[Wittrs] Is There a Free Will?
- From: Joseph Polanik <jpolanik@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:05:37 -0500
Cayuse wrote:
>Joseph Polanik wrote:
>>physicists and mathematicians have taken over from philosophers the
>>task of deciding whether there is a free will. google "conway kochen
>>free will theorem" or start your search here
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem.
>The article hits the nail on the head when it says that "The
>definition of "free will" used in the proof of this theorem is simply
>that an outcome is "not determined" by prior conditions, and some
>philosophers strongly dispute the equivalence of "not determined" with
>the existence of free will".
there is no idea so absurd that it hasn't been advocated by some
philosophers. --- Cicero.
the fact that some philosophers disput X means almost nothing. if you
want to research the impact of QM on philosophical claims about free
will. determinism and indeterminism; then, look up t'Hooft. he is a
nobel laureate who tried to come up with an alternate interpretation of
QM, one that preserved determinism while maintaining consistency with
experimental results. to avoid recognizing that the experimenter has a
free choice as to how to which experiment to conduct, he had to assume
that the apparently free choice altered the past so that the past
continued to determinate its future --- including that 'choice'.
you can find t'Hooft's papers at arXiv.
>Certainly there is the *idea* of an agent, but that agent does not
>appear in the immediate data of experience.
and; therefore ... what?
having an idea about a cow doesn't prove that there is no cow.
>There are many scientific studies that support the contention that the
>organism weaves stories around events such that the idea of self is
>placed at the centre of those stories -- i.e. the idea of "self as
>agent" is a post-hoc fabrication (see the work of Benjamin Libet, and
>see Michael Gazzaniga's book "The Mind's Past").
nothing unreal is self-aware.
in the absence of anything real in any sense of 'real', in the absence
of everything that exists ... no such stories would be told. hence, the
telling of such stories proves that something is telling such stories
--- irregardless of whether this or that story is accurate or
inaccurate.
Joe
--
Nothing Unreal is Self-Aware
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http://what-am-i.net
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