Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">OT topics are the meterietes of the forums - they burn big and bright, for a relatively short time until people get tired of them and stop posting. It has happened before. Set the view to "Show All Topics" and you can see for yourself. This one only has 200 Posts so far; others have many more.

[ March 20, 2003, 02:03: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There is a difference between holding a position and playing Socrates. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Your post had not an ounce of logical argument or philosophical merit to it, actually. All you did was to say "this is how it is". There was no reasoning given.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">OT topics are the meterietes of the forums - they burn big and bright, for a relatively short time until people get tired of them and stop posting. It has happened before. Set the view to "Show All Topics" and you can see for yourself. This one only has 200 Posts so far; others have many more.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I assume Atrocities was joking. Look at his post count. He has posted here enough times to know about OT topics. In fact, he has started several of those OT threads that swelled in sized. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ March 20, 2003, 02:57: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, we seem to have left behind our discussion of Fyron's theory that the Roman Catholic Church slowed progress and lengthened the "Dark Ages" by a couple hundred years, the topic that started this thread, and moved on to all kinds of philosophical meanderings. Since we're talking about predestination, perhaps we have found our way back to early-modern religion. Are you a closet Calvinist Fyron? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ March 20, 2003, 03:14: Message edited by: Chronon ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

It is probably time to give this thread a more appropriate title. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

No, I am not a Calvinist. We are not talking about predestination. Predestination is the belief that everyone's final destination in the afterlife is determined before they are born. Their actions on Earth make no difference between whether they go to heaven or hell. This is wholely different than determinism v. free will.

[ March 20, 2003, 03:24: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Turn it around - How can you tell for sure (or wihin a reasonable doubt) that free will is an illusion? Until you can demonstrate your side, one hypothesis is as equally valid as the other. However, I made a point about quantum mechanics a while back which would support free will....</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Exactly.
The post I was quoting had much determination, but nothing concrete backing it up.
I was just trying to encourage something deeper than "yes it is" "no it isn't". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, this was the crux of the problem. There is absolutely nothing logical or philosophical about the responses (the QM post comes close, but not quite). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif The original post about this was not meant as an end-all, beat-all argument, but more as a topic to discuss. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ March 20, 2003, 04:29: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">All right, then, um..
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">How then could you explain the monks who deprive themselves for spiritual enlightenment or those who suicide? If everything is determined by the laws of nature, which state that things want to survive, then they cannot be explained. They can, however, if you postulate that the people involved have free will.
If you postulate that they do not have free will, and do so as a result of social and economic pressures, then you must also explain why most people don't.
If you postulate that people do what they do because of their genetic makeup and how they were raised, then you must also address how the child of a child beater will often not become a child beater him- or her- self, despite the very strong tendency for the furtheration of the parents' habits that is known to exist.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, you're probably right. See new title above...

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

Cool, a pub. Just in time, with the demise of the Cantina I have nowhere to drown the sorrows inflicted by the Iraq thread.

*dogscoff orders and downs four pints of strong lager, all the while considering whether his actions are simply the deterministically inevitible results of an uncountable accumulation of absolute probablity events in the vast atomic pinball game that is the entirity of space/time since the Big Bang, or whether the essence of consciousness actually resides in the largely unexplored realms of quantum mechanics, thus scientifically proving that the human mind is greater than the sum of its parts and releasing decision from the deterministic constraints of cause and effect, implying that free will does exist and making tomorrow's hangover entirely his own fault.

Even though Fyron hasn't got his Comprehensive Deterministic Universal Modeller (C-DUM) working yet, everyone predicts that dogscoff will soon fall drunkenly off his chair. He does.

[ March 20, 2003, 15:46: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

It finally all came together for me, and now I understand. We are all doomed to play SEIV forever (or at least until SEV comes out) because of all of the events that have happened in the past. We have no choice, it is simply the way it is. So if someone gives any of us grief for playing the game too much, we should just respond that you can't fight nature, that this is the way things must be. I think I like this theory.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

How about this:
Is it possible for a computer program (such as an AI routine) to have free will?

If so, a copy or close variant of that program, running in an organic neural net/brain would also provide free will.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Quite probably. All that mucking about with electrons that goes on inside circuitry probably involves QM.

You should have a read of Rob Schrab's Scud: Dispoible Assassin. It's a great read and there is a really nice concept about all of human history being predetermined by God, but then a Robot (without sould and therefore unconstrained by Destiny) messes everything up.

Not the same thing at all, I know, but it made me think of it and it's a damned good comic.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">How do you mean? By generating errors? They're pretty rare, except when using windows, and that's not due to QM, its due to QA.

I think we could also use a good definition of Free Will, and what it means to say one thing has it while another dosen't.
If an AI compares random numbers to decide whether to go left or right, is that free will? It will be chaotic and unpredictable...

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Apply a force to a ball on a pool table- if the force and direction and locations of all the balls are known, the exact consequences can be predicted and known by applying a series of known physical laws. Once the force is applied, the rest of their movements could be said to be pre-determined by the laws of physics. Cause and effect.

Now consider that not only pool balls are subject to physical laws. People, cars, planets, atoms, brain cells... these are all made of matter and subject to the laws of physics. Therefore, if you apply a force to a car and all the variables are known, then the end result can be predicted. The implications of this are scary, and it's called determinism:

Determinism goes beyond "you're hungry and people eat when they are hungry, so I can predict that you will eat." It's more like "your decision to eat or not eat depends upon an immensely complex balance of psychological and physiological factors, all of which can be theoretically reduced to a bunch of chemicals and electrical impulse flying about in your brain and body."
Chemicals and impulses that are subject to the laws of physics, just like the pool table.

Imagine the universe as a massive, four (more?) dimensional pool table, with every one of the squillions of most fundamental subatomic particles as a pool ball. At the very beginning of the universe, in the instant that the big bang occurs, a force is applied. The qualities of that force set the entire universe in motion in a direction determined by the qualities (power, direction etc) of the force. Every movement of every atom from that moment until now, including the atoms in your brain clustered together right now in the right pattern to form the decision "I will eat" or "I will not eat"... every single movement in the entire universe is predetermined in just the same way the the balls on the pool table were. you have no free will. Your decisions are just cause-and-effect results of physical phenomena within your brain, which in turn are only the way they are because they were put there by other cause and effect reactions, and so on right to the big bang.

Now quantum mechanics provides us with a get out clause. QM implies that there are some things going on in the universe which don't necessarily have anything to do with cause and effect. They do not follow predictable laws, and there's room for free will again, although it implies some very wierd and unscientific things about the nature of the mind.

Anyway, I gotta go...

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">As a computer programming student, I can tell you it is extremely difficult to get a computer to produce truly random numbers. It is possible, mind you - it takes hardware that produces truly random input, such as a noisy diode or a human user; sometimes a clever programmer will use the processor itself as a truly random number generator by using the clock drift - however, those are very rarely used. What is normally produced is pseudorandom numbers. These numbers come out of simple equations, where the routine goes something like this (I may have my suntax a bit off):

double Random(Double *seed){
double r = 1.73658965335795;
double d = 4.56891247479574;
*seed = r * (*seed) - d * (*seed) * (*seed)
return *seed;
}

While not truly random, these types of routines produce numbers that are scarecly predictable.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

The least significant bits from a microphone input (even if the microphone isn't plugged in) should also do fairly well, I hear.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You made a pun!

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting statement. The problem is that it doesn't take onto account gestalt, or emergent, properties. When a system (whether it be composed of atoms, neurons, people, cultures, etc.) gets to a certain level of complexity it can display qualitatively different features, ones that cannot be predicted solely through knowledge of the constituent elements. Examples of such would be the emergence of life from matter, the emergence of consciousness, the emergence of the nation-state, the properties of many drugs, breaching the speed of light, etc. Using the billiard analogy, this would be equivalant to a particularly complex shot causing all the balls to merge into a 30 foot tall MechaGodzilla that promptly dashed off to play in the land of Nod. The laws of physics could not predict that.

Determinism falls apart in the face of such drastic shifts in expectation.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

While there are properties you may not expect, that's because you aren't following the exact cause and effect, (mainly because its too hard to think about)

Things like the game of life (Link) have emergent properties, but still, if you follow the rules, and know the exact starting conditions, you can predict.
Try the "shooter"; its pretty cool.

Also, what are you referring to about the speed of light? All of the reports I've seen were basically media-hyped illusions.

[ March 20, 2003, 22:26: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

However, the more complex the system, the more effect even a small change can have. When you get to things as complicated as the human brain, quatum mechanical effects can no longer be ignored. However, one of the big things in QM is randomness and chance. For an organism as complex as a person, prediction based on the laws of physics breakes down. In the game of life you link to runs on a very small set of rules that ignore all possibility of QM effects.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

This is all interesting, but we're still don't have any working definitions. I'll start the ball rolling (and you all can kick it straight back in my face http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ):

Free will--the ability of an organism to make a decision independently of outside factors, including prior experience, available data, and previous input (training, education, etc). Free will acknowledges the influence of both internal and external factors, but reserves the responsibility of choice to the organism in question.

Determinism--the principle that thought and decision processes are predetermined by prior scientifically explainable physical or chemical processes. Determinism holds that the entire future of the universe was determined at the beginning of time, and the concept of free will is an illusion derived from the complexity of the physical forces involved.

Do those sound like good working definitions? Or should we make some changes/scrap and start over?

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

Those are decent working definitions for now.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

quarian: your emergent properties would still result from physical laws. The fact that no human could ever collect enough data to apply those laws and make a prediction is irrelevant. it's stilldetermined.

acording to a determinist...

just for the record, I'm not a determinist. I prefer to believe in the quantum stuff. God does play dice. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Krsqk: Your definitions fit nicely.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I was referring to the fact that the theory of relativity does not apply to anything going past lightspeed. Physical(?) laws after that point would be qualitatively different.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Perhaps, I was pointing out that the sometimes drastic changes that occur with emergent properties would nullify previous predictions based on the prior qualities. For example, projections based on the entropic qualities of quantities of matter are moot when said quantities acquire the anti-entropic qualities of life.

Perhaps this would be a better argument against prophecy. As complex systems grow in complexity they inevitably qualitatively change, thus nullifying existing predictions. Determinism is a little more annoying since it relies on supernatural influence (whether it be a god, a set of laws, etc.) and so is exempt from most rational arguments (it can always claim omniscience).

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ok, but I don't see what you're getting at...

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Although, that would make prophecy under a free-will system all the more remarkable. BTW, I don't see the existence of the supernatural as contradictory to the operation of free will; they operate in different spheres (although supernatural could override/negate the effects of free will if necessary).

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

There seems to be at least two points of view in regards to how our thoughts originate. (1) There is the biochemistry view that says thoughts are a result of chemical reactions in the brain; i.e. the different chemical and electrical processes are what thought is. If this is so, free will would be an illusion. (2) Another view is that we have a soul or spirit which is separate from physical matter. Thoughts originate from this non-physical spirit, and the chemical processes in the brain are a secondary phenomenon caused by the thought. Then free will is possible because thoughts can originate independently of the arrangement of chemicals and atoms in the physical brain.

Even if quantum mechanics allow random processes to occur, that does not necessarily mean that we can have free will. If the reactions in the brain occur randomly, then we don't have a choice as to what the outcome is, and therefore we are not in control. Our thoughts would be a consequence of random quantum fluctuations, not a result of free will.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Quarian, you're still not getting it it. The predictions are irrelevant. Under determinsism, you are just a bunch of particles bouncing around, following the only path through history they possibly could have from their random creation in the Big Bang. The universe doesn't care whether you "predict" or "know" things or not, because your "knowledge" is just a complex pattern of matter in your "brain", which itself is nothing more than a bunch of atoms that happen to be hanging out together for a while because physics put them there.
Under determinism, you have no free will because in any given set of circumstances your atoms can only take one path- the path determined by the laws of physics. There is no possible alternative, no choice, no decision and no free will.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No it doesn't. It absolutely does NOT. Determinism is the absolute extreme non-spiritual, absolutely physical view of the universe. It is the logical extreme of the assumption that everything in the universe is governed by a set of utterly consistent physical laws and nothing else- an assumption that has been central to science for centuries. The introduction of any supernatural presence would mean something affecting events from outside those laws, and so introduce unknown variables and screw everything up.

As for the speed of light, even if the way things react to circumstances change under those conditions, they will still be bound by a set of consistent rules.

Quantum mechanics introduces doubt to the determinist argument by taking the "utterly consistent" out of the physical laws. That's why it's so contraversial and ground-breaking. It still doesn't necessarily introduce a god or soul, although it doesn't rule them out completely either.

EDIT: I hadn't read Kamog's post. Good point.

[ March 21, 2003, 08:57: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

I have to admit that I'm highly dubious of the extreme determinist position. Here are my two cents (or eurocents):

I'll grant that natural law (genetics, physics, etc.) does have some effect on basic human function, personality and so on. What I look like, how my body has developed, and my basic temperment does seem to have been imposed by natural law. After seeing the development of my daughter and her friends, I would agree that natural law does play a significant role (I used to be more of an extremist on the nurture side in the "nature versus nurture" debate).

But, I don't see how natural law makes me stay up too late working on the frigate design for my ship set, or dictates which type of cereal I eat in the morning.

So, the way I see it, natural law dictates a certain range of behaviors on the macro level, but free will has everything to do with decisions on a micro level. Perhaps quantum mechanics and Newtonian physics are indeed a good analogy. Newtonian works for large bodies, but fails for small ones, just in the same way that natural law works for the general parameters of life, but not for determining what one eats for breakfast.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I agree with you, but I'm playing devil's advocate here, so...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But the macro level is just a manifestation of events on the micro level. In fact, there *is* no macro level- that's just an abstraction made up by our puny mortal minds that, for some obscure reason, find it easier to process the concept of "a lump of wood" than "a hundred squillion carbon, hydrogen and assorted other atoms in a particulr arrangement."

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It's not nature vs nurture- nature and nurture are *both* within the realm of cause and effect. I'll explain after another quote or two...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Let me put it this way: Your every decision and your every involuntary process is a result of who You are. (Note the capital letter) If you stay up all night on your shipset, it's because there are factors at work in You stronger than your urge to sleep. There's no mystery to it- A desire for completion, a desire to impress your peers, the fact that you had a nap just after lunch and aren't too tired... Dozens of conflicting factors that all combine to make Your behaviour. The question is, who are You?

The trouble is, you can't let go of this idea that You are any less a pile of atoms than your breakfast cereal or your desk. Your brain and body constitute a hugely complex pattern of matter, but it is still just a finite lump of matter.

The pattern your matter-lump now happens to occupy is You. Your entire state of mind and personality, your memories and emotions, all of it down to every Last tiny detail is encoded in the exact, unique arrangement of nerves and cells and tissues and chemicals that make up your brain and body at this exact moment. In a micro second it will be changed- gone forever, replaced by a slightly different You.

The important thing is that all those factors I mentioned earlier, the ones that decide whether or not you go to bed, those things are encoded in your current pattern as well. Your creative urge is a particularly complex budles of nerves somewhere in your head. Your tiredness is a build up of chemicals in your nervous system. Which one is stronger? Your decision to stay up or go to bed is determined by the interaction of this physical matter in You- your "pattern", as I keep calling it.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But the micro-level physical matter that is You is still subject to physical laws. If you were to look at any particle in your body at any given moment in time (for example the crucial atom in your brain that can tip the balance between you going to bed or not), if you looked at it you would see that it does not have a choice about what happens to it next. Physics (ignoring quantum stuff) only allows one possible course of action. There is only one thing it can do, so you WILL go to bed or you WILL stay up.

And all of this holds for every single one of your atoms and protons and neutrons and whatever-elsons, and all the other particles in the universe, all the time, and it has done since the Big Bang, and shall be ever thus until the entire universe crumples into itself in a great big entropic heap.

Extrapolate this process backwards through your life, with the state of your physical being at any given moment being the inevitable result of the state it was in an instant before, and you see that you have no free will. You just think you do, atom-bag.

[ March 21, 2003, 16:25: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting take, but it does point out one important fact: Competing base unproveable assumptions. 1) Measureable reality is all that exists. 2) Soul exists and has influence.

Niether of these can be objectively tested (barring some controversial expieriments where dying people lost 3/4 of an ounce on death, disreputable claims on psionics, near-death experiences, et cetera) which would put the debate up to an endurance challenge on which side can keep shouting the longest, as both sides assume different things and niether assumption is either proveable or disproveable, and everything follows from those base assumptions.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

An interesting experiment had people reacting to things while in a real time scanner (CAT or MRI or something).

When for example, they touched something hot, they would, naturally, jerk their hand back.
A noticable amount of time later, the brain activity would kick up in response.

The people would report that they actively moved their hand, when it was a subconsious reflex, and the brain simply hadn't had a chance to notice and respond by that time. They just didn't remember it that way.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

Nerve cells do have some degree of functionality independant of the brain, after all.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

IIRC, most (if not all) reflexes just go to the spinal cord and back, rather than all the way up.

The thing is, those people remembered deciding to do something, when really, they had no choice.

Ah!
I just remembered what I was thinking about on the way to school this morning:

Consider a (3D) movie, and the characters in that movie.
From a vantage point independent of time (such as a god's) how are is our universe different from that movie reel?

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

I guess that would depend on the point of view one takes (deterministic or free will). A determinist would say that the film makes up life--every event was pre-recorded, and it only is a matter of happening. A free-will-ist http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif would say the reverse, that life--each individual's thread of events--makes up the film.

The question gets more interesting when you throw in the two views of supernatural sovreignty, which are almost parallel to determinism and free will. One holds that God is in active control of each event, and that our free will is only an illusion; the other says that He usually only controls the general direction of things and allows us to make our own individual choices. The latter view would say that while God could control every event, He is powerful enough to work around (and in spite of) individual choices and still accomplish His will.

To draw an analogy from chess--I am an aggressive player. I can push you this way and that, and leave you only one option. I have enough skill to beat you, but that's about it. That's the first view. The second would be if I were, say, a Grandmaster (ha, yeah, right) playing a novice. I wouldn't have to force you into submission. I could sit back and let you do what you want, and still subtly direct the play how I wanted it to go (control of the center and all that). Or maybe it's like a chess engine at 100-ply thought playing one at 1-ply thought--there's a difference in perspective there.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

Dogscoff, that is a very interesting argument for determinism. I am going to have to think about it for a while (it's too late at the moment, and the tired atom http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif is telling me to go to bed) and see if I can come up with a good counter-argument. Intuitively I believe that one can be a collection of atoms AND have free will, but I will have to think about how to properly construct an argument that works within natural law.

So, I'll be back... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

Some people say that only humans are self-aware and animals are not. According to them, a dog is not capable of introspection - it is able to learn and react to situations, but it does not know that it is doing so. I think that there is no way to confirm if this is true or not. Intuitively, it does not seem right that humans are special and fundamentally different from other life forms.

If humans have free will, then do dogs have free will? How about fish? Insects? Bacteria? Where do we draw the line? In my opinion, if we say that humans have free will, then all life forms must have it also.

If it is possible to arrange a collection of atoms in such a way as to have free will (as in a human brain), then in theory it must also be possible to construct a machine that has free will.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I agree with you Kamog.

We humans often make the mistake of defining attributes in human terms.

It is obvious that animals do not have our self-awareness.

Now, it could be a matter of degree or they may have a self-awareness which is fundamentally different from ours.

So, just because they do not share our "type" of self-awareness, does not mean they lack self-awareness.

The above comments also apply to the concept of free will.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That seems to imply that God is embedded in time, and is dragged along with the "present" like the rest of us.

If you can view multiple points in time simultaneously, in fact, all time simultaneously, then the universe should look like some sort of lumpy/stringy 4-or-more dimensional construct.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That seems to imply that God is embedded in time, and is dragged along with the "present" like the rest of us.

If you can view multiple points in time simultaneously, in fact, all time simultaneously, then the universe should look like some sort of lumpy/stringy 4-or-more dimensional construct.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I thought about free-will and determinism a lot. There are pros and cons on each side.

Basically, I have resolved it for myself on a practical basis.

If determinism is in effect, then it doesn't matter what I do. It is all foreordained.

So, I might as well conduct my life as if free will was the opererative principle.

If I am right (free will), then I have tried to exercise free will. If not, it doesn't matter since my attempt to exercise free will was foreordained.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

The whole discussion about 'determinism' vs. 'free will' assumes that cause and effect it true. There is a traditional logical error called 'Post Hoc' (Latin 'After here') which is essentially about assuming cause and effect. Just because event B always follows event A does not 'prove' that event B is caused by event A. They could both come from a single common cause that you are not able to see. David Hume observed that even in the physical world of the senses you cannot see the cause of one object moving another by physical contact. You can observe the event but there is nothing in sensory data that tells you how and why it happens.

As you are finding with the discussion of time, it's a bit difficult to get a handle on a universe that doesn't rely on linear time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif But regardless of what the universe 'really is', if what we perceive as 'time' is not real the whole issue of 'determinism' vs. 'free will' is moot. Our 'will' could very well be included in whatever force(s) create the universe as a whole (from whatever 'external' perspective these forces act from) and so we have pre-determined ourselves by our own freewill. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ March 22, 2003, 20:35: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I completely agree there.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

Baron, I couldn't agree with you more about time.

Because A follows B, we make the assumption B causes A.

And that may not be true.

And to take this discussion into a completely different direction, some proponents suggest time is an illusion.

They claim the past, present and the future already exist in a kind of omni-present. It is just that our perspective is riveted on the present and gives us the experience of discovering the future.

Can't say I really understand it, but it is a interesting concept.

[ March 22, 2003, 22:45: Message edited by: tbontob ]

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Aside from errors, such as where there is a third-event cause, isn't that part of the definition?

If not, how is cause defined?

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

"They claim the past, present and the future already exist in a kind of omni-present. It is just that our perspective is riveted on the present and gives us the experience of discovering the future."

There was a story written about this a while back..it's called "The story of your life"

Phoenix-D

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

I don’t like your two options, either there is a supernatural universe that dominates ours or everything can be predicted....
A myriad of chemical and electrical reactions inside my skull insist that they generate my free will.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

If consciousness is produced by chemicals in the brain, then I wouldn't want to step into a Star Trek transporter. The moment my body is transformed into energy, I'll be dead. Then a duplicate clone of me with my exact memories and personality will be created at the destination. If you ask the new 'transported' me what happened, he will answer, "I stepped into the transported and now I find myself here." But the original me will be gone. What the real me would experience is stepping into the transporter, and into oblivion.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think it's the quantum stuff that is actually more important here. I don't think it's really possible to model the human brain using Newtonian physics or strict chemical processes (as Kamog has pointed out). There is randomness at the particle level (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) that cannot be predicted, and individual behavior is more like the sub-atomic particle (undetermined until it happens) than the motion of a large planet (very predictable). Also, I think the human mind is more a pattern of energy than strictly a chemical process. And this pattern is extremely complex and ever-changing. Add to it all the experiences I've had, and the learning I've done over the course of my life, and I don't think any predermined pattern could possibly account for everything that I've done.

I guess when it comes down to it, I believe we are more than just atom-bags. Perhaps just atom-bags plus energy, but that energy changes everything.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yep trasporters anihiliate matter and create a duplicate somewhere else.
All trekkie characters are just copies of someone that died the first time he/she stepped into a transporter.

Re: [OT] Plato\'s Pub and Philosophical Society
 

"Yep trasporters anihiliate matter and create a duplicate somewhere else.
All trekkie characters are just copies of someone that died the first time he/she stepped into a transporter."

Which means that the transporters are cloning devices. Simply leave out the "anihiliate" step.

Phoenix-D