that is more than the sum of sensory inputs — Gnomon

I don't think anyone is saying the sensory inputs make for the whole of the will's analysis. There's lots more going on, plus rumination is a feedback loop.

The more information the will has, the better it works. Certain information is much greater than the average info, such as the realization that being in charge is an illusion, ironically, for that lets one know all the more that some seemingly bright idea needn't be totally fallen for simply because one came up with it.

Yes, but is that feeling of being in control of your life a truism or an illusion? — Gnomon

Illusion. "More than" hasn't been found.

Were you in Vietnam fighting through the worst of it? I was at the tail end.

Mystical…

Happy birthday and plenty of 'glorious experiences', to enable you to make more pictures and poems. — Jack Cummins

Thanks, Jack.

Some great scenes, music, and poem story:

That may be true, but randomness also breaks the chain of Cause & Effect with an Acausal link. It's that gap in causation that may provide a way to escape from the bonds of Determinism. But, it takes intelligence and reasoning ability to take advantage of the opportunity of arbitrariness in place of necessity. :smile: — Gnomon

You're a great responder, Gnomon, very good and pleasant over the years;, so let me say 'Thanks'. I turned 74 today and have had good luck so far; the world can't seem to kill me off, not even back in Cambodia when I was an intelligence officer at rare times in the field, but was mostly in Honolulu with ladies. Now the virus can't catch me, either, nor the doomsday glacier in Antartica that may soon crumble and greatly raise the sea level. These are epic times.

Sabine Hossenfelder has been espousing Super Determinism of late, if you want to look into it, and so here we are, between its specter and the escape as the randomness option, of all the binds and rocks and hard places to be in…

Well, it seems that the great benefit of the universe is that we get to have glorious experiences, sometimes, even if we are actors portraying ourselves in a play. I've always felt in charge, and that seems to have added to the pleasure.

What's the difference between "fixed will" and "free will"? — Gnomon

"Free will" is what sounds good to have because it announces that the will is free of something than no one is ever able to say but for that the will can usually operate, but that is not adding anything because that's what the will normally is. So, ‘free will’, on the surface, seems to be a great thing to have, for it promises one to be free of some constraint, which must be a good thing, right? Is the will/brain free to operate in the way that it does? Well, usually, outside of the control of parents, employers, owner, gods, and the like who can have forcing methods, so this kind of ‘free’ is not adding anything extra to the regular will, since mechanisms like the will are already free to operate.

In Earthly judicial courts, coercion/controlling/forcing/insanity, etc. can serve to have one judged as not responsible versus being held responsible. Note that this diametric is orthogonal to the other axis—that of a fixed will dependent on what one has become up to the moment versus a non-fixed (free?) will not depending on anything, if one still wants that in order to be ‘free’ (‘twould be a mess—not anything could function).

Does one want to be free of the consistency that the will provides, based on who we are from what we’ve become? No, this would not be the ‘free’ of free will. For the religious, does it mean to be able to be free of God’s will? No, for this is not ‘free’ since there will be consequences. What, then, is there for the will to be free of that is not some trivial finding? No one can say!

The closest we can answer this is the stance that compatibilists take, which again is no great shakes at all, for they still have it that all events are determined, which strangely makes for a free will for them but for when one is coerced into doing something, since their ‘free’ state is merely the freedom from coercion, for they grant determinism. Did they consider that the coercion was always going to happen, too, in the whatever will be will be? Other restraints upon doing what we like are such as the weather, laws, people, and more. A truly free will seems to have no real meaning, yet still remains a kind of Holy Grail hope to find somehow. When they can't push the idea forward, they may try some diversionary push-back.

Is it totally bound…? — Gnomon

Not if there is 'random', but otherwise it does as it has to. We see that 'random' harms the will if it messes up the path the will was taking.

Is there a way to measure the degree of fixation? — Gnomon

The deeper the fixation, the harder it is to learn or get deprogrammed. Some may be so stuck that we just ignore them. Every family seems to have one of those among their relatives.

Who do you think is punishing us with the desire for freedom without the power to choose? — Gnomon

No one can say what other way the will could be free of itself. No punishments, but perhaps there's some evolutionary advantage.


As for Super Determinism, this is just determination all the way through, with no 'random'.

pro:

1. The Block Universe is so. (Plus, 'God' knows everything, to the dismay of theologians.)

2. The quantum particle measurements ending in probabilities may be…

2a. because we can't take the influence of the entire universe into account or

2b. since the wave function proceeds deterministically before measurement, that's that, and since the particle is not a pinpoint but is spread out we can't have a precise location just stabbing into some part of it, which may also disrupt it, or

2c. it is already determined how the scientist will probe it that correlates with the result, making science useless.

con:

1. The eternal bedrock of reality can't have any input to it (yet there could be the most simplistic default of the way it has to be).

If you are not free to choose between Sense and Nonsense — Gnomon

The fixed will chooses all the time; it's mostly about providing for future. A bright fixed will can still be sensible. Or a will may not have good inputs and go for what turns out to be nonsense. The neural analysis considers what it holds and all the inputs. Restraints and forces against what the will wants are inputs, too. I could even grant that the brain waves of others are inputs, also—just another input! Billions of neurons with trillions of connections then do their analysis. Thinking may be flawed and neurotransmitters may not be sufficient to carry the signal across the synapse, but these are just more inputs.

We see that 'random' doesn't make for free will. Some may take consolation that the hurting of the will by 'random' provides for something different to happen. Perhaps there is no 'random'; I'm looking into this now. That would be a super shock!

Who is this "Will" you speak of? — Gnomon

Brain. Fire at Will!

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS

Determinism doesn’t sit well, at first;
Its flavor does not quench the thirst,
For then it seems we but do as we must,
But, we’ll see a way that in this we’ll trust.

We wish that our thoughts reflect us today,
Our leanings, for it could be no other way.
To know, let us turn to the ‘random’ say
To see whatever could make its day.

Shifting to this other, neglected foot,
What could make the ‘random’ take root?
It would have no cause beneath to explain
The events, they becoming of the insane.

We could pretend, imitating air-heads,
Posting nonsense on purpose in the threads,
But that then we meant to do this way,
Noting history, too, so ‘random’ holds not its sway.

There’s less problem of a determined Nature
Than the same in our individual nature,
But, sense isn’t made from ‘random’ direction
That relies on naught beneath its conception.

Would we wish it to be any other way?
Doing any old thing of chance that may?

The ‘random’ foot then walks but here and there,
Not getting anywhere, born from nowhere.
The unrooted tree lives magically, unfathomed.
Is not then ‘randomness’ but a fun phantom?

The opposite of determined is undetermined,
The scarier ghost that’s never-minded.

Not all anti-vaxxers are Fatalistic. Some exercised their "Free Won't", to rely on God instead of fallible doctors. That's Faith, not Fatalism. OK . . . fatal Faith, if you insist. — Gnomon

There's no "Fatalistic" tendency undermining the fixed will truth; that's just a diversion, as is saying "cynical". The will itself excercises "free won't" just like any other decision/choice analysis that it performs.

FREE WILL?

Do you control your thoughts or do they control you?
Could you, silly as it seems,
Just be falling, hook and line, for your thoughts?
Think about it—thoughts may tell you the answer!

The brain’s decisions are determined by
Memories, associations, and
Learned behaviors right up to the instant;
So—our decisions are predetermined.

The ‘free’ in free will has no real meaning,
Unless we take it to mean random, that
One’s will depends on nothing but dice rolls;
What good would such a brain be anyway?

Can you start or stop your thoughts? In other words,
Can you will that which does the willing? Try it.
Oops, a surprise thought just came from the blue;
You did not will it—the will is unfree!

A mind is perhaps many little minds,
Each a simpleton awaiting control,
Such as when we eat, socialize, or fight,
None of them very complex at all.

The brain, with its hundred billion nerve cells,
Does all of our decision-analysis,
Only making its results known, at the last,
To the brain’s highest level: consciousness.

People act, robot-like, since they know not
The why of what they do, for decisions
Are made blind, by brain networks, just before
They’re presented to us in consciousness.

Consciousness comes three hundred milliseconds
After the brain does its analysis,
And, thus, has no causal say or veto power,
Zero, over what the brain comes up with.

Decisions are not made by consciousness,
Although, this fine picture in the mind’s ‘I’,
Merely the brain’s perception of itself,
Is fed back whole for future shortcutting.

Not much of what the brain does reaches
Consciousness, and even when it does,
The mind’s last to know, being like a tourist—
For decisions precede their awareness.

First-level people have beliefs and desires,
But second-level people can have beliefs
And desires about their beliefs and desires,
Becoming able spectators of themselves.

Although our decisions of the instant are
Fully determined, and are therefore not free,
We may happen to learn something new—and make
Choices tomorrow we wouldn’t make today.

Thoughts good and bad come and go, as the brain
Looks at itself without assigning values.
Still, lucky that others can’t read our minds,
’Though forbidden thoughts are normal and sane.

If you try hard not to think of something,
Then you will just think of it all the more
So, if told to avoid impure thoughts, you’ll
Think of people naked beneath their clothes!

We may fall for our thoughts, hook, line, and sinker:
Conditioned responses, reflexes, or
Overwhelming emotions, spurious,
Or ancient, planted by evolution.

When extreme thoughts arrive, uninvited, as
Some do, the larger will vetos them—“don’t”.

We’re all robots, but no one notices
Since there are so many different kinds,
Which, though making life quite interesting,
Obscures the fact that the will is unfree.

Ouch! That sounds like cynical Fatalism — Gnomon

They wouldn't get vaccinated and couldn't, so they died from Covid.

So, you are a Drone controlled by Fate — Gnomon

We are all automated! What appears in consciousness is ever the past that's all over and done. At least it's the just past, for conscious content is always a very sequential representation to what the brain came just up with, and so it's not that far behind.

Of course, this realization of choices not being directly decided in consciousness right then and there is still the most shocking information of all to us, and furthermore it undermines many other philosophic proposals…

Although the conscious content is never of the now and so cannot be causal, rumination continues on sometimes and the process repeats, if one is not instantly reactive, perhaps with other brain areas contributing. Perhaps the qualia grant subsequent brain analyses a shortcut to more quickly size up the ongoing situation, with the qualia serving as a focus. Eventually all the other brain figuring areas have checked in and a final decision arrives, or not, if it can be delayed or to wait for more information.

Thus, the will is fixed to what it has become up the moment, but the will is dynamic and so its repertoire can be enlarged through learning, unto new and better fixed wills of the future moments.

The universe does us, not some other way around; we can't really claim blame or fame. Besides, whenever were we responsible for how we formed from genetics, nature, and nurture? Never.

What if one cannot learn because the will has become much too fixated? Doom.

conscious decisions — Gnomon

Free won't decisions aren't free of the will either. No decisions are made in consciousness; consciousness reflects the brain product that has already finished and took time, plus even more time has passed while the representation in consciousness was being built and woven into the flow.

something cant come from nothing. no matter if its spiritual or not. and therefore even a magical soul would not be able to create first causes, and therefore it would have no true free will

because despite everyone being too ignorant to realize it, true free will would be the ability to create first causes from nothing into the mind. — Miller

Good one! Plus, a first cause wouldn't know anything, given that it has no input.

Wave-Particle duality — Gnomon

Nor a wavicle, either, but a quantum field.

PS___No mysteries? When did you achieve Enlightenment and Omniscience? Should I address you as "Bhodi"? :wink: — Gnomon

Yes, as Bhodi, and as All-Knowing Philosopher Scientist of All Universes.

meta-physical topics — Gnomon

Not meta-physical. The will does as it has come to be. Time is fundamental as motion/movement/causality since there was no stillness stopping everything. Consciousness came to be along the way since before life there wasn't any; same with life. The notion of a self is the result of experiencing. No mysteries left.

But what are quantum fields fields of? Fields of what fill, or even constitute space and time? — Goldyluck

Stuff? They are the only stuff that there is.

A wavefunction is a momentary cross-section of a quantum field, propagating freely or interacting with other wavefunctions. — Goldyluck

Fields interact with other fields; it makes for a very complicated math to be worked on.

Whoever wants to know exactly where a particle is can go fish, and not know exactly where the fish are. No big deal.

But the concept of "Fields" is just as spooky as the empty-space notion of invisible intangible essential "Aether". He quotes physicist Sean Carrol, "the fields themselves aren't made of anything --- they are what the world is made of". — Gnomon

Einstein showed that there is no fixed background, and QFT is also background free, a rare agreement between the tiny and the large theories.

The elementary particles are breakable and makable, and so they are secondary, not fundamental, and are called physical matter. They cannot be a substance that is new and different from what is primary, for then they would be primary, as fundamental. Besides all the elementaries of a type are identical in quantum energy level, size, spin, charge, and all; thus they are formed of the same primary cloth. Nothing spooky here: the elementary physical matter are the quanta directly; thus what is primary is physical. Furthermore, what is primary is always physically moving and has no halt—or naught would have happened. The constant happenings/causations/movements are basic 'time'.

As for fields not being made of any thing (Sean Carrol), they are not makable or breakable, being the continuous simplest. They can serve for what we used to call 'space', our 'space' being emergent, but time isn't.

Some would consider my behavior to be somewhat religious, but with my Fundamentalist family and relatives I tread lightly. — Gnomon

The G*D Mind who programmed the universe is still a 'God', even if not infinitely smart. How is it there as the Eternal Basis of All, it thus necessarily having no input? What memory does it have to work with? What relations of concepts would it have to use in order to sort out thoughts? How could it make plans? What source would it use for making a universe out of? What purpose would it have?

I'd define space as that which everything moves through. — Gregory

Except that this inert absolute space of Newton's got the boot from Einstein, whose gravitational field essentially is space-time at the macro level. At the micro level, the quantum field would serve as 'space', although it is really just simple continuous stuff. One could still say that an elementary particle as a field quantum is in the field.

Does Space actually exists? I mean out of human experience that we understand it, does it actually exist "on its own"? Or it's only an a priori human non empirical thing which allows us to form all of our experiences as Kant suggested? — dimosthenis9

This could be if our brains spatialize time into ‘space’ so that we can better navigate through the series of discrete nows. The brain’s re-presentation of the successives would add spatial dimension to the past nows, this spatializing showing up as a distance for what is really just back in time

Atoms or Bosons — Gnomon

I will explain quarks and bosom energy tomorrow, along with the some old sexist problems caused by the quark names.

Is not the only thing conceivable as physically existing something that is spatial? — Gregory

The quantum vacuum with its overall quantum field is the One and Only, as the simplest state. Its field waves provide for extension into dimension, and it is everywhere because 'Nothing' cannot be. There's no non acting and unresponsive space background as a place, as Newton had it, whose only quantity is volume.

Matter is composed of field.

Space — Gregory

There is no space as a place; the quantum fields exhaust reality.

crap — Gnomon

My Space Vacation:

all those "nothings" — Gnomon

…added up to a heck of a lot of crap!

Yet quarks are supposed to be the constituent parts of massive objects. Where does all that mass actually come from? — Metaphysician Undercover

Most of the mass=energy of a proton is from the gluons.

Photons have no charge, no resting mass, and travel at the speed of light.
That's about as close to nothing as you can imagine. But modern physicists have become grudgingly resigned to treating nothingness as-if it is a physical (material) object. Photons, Fields, & Quarks would have been dismissed by Aristotle as Platonic Ideals — Gnomon

Indeed, they are all close to nothing, as expected, being so minuscule, but 'close' is not nothing and so there is no "nothingness" to treat…

Besides, a Potential photon is barely physical, and it only becomes Actual when it slows down to "macro" speeds at which its potential condenses into Matter. So, the "source of Information" (meaning) is always a differentiating Mind of some kind. — Gnomon

It is thought that two photons colliding can produce an electron and a positron, if this is what you mean by them slowing down, and this is under study. Photons don't decay on their own, which is why they will be left at the end of the universe. Also, "barely physical" is still physical.

I see that you have Mind's information operating a photon.

Materialism began to die on the vine, in the early 20th century, at the advent of Quantum Theory and Information Theory. Yet, those powerful new ideas were at first resisted, even by such wise philosophers as Einstein. — Gnomon

Photons are a good source of information in our macro world; light peels information off of an object for us to receive.

Of course, the elementary particles are called matter but they are not fundamental; Einstein suggested rather that all is field, and in QFT we take this elementary matter as being spread out quantum lumps in a fluctuating quantum vacuum field. Their information is such as the wave frequency telling of their energy, the wave length providing for volume and extension into dimension, the positive and negative amplitudes providing for matter and antimatter and its charge polarity.

That there are are just a few handfuls of particles tells us that there are only those number of ways to make them, especially the more stable particles that are just a few. The information that makes the physical particles would be just as physical since the physical particles are directly the quanta of the fields, not something new and different in substance. The information for making a particle is described by the math that matches quantum field waverings as sums of harmonic oscillators, for this is how the quantum fields operate.

We can still out of awe portray nature in a kind of mystical fashion, too. Here are two of my videos that do that, just for the fun of romanticism to show that way:

So what, then, is change in itself? — Bartricks

What is not still, changes. Thus, change is movement/motion. There is no overall Stillness, else naught would go on; therefore, something is ever changing.

Black Hole — Gnomon

Happy Black Hole Friday!

Hellholes hurl infernal light-year jets of fear,
In Centaurus, cross the galactic sphere.
Supermassive darkling beasts devour all;
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

it explains why things fall apart (Entropy), but not why they assemble into whole systems. — Gnomon

Maybe you watched my 'Energy' video… Let me know if the answer is in there.

QT does not account for "spooky" Gravity. — Gnomon

Quantum gravity hasn't been figured out yet, but isn't it then a wonder then how QM works so well?

Sometimes we get lucky; apparently the weak effect of gravity is neglible at the miniscule QM level!

Roger Penrose thinks that at the point where the micro meets the macro, the gravity is enough there to swing the state, but we don't know where that point is. I predict it is about the size of a piece of dust since that's the mid-point between the largest and the smallest. Roger needs some money from to perform an experiment in space to find out. Send $$$ right away because he is very old and can't wait around too long.

Why not? — Arthur1947

All That Lies Between

This description of the hypothetical First Cause of the Big Bang sounds like something I might write. It accurately outlines what I call : BEING ; Enformer ; LOGOS ; G*D ; etc. But we seem to differ in our opinions of exactly what that "Something" is, essentially. — Gnomon

It is the simplest, so there's really no more to go with it to keep it Fundamental. Its math may be messy, though.

I can see how the “intricacies and complexities” of QFT would arise in its complete math description nightmare, given that the 25 quantum fields overlap and can interact with one another (we can’t even solve the three-body problem), but any individual field would seem to be of the ultimate simplicity. That QFT works so well is a huge plus for it being ontological, too.

I see that the following is the crux of the matter of much wondering about existence:

“I cannot rid myself of the conviction that Nothing would have obtained had not something special somehow superseded or counteracted it. Yes, I know that seems circular— …”

— Robert Lawrence Kuhn

(Answering him in an email):

Not really circular, but undeniably showing a feat accomplished such that we can claim necessity for sure as a Truth without a Proof, which is about all that philosophy alone can do, which is why it’s more satisfying to the find the physical analog of the logic through physics.

The Proof is not always necessary or possible, but we do have the quantum vacuum and its overall quantum field staring us in the face as able to make all the constituents of the universe. Carlo Rovelli likes to say that the quantum fields exhaust reality, which one could also take as a joke that all this research can be really tiring, although I find it to be invigorating.

‘Necessity’ is of course still as a brute fact, but that’s the best point for the buck to stop, at the causeless, in order to avoid the infinite regress that ever ensues if we get taken in by the template of wanting a lesser stage to ever have to come from a greater stage.

I can only offer that since ‘Nothing’ couldn’t cut the mustard that ‘it’ couldn’t, and it is thus again impossible or that ‘it’ cannot be an it, and so The One Existent has no alternative and thus it must be, as the least state that gives rise to the composite and then to the greater complexity, just as we see as what happened in the universe.

I’ll perhaps have to think more about why the One Existent has to be what it is, given that with no beginning it couldn’t have any specific design or direction going into it. At first, I thought that it not being anything in particular somehow meant that it could be everything, either linearly or all at once (we don’t yet know the mode of time), but lately I’m sticking with that it defaults to be being the simplest state with no parts in order to satisfy the fundamental arts, which state still seems to be able to do anything and everything.

In the class of universes that have life, our universe is not among the worst, nor close to perfect, as it is mathematically elegant, for there are superfluous entities in it, along with a lot of waste. Protons and neutrons require only up and down quarks, and not the other four quarks. Of course, the extravagant waste may have increased the chances of Earth having the right conditions for life and the other quarks and stuff may play some role.

Our universe then is generic, as mediocre, even, somewhere within the range of universes that can achieve life. Our universe took an extremely long time to evolve cosmically, as well as for life to develop biologically. It perhaps wasn’t the quickest or the slowest to do so. It kind of limped along through the deuterium bottleneck at first.

We on Earth had to wait for a metal rich third generation star, and then early life had to suffer through five extinctions, nearly wiping out all of the species, the last near extinction, the Permian, opening up a space for mammals to evolve. I doubt if Intelligent Design consists of throwing a huge rock at the Earth.

That our universe is somewhere in between perfect and the worst shows that there has to be a multiverse. Also, if there can be one universe then there can be more.

Why not? — Arthur1947

Because there can't be a 'not'.

I was born in 1947, too.

Perhaps, and contrary to all our intuitions, something can come out of nothing, given enough "time", which didn't exist prior to the big bang, supposedly. — Manuel

We can't even hope for 'Nothing' to be or do something because 'it' isn't. You're right that humans might have trouble pondering anExistent that has no alternative or opposite, given that we can think of alternatives for other 'thing's, plus, Nothing is indeed a word, albeit that it means: not anything.

Now, how can the Permanent Existent be something definite, like continuous points with this as a continuous 3D wave field, given that it has no beginning and thus no direction or design to it? It's likely that there isn't anything simpler, given that it has to be partless to be fundamental.

Since the Permant Existent ever remains, it could make another temporary universe… unto a multiverse.

gravity is an illusion. In part, it is associated with a quantity called “curvature” — Gnomon

GRAVITY EXPLAINED

The Strength of Gravity, the Feeble Apparent

Gravity is a universal force—for any body:
The force felt by a body is mass proportional;
Yet, the acceleration that’s felt is the inverse!
This coincidence removes all mass dependence.

(Einstein transcended this amazing “coincidental” race
By bodies going straight through curved space.)

Gravity might be derived from the fundamentals,
The byproduct of a small residual after cancelations
Of opposite electric or color charges, and more.
Why then is gravity universal, for its sources are not?

Perhaps the appearance of feebleness is deceptive
Since protons and neutrons are but lightweights.
But why are they so light? Their mass is a compromise
Between a disturbance energy and its cancellation.

The quarks’ color charge
Disturbs gluons around them,
Small at first,
But larger growing farther from the quark.

These disturbances cost energy,
But, how to cancel them?
With an anti-quark
Or two complementarily colored quarks.

But, the qualifying quarks
Can’t sit atop the originals,
For quarks have no definite position,
Just a wave function,
And they can’t be localized
To a small spread of position,
For this requires a larger energy;
So, forget nullification.

The compromise is that
Some residual energy amounts
From the not-completely-canceled
Gluon field disturbances
And from the not-completely-canceled
Quark positionings;

Thus, the proton mass from m=E/cc,
With this tricky element
Of how the gluon disturbance field
Grows with distance.

The residual strong energy
From color charge also binds
The protons and neutrons
In the atomic nucleus;

The electromagnetic electron/nuclei
Charge residuals
Bind atoms into molecules,
And molecules into materials.

Asymptotic freedom
Is a subtle feedback effect
From virtual particles
Antiscreening the color charge.

This antiscreening builds up gradually,
Especially at first,
Then proceeds more quickly,
Building upon each building.

Whereas, screening happens
For electrically charged particles,
Being such as a positive charge
Attracts a negative virtual cloud.

Thus, at first,
Since it’s so slow to build,
The pressure to localize the nullifying quarks
Is quite mild as well;

Thus, there’s no need
To very strictly localize and
So the energies are small;
So then is the proton mass.

This is the lightness of being.

(Ideas herein were gathered from readings, esp. Frank Wilczek)