- #71
ThomasT
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I agree that we have, and evaluate, and make choices based on, as you said (I'm paraphrasing), our projections of what each distinct course of action that we're considering might entail -- and this behavior is, I think, compatible with the assumption that in a deterministically evolving universe we could not have done other than what we did.apeiron said:But if a person can anticipate the future course of events, then yes, a person does have choices.
Recall the way I approached defining determinism in post #65. If we assume that our universe is deterministically evolving in that sense, then that's incompatible with free will defined as the possibility that, given a certain set of antecedent universal spatial configurations (uc1), then some set of universal spatial configurations (uci) other than the set of configurations that was observed to have occurred (uc2) could have occured. That is, free will means uc1 --> uci, but deterministic evolution means uc1 --> uc2.apeiron said:The course of physical events may be highly determined - drop a stone and it will fall - but that just makes them very easy to anticipate and so control.
We observe that uc1 --> uc2. That is, we observe the universe to be changing in such a way that each almost instantaneous snapshot of its spatial configuration is unique and very much like its immediate predecessors and successors. Free will entails that temporally proximal configurations might be less closely congruent (ie., more different) than a finite speed of change would allow.apeiron said:Like Demystify, you are making the classic mistake of assuming all causality to be local effective or proximate cause. Whatever happens is being driven by immediate past events.
That's ok for dealing with things at the human level, the level of our sensory apprehension. But I think we've learned enough to make some inferences about what the universe might be on a deeper level than just the way it appears to us -- keeping in mind that we're an inseparable part of it all, just along for the ride so to speak.apeiron said:But human freewill is all about being driven by anticipation of future consequences. We imagine what might be the case of alternative courses of action and act accordingly.
I think we have to frame the free will vs determinism consideration wrt a vision of reality that's somewhat less anthropic than our human "anticipation of future consequences". We might, for example, assume that the deep reality of the universe is waves in a hierarchy of media, and that it's "being driven" by a fundamental wave dynamic (not an anticipation of the future), like, say, the expanding wave shell that results from dropping a stone into a pool of water -- a characteristic behavior of all waves in all media at all scales -- toward eventual equilibrium with whatever it's a part of.
Sure, there are emergent regimes, protectorates, organizing principles, etc. And the assumption that our universe is evolving deterministically both underlies and transcends all of that.apeiron said:The same more complex view of causality can be taken in physics too. So we can talk about dynamical systems being entrained to structural attractors, dissipative structures entrained to the second law of thermodynamics, or quantum systems betraying evidence of contextuality and retrocausality.
And 'retrocausality' is also incompatible with the assumption of deterministic evolution.
I think we all are. It's the, at least tacitly, assumed basis for all of our actions. We might say that we believe the universe to be evolving nondeterministically, but we behave as if we believe that it's evolving deterministically.apeiron said:Clearly, you are deeply committed to the belief that reality is simply deterministic ...
But whatever one chooses to say one believes, the argument that the assumption of free will (ie., that we could have done other than what we did) is incompatible with the assumption that the universe is evolving deterministically still holds, imo
Yes, I think so. For example, I wouldn't call light 'material', but we only know anything about it because of its effects on material objects. And the assumption that the universe is evolving in accordance with the principle of local causality (ie., that the speed of configurational change is limited by c) does fit with all extant observations, afaik.apeiron said:... - the only causality is local/material/effective.
QM does fit that belief (that we're part of a deterministically evolving universe), whereas, I think I've shown that free will doesn't.apeiron said:And so you want to make both QM and human freewill fit that deep belief about nature.
Causality just refers to the ordering of the evolutionary sequence of spatial configurations of some 'system' of objects. Wrt the universe, each configuration is unique, and each configuration is both a cause and an effect, being called one or the other depending on whether it's being considered as a predecessor or a successor to some other configuration.apeiron said:But that is just one theory about causality.
Imo, the evident deterministic evolution of the universe in a direction away from prior configurations (the arrow of time -- a consequence of the fundamental wave dynamic) is a fact of nature which renders free will and retrocausality as essentially meaningless concepts.apeiron said:There are other ways to think about the facts.
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