I don’t know what anybody calls it, but I can make a choice. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be forced on me, not even by nature. I still have choice even if such a choice is given by nature. I mean this seems to be the reality of living and all these other explanations seem to be efforts to elaborate on this. What more meaning all of this is that I’m doing when I get up to either do preference 1, 2, 3, 4, etc… all the theorizing on that fact looks like fun and interesting. But way over my head at this time. So if anything derives out of the current science that common sense isn’t already doing, in other words, a scientific finding that in turn may alter common sense I’m all ears!
Then why can’t anyone induce the Quantum Zeno Effect? If you can do this, there’s a prize by a Swedish central bank with your name on it, along with every physicist on Earth wanting to pick your brain as to how you did it. 
It’s still purely random in terms of actually predicting every possible movement in question. No equation can encapsulate them. It’s much like the many body problem, you can only know after you observe it, until then you’re purely guessing.
thats a technological issue, it does not mean that the motion of a molecule is not definitively determined by the collision of its bundle of atoms by other atoms with whatever trajectories they have. If it is random it is random from our epistemic position vis predicting precise outcomes, however it is not as though what will happen might depend on anything other than what has happened. even if we doubt, at least at this scale, the universe does not doubt.
I think you’re conflating randomness with chaos.
I didn’t say it was chaotic. I said it was purely random.
Actually it does in one context mean that. Being that molecules in terms of their behavior has no determinant that is reducible to a single atom.
The Universe is not a rational being therefore it can’t doubt anything, it just is.
explain?
yeah, i agree, i was using it as a metaphor. im saying, if i arrange a train on its tracks and then so coordinate the universe so that you ‘practically’ don’t get a chance to discover details of the track i laid ou; you might yet express surprise at the report that the train arrived at such and such a station..
I know. But your argument for randomness refers to chaos. Chaos is purely deterministic, just not predictably so. Randomness is unpredictable, AND indeterministic.
This is not true, an equation CAN encapsulate a chaotic system like brownian motion. For example, Lorenz discovered that the chaotic movement of a properly designed waterwheel will never repeat itself. The Lorenz attractor is a model of such deterministic, non-repeating systems, and is entirely determined by a set of three equations. However, ‘working backward’ from an observed chaotic system to said equation is in practice impossible.
As for your previous post about the Quantum Zeno effect, I admit to not being familiar with it, although a quick wiki search shows that there has been experimental success in inducing it, so perhaps a Nobel is in one of their futures? Regardless, you are asking for too much. Something that is possible in principle does not mean it must be technologically feasible or currently understood to the degree necessary. The current failures of AI does not mean that all computational theories of consciousness are false, etc.
I still fail to see why. It seems experientially odd but it’s logically valid.
We are essentially getting onto the subject of time. Firstly let me define this problematic concept as: that which is necessary for action.
Now when did time exist? Well there’s a two possibilities: it has always existed or it came into being.
The first I believe is incoherent since it rests on the assumption of the cogency of actual infinites. Infinity, as conceived by Aristotle, was essentially considered as an ongoing process which never reached a final point. Now with the advent of set theory, by Cantor I believe, he argued that actual infinites were possible since there was a set which contains all sets and as such actual infinites were possible. I think Russell then pointed out the paradox that a set couldn’t contain itself and so this didn’t hold. Russell did believe in transfinite numbers but I’m not sure on his justification. My history in this area is sketchy so any help here would be great.
Anyway, I believe one can so the absurdity of actual infinites rather easily. I here I’m shamelessly stealing Hilbert’s Hotel.
Imagine a hotel with countably infinitely number of rooms all of which are occupied. Then a new customer arrives. One may think there’d be no room but all that needs doing is to move the guest in room 1 to 2 and the guest in room 2 to 3 etc and one can accommodate a new guest. This process can continue with every new guest who arrives. So we have the situation in which all rooms are occupied but we can still accomodate new guests; it is both full and not full at the same time.
Put it another way:
∞ + 1 = ∞
Which makes sense due to the potential nature of infinity. Yet if it is actual too we can do this:
∞ - ∞ = 1
0 = 1
Slightly odd to say the least.
Thus we must conclude time began from which it follows that a timeless being brought it into existence. You could then argue who made God but the regression ends at the beginning and the timeless being must be without beginning. NB he is not before the beginning because their is nothing to be before, he is without time and as such the question who made God is nonsensical. I’d argue though at creation (action) he exists within time which is consistent with my above definition.
In conclusion then, theism does solve the regression problem whereas naturalistic determinism does not.
Now you may argue as did Mises that if God did exist determinism would follow anyway due to God’s omniscience and omnipotence. The latter is really a weak objection since it disallows the possibility that God could give free agency to anyone. Is it really impossible for God to set up a framework for a game and let people play it out how they wish too without God necessarily ordaining all their moves. It would be like saying that X pointing a gun at Y caused Y to shoot Z dead since he could stop Y killing Z dead. Rather than being a logical problem it is a moral one of why God doesn’t always intervene when we may expect him to do so. The quick answer is he know more than we do and more importantly at this juncture has a bigger perspective.
Omniscience presents a bigger problem: if God knows what we will do before we do it surely then we have no choice in what we do. If God infallibly knows at T that X will choose A at time T+1 then X can do no other than choose A. The question is though is knowledge of the future possible. Id argue since it does not exist then it can’t be known. Analogously we have an idea of what a Minotaur is but do we really know what one is? Obviously we can’t know what it IS since it IS NOT. It is merely a potential form one could take. So as with time God knows all possibilities but not what will occur.
Obviously there are theistic variants of determinism which don’t fall prey to the regression fallacy but do fail on the possibility of a person knowing truth as with other deterministic systems.
I used to distinguish it from compatabilism since most compatabilist will say there possition, like Nir’s, has free will hence the distinction.
Are you familiar with Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism? Supposing that the gazelle does run away from the lion this no way implies that he has true knowledge. The gazelle could believe the lion is a God so runs away from it. Even on your own terms you can’t get anything better than a crude pragmatic sort of knowledge.
But of cause you do cause it- your/my will is self causing. Of course the freedom worth wanting is the ability to make decisions but your position under cuts it.
Since there’s no way of evaluating the truth of the proposition other than to say what you were determined and since you are not epistemologically infallible there’s no way of telling what you were determined to say is true.
If man is free it COULD be different.
I need mental stimulation, ever since leaving uni I get very little. My main interest in the topic comes from a theological background and a desire to maintain the dignity and responsibility of man in his freedom of the will.
Why is dualism untenable?
“Why is dualism untenable?”
Occam’s Razor in conjunction with the plethora of neurological and experimental evidence that substantiates monism. Then of course there is the fact that dualism is a black box that simply pretends to explain consciousness by postulating supernatural complex entities that are unfathomable to the human mind.
Good old Occam’s broom. Any way how could one prove via the material that the immaterial exist? The fact that we cannot exhaustively know about supernatural entities does not mean we cannot know anything about them.
And how do you propose to learn anything about the supernatural? Divine inspiration, introspection?
I think my above cosmological style argument works pretty well. But yes introspection, natural law and divine inspiration are pretty good places.
If there are things he cannot do and know, how is he still omnipotent and omniscient?
Z.
The normal caveats as such for omniscience and omnipotence is logical possibility. I concede that God could have created an exhaustively deterministic universe and as such have exhaustive definite foreknowledge since he brings all things to pass. My point is that in his sovereignty he chose to make man free and thus cannot logically know what he will do in the future, only map all possibilities.
I hope that clears it up. I possibly should have made this clear earlier but it was in response to determinism so I framed it as such.
Even if your cosmological argument was persuasive (it isn’t), all you are arguing for is some prime mover type deity. There is no justification for a spiritual, caring, personal god or even a conscious entity at that. If you define God as ‘whatever it is that everything came from’ then sure, you may have a point (a trivial one). Don’t go and equivocate between the deism you are arguing for and your own pet theistic beliefs, where the creator of the universe loves and cares for us and sits in his castle in the sky. The God of the Gaps is a poor argument.
Well the cosmological argument was only ever intended to to prove a prime mover deity. The purpose was to show that theism doesn’t succumb to the regression fallacy. It is not however a classic God of the Gaps argument since that relies on God filling ignorance; my cosmological argument rests on logical necessity.
I could argue for a fuller conception of God but I didn’t. My response of saying that divine inspiration was merely a retort to your incredulity of knowing of the immaterial I never intended that to form an argument as such just a possible way of knowing the immaterial.
Nope.