ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (09/19/85)
>> Laura [Welcome back!!] > Rich >> Rich, if I follow your argument, I seem to get this. >> 1. All actions are caused. >> ... >> Therefore: all things are determined. the thesis of free will is invalid. > >Pretty much. A clarification on the word `cause' -- I assume we are using this word in the sense of Hume's temporal and spatial conjunction between causes and effects, or Einstein's locality principle which requires that effects be transmitted continously through spacetime. >> You postulate that all those who believe in free will believe that some >> outside agent (their soul) is responsible for some of the actions in 3 or 4 >> or 5. Therfore you think that all those who believe in free will also >> believe in souls. > >All those who believe in free will must of necessity and implication believe >in souls. There is of course nothing to stop a person from holding two >contradictory beliefs... Horsefeathers! You have only shown that YOUR definition of free will (spontaneous behavior) is not consistent with the decrepit a priori assertion: All actions are totally determined by antecedent causes In Hobbes' day, this was a daring assumption, and it, in fact, proved so scientifically useful that people stopped questioning it. By 1930, scientific explanations (QM) of such diverse phenomena as the periodic table of elements, the wave/particle nature of light, Brownian motion, the structure of atoms, the color of heated metals and many others had thrown serious doubts on the explanatory power of causality. >...It's just a sign that they haven't thought things through. As a libertarian (=freewiller), I take that as an insult! Do you understand your own mind well enough to distinguish between your own subjective delusions and objective scientific fact? Can you distinguish a priori assertion from empirical evidence? When was the last time you read a text containing modern philosophical or scientific ideas differing from your own? >> This is not the only objection that has been made to the thesis of strict >> determinism. A good many people do not buy postulate 1 -- they think that >> some actions are definitely caused, but others are either uncaused or >> self-causing. For [them], a non-belief in determinism does not imply a >> belief in souls. > >Do they believe this (obviously an assertion without evidence behind it) >for a solid logical reason, or because choosing that precept allows them to >reach a conclusion they want, e.g., god or free will? Do you prefer to believe a 17th century assumption (provably, an assertion discredited by hard scientific evidence) for a solid logical reason, or because choosing that precept allows you to complacently hang on to outmoded beliefs, e.g. strict behaviorism? From several past comments, I infer your stance is: 1. QM entails mere randomness, explainable as: a. lack of complete knowledge of antecedent causes, or.. b. human interference due to experimental error. 2. If we mentally subtract the error, or find the missing causes, then QM along with its indeterminacy is an illusion explainable by proper causal mechanisms. 3. Consequently, quantum indeterministic explanations are no more valid than causal ones -- neither one can currently able to `know' what really `caused' the randomness. Am I correct about your beliefs? If so, you are badly mistaken. Regardless of the validity of QM, your assertion that antecedent causes determine present state is demolished by Bell's interconnectedness theorem, which asserts, according to Bohm (whose efforts in the 50's led to its ultimate experimental verification): Two entities, such as electrons, which initially combine to form a molecule and then separate, show a peculiar nonlocal relationship, which can best be described as a noncausal connection of elements that are far apart. -- David Bohm That is, actions are partially determined by the simultaneous state of remote events at the present moment. Anyway, Bell's theorem is empirical fact, having been derived directly from experimental data without any assumptions from QM. SMASH CAUSALITY!!! -michael
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (09/21/85)
>>> You postulate that all those who believe in free will believe that some >>> outside agent (their soul) is responsible for some of the actions in 3 or 4 >>> or 5. Therfore you think that all those who believe in free will also >>> believe in souls. >>All those who believe in free will must of necessity and implication believe >>in souls. There is of course nothing to stop a person from holding two >>contradictory beliefs... > Horsefeathers! You have only shown that YOUR definition of free will > (spontaneous behavior) is not consistent with the decrepit a priori > assertion: > > All actions are totally determined by antecedent causes Which is supported both by scientific study and by many of the philosophers you quoted in your last article, whom you use as "ammunition". >>...It's just a sign that they haven't thought things through. > As a libertarian (=freewiller), I take that as an insult! Now you know how your choice of words sounds to me. You could of course, show me how you HAVE thought these things through rather than just asserting that you haven't. Your avoidances of consequences and implications of beliefs has been astounding. -- "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr