Determinism & free will

[Saviourmachine]

Determinism & free will

I believe that everybody has a free will. Indeed, so I suggest that not every event has a cause (see topic ID + first cause = ?, post 11):

To suggest every event has a cause is a surprisingly Deterministic statement to hear. To believe all events must have a cause fundamentally denies the existence of Free Will (of course, its possible to believe in both Determinism and Free Will, but then if you wanted to make sense of your faith in God, you would have to explicitly assume he is quite limited in his omniscience... there are so many great Free Will paradoxes involved when you include omni-properties in the definition of God).

I want to make sense of my faith in God. I’m not assuming any limit in His omniscience. Let’s go!

Above time
Because God stands above time, "before" (in the way we normally understand) doesn’t apply to Him. He’s looking with the same ease to us from the eternity that lays ‘behind’ us, then from the eternity that’s ‘before’ us. To say that God isn’t able to look in the future is the same as saying that he can’t look back in the past.
We’re looking at time with a particular view. An example: can you imagine that you’re learning for your exams upstairs and in the meanwhile going to dinner downstairs? That’s not possible in ‘our time-space’ but it is for somebody who’s not bounded to our time-space. Another example: can you imagine that you’re learning for your exams at night, and in the meanwhile cycling to one of them in the morning? Maybe the time isn’t so continuous like it seems for us, for a Spectator that’s looking behind the walls of time. When he’s looking he sees everything at once, He doesn’t have to focus.

God’s omniscience and standing above time
I think that it’s for a Being that can handle and create time, very easy to be omniscient! Suppose, He didn’t know something: there’s something occuring He didn’t expect. What He can do is this: manipulate the time so that what was once unknown to Him, now is known to Him beforehand!

The moment of choosing
When exactly is the moment of choosing? I think it’s in the eternity and in time! When God choosed in eternity, we choosed with Him, when we’re choosing now, God is choosing with us. I really think this paradox of determinism and free will doesn’t exist in reality!

Who wants to shoot?

PS: I'm posting here, because it handles logical reasoning and therefore science. Philosophy is science too, isn't it?

 

[Jet Black]

Above time
Because God stands above time

is this your axiom? I disagree with your axiom from the start. not to worry.

, "before" (in the way we normally understand) doesn’t apply to Him. He’s looking with the same ease to us from the eternity that lays ‘behind’ us, then from the eternity that’s ‘before’ us. To say that God isn’t able to look in the future is the same as saying that he can’t look back in the past.

"before" is meaningless when we look at the big bang.

PS: I'm posting here, because it handles logical reasoning and therefore science. Philosophy is science too, isn't it?

the problem is that it doesn't, your logic is based on a set of assumptions that cannot be regarded as axioms. If your axioms fail, then however impeccable your logic, it all falls apart at the seams.

 

[Saviourmachine]

Come on, you can speculate with my assumptions too! I'm doing the same all the time. It's like playing with the toys of other persons. If one axiom I always thought to be true would fail, I don't have to start up from scratch.

 

[Aggie]

Because God stands above time, "before" (in the way we normally understand) doesn’t apply to Him. He’s looking with the same ease to us from the eternity that lays ‘behind’ us, then from the eternity that’s ‘before’ us. To say that God isn’t able to look in the future is the same as saying that he can’t look back in the past.

There is a great deal of support for this idea, although it would have been nice if you had mentioned more of it. This idea is actually a very traditional one for Christians to hold, and was strongly believed by John Calvin. One of the reasons for this is that it's the only way prophesies can be explained: how could God reveal the future to someone if he doesn't know what it will be?

The theology that opposes this idea, which is referred to as "openness", is one that I've disapproved of for several years for the reason I mentioned as well as scientific ones. The following quote is something that I wrote on the same topic at a different website. I'd post a link to it, but I don't think I'm allowed to do that until I have at least 15 posts.

The whole idea of openness comes from humans' idea of having free will. If our decisions determine what the future will be, it wouldn't be possible for God to know what the future is, let alone have it be part of his plan. However, as I pointed out, there is only one possible future; the only way it's differrent from the past is that it's harder for us to know what it will be. From the point of view of someone traveling faster than the speed of light, what we consider the future would actually appear to have already happened, and what we consider the past would not have happened yet.

This fact is damaging to the idea of free will, but I don't have a problem with that. Various recent discoveries of medical science point in the same direction: for example, when a conscious person has their brain operated on, it's possible for the doctor to make the person move in a certain way by stimulating the person's brain. The person will claim that they had chosen for themselves to make that motion, but to any outside observer it's obvious that the person is doing that because the doctor poked his or her brain. The person did make a decision to move their body in that way, but the decision was only a product of the interaction of the chemicals and neurons in their brain.

When there's a mechanical or electronic device being operated, everone will agree that for any input into it there is only one possible outcome, and that outcome is only a product of the input interacting with the device's internal mechanisms. For some reason, however, people don't like to look at our brains the same way. Our brains are made of atoms no different from those of any computer, and are subject to the same physical laws.

What I'm referring to here as the notion of the past, present, and future all existing at once is a product of both of Einstein's theories of relativity. Michael Kane, who has both a Master's Degree in theology from Westminster Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University, wrote a letter on this topic to the magazine "Christianity Today" which they published in the issue of July 9, 2001. The letter is as follows:

The debate between Christopher Hall and John Sanders over openness theology ["Does God Know Your Next Move?" May 21] properly focuses on Scripture, but as a scientist, I am troubled that some of Sanders's statements are incompatible with modern science.

He say that God's knowledge of the future is not really limited because "the 'future' does not yet exist so there is nothing out 'there' to be known...God knows all that can be known, and to say that it is a limitation for God to know 'nothing' is ridiculous."

The actualy existence of past, present, and future is required be Einstein's theory of relativity. All space and time form a four-dimensional continuum that simply exists; the theory does not permit time to be treated as a dimension in which the future is open or incomplete. The theory of relativity has measurable consequences and has been validated by rigorous experimental tests. It is only with great trepidation that one should abandon it.

(Note from me: there is an article by Brian Greene, professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia University, on page A25 of the New York Times from January 1, 2004 that explains this in more detail.)

From a Christian point of view, it is reasonable to conclude that the temporal and spacial extent of our universe were created together, and thus the entire four-dimensional structure resides before its Creator in an eternal present. thus our modern scientific understanding of the nature of time fits quite well with the Christian tradition that God has knowledge of all time, past, present, and future: "before Abraham was, I am."

I don't usually read the letters in "Christianity Today", but it was hard to resist reading this one, especially considering that the author, Michael Kane, is my father.

 

[Mike Flynn]

Determinism & free will

I believe that everybody has a free will. Indeed, so I suggest that not every event has a cause (see topic ID + first cause = ?, post 11):

Well, determinate and indeterminate events certainly don't give you free will. In fact, such a notion is not logically possible in the material world. If you want to talk spiritual, then that opens another option.

Maybe the time isn’t so continuous like it seems for us, for a Spectator that’s looking behind the walls of time. When he’s looking he sees everything at once, He doesn’t have to focus.

Here's the trouble: you can't have free will and God explicitly knowing the future. Quantum physics tells us that the future is indeterminate...meaning it has not been determined. If God 'knows' the future then quantum indeterminacy is flawed and we have no free will.

You could get around it by proposing that God has chosen not to have any knowledge of the choices we will make. And his sense of the future, as a being 'outside time' as you put it, is the same as the present...he is simply watching us making our choices...just like he does in the present.

However, you would have to live with the idea that there are limits to omnipotence.

 

[Aggie]

Quantum physics tells us that the future is indeterminate...meaning it has not been determined. If God 'knows' the future then quantum indeterminacy is flawed and we have no free will.

Actually, quantum physics doesn't predict that. What quantum mechanics predicts is that there are certain events whose results cannot be predicted on the basis of the circumstances under which they ocurred. But these events are still defined as part of space-time the same way everything else in the universe is.

I'll use an example to make this clearer. Suppose I split a helium atom into the two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons that it's made out of. The two electrons would head off in two different directions, and I would know that one of them was spinning in one direction, and one in the opposite direction...but it would not be possible to predict which of them would be spinning which direction based on any prior observation of the atom, or the circumstances under which it was broken apart, becuase which of them end up spinning which direction is not determined by any observable prior circumstances. The only way to know which of them was spinning which direction would be by measuring it AFTER the atom was broken apart.

Normally, a value that has not yet been measured can still be defined in other ways. To use a basic example, if I'm firing a cannon and I know both the speed with which the cannonball will leave the cannon and the angle at which it will be fired, as well as how air friction will affect it, then the amount of time the cannonball spends in the air and the distance it will travel will both be defined mathematically, so I will be able to figure out what they are even if I don't measure them directly. The way my helium atom example differs from this is that there is that the spin of these electrons is NOT defined by any equation until someone measures one of them directly. (It's only necessary to measure one of them; once you know the spin of one of them, you also know the other one is spinning the opposite direction.)

This is really a different issue from Relativity, which is merely saying that everything that this atom and the electrons from it do, for as long as they exist, are defined as part of the eternal continuum of space-time. This means that someone travelling faster than the speed of light, for whom time would be running in reverse, would be able to know which direction these electrons were spinning before they saw the atom that the electrons were part of. But to this person, it wouldn't look like the atom broke apart--it would look like two electrons, two protons, and two neutrons came together and formed a Helium atom.

 

[Mike Flynn]

Actually, quantum physics doesn't predict that. What quantum mechanics predicts is that there are certain events whose results cannot be predicted on the basis of the circumstances under which they ocurred. But these events are still defined as part of space-time the same way everything else in the universe is.

Sorry Aggie, but this is incorrect.

I'll use an example to make this clearer. Suppose I split a helium atom into the two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons that it's made out of. The two electrons would head off in two different directions, and I would know that one of them was spinning in one direction, and one in the opposite direction...but it would not be possible to predict which of them would be spinning which direction based on any prior observation of the atom, or the circumstances under which it was broken apart, becuase which of them end up spinning which direction is not determined by any observable prior circumstances. The only way to know which of them was spinning which direction would be by measuring it AFTER the atom was broken apart.

The idea is not that the spin is not observably predetermined, its that it is not determined...period.

When a particle approaches a double slit, the antinode that it lands on is indeterminate. But it is incorrect to say that this particle is travelling on one and only one defined path during the experiment before it is measured. Otherwise we could not have interference, and wave particle duality would not be an observable phenomenon. Read Feynman.

Normally, a value that has not yet been measured can still be defined in other ways. To use a basic example, if I'm firing a cannon and I know both the speed with which the cannonball will leave the cannon and the angle at which it will be fired, as well as how air friction will affect it, then the amount of time the cannonball spends in the air and the distance it will travel will both be defined mathematically, so I will be able to figure out what they are even if I don't measure them directly.

Like I said, this has precious little to do with quantum indeterminacy. The indeterminacy we are talking about here is not due to missing measurements. Vaccum fluctuations are another good example for you to consider.

The way my helium atom example differs from this is that there is that the spin of these electrons is NOT defined by any equation until someone measures one of them directly. (It's only necessary to measure one of them; once you know the spin of one of them, you also know the other one is spinning the opposite direction.)

The fate of your atom is certainly defined by equations Aggie...as a set of possible states defined by the current state. The 'selection' of the future state is indeterminate. However, the equations that governs the states tells us that the destiny of a particle depends on the existence of all of the other possible states before a measurement is taken. IOW, if you block one slit...the possible future states of the electrons passing through the open slit is completely altered (because you have eliminated possible paths). Your example does not address this point.

This is really a different issue from Relativity, which is merely saying that everything that this atom and the electrons from it do, for as long as they exist, are defined as part of the eternal continuum of space-time. This means that someone travelling faster than the speed of light, for whom time would be running in reverse, would be able to know which direction these electrons were spinning before they saw the atom that the electrons were part of. But to this person, it wouldn't look like the atom broke apart--it would look like two electrons, two protons, and two neutrons came together and formed a Helium atom.

Except that faster than light travel is not part of relativity (in fact it is shown to be impossible in that theory). Reversing the arrow of time is a possibilty...although I am not familiar with the specifics.

Relativity is strictly deterministic, BTW.

 

[Aggie]

Except that faster than light travel is not part of relativity (in fact it is shown to be impossible in that theory).

This is a conclusion that some have drawn from relativity, but it's not part of relativity itself. What relativity predicts is that accelerating an object with mass to EXACTLY the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy; the reason why this has been interpreted to mean an object can't travel FASTER than light is that the only known way to accelerate something to faster than light-speed would involve accelerating it THROUGH light-speed on the way there.

One potential way an object with mass could travel faster than light would be if it had been travelling at that speed since the beginning of time. If there were a way to change an object's speed instantaneously, this could also allow something with mass to travel faster than light even if it wasn't before, but there is no known way to do this.

When a particle approaches a double slit, the antinode that it lands on is indeterminate. But it is incorrect to say that this particle is travelling on one and only one defined path during the experiment before it is measured. Otherwise we could not have interference, and wave particle duality would not be an observable phenomenon. Read Feynman.

I have, although admittedly not everything he's written on the topic.

I was careful in my previous post in this thread not to address the issue of whether the state of these particles truly does not exist before it is measured, or whether or not it is something that DOES exist but can only be detected by measuring it. The experiment you've mentioned is explained by both the theory that the particles' states don't exist before they're measured, and the theory that the factors which determine the probability of the particle being found at a particular location are creating a wave other than the particle itself, that governs the particle's motion.

This "pilot wave" theory is less popular than the alternative, since it relies on something for which no direct evidence has ever been found. However, it is the only theory that explains how the effects these measurements can be reversable, which is something that is supposed to be possible for all microscopic processes. As you seem to know, the passage of time is supposed to be equally possible in reverse.

In any case, the evidence for and against pilot waves is only marginally relevant to my main point, which is that neither when the particle's states are determined, nor the apparent unpredictability of these events, alter relativity's basic conclusion that all of these events are part of a four-dimensional continuum where what we consider to be the past, the present or the future all depend only one one's point of view.

 

[Vegan Charity]

Determinism & free will

I believe that everybody has a free will. Indeed, so I suggest that not every event has a cause (see topic ID + first cause = ?, post 11):


I want to make sense of my faith in God. I’m not assuming any limit in His omniscience. Let’s go!

Cool, I inspired a thread

I wrote this post in the Philosophy and Morality board, I detailed a number of Omniscience-Freewill paradoxes. (I might copy and paste some things from that thread into this one)

Above time
Because God stands above time, "before" (in the way we normally understand) doesn’t apply to Him. He’s looking with the same ease to us from the eternity that lays ‘behind’ us, then from the eternity that’s ‘before’ us. To say that God isn’t able to look in the future is the same as saying that he can’t look back in the past.
We’re looking at time with a particular view. An example: can you imagine that you’re learning for your exams upstairs and in the meanwhile going to dinner downstairs? That’s not possible in ‘our time-space’ but it is for somebody who’s not bounded to our time-space.

First, I think it is necessary to define what "time" is. There are a lot of issues which Philosophers still heatedly argue about today, of those include: The Objective Existence of Color, The Nature of Reality, How much Will is actually Free-Will, and What is the Nature of Time.


Time is not a physical substance, its not a spatial dimension, time is just what people call the chronological passing between one event or another. (Note: In terms of General Relativity, the concept of time can be expressed mathematically as Delta Distance * c = Spacetime, a great deal of complicated 3D Vector Calculus will explain how Gravity affects Spacetime.)

I should get something across: There is no such thing as "absolute past", "absolute present", or "absolute future". I can express this idea easiest by comparing it to the Cardinal Directions: There is no such thing as "east", "north", "south", or "west". There is only "east of", "north of", "south of", and "west of". In the same way, there is only "two days before", "One week until", and "occurring at the same moment as".

To sum all that into one short sentence: Time is a relative concept.

For the reasons that time is not a spatial dimension and time is an intangible relative concept (because it does not exist concretely or as a physical substance), therefore its it quite physically and logically impossible to travel through time*. I would think even God is "bound" by our time-space. Of course, thats just a quirk of language, to get passed this all you have to say is "God knows all events". But if God knows all events, then that is Fatalism. Fatalism = No Free-will.

I dont believe God is eternal, because infinity just doesnt exist when you talk about time. In the same sense, there is no such thing as a largest due to the fact you can always take that largest number and add 1 to it. A largest number (or infinite amount of time) is an incoherent statement. Another reason God is not eternal is the references to "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and Last", so at least I can say God has a beginning. If I wanted to say God was eternal, I would spiral into a loop of fuzzy logic.

(Oops, I'm beginning to ramble )

*The reason why its logically impossible to travel through time is for the same reason its logically impossible to travel through "1+1=2". The phrase "travel through time" is shorthand slang which in terms of Physics is bereft of logical coherency, though in everyday speak the phrase does carry meaning.

Another example: can you imagine that you’re learning for your exams at night, and in the meanwhile cycling to one of them in the morning? Maybe the time isn’t so continuous like it seems for us, for a Spectator that’s looking behind the walls of time. When he’s looking he sees everything at once, He doesn’t have to focus.

In that case, free-will has been defeated, Fatalism is in place.

In the case of Omniscience, you can easily argue against Open Theism in that knowledge of the future does not necessarily mean that the future is influenced in any way.

Except that, if God knows the future, the future is determined going forward and has been determined from the very start.

Thus, by creating the universe the way it is, exactly the way he did, God has in fact done something to direct or influence the course of action of all future events.

So a few possibilities:
1. The future is pretermined by God (due to his omniscience). If this is the case, then assuming God is omnibenevolent, there should be no Hell.
2. God does not know the future, therefore he is not omniscient. This means humans do have some amount of Free Will. Something more to add: If God is not omniscient, then he is not omnipotent. The reason why is that Omniscience and Omnipotence is redundant (if you know everything there is to know, then you know how to do everything). And seriously, who cares if God is not omniscient, it wouldnt make him any less God.
3. The future is pretermined, Hell exists, nonbelievers do go to Hell, therefore you can only assume God is Evil.
4. God does not exist.
5. Others possibilities I have not listed

God’s omniscience and standing above time
I think that it’s for a Being that can handle and create time, very easy to be omniscient! Suppose, He didn’t know something: there’s something occuring He didn’t expect. What He can do is this: manipulate the time so that what was once unknown to Him, now is known to Him beforehand!

If something is unknown to him, then God is not omniscient.

If God knows the future, then the events of the future have influenced the past (backwards Causality), that current inner and outer circumstances of the future have been changed (that means the future is altered as well), then God still does not know the future. God is not omniscient. To argue that the future is not changed yet God still knows the events of the future, you have to take the position that God has no free will.

The moment of choosing
When exactly is the moment of choosing? I think it’s in the eternity and in time! When God choosed in eternity, we choosed with Him, when we’re choosing now, God is choosing with us. I really think this paradox of determinism and free will doesn’t exist in reality!

Philosophy is a lot of fun, isnt it? The paradoxes are endless!

 

[Vegan Charity]

Well, determinate and indeterminate events certainly don't give you free will. In fact, such a notion is not logically possible in the material world. If you want to talk spiritual, then that opens another option.

Materialists would disagree. Materialists define "Free-will" simply as "the ability to choose things at your own accord". Materialists do not deny that they have the ability make choices at their own accord, however they have an interesting paradox in their Philosophy as well:
People can make choices freely at their own accord, but given the same inner and outer circumstances those choices they make will be identical. This is known as Soft Determinism (also called Compatibilism).

I've had some pretty spirited discussions with Materialists, and their Philosophy is not nearly as shaky as you would think. Most people assume Materialists think everything that happens is a product of natural phenomena (kinda like a person is a big bag of chemical reactions). When I ask how Materialists believe in Free-will if people are nothing but a bag of chemical reactions, I was met with a rather ingenious reply:
The systems involved with Cognition are not comparable to the systems involved in the Physics. That is why reducing down everything the Materialist thinks to merely atoms bumping into each other and trading electrons is incorrect. Its like asking how a bicycle can steer left or right by reducing down the bicycle to merely "made of metal and plastic".

That is a very quick summary, but I find that as an ingenious concept.

 

[Jet Black]

In order to describe something of any substantial complexity, it is often nescessary to describe it in terms of incrementally simpler components - to describe a computer, you describe it in terms of different boards and pieces. to describe the boards, you talk about chips. to describe the chips you talk about transistors, to describe them you talk about bulk material properties, to describe them you talk about atomic properties and so on. In a sense it is meaningless to describe the large scale structure in terms of it's most findamental descriptions since you are in effect missing out on all the complexity, however it is theoretically doable, and the argument that we are a bag of chemicals is basically true, but an incredibly complex one. At the end of the day, the only problem with reductionism is that people don't like the sound of it.

Back on to free will. This is the result of a high level of complexity, and should be dealt with appropriately.

 

[Aggie]

There are two things Vegan Charity has said that I disagree with, and one of them has already been pointed out. Just to clarify it, there are a limited number of ways that atoms can interact with one another, and the methods of interaction in our brain that produce our actions are of the same sort as the ones that govern other physical processes such as a computer. If reductionism can accurately describe a computer, then it can accurately describe a brain as well.

My other problem is with your description of the nature of time:

Time is not a physical substance, its not a spatial dimension, time is just what people call the chronological passing between one event or another.

You understand some of the implications of relativity, but not all of them--a dimension of the same sort as the three spatial dimensions is EXACTLY how relativity defines time. And how the relationship between two events is described by these dimensions is something that depends on the point of view of the person watching them.

I should get something across: There is no such thing as "absolute past", "absolute present", or "absolute future". I can express this idea easiest by comparing it to the Cardinal Directions: There is no such thing as "east", "north", "south", or "west". There is only "east of", "north of", "south of", and "west of". In the same way, there is only "two days before", "One week until", and "occurring at the same moment as".

A much better analogy would be that there is no absolute left and right, because the idea of one event ocurring before or after another is relative also. It's like which objects are on the left, and which are on the right, varying depending on the observer's point of view.

I recommend that you read the article on the New York Times that I mentioned, because it provides a very good description of this sort of thing. I'll also make up my own example, though:

Suppose you're friends with an alien who lives on a planet several light-years from Earth. Some sort of major event happens on Earth that you decide you want to tell this alien about, so you get in a space-ship to travel to his planet. Since this planet is so far away, you have to travel at a signifigant portion of the speed of light in order to get there within your lifetime. This is hard to do, but as long as you don't REACH the speed of light, it's not impossible.

As you travel to this planet, you keep track of how long it has been since this event ocurred. It doesn't matter what method you use, since any instruments that measure time will work just as well on the space-ship as they would have on earth as long as they don't rely on gravity. It could be a digital electronic clock, a wind-up clock, an atomic clock, or all three--if you bring all three of them on the spaceship, they'll agree with one another for your entire trip.

When you arrive on the alien's planet, you show him your clock or clocks and use them to show the alien how long it has been since the event occurred. It turns out that there was also a major event at HIS planet ever since which he has kept a timer, and he compares his clock to yours in order to determine which event happened more recently. More time has elapsed on his clock since the event on his planet than has elapsed on your clock since the event on your planet, so the two of you conclude that the event on his planet happened before the event on Earth.

What relativity predicts is that if, when the event on the other planet had occurred, the alien on this planet had chosen to take HIS space-ship to Earth and brought HIS clock or clocks with him on it, the two of you might find that the clock you have on Earth had measured a greater amount of time since the event on Earth than his clock had measured since the event on his planet, meaning that the event on Earth happened before the event on his planet. By specifying the distance between the planets, the speed travelled, and the amount of time since the event measured by the clock that stayed on the planet where the event ocurred, it's possible to ensure that which event the two of you think happened first will depend on which of you makes the trip to the other's planet. I'd give the numbers, but I don't know the exact equations used to determine this, and my father's not home right now.

This is one example of the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say that relativity treats the idea of "before" and "after" as depending on one's point of view. In the example I described above, which event ocurred before the other simply is not defined--there is no absolute measurement of time that cannot be said to be inaccurate by someone who was or is travelling at a different speed. For distances and speeds that humans travel in their everyday lives, this discrepancy is too small to notice, but it has been observed by very precise instruments such as atomic clocks. And even a fairly ordinary clock can be seen to run more slowly in the space shuttle when it's orbiting Earth than an identical clock running on the ground, even if the two clocks run at exaclty the same speed when they're side-by-side.

This is the theory of Special Relativity. General Relativity describes a similar warping of time that's caused by gravity, but I think I've explained how this sort of thing works in enough detail that I don't need to get into that.

 

[Mike Flynn]

Materialists would disagree. Materialists define "Free-will" simply as "the ability to choose things at your own accord". Materialists do not deny that they have the ability make choices at their own accord, however they have an interesting paradox in their Philosophy as well:
People can make choices freely at their own accord, but given the same inner and outer circumstances those choices they make will be identical. This is known as Soft Determinism (also called Compatibilism).

Interesting...but it is not supported by either logic or physical laws.

The systems involved with Cognition are not comparable to the systems involved in the Physics. That is why reducing down everything the Materialist thinks to merely atoms bumping into each other and trading electrons is incorrect. Its like asking how a bicycle can steer left or right by reducing down the bicycle to merely "made of metal and plastic".

But a bicicle can't steer left or right on its own...its machinery can only steer when it is forced to do so by another object. This makes it a poor example. If the sytems involved in cognition are physical systems only, then there are indeed intrinsically linked to the laws of physics.

IOW, where is the rider of the bicycle that is your brain? If that rider is a physical entity, then where is the free contol for that machinery? (and so on..).

In a paradigm of indeterminacy and determinacy (which is the universe in which we live), there is simply no room for a free control (in a strictly physical sense). Determinate events are strictly caused and not free. Indeterminate events are stricly uncaused and not willed. How could the physical machinery of the brain step outside this paradigm?

That is a very quick summary, but I find that as an ingenious concept.

I don't think so. Its simply a variation on the old 'mind-body' problem. IOW, the compatibalist sidesteps the issue by pointing to complexity. But complexity in a machine does not change the laws of physics that govern that machine.

 

[Mike Flynn]

This is a conclusion that some have drawn from relativity, but it's not part of relativity itself. What relativity predicts is that accelerating an object with mass to EXACTLY the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy; the reason why this has been interpreted to mean an object can't travel FASTER than light is that the only known way to accelerate something to faster than light-speed would involve accelerating it THROUGH light-speed on the way there.

Since the equations that govern relativistic mass, length, and energy are invalid when v>c then I submit that this is an unsubstantiated claim.

How would we compute the relativistic mass of a particle with v>c, no matter how it arrived at that speed?

One potential way an object with mass could travel faster than light would be if it had been travelling at that speed since the beginning of time. If there were a way to change an object's speed instantaneously, this could also allow something with mass to travel faster than light even if it wasn't before, but there is no known way to do this.

Source? I doubt these assertions are derived from general relativity. Like I said before, the relatavistic equations are invalid at v>c. Am I missing something?

I was careful in my previous post in this thread not to address the issue of whether the state of these particles truly does not exist before it is measured, or whether or not it is something that DOES exist but can only be detected by measuring it.

No you weren't, because you implied that the particles do indeed have a state before you measure it...and when you measure it the states are simply revealed. Your helium atom analogy makes this point quite clearly.

The experiment you've mentioned is explained by both the theory that the particles' states don't exist before they're measured, and the theory that the factors which determine the probability of the particle being found at a particular location are creating a wave other than the particle itself, that governs the particle's motion.

The experiment I mentioned is explained by the fact that the particle seems to exist in a superposition of states before it is measured. Measurments seem to 'collapse' the states into a single one....and that one is indeterminate.

And you did not bother to address the existence of virtual particles.

In any case, the evidence for and against pilot waves is only marginally relevant to my main point, which is that neither when the particle's states are determined, nor the apparent unpredictability of these events, alter relativity's basic conclusion that all of these events are part of a four-dimensional continuum where what we consider to be the past, the present or the future all depend only one one's point of view.

Leaving the philosophy aside for the moment, virtual particles are not part of the four dimensional continuum of General Relativity before they come into existence Aggie.

And havn't you heard? We are talking about 11 dimensions these days.

 

[Aggie]

OK, we're starting to get beyond the limits of my knowledge--all I know about this is what I learned from my father combined with accelerated science courses in high school. My understanding of the reason something can't travel faster than light is the one I gave, but there may be another reason that I didn't know about.

My understanding of the slit experiment has always been that although any measurement of which slit a given photon traveled through will indicate that it only travelled through one of them, which is what both traditional quantum mechanics and pilot-wave theory would predict. The fact that the locations reached by the photons follow an interference pattern even when there's only one photon traveling through the slit or slits at a time could either mean that the photon itself is defined as a wave that can interfere with itself, or that the positions reached by the photon are determined by interference in the photon's pilot wave, which determines where the photon can go.

I haven't yet heard virtual particles disproving pilot wave theory. Wouldn't pilot wave theory just say that they appear at a certain time whether they're measured or not, but measuring them is the only way to learn of their existence?

Leaving the philosophy aside for the moment, virtual particles are not part of the four dimensional continuum of General Relativity before they come into existence Aggie.

Up until this point, you seem to have been understanding this stuff pretty well, but it seems like you've missed something here. Something has to be part of space-time in order to exists at ANY point. Even if it could not be predicted on the basis of any event that preceded it, and even if the nature of this event does not exist until after it's measured, when any aspect of this event ocurred in comparison to other events would depend on one's point of view just as much as any other event would.

So, for example, if something in what some people consider the future is not currently part of space-time, that means that I wouldn't be able to detect it even if space-time was curved in such a way that what I considered to be the present contained things caused by this event. One of the reasons for defining all events as part of an eternal continuum is that the traditional idea of the future not yet existing doesn't allow this sort of thing to happen.

You seem to agree with my principal point that relativity requires predestination, but if you'd like to keep discussing physics with me, I should probably get my father involved. The distinction between quantum mechanics and pilot waves matters little enough to me that I don't have a problem with changing my viewpoint about it, but I want to make sure I get enough information before I do so.

 

[Mike Flynn]

OK, we're starting to get beyond the limits of my knowledge--all I know about this is what I learned from my father combined with accelerated science courses in high school. My understanding of the reason something can't travel faster than light is the one I gave, but there may be another reason that I didn't know about.

Fair enough.

My understanding of the slit experiment has always been that although any measurement of which slit a given photon traveled through will indicate that it only travelled through one of them, which is what both traditional quantum mechanics and pilot-wave theory would predict. The fact that the locations reached by the photons follow an interference pattern even when there's only one photon traveling through the slit or slits at a time could either mean that the photon itself is defined as a wave that can interfere with itself, or that the positions reached by the photon are determined by interference in the photon's pilot wave, which determines where the photon can go.

You need to remember that pilot wave theory remains a highly speculative domain:

1. pilot waves seem can't be classical waves...so what are they? The guide the photons and electrons but do not influence them in ways that a classical wave would.

2. pilot waves would have to convey information instantaneously across arbitrarily large distances.

IOW, we don't know if pilot waves are real or not (as far as I know) any more than we know if the 'many worlds' hypothesis is valid. What we do know, is that quantum mechanics incorporates the non-classical idea of non-locality...and we can't get around it.

I haven't yet heard virtual particles disproving pilot wave theory. Wouldn't pilot wave theory just say that they appear at a certain time whether they're measured or not, but measuring them is the only way to learn of their existence?

Pilot waves does explains wave/particle duality...not virtual particles as far as I know. I am not saying that virtual particles contradict pilot waves...I am saying that some of your claims (regarding determinsm and relativity) seem inconsistent with the existence of virtual particles.

VPs do not exist in dimensional space before they occur. They simply occur and are completely indeterminate.

But perhaps we should get back to the matter at hand...since we are digressing a bit:

There is no room for free will in a paradigm of determinate/indeterminate events. Such a notion must imply a non-physical element of some kind, that is neigther determined or indeterminate.

 

[AlHailThePowerOfJesusName]

Savior, I completely agree.

is this your axiom? I disagree with your axiom from the start. not to worry.

Alright where do you think God exists relative to time?

 

[Saviourmachine]

The immaterial material world

Well, determinate and indeterminate events certainly don't give you free will. In fact, such a notion is not logically possible in the material world. If you want to talk spiritual, then that opens another option.

Why should free will be part of the spiritual world? Is consciousness?

God bounded by the direction of time?

If God 'knows' the future then quantum indeterminacy is flawed and we have no free will. …
You could get around it by proposing that God has chosen not to have any knowledge of the choices we will make.

It seems your God is looking at time the same we do. He has to ‘wait’ until He knows.

Before or after?

However, the equations that governs the states tells us that the destiny of a particle depends on the existence of all of the other possible states before a measurement is taken.

"Before a measurement is taken." It doesn’t depend of the existence of the states after the measurement is taken? Or does it?

TimeCreator => Omniscience

God’s omniscience and standing above time
I think that it’s for a Being that can handle and create time, very easy to be omniscient! Suppose, He didn’t know something: there’s something occuring He didn’t expect. What He can do is this: manipulate the time so that what was once unknown to Him, now is known to Him beforehand!

If something is unknown to him, then God is not omniscient.

I tried to argue for this: TimeCreator => Omniscience. That God can create and manipulate time implies that He's omniscient.

A paradox, but with a scientific analogy

The moment of choosing
When exactly is the moment of choosing? I think it’s in the eternity and in time! When God choosed in eternity, we choosed with Him, when we’re choosing now, God is choosing with us. I really think this paradox of determinism and free will doesn’t exist in reality!

I think it’s like the wave/particle duality. We’re thinking of God and us as particles, but maybe we’re interacting.

 

[Aggie]

It seems your God is looking at time the same we do. He has to ‘wait’ until He knows.

I've been trying to explain here why he doesn't have to wait; he knew what would happen in the universe the moment he created it. I suggest that you read the rest of this thread, especially the posts from me and Mike Flynn. Apart from phrophesies not being possible if God doesn't know the future, it's not possible for all of space to exist at once without all of time existing at once also.

Also, I'd like to correct a minor mistake in my spaceship example of special relativity: you don't actually need to know one of the three things I said that a person would need to know in order to predict what the situations would be where you and an alien would disagree about which of two events happened first. It doesn't matter how LONG your clocks have been running, all that matters other than the speed and distance is what the time difference is between your clock and his clock when you get to his planet. The longer and faster you travel on your way to his planet, the further ahead his clock can be of yours and still have it be the case that if he came to YOUR planet, your clock would be ahead of his.

 

[Saviourmachine]

Sorry, I read not carefully enough. I thought Mike was stating that the future is not determined ('cause quantum mechanics) and that God is not omniscient.