Free Will and Religion - Page 42

On March 11 2012 22:25 paralleluniverse wrote:
But the universe is not deterministic, the universe is random.

On March 11 2012 22:32 Gegenschein wrote:

What are MiraMax and you are arguing about, then? It seems you both believe that the universe is random. : D

On March 11 2012 22:37 paralleluniverse wrote:

MiraMax believes we have free will, because he can choose to do what is on a randomly drawn card. I'm saying you have no choice in that. You were always going to do that.

The randomness in the universe is at the subatomic level, it doesn't in general apply to macro-objects like people, cards, computers, etc.

On March 11 2012 22:37 paralleluniverse wrote:

MiraMax believes we have free will, because he can choose to do what is on a randomly drawn card. I'm saying you have no choice in that. You were always going to do that.

The randomness in the universe is at the subatomic level, it doesn't in general apply to macro-objects like people, cards, computers, etc.

On March 11 2012 22:55 MiraMax wrote:


To try to be even more precise: I am arguing that the possible fact that "I was always going to do X (in the sense that only one actual world possibly exists) does not and cannot even in principle limit my 'freedom' of choice in any relevant, comprehensible sense of the words "freedom" and "choice".

My evolution example was meant to show that by following your train of thought, I could insist that it is 'really' false to say that "evironmental conditions X at point in time t select for the procreation of organism Y" because this would imply that organism "Y" was not selected for in any possible world. Since only the actual world is possible, organism Y was necessarily procreating, nothing was 'really' selected for and thus there is nothing to learn from such an observation.

Our accepted "explanations" don't work like that. They allow us to consider counterfactuals and say: "Were environmental conditions X not present, but environmental conditions Z, organism Y could not have been selected for at time t". In exactly the same relevant sense I claim it is true to say that "had I not chosen to do X, I could have chosen to do Y at time t" irrespective of whether in actuality I chose X as a consequence of a chain of deterministic processes which were started at the beginning of the universe. This is all the relevant freedom I could ever have and want to have with regard to choices irrespective of determinism or indeterminism or the like.

On March 11 2012 23:41 paralleluniverse wrote:

Your point about experiments making no sense in a deterministic universe is rather wonky, and is something I've already addressed in a previous post.

The universe follows physical laws, so it's no surprise that even in a deterministic universe, when we make a experiment, we would be measuring these laws in some sense. Then it is obviously not surprising that we can ask what would happen if we applied these laws to some particular situation. It would make sense if the situation was in the past and never occurred, such as what would happen on earth if dinosaurs weren't wiped out. It would make sense if the situation was something that is likely to occur in the future, such as how to make more efficient solar panels. It would make sense if the situation was a timeless property of the universe, such as how much vacuum energy there is in an empty unit of space. It always makes sense to ask legitimate questions of science.

Your argument taken to the extreme seems to imply, if we are in a deterministic universe, then we should immediately cease all science, because it is ultimately pointless.

On March 12 2012 00:12 MiraMax wrote:


Exactly! With the only caveat that it is not originally "my argument" taken to the extreme, but in fact what is implied if "your argument" is taken to the extreme. We can setup exactly the same kind of experiments for testing the consequences of free will and 'real' choices and none of our findings there are compromised by the possible fact that it was all predetermined to be so in the particular situation of the experiment. That is exactly why determinism cannot take anything away from the power and validity of any explanation including free will. Our will is free because we have real choices, because we can act otherwise even if this is only in the sense of counterfactuals, because if actuality is the only 'really possible' world any and all alternatives are 'merely' counterfactual, including our alternative modes of action.

Or you conclude that free will is only an "illusion" since all things could never be otherwise (including our choices), but then any other explanation above the level of "basic constituents and the deterministic law(s) governing them", like evolution or gravity are just "illusions" of regularity. I find this latter view unintuitive since it seemingly fails to fully account for their predictive power.

I would happily agree that free will is "as illusory" as is gravity, however. Would you?

On March 11 2012 22:37 paralleluniverse wrote:

MiraMax believes we have free will, because he can choose to do what is on a randomly drawn card. I'm saying you have no choice in that. You were always going to do that.

The randomness in the universe is at the subatomic level, it doesn't in general apply to macro-objects like people, cards, computers, etc.

Nietzsche in the Ante-Christ
The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness.

On March 05 2012 21:37 paralleluniverse wrote:


The only reason theologians and religious people latch on to the completely unscientific notion of free will is to "explain" why bad things happen. If God is good, then why did he let the genocide in Rwanda happen? Why does he not intervene in the the mass-murder being conducted by the Syrian government, as we speak? Why is there evil in the world. Because God gave us free will, allegedly. This is then neatly tied into the Original Sin myth, whereby Eve exerted free will and chose to eat from the Garden of Eden, and this frivolous reason somehow necessitated that Jesus die on the cross.

On March 12 2012 01:15 Pahimarus wrote:


Or perhaps those theologians disagree with your fundamental assumption that the laws of science are the only laws that govern the universe. Every belief system has a set of philosophical underpinnings which are assumptive in nature and cannot be proven. I think it is unfair for you to judge the ideas of the 'theologians' strictly on the basis of your own philosophical assumptions. Essentially you are using the internal consistency of their argument as evidence of fabrication, yet at the same time arguing that your argument is correct because it is itself internally consistent.

If one of these "theologians" was to come to you and argue that your view was wrong on the basis of the teaching of the Bible (and I would be surprised if someone hasn't ), I suspect you would be spectacularly unconvinced by their arguments since you reject their fundamental belief that scripture is an authoritative source of knowledge. Similarly, since they reject your belief that science is the only authoritative source of knowledge, your argument that science "proves" free will to be impossible, is essentially irrelevant.

On March 08 2012 18:42 EatThePath wrote:

What...? That means it's either true or undecidable.


I've been flirting with responding in this thread, but nothing has really presented itself as a good launchpad. The topic of religion is a distraction. But this has grabbed me because it's both the point, and an introduction to the thing that this thread has missed so far.

You're right -- this argument is purely pedantic because it can't affect the life you live. Indeed, your perception is always that you have free will, and make decisions for yourself. Even if you admit that free will doesn't exist, you still experience it constantly. As far as anyone can say, functionally we have free will.

Think about that. Functionally we have free will.

This is the explanation of the problem. That being, it is rather easy to reason that there is no free will, or at the very least "free will" is a meaningless term.

We experience free will because we cannot know what our choices will be. They arise as the product of unthinkably many real physical events. Some of these may be literally impossible to know/observe/measure, if the veil of quantum mechanics is never pierced. In any case it's impossible to know all of the things that go into a choice. This is more than just because it's an unwieldy task. The physical cost of observation and computation prohibits it. The universe is bounded, and cannot perfectly observe itself.

As an aside, think of Godel's theorem in analogue, if that helps.

Anyway, it's literally physically impossible to attain the perfect information and compute it in a way that would demonstrate what a choice would be before it is made. Put another way, it's impossible to build a universe-predictor, because we are within the universe. The only way to learn the choice is to watch everything play out... and see the thing itself.

To come back to our individual experience: what is that other than one's observation of one's self? This is indeed just self awareness, consciousness. Thus, we experience free will as a retroactive phenomenon. This is not at odds with a deterministic universe; it is in fact the result thereof.

At heart, this puzzle can be understood most broadly under the umbrella of thermodynamics. In a way it is rather liberating. A deterministic universe provides knowable things but we can't ever know them all! Not even what we will do next.

This book walks you through everything I just tried to say; it's very neatly done. There's some random topical stuff but the core is well worth the read.

On March 12 2012 00:20 paralleluniverse wrote:

Gravity is not an illusion. There are laws governing gravity. Free will, on the other hand, is a violation of the physical laws, and therefore absurd.

Determinism does not compromise experiments, because the underlying thing we are experimenting on is governed by physical laws that the experiment will pick up.

Counterfactuals still make sense in a deterministic universe, because having learned about the laws of nature we can ask what would happen when they are applied to certain situations. This helps us with future predictions.

To think that in a deterministic universe we should cease all science is confusing determinism with fatalism. It's like saying, if the universe is deterministic, why do anything at all? Firstly, not doing anything is doing something and will lead to certain outcomes likely unfavorable, secondly if the universe is deterministic, you have no choice, if you do nothing you were always going to do nothing.

Applied to science, doing no science is stupid because it would stop human progress, secondly, we would have no choice on whether we stopped doing science or not, it was already determined.

On March 12 2012 16:27 MiraMax wrote:


You seem to have all that it takes! So why don't you listen to your own advice and simply abandon the fatalistic notion that just because a causal chain determines my free choice and that - in a deterministic universe - I will therefore always do the same thing given a sufficiently specific situaton this could somehow limit the freedom of my will or the freedom of my choice. It just doesn't follow.

This is the thought process that convinced me that there is no free will:

Start from 1 particle.

Imagine that the universe is just 1 particle. I don't know what kind of particle it is or what are it's properties but imagine it's alone. It has nothing to react to. It just sits there. Does it have free will? What is required for this particle to get free will?

Add another particle. It can be same as the first one or a unique particle with properties different form the 1st. Does each of the 2 particles have free will? Do the 2 particles have free will when thought of collectively? What is required for this set of particles to get free will?

Add more particles. Every time you add 1 ask the questions I asked above. At some point, you reach the number of particles in the universe.

At what point will there be an answer, "yes, this set of particles have free will"?