Everything is compatible with Super-Duper-Determinism. God is all powerful. — Rich

Classical mechanics is not super-deterministic. Or rather, the completion of quantum mechanics, to render it compatible with classical mechanics would not be superdeterministic.

Let's give some credit to those of religious faith. At least they are aware enough of their faith that they don't deny it. Determinists are swimming in their own admitted illusions. — Rich

What you could do is demonstrate that the laws of physics are not deterministic.

What the heck does GTR have to do with Super-Duper-Determinism?? — Rich

According to GR we inhabit a stationary block space-time. This is as super-duper-deterministic as you can get.

It is not even compatible with QM... — Rich

In what way is GR not compatible with QM?

The only Law of Physics that I know of is Quanum Mechanics and it would take a great myth maker to interpret QM into superdetermiminism. In fact, it would take an act of your faith. — Rich

That's why 't Hooft, who got the Nobel Prize for instigating and developing the Standard Model is a Superdeterminist.

The Copenhagen Interpretation is entirely compatible with Superdeterminism.

And there are other Laws of Physics - specifically General Relativity, which are Superdeterministic.

So, no faith is required, just some education.

What exactly does it mean for something not to be a function of the past? — JustSomeGuy

You want some help understanding one of the most important mathematical results of C21?

I have to second this, tom, you're displaying a very juvenile attitude with the tone of some of your comments. Being a smartass is extremely detrimental to intelligent conversation. — JustSomeGuy

So, you're not really interested are you.

As I said in one of my other posts, conflating causal issues related to QM with causal issues that are metaphysical and have been around for thousands of years shows a misunderstanding of both science and metaphysics. — T Clark

And you have the audacity to complain about "snottiness"?

Allow me to rephrase:

You misunderstand quantum mechanics and metaphysics.

Better?

As with any religion Determinists believe that the Laws of Nature are unlimited in their power to do things in ways mortals cannot comprehend. — Rich

Superdeterminism is not a religion. It is a consequence of the laws of physics being interpreted in a certain way. But you are right about the inability to comprehend bit. In fact it is worse than that: Reality IS a conspiracy!

It's as much of a conspiracy as any religion. People of like faith get together to worship the Supreme and there is always someone to pass the plate. If one really wants to understand the nature of religion, study Determinism and its evangelists. — Rich

It is funny that you should mention the "conspiracy" because Reality is indeed a conspiracy under determinism.

J.S. Bell coined the term "Superdeterminism" to describe the sort of determinism that must exist in the light of quantum entanglement. Under questioning in an interview he admitted that superdeterminism was no different from what philosophers call determinism.

Sadly, Bell could not anticipate the fact that he would be undermined by devastating critiques such as:

As I said in one of my other posts, conflating causal issues related to QM with causal issues that are metaphysical and have been around for thousands of years shows a misunderstanding of both science and metaphysics. — T Clark

As I said in one of my other posts, conflating causal issues related to QM with causal issues that are metaphysical and have been around for thousands of years shows a misunderstanding of both science and metaphysics. — T Clark

I forgot, you are the only one who understands these things,

But for the rest of us, particularly if you read the works of J.S. Bell and others, perhaps a few well known philosophers of physics like David Wallace, and even the recent papers by 't Hooft (for the unaware, he's the Nobel Prize winning "father of the Standard Model") on superdeterminism, you will find they are the same thing.

Certain theories in Quantum Mechanics claim that there is randomness, but randomness isn't the same "freedom". Or are you referring to something other than randomness that I'm not aware of? — JustSomeGuy

Actually, most QM theories don't claim randomness. As far as I'm aware, only GRW does.

As I think I mentioned, The Free Will theorem considers actions to be free if they are not a function of the past. This is different from randomness.

Anyway, QM makes it clear, you can't have determinism and causality, unless you dispense with collapse, and and accept the wavefunction corresponds to a feature of reality.

If its actions are truly random, then the mind would not be "setting its own initial conditions". To set its own initial conditions in any coherent way, there would have to be some consideration of inputs and expected outputs. — CasKev

No

Even a random number generator requires a seed before it can generate a meaningless random number. — CasKev

That would be a pseudo-random number generator.

I don't understand your comment. Do you mind to rephrase? — bahman

According to known physics, the brain is a universal computing device. All such devices are equivalent. So, the program running on your brain (or any other universal computer) is the entity that creates consciousness as a feature. Consciousness, and free-will are software features, not hardware features.

Playing chess, is no more a feature of the computer hardware than consciousness is a feature of the brain.

1.a) Evolution is optimising ways of contributing to the increase of entropy, as systems very slowly approach equilibrium. (The universe’s predicted end) — ProgrammingGodJordan

How is "optimising ways of contributing to the increase of entropy" selected for by evolution?

Yes, I agree. But you then have the tension between body and consciousness which this leads to improbable situation. This was subject of another thread. Please see the link in OP for further discussion. — bahman

Why, when there is such a straight forward resolution?

I cannot resolve the problem which stated in this thread and the other thread if I accept that the mind is byproduct of brain activity. — bahman

The mind is a byproduct of brain activity in the same way playing Go is a byproduct of computer activity.

What information would be considered when choosing the initial conditions? It would have to rely on expected results based on existing information, once again leading to determinism... — CasKev

If the mind operates in the manner of evolution (we know epistemology works that way, so why not) then there is no requirement for information, or expected results.

If I recall, in genetics it is impossible to transfer information to the genome, which is called the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. If the mind operates in a similar fashion, there will be some kind of randomizer in the brain, whose output will require the attribution of meaning, which could also be random.

The importance of this question comes to my mind after the discussion in this comment. — bahman

It does seem utterly wasteful and counter-evolutionary to claim that consciousness and free-will are illusions. For this to work in evolutionary terms, then consciousness and the awareness of free-will must have a physical effect, which means that the illusions must be causal.

So, we have certain illusions, that must be caused by something physical, that must cause something physical, that must render the illuded fitter for survival. Very odd indeed!

Perhaps illusion is the wrong descriptor?

Maybe when taken out of context. You still attach some magical quality to Mind that is the final factor in decision-making, independent of the experiences and expected results. — CasKev

What if the mind is capable of setting its own initial conditions?

Causation/determination exists, regardless of how many factors are interwoven. — CasKev

You can't have determinism and causality. Quantum mechanics has shown them to be incompatible. In the language of entanglement and the Bell inequalities, local (i.e. causal) realism (i.e. determinism) is ruled out.

That's not accurate. If everything is the result of a cause, there cannot be true freedom of choice. A choice in itself does not imply free will. We need to look at the choice and ask: if literally every single thing leading up to that choice were exactly the same, everything in the history of the universe had happened exactly the same, could you possibly have made a different choice than the one you made? If everything that happened is the result of causation, the answer would be no. — JustSomeGuy

According to physics, the answer is YES!

I don't particularly like the flavour of quantum mechanics that the Free Will and the Strong Free Will Theorems are expressed in, but Kochen and Conway explicitely cover this. The freedom they claim to have identified is not a function of the past.

So I've heard. I just watched a Youtube video last night in which the speaker made that exact same point, that black holes have infinite density. — fishfry

There are lot of idiots making videos on YouTube.

You're still subjecting God to time, which doesn't make sense. God sees all of your decisions at once, your entire life as a point, a singularity. This is what the universe looks like outside of time. — JustSomeGuy

It's absolutely noting to do with time. It is everything to do with the in-principle indistinguishability of identical instances of you, or anyone else.

Here's an equation to help:

YOU -----> 1/sqrt(2)You1 - 1/sqrt(2)You2

Now, how can God, or anyone else tell which instances of YOU (of which there is an uncountable infinity) become You1? It is fundamentally unknowable.

Also, what has this got to do with time?

You are subjecting God to the constructs of time, which is a mistake. The reality is that everything that ever has existed or happened, and everything that ever will exist or happen, can just be seen as being. A sort of singularity of things going on. We cannot help but view things through the lens of time because that's how our brains process information, but time is not something "out in the world", it only exists inside our minds. — JustSomeGuy

It's absolutely nothing to do with time.

Think of the universe as a hunk of clay, with it's own bumps and shapes and characteristics, all just existing at once as it is. God can look at the clay as a whole and see all of it, because he is not part of the clay. — JustSomeGuy

And He cannot tell which decision you will make, in principle. All that can be known is what proportion of the Multiverse contains the instances you you that made a particular decision. He cannot know, which particular you made the decision, as prior to the decision all of the instances are indistinguishable, in principle.

Thus the paradox of freedom and foreknowledge is solved. Unfortunately, in my experience, people don't like solutions.

No, His knowledge of our decision is not similar to our reflection of past events. He can tell us what we will do in future. — bahman

I think science needs to come to the rescue of philosophy, yet again. No, God cannot tell us what we will do in the future, because what we will do is in principle unknowable (according to science), and if you check your theology, you will find that God only knows what can be known.

Here's how it might work. Defer a decision to a quantum bit generator - e.g. an electron prepared spin up along x, measured along z. What did the bit tell you to do? Can God in principle have known which decision you would make?

It turns out that if you take the realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, then God cannot know what your decision will be. Unfortunately, in this case, neither can you.

When it comes to more normal decision situations, I have seen arguments that imply that if there were counterfactuals, then God can't know your decision.

I need to start compiling a list of paradoxes resolved by realist quantum mechanics.

So lets focus on the immaterial aspect of the mind, we have perceptions, we have continuous narrations and self talk, we have a large array of images and sounds but if the mind were absent of all these qualities could we still say there is a mind that is present? — Fumani

These are all software features, as is consciousness.

The only justification I have come across for induction is Reichenbach's, which is essentially: 'we have no better alternatives, so we might as well use induction'. Which is fine, but unnecessary, since we will use induction anyway, as we could not do otherwise, being the sort of creatures we are. — andrewk

We don't use induction, mostly because there is no such logic, or method.

Sure, we may generalize, but we do so from data that is already reported in a manner amenable to generalization, and there is no method or logic or principle that can help us to know which of our generalizations will be successful.

Unfortunately people tend to refer to this conjecturing of generalizations, of ideas or theories, as "induction" for some reason. Some even claim it is part of the scientific method!

You mean deductive logical support. Inferential and probabilistic reasons can be given for it. It's seems perfectly rational to me to infer that we have this habit of mind because causality exists, which permits an evolutionary account. — Marchesk

So now we need three unjustifiable principles to certify our knowledge as true: Causality, the future will be the same as the past, and that the unexperienced is the same as the experienced.

What a mess!

Time is fundamental variable of any dynamical theory. This means that time cannot be an emergent property of any dynamical theory otherwise we are dealing with a contradiction. Therefore time cannot be created/emergent. — bahman

Except that view has been falsified:

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/quantum-experiment-shows-how-time-emerges-from-entanglement-d5d3dc850933

It is easy to see how an expanded physics or psychophysics can in theory correlate vibrations or patterns of energy with particular qualia such as colors and sounds and thereby for the brain to generate a virtual reality show.
The really hard problem is how the brain creates a private subjective world and for what reason if it is not efficacious. It is not only a hard problem it is probably an impossible problem if consciousness is not a product of the brain. — lorenzo sleakes

I think you are using terminology in a non-standard way. While it is easy to follow the nerve impulses to their final destination in the visual cortex, or wherever, this is not the quale "red". Qualia refers to the unexplained subjective what-it-is-like to see colours, not the specific neuronal effects of seeing colours.

Robots don't possess qualia, but they do possess "neuronal" effects.

"At some time in the long distant undatable past, an eye opened up onto the world and something different began to happen in this sector of reality possessing the principle of life. A rock is clearly not aware of its solidity but a life form with a complexity capable of generating eyes is aware of itself, is conscious of itself."
(All quotes in this post are from O Shaughnessy in his work “Consciousness and the World”) — michael r d james

Don't you find that a bit of a leap? Why do people keep assuming living creatures are aware of themselves? I suppose it's "obvious"?

We don't however, fall into the anthropomorphic trap with robots or computers though.

He can say what he likes, but it's still wrong to deny evolution on the grounds that determinism is the case. — Michael

So, your argument is that Darwin's words on the matter are irrelevant, and that he is wrong about his own theory.

I am suppressing laughter.

I could expand that the Modern Synthesis and Darwin are in concordance on this matter, but I suppose your retort would be that the MS is irrelevant and wrong also.

It's evolution if the heritable characteristics of biological populations have changed over successive generations. It doesn't need to be randomly caused. — Michael

You should read some Darwin, particularly the book and chapter I have been referencing.

Darwin clearly states that if the variations are determined, them natural selection and survival of the fittest are superfluous.

Darwin thought deeply about this issue, and for a very long time. If you don't understand him, at least show him some respect.

Are you actually trying to deny evolution because determinism is the case? That's a very strange argument to make. — Michael

Perhaps you should re-read my posts.

That just means that randomness is not globally allowed. You still can have local randomness. — bahman

You mean like local randomness for local people? Who is allowing this?

Maybe his theory is incompatible with determinism, but it doesn't then follow that evolution is. Evolution is a fact, and according to you so is determinism. Therefore they must be compatible. — Michael

That is pretty nonsensical. Evolution requires ontological chance/randomness. If biodiversity has happened as a deterministic inevitability from the initial conditions of the Big Bang, then the process that has occurred is not Evolution.

Darwin's exact words on this were:

If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained... natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us as superfluous laws of nature.

It is easy to see how the brain creates a virtual reality generating the qualia that we experience in consciousness. — lorenzo sleakes

It's so easy to see, that it is commonly known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

Oh yeah!! Where it that? "Ontological Ultimate" is not an expression uttered by Darwin. SO who are you kidding? — charleton

You would have to be quite the disingenuous sneak to claim that I anywhere quoted Darwin directly, or claimed those were his exact words. I told you which chapter, of which book, I was referring to, and gave the conclusion of his arguments.

Darwin not only requires ontological chance for his theory, he knows this, and defends his view in the chapter of the book I referenced. He also made this his final statement:

On the other hand an omnipotent and omniscient Creator, ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as that of free will and predestination.

So there you have it. Darwin knew that his theory is as incompatible with determinism as is free will.

There is only one deep theory about nature and that is QM which is totally probabilistic. Other than this, you have the Laws of Nature which is not a theory but a Pagan God. — Rich

Like I said, you know nothing about QM.

The biggest problem with determinism it's that there is absolutely zero evidence for it. Other than that, it is a nice story of how the Laws of Nature (God) determines everything. — Rich

Except that our deepest theories of reality are deterministic, and have been tested to extraordinary accuracy. No violation of Unitarity has ever been discovered.

The biggest contribution that QM has had on philosophy is that it finally put to rest the possibility that there could actually be a deterministic universe. — Rich

You don't know the first thing about QM.

Incorrect. Quantum mechanics doesn't say that we can change what we will. — Michael Ossipoff

So, let me repeat myself. The testable theory that was asked for is Quantum Mechanics. The Guiding Principle is the CTD-Principle, which is proved to be respected by QM.

The CDT-Principle enjoys the same status as the Principle of Conservation of Energy.

But yes, I admit that, at philosophy forums, quantum mechanics has a big pseudoscientific mystique. — Michael Ossipoff

OK, pseudoscientific, mystique. Provide references.

And I also admit that there are some people here who are all confused about the difference between, and the boundaries between philosophy and science (quantum mechanics is particularly popular in that regard). — Michael Ossipoff

I suspect those are the people who have no sincere interest in philosophy or science.

I'm not saying that QM doesn't have any philosophical relevance. A recognized authority, a physicist specializing in QM, wrote that QM lays to rest the notion of an objectively-existent physical world. — Michael Ossipoff

Ah, the eponymous Recognised Authoritaaaay.

Have you ever tried to reduce your craving for some nutritionally-undesirable kind of food? — Michael Ossipoff

Sometimes I am simply overwhelmed by the depth of the arguments on this forum!

The Laws of Nature act in mysterious ways and it is not for us to understand them - not that understanding had any meaning anyway. — Rich

As I mentioned earlier, this type of determinisn - SUPERDETERMINISM - turns Reality into a conspiracy theory.

However, the type of determinism that really exists is quite different!

Determinism acts in both ways and all ways, because it is more of a religion than a philosophy. All one has to do is assign whatever attributes one wishes to the mystical, omnipresent, omnipotent Laws of Nature and bingo, you have your story. One can appeal to the power of God in the same way. — Rich

Although you don't understand how determinism works in Reality, it doesn't matter, because those who deny Free Will because of determinism, but advocate Evolution, don't either.

I really think you are clueless here. — charleton

OK, let's hope you aren't going to make a fool of yourself.

Determinism just means that for each effect there are causes. — charleton

Is that all it means? Causes? OK, given quantum entanglement, how does that work out for you?

True there is no such thing as chance in an absolute sense. — charleton

Heavens Above!

Chance in a deterministic world just means we've not enough information to predict all outcomes in a complicated world. — charleton

OK "chance" is epistemological.

A dice is not random; its landing is determined by the throw, and other causal factors, that are not easy to measure. — charleton

Wow!

As I said Darwin wrote about this. He admitted his theory requires chance as an ontological ultimate.

How does this correlate? — charleton

I find it strange that those who deny free will in the face of determinism, because the two really aren't compatible, baulk at the notion that evolution is therefore also incompatible.

The case for the incompatibility of determinism with evolution is actually much easier to make. Determinism really means there are no chance events. Evolution requires chance to exist as a ontological ultimate.

Darwin actually wrote about this in the last chapter of his "The variation of animals and plants under domestication."

God either plays dice or he does not.