of tasting honey.
    What are you talking about? I'm talking about the experimental setting, like a polarizer sheet in an Aspect experiment being set to 120 degrees. I'm not sure what that has to do with tasting honey.
    The issue with this foliation of 3D surfaces is that these too are frozen in the block structure. The experience we have of "time advancing from moment to moment" does not happen in this structure.
    The embedding isn't frozen though, it has a continuous parameter that varies.
    This can be foliated into a series of 3D slices but it doesn't change the fact that one each of those slices you and I are both frozen and unmoving.
    You're basically just giving Zeno's paradox. "How can things move if moments are frozen?"
    That's the beauty of it, you can see it. In fact, only you can see it for yourself. No one can reason it out because no amount of logic or mathematics can give rise to what is something that can only be experienced through first-person empiricism.

    Buddhist philosophy has a lot to say on this and sets out first-person empirical practices for observing it.
    I will trust experiment over "beautiful" introspective philosophies. I think that might be the difficulty you have with physics. For you Experience > Evidence. If what you are saying is right you can use a human to violate QM's correlation inequality bounds. Nobody has demonstrated this, I don't believe it. No matter what meditative self-analysis you propose.
    At the fundamental level of reality, the reality behind the veil to paraphrase d'Espagnat, I'm not sure concepts such as determinism and indeterminism apply.
    Then why do you think our choices are determined if things "behind the veil" don't have to be?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    It would not occur without the particle. If you mean that by "caused" then yes. But there is no spatiotemporal process.


    How I would be inclined to talk about the change in colour being "caused", is to say that we have a detector plate which changes colour. Clearly we can identify a moment prior to the change in colour and after the change in colour. We don't need to assume that such spatiotemporal concepts apply to the particle at the fundamental level. We can focus on the change in colour of the plate - having established that the particle exists in some sense in the Universe.

    For this event to occur, for the plate to change colour, something must happen to the plate. We don't need to be able to specify what that occurrence is and we don't need to provide a detailed description of the process, we can simply conclude that something must happen. The alternative is that nothing happens and the plate doesn't change colour. This term "something happens" (apart from being the name of an 80/90s pop band) is a place holder that we can use in contrast to the alternative (and lesser known pop band) "nothing happens".

    Something happens and there is a change in the colour of the plate. We would say that this something happening causes the change in colour of the plate. Again, if nothing happens then there is no change in colour i.e. no change in colour is "caused".

    So, with the change in colour of the plate, either it spontaneously changes colour by itself, owing to its internal dynamics or something else happens. We have established that it is not down to the internal dynamics of the plate itself, so we can focus on that something else.

    You have said that the change in colour would not occur without the particle so we can ask, prior to the change in colour, does the particle exist in some sense? Again, we don't need to apply spatiotemporal concepts to the particle, we can ask this question in reference to the receptor plate. Observing the detector plate prior to the change in colour we can ask "does the particle exist in some sense?"

    We can ask that question at various moments throughout the experiment to coincide with other events. We can ask it prior to switching on the machine that generates the particle, we can ask it after the machine is switched on, and we can ask it at various intervals throughout the process until the plate changes colour.

    The answer will either be yes or no.


    So, imagining a moment immediately prior to the plate changing colour, does the particle exist in some sense?



    Fourier wrote: »
    What are you talking about? I'm talking about the experimental setting, like a polarizer sheet in an Aspect experiment being set to 120 degrees. I'm not sure what that has to do with tasting honey.
    Ultimately, we are talking about a first-person, subjective experience - the decision about which setting to use in the experiment. There is no possible mathematical or logical account that can be given for this.

    Tasting honey is another first-person subjective experience. There is no possible mathematical or logical account that can be given for this. The only way that this can be explored or tested is through first-person empirical investigation. The same is true for free will.

    Fourier wrote: »
    The embedding isn't frozen though, it has a continuous parameter that varies.
    Before we get onto this particular parameter and how its variance gives rise to relative motion in a frozen block structure, am I correct in saying that each embedding i.e. each 3D slice would have a fixed value for this parameter; that the variance in the parameter applies when we consider a number of points along the world line?

    To try and clarify, if we take your worldline/worldtube and pick three different points along it, corresponding to different stages in your life. Does each point have its own value for this parameter with each of the three points having a different value, thus giving rise to this variance?

    Fourier wrote: »
    You're basically just giving Zeno's paradox. "How can things move if moments are frozen?"
    There are certainly major similarities to Zeno's paradox of the Arrow. I can't say for sure that they are absolutely identical, but the block universe, with its static and unchanging worldlines, certainly seems to embody Zeno's paradox.

    Fourier wrote: »
    I will trust experiment over "beautiful" introspective philosophies. I think that might be the difficulty you have with physics. For you Experience > Evidence. If what you are saying is right you can use a human to violate QM's correlation inequality bounds. Nobody has demonstrated this, I don't believe it. No matter what meditative self-analysis you propose.
    There are plenty of studies in the field of psychology, most notably behavioural and evolutionary psychology, which have major implications for the notion of freedom of choice. There is an abundance of evidence which points to how our environment dictates our choices and behaviour.

    In fact, arguably, the only "evidence" in favour of free will is our own misguided perception about ourselves - bearing in mind that QM doesn't offer evidence of free will, it is established by way of logical necessity.

    As the paper you cited identifies "with no additional information about the respondents, it is difficult to understand what could lead a person not to follow the simple instructions" i.e. to understand the choice they made.

    Doesn't d'Espagnat talk about this in Veiled Reality? There is no getting away from the first-person subjective experience. The relative positions of the planets or that of a pointer on its dial, or that of the change in colour of a detector plate are all elements of our experience. In fact, first-person subjective experience is the only way in which knowledge can be acquired.


    Fourier wrote: »
    Then why do you think our choices are determined if things "behind the veil" don't have to be?
    Because pretty much every aspect of our lives is determined by preceding causes.

    We don't choose to be born, much less to be born as humans. We don't choose our sex. We don't choose the culture into which we are born or the language that we will speak. We don't choose to start school and become educated in specific subjects. By this time, the seeds are sown and much of the decisions we make in life will already be dictated by these prior conditions. But the causes don't stop there, we are continually being influenced by our environment in ways that we don't usually realise.

    With regard to an experimenter choosing the settings in an experiment, this decision is preceded by the decision to enter this field of research, which is preceded by the decision to study physics, which is preceded by the subjects taken in school, which is preceded by being born, which is preceded by his parents procreating, which is preceded by....right back to the big bang.

    EDIT: We can isolate any of these decision points and drill down into the causes the precede it.

    The decision making process is very much open to empirical investigation. The problem with third party studies is that "with no additional information about the respondents, it is difficult to understand what could lead a person [to make the decision they made]". We can however make empirical observations of this process on a first-person basis and we have more information than anyone about what leads us to make the decisions we make, bearing in mind the influences stretch back to our childhood.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    We can ask that question at various moments throughout the experiment to coincide with other events. We can ask it prior to switching on the machine that generates the particle, we can ask it after the machine is switched on, and we can ask it at various intervals throughout the process until the plate changes colour.

    The answer will either be yes or no.


    So, imagining a moment immediately prior to the plate changing colour, does the particle exist in some sense?
    The particle seems to have a non-spatiotemporal existence, so it doesn't really exist prior or after to the colour change although it does exist.
    There is no possible mathematical or logical account that can be given for this.
    So you agree with QM that no mathematical or logical account can be given for the choice of observable?
    bearing in mind that QM doesn't offer evidence of free will, it is established by way of logical necessity.
    It does, you just have a funny notion of "evidence" that's essentially unscientific. QM has postulates that have implications, free choice being one. All evidence we have found is consistent with those postulates and their implications.

    If QM was wrong about this one would not obtain Tsirelson's bound. That's a fact. To me that is evidence. I've no idea what you mean by no evidence since that is direct evidence.

    However several times in this and the other threads it's clear that consistency and scientific evidence aren't enough for you, you need something else that I think lies outside science.

    Take free choice in QM. The scientific case is clear, QM implies Free Choice, Free choice implies Tsirelson's bound. Go do an experiment on Tsirelson's bound and you will it will be confirmed. The alternative is superdeterminism which has no evidence and plenty contradicting it.

    For you this isn't enough. It isn't "evidence". I don't know what is as far as you're concerned. Almost direct unassailable experience of the truth like a god? For this reason I don't think you should bother with science. The fact that consistency and evidence for a theory doesn't budge your opinion makes it clear you require something else and since science is only about internal consistency and empirical evidence you're not going to get it. I'll say more below.
    There are certainly major similarities to Zeno's paradox of the Arrow. I can't say for sure that they are absolutely identical, but the block universe, with its static and unchanging worldlines, certainly seems to embody Zeno's paradox.
    It's just Zeno's paradox. I suggest you read the literature on that since your objections don't have much to do with the block universe specifically, but with Zeno related issues.
    We can however make empirical observations of this process on a first-person basis and we have more information than anyone about what leads us to make the decisions we make, bearing in mind the influences stretch back to our childhood.
    This ends the discussion for me. You've basically said there can't be a logical, mathematical and now (via the removal of third party methods) scientific investigation of this. The scientific evidence is consistent with QM, but you say your personal reflections are not. For me there is little to say then because I can only talk about evidenced scientific theories not your internal experience. As I said above for you it is just "Gut Intuition" > "Science".

    This is similar to your objection to time in Relativity above. Your issues are really ones to do with the experience of time passing and as such more about Zeno's paradox.

    The evidence that QM and Relativity have accumulated doesn't really matter to you since you basically put first person intuition above them. That's fine but I think it would be best for yourself to then target discussions on those issues in philosophy rather than bothering with scientific theories. I only enter these discussions to explain QM and Relativity, not to talk about your personal reflection and how it can end thousand year old debates and contradict a scientific theory. It's clear QM is just a red herring here as you have dismissed its actual evidence for free choice from the Tsirelson bound as not being evidence for no scientific reason but for vague philosophical ones.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    The particle seems to have a non-spatiotemporal existence, so it doesn't really exist prior or after to the colour change although it does exist.
    Again, we don't need to apply spatiotemporal concepts to the particle itself. We can ask a basic question at every moment of the experiment. We are the ones operating in the spatiotemporal domain but we can ask questions about the state of the Universe at each moment that do not make reference to spatiotemporal notions.

    It might be more fruitful to talk purely in terms of the classical level, at which level the predictions of QM are observed.

    We have a detector plate which changes colour. In order for the plate to change colour, something must happen to or in the plate. If nothing happens to the plate then it won't change colour. The change in colour is what we call an effect. The "something happening" is what is colloquially known as a "cause".

    Something happening to cause an effect, i.e. something happening to cause the change in colour, is determinism by another name.

    It might not be the kind of determinism we are used to, where we can track the every movement and location of the objects involved, but it is, nonetheless, determinism. Something happening to effect a chance is determinism in its most basic form.

    What QM says, or more importantly, doesn't say, does not change this basic fact.

    Fourier wrote: »
    So you agree with QM that no mathematical or logical account can be given for the choice of observable?
    I'm taking your word for it for the purposes of this discussion.

    Fourier wrote: »
    It does, you just have a funny notion of "evidence" that's essentially unscientific. QM has postulates that have implications, free choice being one. All evidence we have found is consistent with those postulates and their implications.
    Precisely, free choice is an implication, a logical necessity of the theory. Logic isn't empirical evidence. That's not to say that it is incorrect on that basis alone.

    Fourier wrote: »
    If QM was wrong about this one would not obtain Tsirelson's bound. That's a fact. To me that is evidence. I've no idea what you mean by no evidence since that is direct evidence.
    I'll take your word for this, for the sake of argument, and will get around to looking into it. But, as you said
    Fourier wrote: »
    The theory provides no mechanism for its occurrence but its existence is a consequence of the axioms.
    There is no direct evidence, the theory says there can not be direct evidence, It is a logical necessity.

    Fourier wrote: »
    However several times in this and the other threads it's clear that consistency and scientific evidence aren't enough for you, you need something else that I think lies outside science.
    Consistency is essential, but consistency with the world we live in, not internal self-consistency because even circular arguments are internally self-consistent.

    With regard to relativity, the preclusion of relative motion in a block like structure is an example of a lack of consistency. With regard to free will, it is the abundance of scientific evidence from fields such as behavioural psychology which have direct import for the very notion of freedom in decision making.

    The first-person empirical investigation is in addition to this and as it is the only possible way to actually investigate the notion of free-will, because free will is a first-person subjective phenomenon.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Take free choice in QM. The scientific case is clear, QM implies Free Choice, Free choice implies Tsirelson's bound. Go do an experiment on Tsirelson's bound and you will it will be confirmed. The alternative is superdeterminism which has no evidence and plenty contradicting it.
    I'll take your word for this, but that still doesn't mean that free will exists or that we have to accept it in spite of an abundance of evidence to the contrary.

    Fourier wrote: »
    For you this isn't enough. It isn't "evidence". I don't know what is as far as you're concerned. Almost direct unassailable experience of the truth like a god? For this reason I don't think you should bother with science. The fact that consistency and evidence for a theory doesn't budge your opinion makes it clear you require something else and since science is only about internal consistency and empirical evidence you're not going to get it. I'll say more below.
    It's you who doesn't appear to be budged by the evidence. There is an abundance of evidence in the field of behavioural psychology, including those studies on the effects of priming, which have very real and direct implications for the notion of freedom of choice. These fields actually study decision making!! Directly!

    And yes, priming is incredibly pertinent to the question of free will/freedom of choice because the very premise is that our choices are not only influenced, but in many cases dictated by priming factors in our environment, beyond what we normally perceive. This appleis equally to experimenters who choose the experimental settings in QM machines.

    Fourier wrote: »
    It's just Zeno's paradox. I suggest you read the literature on that since your objections don't have much to do with the block universe specifically, but with Zeno related issues.
    I have read literature on Zeno's paradoxes and there is nothing in the attempts to refute the paradox of Zeno's arrow that rescues relative motion form the frozen block Universe. Perhaps you are confusing Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise with the arrow paradox.

    Fourier wrote: »
    This ends the discussion for me. You've basically said there can't be a logical, mathematical and now (via the removal of third party methods) scientific investigation of this. The scientific evidence is consistent with QM, but you say your personal reflections are not. For me there is little to say then because I can only talk about evidenced scientific theories not your internal experience. As I said above for you it is just "Gut Intuition" > "Science".
    Can you propose a scientific study to test for free will? Bearing in mind the difficulty expressly stated the paper you referenced.

    There is an abundance of scientific evidence which has major, negative implications, for the notion of free will because it suggests that our decisions are affected by myriad factors which are not only not of our choosing but actually sabotage us in doing the things that we would like to do.

    Fourier wrote: »
    This is similar to your objection to time in Relativity above. Your issues are really ones to do with the experience of time passing and as such more about Zeno's paradox.
    It's not about the experience of the passage of time at all - bear in mind I argue against the existence of time - its about motion. This is where Zeno's paradox diverges - it is similar, but not the same, as I said. Zeno wasn't discussing motion in a 4D static block universe, he was discussing moments in time, in a 3D universe.

    If I believed that your decision not to address this particular question was a free one, I might be upset :D But seeing as how I can't possibly tell whether you have free will or not, I won't be.
    Before we get onto this particular parameter and how its variance gives rise to relative motion in a frozen block structure, am I correct in saying that each embedding i.e. each 3D slice would have a fixed value for this parameter; that the variance in the parameter applies when we consider a number of points along the world line?

    To try and clarify, if we take your worldline/worldtube and pick three different points along it, corresponding to different stages in your life. Does each point have its own value for this parameter with each of the three points having a different value, thus giving rise to this variance?


    Fourier wrote: »
    The evidence that QM and Relativity have accumulated doesn't really matter to you since you basically put first person intuition above them. That's fine but I think it would be best for yourself to then target discussions on those issues in philosophy rather than bothering with scientific theories. I only enter these discussions to explain QM and Relativity, not to talk about your personal reflection and how it can end thousand year old debates and contradict a scientific theory. It's clear QM is just a red herring here as you have dismissed its actual evidence for free choice from the Tsirelson bound as not being evidence for no scientific reason but for vague philosophical ones.
    Relativity and QM are both phenomenally predictive theories. The evidence to support them is absolutely overwhleming.

    That doesn't change the fact that relativity leads us to a physical structure which precludes the possibility of relative motion. This, I see, as a pretty big issue given that relative motion appears to be self-evidently true. As you know, I would be inclined to believe that the mathematics of relativity could be interpreted differently, without losing any of the predictive power. This of course remains a conjecture and is separate to the very critical issue of the preclusion of relative motion.

    The idea of freedom of choice is, if not contradicted, then certainly challenged by the scientific findings in the field of psychology.

    In addition to this, it is contradicted by first-person empirical observations.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    roosh wrote: »
    What QM says, or more importantly, doesn't say, does not change this basic fact.
    Here we go again. "Linguistic games + my gut" > "Verified Scientific Theory".

    All you have described is an event occurring. That's not determinism. The occurrence of an event is not determinism. If proving determinism in spite of QM was as ridiculously easy as saying "some thing happened" and "something caused it" this it would have been done years ago.

    In order to be determinism you have to identify the cause and show that the outcome is a unique consequence. Not just say "hey there was an event.

    Surely you can see that you have not shown the outcome is a unique consequence as needed for determinism?
    I'll take your word for this, but that still doesn't mean that free will exists or that we have to accept it in spite of an abundance of evidence to the contrary
    So what is wrong with Tsirelson's bound?
    It's you who doesn't appear to be budged by the evidence. There is an abundance of evidence in the field of behavioural psychology, including those studies on the effects of priming, which have very real and direct implications for the notion of freedom of choice. These fields actually study decision making!! Directly!
    I'm not disputing or denying the work in psychology. It's simply that from reading the literature whether priming has any real consequences for Free Will in general is under debate.

    I am moved by evidence. The point is only by evidence. You're coming to priming with a preconception of no free will arrived at from non-scientific considerations. However when I actually look at the priming literature some psychologists think it doesn't negate Free Will, some think it does, some think it mollifies it rather than negates it and others think it modifies it. That's from my reading of currently >30 scientific papers on the subject since this conversation began. The field of psychology does not seem to be presenting the current priming findings as "no free will" with even a slight majority.

    Have you read and gone through the statistics in the major priming papers and then read analysis of them. I have. It's not "no Free Will" like you are portraying it. In fact I'm prone to think that you simply know some bits about the experiments, have cursorily read some paragraphs here and there out of context and have a preconceived conclusion. I think this because it seems to be what you do with physics and once again are presenting another field in a distorted fashion.

    In psychology of the mind papers that reference Free Will most seem to think it has no insurmountable implications for Free Will, even the people who think there is no Free Will say priming holds nothing in particular against it.

    I can be budged, but I don't think you've critically analyzed the field or read widely. Have you read a monograph on priming?
    Before we get onto this particular parameter and how its variance gives rise to relative motion in a frozen block structure, am I correct in saying that each embedding i.e. each 3D slice would have a fixed value for this parameter; that the variance in the parameter applies when we consider a number of points along the world line?
    There's only one embedding. We can either foliate and embed the 3D structure into the 4D one or form a fiber bundle and embed the 4D structure over the 3D one. The latter shows the 4D structure is isomorphic to the 3D one with moments of time.
    4D static block universe, he was discussing moments in time, in a 3D universe
    A 4D block universe is isomorphic to a 3D universe with moments.
    That doesn't change the fact that relativity leads us to a physical structure which precludes the possibility of relative motion
    This isn't a "fact", it's a conclusion you have reached that nobody else seems to hold. You can't speak to it as a fact.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    I think it's best to just stick to the determinism in QM issue as this is the simplest case above and the clearest that doesn't require bringing in other fields. I think I won't respond to the other points for now since the one about determinism in QM is the easiest to deal with.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    Here we go again. "Linguistic games + my gut" > "Verified Scientific Theory".

    All you have described is an event occurring. That's not determinism. The occurrence of an event is not determinism. If proving determinism in spite of QM was as ridiculously easy as saying "some thing happened" and "something caused it" this it would have been done years ago.

    In order to be determinism you have to identify the cause and show that the outcome is a unique consequence. Not just say "hey there was an event.

    Surely you can see that you have not shown the outcome is a unique consequence as needed for determinism?
    If our task was to identify a specific cause in the deterministic chain then yes, we would need to identify the cause and demonstrate that the oucome was uniquely caused by it. We don't need to identify the specific cause however - I thought we might be able to box it in, but we can approach it from the other side.

    Determinism at its most fundamental level is simply cause and effect. Some change occurs which has a cause.

    In the case of the experiment in question we have a clear and obvious effect, the change in colour of the plate. This is a macro, or classical level observation.

    Now, under what circumstances could this change possibly occur? Either the plate changes colour spontaneously by itself or something causes it to change colour. In general, either changes occur spontaneously or they are caused. Again, bear in mind we are talking about classical level observations.

    We have ruled out the plate spontaneously changing colour, so we are left with only one possibility, that the change was caused. If there was no cause, and the plate didn't change colour spontaneously then the plate would not change colour. But it did, so we are left with the conclusion that the change had a caused.

    We might not be able to definitively identify what the cause of the change was, but we don't need to, in order to conclude that there must have been some cause i.e. something happened to cause it or some "thing" caused it.

    It would seem that the smart money would be on the particle that we prepared specifically to fire at the plate, which we were expecting to hit the plate but we just didn't know where it would hit. Unfortunately, correlation does not imply causation so the particle gets away with it. Still, however, the change had to have a cause, hence determinism.

    Again, this is at the classical level of observation.

    Fourier wrote: »
    So what is wrong with Tsirelson's bound?
    I haven't said that there is anything wrong with it. I'm not familiar with it. I will take your word for it. The issue is with the notion of freedom of choice.

    Fourier wrote: »
    I'm not disputing or denying the work in psychology. It's simply that from reading the literature whether priming has any real consequences for Free Will in general is under debate.

    I am moved by evidence. The point is only by evidence. You're coming to priming with a preconception of no free will arrived at from non-scientific considerations. However when I actually look at the priming literature some psychologists think it doesn't negate Free Will, some think it does, some think it mollifies it rather than negates it and others think it modifies it. That's from my reading of currently >30 scientific papers on the subject since this conversation began. The field of psychology does not seem to be presenting the current priming findings as "no free will" with even a slight majority.

    Have you read and gone through the statistics in the major priming papers and then read analysis of them. I have. It's not "no Free Will" like you are portraying it. In fact I'm prone to think that you simply know some bits about the experiments, have cursorily read some paragraphs here and there out of context and have a preconceived conclusion. I think this because it seems to be what you do with physics and once again are presenting another field in a distorted fashion.

    In psychology of the mind papers that reference Free Will most seem to think it has no insurmountable implications for Free Will, even the people who think there is no Free Will say priming holds nothing in particular against it.

    I can be budged, but I don't think you've critically analyzed the field or read widely. Have you read a monograph on priming?
    I have a broad understanding of the literature on the subject, but I'm sure you will highlight where I am wrong in my understanding.

    We can start with a link to a paper that offers a definition and how they demonstrate that subjects have free will to begin with.

    Does the literature suggest any of the following
    • the language we learn affects how we think?
    • the home environment we grow up in affects our decision making?
    • the community we grow up in affects our decision making?
    • traumatic events in our life affect our decision making?

    What is the starting point for free will in these papers?
    How do they propose to define or even test free will?
    How do they demonstrate that subjects have this thing called free will which they suggest is being modifed, mollified, or negated?
    Or do they start from the assumption that we all have free will?




    Fourier wrote: »
    There's only one embedding. We can either foliate and embed the 3D structure into the 4D one or form a fiber bundle and embed the 4D structure over the 3D one. The latter shows the 4D structure is isomorphic to the 3D one with moments of time.


    A 4D block universe is isomorphic to a 3D universe with moments.


    This isn't a "fact", it's a conclusion you have reached that nobody else seems to hold. You can't speak to it as a fact.
    Regardless of how the embedding occurs. If we have a 4 dimensional structure where objects exist as worldlines or worldtubes embedded and frozen within that strucutre, then an account is needed for how these static, unchanging worldtubes, which themselves do not move, give rise to relative motion.
    Fourier wrote: »
    I think it's best to just stick to the determinism in QM issue as this is the simplest case above and the clearest that doesn't require bringing in other fields. I think I won't respond to the other points for now since the one about determinism in QM is the easiest to deal with.
    Yep, no problem. I had planned on probing on the other point in the previosus thread in which we were discussing.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    As mentioned I will concentrate only on this point.
    If our task was to identify a specific cause in the deterministic chain then yes, we would need to identify the cause and demonstrate that the oucome was uniquely caused by it. We don't need to identify the specific cause however - I thought we might be able to box it in, but we can approach it from the other side.
    ...
    It would seem that the smart money would be on the particle that we prepared specifically to fire at the plate, which we were expecting to hit the plate but we just didn't know where it would hit. Unfortunately, correlation does not imply causation so the particle gets away with it. Still, however, the change had to have a cause, hence determinism.
    If you assume there was a place it was going to hit that we just didn't know then you can prove the correlations will satisfy Bell's inequality. Observations break Bell's inequality. There is no point the particle was "going to hit that we didn't know".

    Determinism is not just cause and effect, but cause and unique effect, i.e. given the current situation things could only play out uniquely one given way. Assuming such a unique relation between cause and effect gives us Bell's inequality in contradiction to experiment.

    You don't need to trace the cause, but you need to show whatever effect occurs is uniquely associated with that cause whatever it may be. Such an assumption gives correlation bounds that are violated in Real Life experiments.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    As mentioned I will concentrate only on this point.
    Sure, we can return to the main topic of freedom of choice if we make progress on this point. We can probably start with the question of how experimenters establish that subjects have free will in the first place, in order for it to be modified, mollified, or negated.

    We probably agree on some of what the studies say about how environmental factors affect decision making, even if we disagree on its import for the role of free will. Establishing that subjects have free will in the first place will precede that though.

    Fourier wrote: »
    If you assume there was a place it was going to hit that we just didn't know then you can prove the correlations will satisfy Bell's inequality. Observations break Bell's inequality. There is no point the particle was "going to hit that we didn't know".
    Let's not assume that then. Lets just focus on the classical level observation of a change in colour at a specific location on the plate.

    If this change of colour didn't happen spontaneously, then it must have been caused. If it wasn't caused and it didn't happen spontaneously then there would be no change in colour.
    Fourier wrote: »
    Determinism is not just cause and effect, but cause and unique effect, i.e. given the current situation things could only play out uniquely one given way. Assuming such a unique relation between cause and effect gives us Bell's inequality in contradiction to experiment.
    We have our unique effect, the change in colour of the detector plate. We might not be able to identify the specific cause but we know that it must either have had a cause or it must have occurred spontaneously. Otherwise, there would be no observation of a change in colour.

    Our predictions are still going to be the probabilistic predictions of QM.
    Fourier wrote: »
    You don't need to trace the cause, but you need to show whatever effect occurs is uniquely associated with that cause whatever it may be. Such an assumption gives correlation bounds that are violated in Real Life experiments.
    "With that cause" implies the identification of a specific cause. We don't need to identify a specific cause. We have a clear and specific effect and we can establish that this effect must have a cause, if it didn't happen spontaneously.

    If the plate doesn't change colour spontaneously or it wasn't caused, then the plate simply wouldn't change colour.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    We have our unique effect
    We have a clear and specific effect
    After the fact.

    For determinism you must show that prior to the fact that there was, at least in theory even if you practically cannot gather enough to data, only one effect that could possibly happen given the the current state of the world.

    Determinism isn't that there was an effect, but that that effect was the only one that could occur given how things were.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    After the fact.

    For determinism you must show that prior to the fact that there was, at least in theory even if you practically cannot gather enough to data, only one effect that could possibly happen given the the current state of the world.

    Determinism isn't that there was an effect, but that that effect was the only one that could occur given how things were.
    Determinism, at its most basic, is cause and effect.

    What you are suggesting is identifying the causal chain linking specific causes to their unique effects. We don't need to do that.

    We have a unique effect. It could have had multiple causes - if that is even a coherent idea; perhaps a number of things combine to give this unique effect although I suspect many causes combining would itself give rise to a different effect, which then acts as the cause for the effect in question.

    Regardless, where there is an effect there must either be a cause or spontaneity. Without either, there is no effect. We seem to have ruled out spontaneity, so we are left with cause and effect i.e. determinism.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    Roosh, I have to say this is getting pretty silly. This is just the basic definition of determinism that literally every book, paper and talk I have ever attended has used. Arguing this is hard to understand.
    roosh wrote: »
    Determinism, at its most basic, is cause and effect.
    It's cause and unique effect. That is the definition used by everybody. Just an example from a course at the university of Oregon:
    the philosophy that everything has a cause, and that a particular cause leads to a unique effect
    roosh wrote: »
    What you are suggesting is identifying the causal chain linking specific causes to their unique effects. We don't need to do that.
    My god. That's not what I am talking about. You don't have to identify the chain.
    We have a unique effect. It could have had multiple causes
    It's not about multiple causes. It's about given the state of the world prior to the effect, i.e. given the cause in the most general sense regardless of how many there are or whether you can identify the link, that there was only one possible outcome. That it was the unique event that was going to occur before the fact of its occurrence, i.e. that it was determined in advance. Determined means fixed/selected out.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    Roosh, I have to say this is getting pretty silly. This is just the basic definition of determinism that literally every book, paper and talk I have ever attended has used. Arguing this is hard to understand.

    It's cause and unique effect. That is the definition used by everybody. Just an example from a course at the university of Oregon:
    We have a unique effect, the change in colour of the plate.

    Our options with regard to this are:
    [1]the unique effect happened spontaneously.
    [2]the unique effect had a cause.
    [3]there was no effect whatsoever


    We can rule out #3 because clearly we have an effect. It's unique because it is the one that happened, and we have ruled out #1.

    Therefore, this unique effect must have had a cause, otherwise, there would be no effect to speak of.

    Fourier wrote: »
    My god. That's not what I am talking about. You don't have to identify the chain.
    That might not be what your intended point is, but that is the implication. To say that we have identify the cause and its unique effect is to attempt to establish a causal chain between a specific cause and its unique event. We don't need to do that because we have a unique event which implies that there was a cause.

    Fourier wrote: »
    It's not about multiple causes. It's about given the state of the world prior to the effect, i.e. given the cause in the most general sense regardless of how many there are or whether you can identify the link, that there was only one possible outcome. That it was the unique event that was going to occur before the fact of its occurrence, i.e. that it was determined in advance. Determined means fixed/selected out.
    This is how determinism is used to make predictions. We're not looking to make a prediction or link a unique effect to its specific cause.

    We have an effect in the detector plate changing colour. We can work backwards form here. We don't need to go far though, as we don't need to identify the particular cause, we simply need to establish that an effect does not happen without a cause.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    We have a unique effect, the change in colour of the plate.
    That might not be what your intended point is, but that is the implication
    I don't know what to say. I've seen teenagers in an intro philosophy class grasp this. I genuinely just don't understand.

    You don't need to identify the link.

    It's that one should be able to show that the causal event has only one possible effect, i.e. that it --->determines<--- the outcome. Just having an event is not determinism.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    I don't what to say. I've seen teenagers in an intro philosophy class grasp this. I genuinely just don't understand.
    I understand your point perfectly, I think it is you who is failing to grasp mine.

    Nothing I have said contradicts the definition you are using. I am simply taking that definition and extrapolating an additional conclusion from it.

    I didn't think the idea that every effect has a cause was a particularly novel one and I certainly can't claim any ownership over it.

    Fourier wrote: »
    You don't need to identify the link.

    It's that one should be able to show that the causal event has only one possible effect, i.e. that it --->determines<--- the outcome. Just having an event is not determinism.
    Here you are defining what a cause is. A cause is only a cause in relation to its unique event. So, to identify a cause, you need to point to its one possible effect. We are not looking to identify the cause.

    There is an aysmmetry here though. Before we can classify something as a "cause" we have to identify its unique effect. Effects are everywhere though and self evident. You see a tree in the garden, that is an effect. You see the sun in the sky, that is an effect. You see a detector plate change colour in an experiment, that is an effect.


    Now, here is the key:
    Either the observations we make are (1) not of effects or (2) they are of effects.

    If (1) is true i.e. the observations we make are not of effects, it means that they spontaneously appear out of nothing, without a cause. The question of how something can come from nothing has implications for this.

    If (1) is not the case then (2) must be true, that the observations we make are of effects, meaning that they have a cause and are therefore part of a deterministic chain of cause and effect.

    We don't need to identify the prior cause to establish the fact that an effect has a cause, we merely need to demonstrate the alternative.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    We don't need to identify the prior cause to establish the fact that an effect has a cause, we merely need to demonstrate the alternative.
    Here you are defining what a cause is
    Dear god.

    I am not saying you have to identify the prior cause. I am not defining a cause.

    I am saying that determinism is not solely that an event has a cause. Determinism is that that event was the only possible effect that cause could have.

    Take a Stern Gerlach experiment. The silver atoms are heated in an oven the exact same way every time. They come out of the oven through a magnetic field and hit one of two detection plates.

    However which plate they hit is not determined. There is the same (type of) cause every time: the emission of a silver atom. However nothing determines which plate is struck. The cause does not lead to a unique effect.

    A cause having a unique effect is what determinism means.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    Dear god.

    I am not saying you have to identify the prior cause. I am not defining a cause.

    I am saying that determinism is not solely that an event has a cause. Determinism is that that event was the only possible effect that cause could have.
    You are completely correct insofar as this is a valid and correct statement about determinism. It is however, only one of several valid statements we can make about determinism. These include:

    (1) This/that cause gives rise to this/that unique effect.
    (2) This/that effect was caused by this/that cause.
    (3) All causes have unique effects.
    (4) All effects have causes.


    Statements (1) and (2) are specific statements which establish a deterministic causal chain, linking (1) specific causes to their unique effects or (2) unique effects to their specific causes.

    We can think of statements of the type (1) in terms of predictions because "the cause" is the subject of the statement and it is looking forward along the chain of cause and effect, so to speak. We can think of type (2) statements in terms of explanations, where "the effect" is the subject of the sentence and we are talking about its specific cause. This, of course, isn't exclusively so, but it is possible to think of them in those terms.

    Statements (3) and (4) are statements about a criterion that applies to all (3) causes and (4) effects. They do not establish a specific causal chain, linking specific causes to their effects, or vice versa. They are general statements which are true of all (3) causes and all (4) effects. These are equally valid and correct statements about determinism.


    Your statement:
    Fourier wrote: »
    Determinism is that that event was the only possible effect that cause could have.
    is a type (2) statement. It talks about linking that event to that cause i.e. establishing a specific causal chain.

    It is a valid statement about determinism, but it is not the only valid statement.


    Discard
    We are not trying to link a specific cause to its unique effect, or vise versa, so we can discard statements of types (3) and (4).


    If we wanted to establish that something is a cause, we would indeed need to be able to point to its unique effect, otherwise it would not meet the criterion above, that all causes must meet. As we are not trying to establish the causal nature of a supposed cause here, we can discard statements of type (3).



    Establishing effects
    That leaves us with statement (4): all effects have causes.
    Again, this a perfectly valid statement about determinism.

    The alternative statement: observed "effects" (or phenomena) have no cause is not a statement about determinism.

    The consequence of this being, the "things" we observe spontaneously appear out of absolutely nothing, with no causal connection to anything whatsoever, in any sense. The question of how something can come from nothing is a separate philosophical issue. I believe we have already dismissed it.



    Conclusion
    So, either the observations we make spontaneously appear out of absolutely nothing or they are effects which have causes. If we rule out the former, we are left with determinism.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Take a Stern Gerlach experiment. The silver atoms are heated in an oven the exact same way every time. They come out of the oven through a magnetic field and hit one of two detection plates.

    However which plate they hit is not determined. There is the same (type of) cause every time: the emission of a silver atom. However nothing determines which plate is struck. The cause does not lead to a unique effect.

    A cause having a unique effect is what determinism means.
    Here you are talking about a statement of type (1). It appears to be more a statement about our inability to predict which plate will be hit i.e. we are unable to determine a priori which plate will be hit.

    We do, however, observe one of the plates being hit. This is our unique effect. The fact that we were not able to predict which plate would be hit i.e. identify a priori the unique event that follows from the cause does not mean that unique event didn't have a cause, it simply means that we were/are unable to predict.

    The alternative is that the effect spontaneously appeared out of absolutely nothing.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,187 ✭✭✭FVP3


    My two cents on this is that Fourier is arguing scientific fact that he knows is true, and had empirical backup, and Roosh is arguing with words.

    Anyway, one thing I was intrigued by was the debate on priming and its effects on free will.


    To start with what is priming? According to wiki.

    Priming is a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD.

    Psychologists think this can tell us something about free will. I disagree, it merely shows a mind hack.


    A while back i was at a meal with a colleague, John. Both of us are engineers by background. He was having a hard time remembering the name of the city Houston in Texas which he had visited. This was frustrating for him. I knew the name. He didn't want any help to begin with, definitely not the first letter, but asked me for some help later. I said "Think of a Dublin train station". He immediately said Houston.

    So what is going on there? Firstly it looks like name lookup is really difficult for humans. This isn't all that surprising as we have evolved to use memory systems common with primates and other animals, which is primarily visual. Specific name lookup is unique to humans. And John knew what the city looked like ( it was in his head) and where abouts the city was on the map or Texas, the name of which he remembered.

    This is what makes "tip of the tongue" so frustrating for humans. For most animals recognising something visually is all they need. John had that but not the exact name. From an evolutionary non human point of view, he did remember the city.

    And of course we use visual tricks - memory palaces etc - to help our own memory. It looks like, with regards to words, we are using some part of our memory system which isn't designed for its existing purpose.

    Heuston was easier for him to remember. Why? Because he goes there every day so it is locally cached ( to borrow a computing term). When I mentioned a dublin train station, on some level he thinks of Heuston station, where he goes every day, and then immediately thinks of Houston, because he is primed with the H.

    As I said this name lookup in the brain is some kind of hack pushed onto a brain thats not evolved for it, and to make it more efficient the search goes down certain paths, and only certain paths, when it tried to remember a specific name. If this path is wrong to begin with, you are stuck. Giving a hint, first name or similar name resets the system and allows it to narrow the search down ( look for a city beginning with H).

    Nothing about free will.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    That leaves us with statement (4): all effects have causes.
    Again, this a perfectly valid statement about determinism.
    It's not the standard definition of determinism. Determinism is that a cause leads to a unique effect.
    Here you are talking about a statement of type (1). It appears to be more a statement about our inability to predict which plate will be hit i.e. we are unable to determine a priori which plate will be hit.
    Also it is not about our ability to predict whether the up or down plate will be hit. It's that due to Bell's theorem and extensions like the Renner-Ekert theorem you can show that nothing determines which plate will be struck. Not even some hidden fact we have no access to. Nothing. Since nothing determines which plate will be struck, then the selection of the plate is not determined hence determinism is not true.

    The exposure of a Stern Gerlach plate has a cause. Namely the emission of a silver atom. But nothing in that emission or any facts in the world determine which plate would be struck. Thus although the emission event causes a "plate exposure" event, it does not determine which plate exposure. The causes in our world under determine the events. Thus according to language used by everybody determinism is false. As has been shown in Aspect experiments.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    FVP3 wrote: »
    My two cents on this is that Fourier is arguing scientific fact that he knows is true, and had empirical backup, and Roosh is arguing with words.

    Anyway, one thing I was intrigued by was the debate on priming and its effects on free will.
    An even bigger issue is that roosh doesn't use words with their standard meaning and considers the non-standard usage of words and his personal insights from meditation to supersede scientific fact.

    Regarding what you mentioned about priming that's exactly what seems to be the consensus in the psychology literature. That it's a mind hack without any real implication for Free Will. In fact when discussing Priming most psychologists don't really mention Free Will.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    It's not the standard definition of determinism. Determinism is that a cause leads to a unique effect.
    Nothing I have said contradicts this.

    We can turn this sentence around and deduce another piece of information:
    A unique effect follows from a cause.

    This is the exact same piece of information. We are not adding anything new to the definition, or taking anything away. This is simply a logical necessity.

    Now, if we were to simply leave it at that , saying that it must have a cause because by definition all effects have causes - that is, afterall what makes them effects - the accusation of semantics could rightly be levelled. We're not leaving it there however.

    There are two possibilities, either:
    1. the observed phenomenon is an effect and therefore has a cuase
      or
    2. the observed phenomenon is not an effect because it has no cause

    These are our two options. If we say that the observed phenomenon has no cause, then it is not an effect - because all effects have causes, by definition.

    However, if the observed phenomenon is not an effect by virtue of having no cause, it means that the observed phenomenon spontaneously occurred from absolutely nothing, without reason or cause, without causal connection to anything whatsoever, in any sense.

    This conclusion has its own set of problems, most notably the question of how something can occur out of nothing.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Also it is not about our ability to predict whether the up or down plate will be hit. It's that due to Bell's theorem and extensions like the Renner-Ekert theorem you can show that nothing determines which plate will be struck. Not even some hidden fact we have no access to. Nothing. Since nothing determines which plate will be struck, then the selection of the plate is not determined hence determinism is not true.


    The exposure of a Stern Gerlach plate has a cause. Namely the emission of a silver atom. But nothing in that emission or any facts in the world determine which plate would be struck. Thus although the emission event causes a "plate exposure" event, it does not determine which plate exposure. The causes in our world under determine the events. Thus according to language used by everybody determinism is false. As has been shown in Aspect experiments.
    As you outline here. We have a cause - the emission of a silver atom. We also have a unique event - the exposure of the Stern Gerlach plate.

    If the exposure of the Stern Gerlach plate was not the unique effect of the emission of the silver atom, then it must have been the unique effect of some other cause.

    The alternative to this is, the exposure of the SG plate is not a unique effect of any cause i.e. it is not an effect at all. In this case, the exposure of the plate happens spontaneously, for no reason or cause, and is not causally connected to anything whatsoever, in any sense. This would mean that the exposure event is a pure coincidence and completely unrelated to the emission of the silver atom, other than through some spooky coincidence.

    Bearing in mind, we are talking about macro-level observations.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    roosh wrote: »
    As you outline here. We have a cause - the emission of a silver atom. We also have a unique event - the exposure of the Stern Gerlach plate.
    But which plate, the upper or lower one? What determines that?

    For the cause "emission of a silver atom" there are two possible effects. Look closely => "two", hence not unique.

    One of two possible plates being hit is not unique, it's a set of two elements. This cause is not associated with a unique effect.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    FVP3 wrote: »
    My two cents on this is that Fourier is arguing scientific fact that he knows is true, and had empirical backup, and Roosh is arguing with words.
    Hey FVP3, thank you for jumping in here. I was actually going to write a post asking if anyone had been reading and could possibly offer another perspective. I think it can only help.

    I completely understand your perception. On the one hand Fourier is clearly referencing well established scientific theory and I appear to be engaged in semantics. That isn't the case however. I am using logic. Fourier is also using logic.

    Nothing I have said goes against the definition of determinism that Fourier is using, in fact, I'm using the exact same definition but looked at the other way around.

    His definition is:
    Determinism is that a cause leads to a unique effect.

    We can turn this sentence around and deduce another piece of information:
    A unique effect follows from a cause.

    This is the exact same piece of information. We are not adding anything new to the definition, or taking anything away. This is simply a logical necessity. A phenomenon is called an "effect" by virtue of it having a cause - in the physical world. If a phenomenon doesn't have a cause, then it isn't labelled with the term "effect". This is all dependent on physical interactions.


    Now, if we were to simply leave it at that , saying that it must have a cause because by definition all effects have causes, the accusation of semantics could rightly be levelled. We're not leaving it there however.

    There are two possibilities, either:
    (1) the observed phenomenon is an effect
    or
    (2) the observed phenomenon isn't an effect


    From there:
    (1) if the observed phenomenon is an effect, it is so because it has a cause
    or
    (2) if the observed phenomenon is not an effect, that is because it has no cause.


    These are our two options. If we say that the observed phenomenon has no cause, then it is not an effect - because all effects have causes, by definition. Again, this refers to the physical world, not simply semantics.

    However, if the observed phenomenon is not an effect by virtue of having no cause, it means that the observed phenomenon spontaneously occurred from absolutely nothing, without reason or cause, without causal connection to anything whatsoever, in any sense.

    This conclusion has its own set of problems, most notably the question of how something can occur out of nothing.

    FVP3 wrote: »
    Anyway, one thing I was intrigued by was the debate on priming and its effects on free will.


    To start with what is priming? According to wiki.

    Priming is a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD.
    Priming is an interesting phenomenon and it certainly has implications for the very notion of free will because it directly impacts (if not dictates) behaviour and decision making.
    To quote Daniel Kahneman
    Studies of priming effects have yielded discoveries that threaten our self-image as conscious and autonomous authors of our judgments and our choices.

    The example you have cited here is one specific example of priming. I would definitely suggest Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, fast and slow for a thorough discussion on the subject.

    Kahneman references the type of priming you mention, the same kind in the study that Fourier referenced:
    In the 1980s, psychologists discovered that exposure to a word causes immediate and measurable changes in the ease with which many related words can be evoked. If you have recently seen or heard the word EAT, you are temporarily more likely to complete the word fragment SO_P as SOUP than as SOAP. The opposite would happen, of course, if you had just seen WASH. We call this a priming effect and say that the idea of EAT primes
    the idea of SOUP, and that WASH primes SOAP

    He goes on to say:
    Another major advance in our understanding of memory was the discovery that priming is not restricted to concepts and words. You cannot know this from conscious experience, of course, but you must accept the alien idea that your actions and your emotions can be primed by events of which you are not even aware.

    He goes onto mention some notable other examples of priming (he goes into each in much more detail in the book):
    For instance:

    A study of voting patterns in precincts of Arizona in 2000 showed that the support for propositions to increase the funding of schools was significantly greater when the polling station was in a school than when it was
    in a nearby location.

    A separate experiment showed that exposing people to images of
    classrooms and school lockers also increased the tendency of participants to support a school initiative. The effect of the images was larger than the difference between parents and other voters!

    The study of priming has come some way from the initial demonstrations that reminding people of old age makes them walk more slowly. We now
    know that the effects of priming can reach into every corner of our lives. Reminders of money produce some troubling effects. Participants in one experiment were shown a list of five words from which they were required to construct a four-word phrase that had a money theme (“high a salary desk paying” became “a high-paying salary”). Other primes were much more subtle, including the presence of an irrelevant money-related object in the background, such as a stack of Monopoly money on a table, or a computer with a screen saver of dollar bills floating in water.


    Money-primed people become more independent than they would be without the associative trigger.

    They persevered almost twice as long in trying to solve a very difficult problem before they asked the experimenter for help, a crisp demonstration of increased self-reliance.

    Money-primed people are also more selfish:
    - they were much less willing to spend time helping another student who
    pretended to be confused about an experimental task.
    - When an experimenter clumsily dropped a bunch of pencils on the floor,
    the participants with money (unconsciously) on their mind picked up
    fewer pencils.


    In another experiment in the series, participants were told that they would shortly have a get acquainted conversation with another person and were asked to set up two chairs while the experimenter left to retrieve that person.

    - Participants primed by money chose to stay much farther apart than their
    nonprimed peers (118 vs. 80 centimeters).

    - Moneyprimed undergraduates also showed a greater preference for being
    alone.

    There are plenty of more in depth examples in the book.
    FVP3 wrote: »
    Psychologists think this can tell us something about free will. I disagree, it merely shows a mind hack.
    You are right, it is a mind hack and one that corporations, politicians, marketers and hucksters the world over try to exploit to influence our decisions - cambridge analytica is a prime example.

    What the studies unambiguously show is that priming affects our decision making. Free will is intimately bound up with decision making - they are arguably one and the same thing. So yes, priming can tell us something about our free will, or rather, lack thereof.

    Bear in mind, any suggestion that argues for the idea that priming only influences our "free will", is starting from an assumption that free will exists. The burden of proof is on those who believe in free will to establish its presence and then demonstrate how priming only influences it as oppposed to completely negates it.

    FVP3 wrote: »
    A while back i was at a meal with a colleague, John. Both of us are engineers by background. He was having a hard time remembering the name of the city Houston in Texas which he had visited. This was frustrating for him. I knew the name. He didn't want any help to begin with, definitely not the first letter, but asked me for some help later. I said "Think of a Dublin train station". He immediately said Houston.

    So what is going on there? Firstly it looks like name lookup is really difficult for humans. This isn't all that surprising as we have evolved to use memory systems common with primates and other animals, which is primarily visual. Specific name lookup is unique to humans. And John knew what the city looked like ( it was in his head) and where abouts the city was on the map or Texas, the name of which he remembered.

    This is what makes "tip of the tongue" so frustrating for humans. For most animals recognising something visually is all they need. John had that but not the exact name. From an evolutionary non human point of view, he did remember the city.

    And of course we use visual tricks - memory palaces etc - to help our own memory. It looks like, with regards to words, we are using some part of our memory system which isn't designed for its existing purpose.

    Heuston was easier for him to remember. Why? Because he goes there every day so it is locally cached ( to borrow a computing term). When I mentioned a dublin train station, on some level he thinks of Heuston station, where he goes every day, and then immediately thinks of Houston, because he is primed with the H.

    As I said this name lookup in the brain is some kind of hack pushed onto a brain thats not evolved for it, and to make it more efficient the search goes down certain paths, and only certain paths, when it tried to remember a specific name. If this path is wrong to begin with, you are stuck. Giving a hint, first name or similar name resets the system and allows it to narrow the search down ( look for a city beginning with H). Nothing about free will.
    Indeed, there is no demonstration of fee will in this example. But let's look at it in more detail.

    If we jump into the part where John is trying to remember the name of the city. He can picture the city because of a deterministic process - he visited the city, experienced its sights and sounds and these created a memory.

    If we were to break down the steps that lead to your conversation, we could see that his trying to recall the name of the city followed from other deterministic causes - perhaps you asked him a question?

    John can't think of the city and then you give him a clue - train station in Dublin. This is another deterministic cause which triggers Johns mind to think of Heuston Station. Given how the mind works, this triggered the assoication with Houston texas, the city John had visited.

    There is no homonculus called "John's Free Will" in John's head sorting through a mental filing cabinet, trying to find the name of the city and when it can't it does a search for a cross reference between train stations in Dublin and cities in Texas. All of this happens subconsciously triggered by environmental stimuli.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    An even bigger issue is that roosh doesn't use words with their standard meaning and considers the non-standard usage of words and his personal insights from meditation to supersede scientific fact.

    Regarding what you mentioned about priming that's exactly what seems to be the consensus in the psychology literature. That it's a mind hack without any real implication for Free Will. In fact when discussing Priming most psychologists don't really mention Free Will.

    It is a mind hack which affects (if not dictates) decision making. Therefore it has direct implications for free will.
    Studies of priming effects have yielded discoveries that threaten our self-image as conscious and autonomous authors of our judgments and our choices.

    Perhaps the reason they don't mention free will is because it is such an ill defined concept.

    Also, you mentioned earlier that some researches say that it "mollifies" or "modifies" free will. The problem with this position is that it presupposes that there is free will in the first place. This of course is not possible without recourse to first-person subjective experience.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    But which plate, the upper or lower one? What determines that?
    We don't need to answer that in this context.
    Fourier wrote: »
    For the cause "emission of a silver atom" there are two possible effects. Look closely => "two", hence not unique.

    One of two possible plates being hit is not unique, it's a set of two elements. This cause is not associated with a unique effect.
    The set of plates that are actually hit is a set with only one element. This is a unique effect.

    You're starting at the preparation stage and saying, there are two possible oucomes, therefore there is no unique outcome.

    I'm starting at the detection stage where there has only been one single outcome and saying, there has only been one single outcome.

    Note, I'm not saying that there was only ever one possible outcome, I'm saying there has been, in actuality, only one unique outcome.


    That unique outcome is either an effect or it isn't. If it is an effect, that is because it had a cause, hence determinism.

    If it didn't have a cause.....well, you know how that sentence finishes.


    EDIT: simply ask yourself, how many plates actually get hit? Does one plate get hit, or do both plates get hit?
    Not, how many plates could get hit prior to the experiment, but how many actually have been hit after each iteration?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    roosh wrote: »
    We don't need to answer that in this context.


    The set of plates that are actually hit is a set with only one element. This is a unique effect.

    You're starting at the preparation stage and saying, there are two possible oucomes, therefore there is no unique outcome.

    I'm starting at the detection stage where there has only been one single outcome and saying, there has only been one single outcome.
    Roosh, if at the preparation stage there isn't one determined outcome, i.e. if it isn't the case that only one outcome can occur given the preparation then you don't have determinism. Determinism is that a cause has a unique outcome associated with it prior to that occurrence.

    What you're doing is identifying determinism with the fact that one outcome occurs rather than multiple outcomes. Nobody ever has meant this by determinism.

    Determinism is that given the world as it is now there is only one possible future. That is not the case in the Stern Gerlach experiment.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    We don't need to answer that in this context.
    We do!!! That's the whole point.

    What -->determines<-- which plate is hit?

    Without something to determine it the world is not deterministic.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    We do!!! That's the whole point.

    What -->determines<-- which plate is hit?

    Without something to determine it the world is not deterministic.
    No, that is missing the point.

    Asking what determines which plate is hit is asking for the specific cause of the unique event. Realise it or not, this seeks to establish a specific casual chain. This is a type (1) question, as mentioned before.

    This is just one aspect of determinism. It is not the only aspect!

    Fourier wrote: »
    Roosh, if at the preparation stage there isn't one determined outcome, i.e. if it isn't the case that only one outcome can occur given the preparation then you don't have determinism.
    At the preparation stage you make predictions. If you cannot predict the single outcome of an experiment, that doesn't mean that the experiment won't have a single, unique outcome, it means that you cannot predict it.
    Fourier wrote: »
    Determinism is that a cause has a unique outcome associated with it prior to that occurrence.
    Doesn't chaos theory contradict this statement?
    Fourier wrote: »
    What you're doing is identifying determinism with the fact that one outcome occurs rather than multiple outcomes. Nobody ever has meant this by determinism.
    Saying, "nobody ever has meant this by determinism" is simply appealing to antiquity and/or the masses.

    But, do you genuinely believe that I have personally, during the course of this conversation, invented the statement, "all effects have causes". If you do believe I am the first person in history to use it, then I would suggest doing a google search for that very statement.

    Determinism is a logical proposition and as such, it is open to probing and questioning. Even if I were the very first person in history to refer to that aspect of determinism, that all effects have causes, it wouldn't invalidate the inference.

    And it is a clear and obvious inference of determinism, that all effects must have causes. It is a logical necessity.
    ...the inevitability of an effect from a cause, this form of
    the principle of sufficient reason deals with ‘logical necessity’, the necessity
    of a true proposition following from a ground

    The reason it is a logical necessity is because an effect is only an effect because it has a cause, and vice versa.

    And remember, I'm not simply saying that the exposure of the SG plate must have a cause because it is an effect - that would be circular reasoning - I'm saying that if it doesn't have a cause, then it happened spontaneously, without cause or reason, with no causal connection to anything whatsoever, in any sense and it's occurrence is a spooky coincidence in no way related to the firing of the silver atom.

    When we rule out the second possibility we are left only with the first i.e. it does have a cause and therefore is part of a deterministic chain of causality - even if we cannot say, definitively what that cause is (although all eyes are on the silver atom).

    Hence, determinism.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Determinism is that given the world as it is now there is only one possible future. That is not the case in the Stern Gerlach experiment.
    That is a common interpretation of determinism but not a necessary condition.

    Determinism is simply the idea that every cause has an effect and every effect has a cause. As with all such philosophical ideas, people attempt to add their own baggage to it.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    Saying, "nobody ever has meant this by determinism" is simply appealing to antiquity and/or the masses.
    Jesus roosh this is stupid. It's the definition of the word determinism. I also "appeal" to antiquity/the masses when I assume the meaning of the word "apple".
    roosh wrote: »
    Doesn't chaos theory contradict this statement?
    No. In Chaos theory every cause has a unique outcome associated with it prior to that outcome's occurrence. Chaos just makes it difficult practically to learn enough about the cause to predict the effect.

    The quote you give from Schopenhauer matches what I am saying. The effect follows from the cause as a ‘logical necessity’. In the Stern Gerlach case the effects are not a logical necessity, since the emission event could produce either. Neither is the logically implicated effect.
    At the preparation stage you make predictions. If you cannot predict the single outcome of an experiment, that doesn't mean that the experiment won't have a single, unique outcome, it means that you cannot predict it.
    I am not saying that a Stern Gerlach experiment won't have a single outcome. I've built and operated a Stern Gerlach device, I know what it will do.

    I am saying that it's not just about us being unable to predict the outcome. It's that nothing determines the outcome.

    Here is a clear question, if you answer it with wordy bollocks I am going to exit this conversation. Clear question, clear answer. Does something determine which plate will be struck in a Stern Gerlach run? I am not asking if a human being can predict which plate will be struck, I'm asking does something determine which plate will be struck.

    Yes or No.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    I am not saying that a Stern Gerlach experiment won't have a single outcome. I've built and operated a Stern Gerlach device, I know what it will do.

    I am saying that it's not just about us being unable to predict the outcome. It's that nothing determines the outcome.

    Here is a clear question, if you answer it with wordy bollocks I am going to exit this conversation. Clear question, clear answer. Does something determine which plate will be struck in a Stern Gerlach run? I am not asking if a human being can predict which plate will be struck, I'm asking does something determine which plate will be struck.

    Yes or No.
    I'll move this up here to address your question, without wordy bollocks, from the start.

    To answer you question, I don't know.

    Now, let me ask you a couple of questions:
    1. Do you believe that I am the first person to refer to that aspect of determinism that can be summed up as, "all effects have causes"?

    2. Does the Stern Gerlach end up with one single, unique outcome. I'm not asking if only one single outcome is possible at the start of the experiment, I'm asking if only one plate is struck at the end of the Stern Gerlach run.


    If you choose, by your own "free will" :p, to exit the conversation then, as ever, I will be appreciative of you having engaged thus far. With regard to my "wordy bollocks" I would say that my statements have been entirely based on reason and have been as concise as possible, given gap that exists in our consensus.

    Forgive the tone of the post in places. I started off a little annoyed and then cooled down as I went. I moved this from the bottom, so the change in tone is actually in reverse.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Jesus roosh this is stupid. It's the definition of the word determinism. I also "appeal" to antiquity/the masses when I assume the meaning of the word "apple".
    If I might make a suggestion, I would suggest that you choose to demonstrate why the statements I have made (about determinism) are false, instead of using fallacious reasoning, trying to reassert the same point. A point, I have addressed and agreed with.

    Yes, it is a statement about determinism. It is not, however, the only, singular statement that we can make about determinism.

    Saying, "no one has ever said that about determinism before" doesn't make the statements false!! It can both be true that no one has ever used such a definition of determinism before and that the statements are logical necessities of determinism.

    This is why the posts are wordy, because I've had to repeat this basic point in countless different ways!
    Fourier wrote: »
    No. In Chaos theory every cause has a unique outcome associated with it prior to that outcome's occurrence. Chaos just makes it difficult practically to learn enough about the cause to predict the effect.
    OK, so if we have a system under chaos theory, where there are only two possible outcomes can we associate the unique outcome with the cause, prior to the outcome?

    Fourier wrote: »
    The quote you give from Schopenhauer matches what I am saying. The effect follows from the cause as a ‘logical necessity’. In the Stern Gerlach case the effects are not a logical necessity, since the emission event could produce either. Neither is the logically implicated effect.
    Of course it does! Nothing I have said contradicts what you are saying. I am making logical inferences form what you are saying - really from the definition. Instead of deciding to demonstrate why those inferences are invalid, you are trying to argue that "no one has ever said it like that before".

    "...the inevitability of an effect from a cause..."

    Notice, it doesn't say "that cause has only one unique effect associated with it prior to the outcome".

    It is a basic statement of the logical necessity that an effect comes from a cause. This is precisely what I have been saying.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,187 ✭✭✭FVP3


    roosh wrote: »
    Yes, it is a statement about determinism. It is not, however, the only, singular statement that we can make about determinism.

    Surely there has to be a precise and agreed on terminology for anything to make sense. In any field whatsoever.
    Saying, "no one has ever said that about determinism before" doesn't make the statements false!! It can both be true that no one has ever used such a definition of determinism before and that the statements are logical necessities of determinism..

    I presume he is saying that "no experts have said this before". It might be true that that you are right and they are wrong, but you need extraordinary proof to refute expertise, and you certainly cant come up with your own definitions of things willy nilly.

    As an outsider, albeit one scientifically trained, I can't know enough to know if Fourier is telling the truth but I can tell you are engaging in poppycock.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    As an outsider, albeit one scientifically trained, I can't know enough to know if Fourier is telling the truth
    If there's any particular bit you're curious about no worries I could get a reference or give a clear answer. There's one very nice article containing the proof of how QM shows the world is not deterministic that's meant to accessible to scientifically trained people in general here:
    https://kantin.sabanciuniv.edu/sites/kantin.sabanciuniv.edu/files/makale/mermin.pdf


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    OK, so if we have a system under chaos theory, where there are only two possible outcomes can we associate the unique outcome with the cause, prior to the outcome?
    In Chaos theory there is only one possible outcome. We might not be able to predict it given limits on data gathering, but there is only one possible outcome.
    Notice, it doesn't say "that cause has only one unique effect associated with it prior to the outcome".
    That the effect is unique is what "logical necessity" means. A specific effect follows necessarily from the cause. Anyway I don't want to help you read Schopenhauer, just read more of his work and you'll see when he discusses determinism like most philosophers of the time he is talking about it as defined by Laplace.
    Do you believe that I am the first person to refer to that aspect of determinism that can be summed up as, "all effects have causes"?
    Saying, "no one has ever said that about determinism before" doesn't make the statements false!!
    I would suggest that you choose to demonstrate why the statements I have made (about determinism) are false
    It's not about the statements being false and you don't have to repeat yourself. I get what you are saying.

    The point is that it's not what determinism means in full. You are giving a necessary but not sufficient statement about determinism.

    For example what you are doing is like saying the definition of an apple is "It is a fruit". That's not false, but it's not the full definition of an apple. Similarly that "all effects have causes" is part of determinism, but it isn't the full definition.

    The full definition is in a form:
    "That a cause has only one unique effect associated with it prior to the outcome"

    That's what determinism means in scientific discourse. Nobody uses your statement to define determinism is what I mean, as not only determinism satisfies it but also Stochastic processes for example. In Stochastic processes all effects have a cause, but Stochastic processes are not deterministic.

    By demonstrating that something obeys one aspect of determinism you have not shown it is actually deterministic. Similarly by showing a banana is a fruit I have not demonstrated it is an apple.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
    Determinism: The world is governed by (or is under the sway of) determinism if and only if, given a specified way things are at a time t, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law.
    This is not true in the Stern Gerlach experiment.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    FVP3 wrote: »
    Surely there has to be a precise and agreed on terminology for anything to make sense. In any field whatsoever.
    Indeed there is. I have outlined some of that terminology previously. I will outline them hear again, in case you missed them. First though, I'll reference a quote from an "expert".
    ...the inevitability of an effect from a cause, this form of
    the principle of sufficient reason deals with ‘logical necessity’, the necessity
    of a true proposition following from a ground

    Notice how he doesn't make the statement that Fourier is making, that determinism is the idea that a cause has a unique effect associated with it, prior to the outcome. This notion appears to be baggage that has been added. I agree that Fourier's definition is one possible interpretation of determinism, but it's not the only one as evidenced by the reference to Schopenhauer above. I believe Kant and Hume made similar statements but you can ask Fourier if Schopenhauer might be considered enough of an expert.

    Those statements about determinism again:

    (1) This/that cause gives rise to this/that unique effect.
    (2) This/that effect was caused by this/that cause.
    (3) All causes have unique effects.
    (4) All effects have causes.

    The definition Fourier is using, or at least, one of the few he has used, is fully accounted for here i.e. in statements (1) and (2). Statements (3) and (4) are, as you will note from Schopenhauers statement above, statements of logical necessity.

    Feel free to outline, by way of a reasoned argument why they are "poppycock"

    ...the inevitability of an effect from a cause, this form of
    the principle of sufficient reason deals with ‘logical necessity’, the necessity
    of a true proposition following from a ground

    FVP3 wrote: »
    I presume he is saying that "no experts have said this before". It might be true that that you are right and they are wrong, but you need extraordinary proof to refute expertise, and you certainly cant come up with your own definitions of things willy nilly.
    Feel free to ask him if Schopenhauer is a reliable enough source.
    FVP3 wrote: »
    As an outsider, albeit one scientifically trained, I can't know enough to know if Fourier is telling the truth.
    Neither can I, tell if everything Fourier is saying is the "gospel truth" or if there are certain other interpretations. I do know that there are other prominent physicists out there who Fourier disagrees with like Lee Smolin who, for example says:

    [quote=Lee Smolin
    ...in fact, it [Quantum Mechanics] doesn't make any sense because it's wrong! And I'm proud to be standing here where Roger Penrose was, just a few weeks ago and he said the same thing. Now, some people are polite and we say it's incomplete, but we really mean, and this is what Roger chided me for, why don't we just say it's wrong? Because that's really what we mean when we say it's incomplete.[/quote]
    If the video doesn't cue up automatically, you can jump to the 10min mark, he says it around the 10:30 mark.


    Also, this professor Gerard t'Hooft is an advocate for Superdeterminism, the theory that is directly relevant to the question of Free Will, which Fourier says is the necessary consequence if there is no free will, but its a theory which he says is laden with problems.

    He also disagrees with Sean Carroll, who is an advocate for an interpretation of quantum mechanics you might be familiar with, the Many Worlds interpretation - or "multiple universes" as it is sometimes colloquially known.



    So, no, I can't be certain that his is the one correct interpretation but I certainly know that he knows this stuff inside out and I find it to be good practice to defer to the expert on matters I cannot offer any reasonable contention on.

    FVP3 wrote: »
    but I can tell you are engaging in poppycock.
    This is the point where you support your assertion with a reasoned critique of my arguments, otherwise I'm inclined to ask, how you can tell?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    Carroll, 't Hooft and Smolin are all good physicists. It's just that their proposals have not worked out. When describing physics I have to refer to theories that match experiment and are working fully developed models. I can't describe the suggestions that have run into problems of a small group that have no empirical evidence and are not used by the vast majority.
    Notice how he doesn't make the statement that Fourier is making, that determinism is the idea that a cause has a unique effect associated with it, prior to the outcome
    That is what Schopenhauer is saying. The uniqueness is what "logical necessity" means. That it follows from the cause logically. In a Stern Gerlach experiment which plate is hit does not follow logically from the emission event. The particular plate selection is not a logical necessity of the cause.

    But anyway this is the sort of thing that gets tiring with roosh. Quantum Theory doesn't contradict determinism because by determinism he doesn't mean current usage of the word (as shown by the definition in the world's major philosophical encyclopedia), he means his own personal definition which perhaps Schopenhauer also meant maybe. Although as a physicist I'm familiar with the 19th century debate on determinism I know Schopenhauer still means the modern definition as like others of the time he knew of Laplace's work on the subject. roosh just doesn't understand the terminology.

    But to get him to I'd have to explain what "logical" means and what "necessity" means in logic which would no doubt start this all over again as he would have odd private definitions of these terms backed up by a confused out of context quote.

    roosh do you at least understand that quantum theory breaks determinism as defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

    This is not true in the Stern Gerlach experiment.
    Hume’s rules, from the perspective of causal reasoning, is the combination of
    the thesis that every event has a cause and the thesis that causation requires constant conjunction. Those two theses together provide a deterministic conception of the causal structure of the world and so entail that there are a lot more regularities than meet the untrained eye, since many types of event are not constantly conjoined in our experience with other types of event: many objects behave in ways that we can ordinarily neither predict nor retrospectively fully explain. And so we need to adopt procedures for uncovering those hidden regularities: we need to employ the scientific method.
    ...
    Hume’s ‘beating about’ in the neighbouring fields in the Treatise – of which
    his discussion of causal reasoning is the major part – has revealed, amongst
    other things, first, that he does not doubt what is sometimes called the ‘causal
    maxim’: the maxim that every event has a cause

    ...
    By trying to define causal determination in terms of a set of prior sufficient conditions, we inevitably fall into the mess of an open-ended list of negative conditions required to achieve the desired sufficiency.
    We can explore the notion of constant conjunction, particularly by considering the alternative.[/quote]
    we inferred the principle: Every event has a cause, from the only condition of the objective possibility of our conception of an event. This is that an event cannot be determined in time, and consequently cannot form a part of experience, unless it stands under this dynamical law. This is the only
    possible ground of proof; for our conception of an event possesses objective validity, that is, is a true conception, only because the law of causality determines an object to which it can refer

    Also from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
    As the following famous expression of determinism by Laplace shows, however, the two are also easy to commingle:

    We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow


    Also from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but including the text surrounding the definition you posted:
    Traditionally determinism has been given various, usually imprecise definitions. This is only problematic if one is investigating determinism in a specific, well-defined theoretical context; but it is important to avoid certain major errors of definition. In order to get started we can begin with a loose and (nearly) all-encompassing definition as follows:

    Determinism: The world is governed by (or is under the sway of) determinism if and only if, given a specified way things are at a time t, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law.
    Far from being the absolute definitive definition you attempted to present it as, is merely a potential starting point. Not only is it a potential starting point, it is "loose" and attempts to be "all-encompassing". As a "loose" starting point, it is open to question. And far from being "all-encompassing" is is overly specific and exclusionary.

    We don't need "loose" or "nearly all encompassing" because we are dealing with a very specific case of inferring cause from effect, which is simply a logical necessity.


    Also from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
    [/quote]Fatalism is the thesis that all events (or in some versions, at least some events) are destined to occur no matter what we do, Fatalism is therefore clearly separable from determinism.[/quote]
    The definition above is more inline with fatalism.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    Far from being the absolute definitive definition you attempted to present it as, is merely a potential starting point. Not only is it a potential starting point, it is "loose" and attempts to be "all-encompassing"
    By loose they only mean the have to define more precisely the terms "world", "governed by", "way things are at a time t", i.e. the definition is loose because it assumes you basically know what these mean. When they define it in detail later it doesn't make much difference to the basic definition.

    If you have problems with what "world" and "governed by" mean you'll have to go somewhere else.

    Do you accept that quantum mechanics violates that definition given in the Stanford philosophical encyclopedia?

    Or even simpler do you admit that nothing seems to determine which plate is selected in a Stern Gerlach and that empirical tests confirm Bell's inequality which shows nothing determines the selection?


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    That is what Schopenhauer is saying. The uniqueness is what "logical necessity" means. That it follows from the cause logically. In a Stern Gerlach experiment which plate is hit does not follow logically from the emission event. The particular plate selection is not a logical necessity of the cause.
    That a cause gives rise to an effect, is a logical necessity.
    That an effect has a cause, is a logical necessity.

    They are logical necessities because a cause is defined by its having an effect and vice versa.

    Do you accept that the above statement is true, regardless of who has or has never said it before? Does it stand on its own merits or is it wrong because no one else has said it?


    Fourier wrote: »
    But anyway this is the sort of thing that gets tiring with roosh. Quantum Theory doesn't contradict determinism because by determinism he doesn't mean current usage of the word (as shown by the definition in the world's major philosophical encyclopedia), he means his own personal definition which perhaps Schopenhauer also meant maybe. Although as a physicist I'm familiar with the 19th century debate on determinism I know Schopenhauer still means the modern definition as like others of the time he knew of Laplace's work on the subject. roosh just doesn't understand the terminology.

    But to get him to I'd have to explain what "logical" means and what "necessity" means in logic which would no doubt start this all over again as he would have odd private definitions of these terms backed up by a confused out of context quote.
    It might get tiring that I don't use the term in the form that you have become accustomed to, but a statement is not invalid based on its popularity.

    It does indeed get tiring having to point out this basic fact of logic.
    Fourier wrote: »
    roosh do you at least understand that quantum theory breaks determinism as defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    That I can't say. From what I can gather, it certainly sounds that way.

    I have heard that there is something which is referred to as the "free will" loophole which suggests that a deterministic, hidden variables theory is possible.
    However, scientists have also identified several major loopholes in Bell’s theorem. These suggest that while the outcomes of such experiments may appear to support the predictions of quantum mechanics, they may actually reflect unknown “hidden variables” that give the illusion of a quantum outcome, but can still be explained in classical terms.
    Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.”


    I believe it is this loophole that was [indirectly] the main, or one of the main, subjects of our discussion.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    but a statement is not invalid based on its popularity.

    It does indeed get tiring having to point out this basic fact of logic.
    I never said it was invalid, just that it's not the full definition.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,553 ✭✭✭roosh


    Fourier wrote: »
    By loose they only mean the have to define more precisely the terms "world", "governed by", "way things are at a time t", i.e. the definition is loose because it assumes you basically know what these mean. When they define it in detail later it doesn't make much difference to the basic definition.

    If you have problems with what "world" and "governed by" mean you'll have to go somewhere else.
    Fair enough. They do take it as a starting point, and so it is certainly open to debate - such is the nature of philosophy. I referenced other definitions also.

    Fourier wrote: »
    Do you accept that quantum mechanics violates that definition given in the Stanford philosophical encyclopedia?

    Or even simpler do you admit that nothing seems to determine which plate is selected in a Stern Gerlach and that empirical tests confirm Bell's inequality which shows nothing determines the selection?

    I think these questions are addressed in the post above. If not, let me know.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    roosh wrote: »
    I think these questions are addressed in the post above. If not, let me know.
    it certainly sounds that way.
    Then there are facts of the world, such as which plate is selected in a Stern Gerlach experiment that are not determined by any other prior fact.

    Which particular word you want to use for this I won't bother with anymore. Most say it is indeterministic.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    Note though that even Hume whom you have quoted does not say that "every event has a cause" is determinism. He says it is part of the definition of determinism (as I said) but that it must be combined with "that causation requires constant conjunction" to fully obtain determinism.


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