If non-determinism at the scale of the brain function is negligible, this will be pertinent to those views that rest freedom on non-determinism. In the same way in which apparent Newtonian determinism is pertinent to a bridge engineer or a plane manufacturer.The nature of consciousness and mind is an open question for philosophy as long as no attempt is made to quash it with pseudo-science such as determinism. — MondoR
I agree that this would be outlandish. At least in the sense of local prediction, we know now that this cannot be done. Globally, as I said, non-determinism and determinism are indistinguishable, but locally we cannot make fully accurate predictions at any scale, and the quality of prediction worsens for mircoscopic events.And from this Determinism built this story about everything that occurs in the Universe can be prodicted with exactitude, even the choices were make. Isn't this outlandish?! — MondoR
Please, check my next to last response. I don't mean to be impolite, but I don't want to double post it.By this precept, the indeterminist nature of the universe is proven by the double slit experiment. — Olivier5
Could you elaborate. I understand that ontology is not epistemics, but absurdity is about human logic. What do you mean by the "logic of the deity". Not that I object, but how do you discern it from "chaos of the deity".I agree that it does not NECESSARILY conform to OUR analytical comprehension. That's an assumption that it does. But even if it is a false assumption, it does not mean the universe is ontologically absurd. It just looks that way to us. — Olivier5
I want again to stress that physics does not and cannot claim anything about determinism at the global scale of the entire universe. It only deals with epistemics concerning isolated systems, which are the result of spatial separation and observation of small vicinity of an object in a small amount of time. Therefore, there may be no coin toss involved at all. Maybe it is all scripted, and particle interactions register the various outcomes with frequency that conforms to a probabilistic model, but in reality there is nothing arbitrary. It is not possible to predict the outcome from the available local information. I am not convinced that we need multiple words to explain QM. We only need the mathematics that describes the regularity in the relations between prior and posterior conditions. For all we know, it may all be scripted. Or it might not be.There MWI interpretation. Try to grasp the exorbitance that Determinists have had to reach in order to justify determinism in an infinite number of universes. Yes, new universes are created for every quantum event. Yet, even stretching to the infinite universes, our Universe, the one we live in, remains probabilistic. Let the Gods live in their Universes (Heaven?) and we live in ours. — MondoR
Quantum uncertainty is not arbitrary non-determinism. It just changes deterministic induction with statistical induction, but it is not the same as lack of any predictive utility. Also, everyone who claims non-predictability appears to hang on QM, which appears to me to not be the core of your objection. Are you saying that QM non-determinism is your primary argument against predictability?Regularity (habitual actions) should be confused with determinism. Nothing has ever been shown to be precisely deterministic. They tried, and then came Quantum uncertainty. — MondoR
Healthy skepticism is justified, but doubt is not an argument. If we start doubting the exhaustiveness of our observations, we are not going to make any progress. A non-determinist could similarly argue that when the the outcome is perfectly predicted, it is only because not all hidden features were measured, and if they were, some of them would turn out different every time. Which turned out to be true in the case of QM. But that didn't change the fact, that in its scope, Newtonian mechanics did make progress for humanity, and pragmatically speaking was correct. I hinted in my (rather longish) reply that we apply determinism and non-determinism with respect to some narrow amount of conditions, not with respect to all there is potentially to know.How do you propose to test the above conjecture that more then one possible outcome can arise from a given circumstance? It's not so easy, because if you demonstrate empirically that two outcomes can arise from the same initial conditions, a determinist can always say that you must not have exhaustively and perfectly replicated the initial conditions. — Olivier5
The universe of QM is not just non-deterministic, but probabilistic, which I paraphrased as inclined non-deterministic. This is not the same as arbitrary non-deterministic. Propensities are counter-factual phenomenon, because they are not testable from finite amount of measurements. If you don't accept statistics as prima-facia instrument of reason, they remain untestable, whereas range-based non-determinsm (either/or outcomes) is confirmable by some amount of measurements. At least retroactively/retrospectively as I explained.The universe appears indeterministic to mainstream science and to common sense. But we can't check. We don't have another universe, that we could watch in fast forward to check that everything always happens the same manner as it did the first time around... — Olivier5
This is what I call absurdism. I consider this different from non-determinism, even when the range of prescribed outcomes of the latter is trivially all-inclusive. A demonstrable statement should be reproducible to some extent, recurring to some extent, and empirical non-determinism should be demonstrable. Whereas absurdism claims that both determinism and non-determinism are deceptive, transient, incidental. As Shakespeare wrote in King Lear - "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport." Absurdism claims that the universe does not conform to analytical comprehension. A form of contention to reason.So to me, the question is metaphysical. It matters not. It's like invisible unicorns, all-knowing daemons and hidden variables. Maybe the gods know what the future holds, or maybe not... We certainly don't know. — Olivier5
We consider what the future holds under the hypothesis that we react and that we don't react. If we predict that the future is adverse when we withdraw, we react and thus change it. We evaluate our possible choices - actions and inaction - in accordance to the prediction of their effects. If we predict right, we will change the future precisely as we expect to.We want to know, and it's a good idea to try to know what the future holds. But we also sense confusingly that we will forever be unable to predict the future, if only because any advanced prediction of a certain outcome may change our response to the situation that would give rise to this outcome, and thus change the outcome itself. Predictions of the future affect the future... — Olivier5
Science is not unquestionable and empiricism does not axiomatically exhaust all that we can call our experience. But at least we are compelled to science by more impeding necessities. I realize that you can claim that the need for purpose and origin are similar to some extent, but science renders their existence suspicious not just by its exploration of the inanimate universe, but also because it conveys to us about our mental fragility and our addiction to self-affirmation. Those higher-order needs might turn out to be vanities. That is why, one needs to be skeptical.A point I would make is that the kind of self-knowledge that philosophy wants to impart doesn't necessarily require any special scientific apparatus. I would say that the aim of philosophy, generally, is to attain a state of equilibrium and disinterestedness, to enable you to always act as the situation calls for and to realize your true purpose, whatever that is. — Wayfarer
That is true for anything relying on inductive inference, not so much specifically for determinism. Non-determinism and determinism can be both empirical, in that both can specify the possible range of the outcome. There cannot be any science behind inductive inference itself, because science stands on top of it. We have faith in the reproducibility of nature's relations that is not founded on science. Science is founded on it.I'm not telling anyone to believe me. I'm just saying that if you look at the history, Determinism was just a story concocted by some people with zero evidence to support it. Believe it if you want, but let's not pretend there is any science behind it. — MondoR
That is not precisely true. First, we should come to terms that we cannot talk sensibly (as in by virtue of sense experience) of global determinism vs global non-determinism in a meaningful way, because the two conditions are epistemically indistinguishable. That is, whether the universe tosses dices all the time or is a scripted story is undetectable by observation on a global scale (looking at the entire present and prior spatial configuration of matter). I guess, we could discuss the proposition of global non-determinism metaphysically, but it will be a tenuous conversation with rather uncommitted intuition inspired terminology. And to quote Wittgenstein, although there might be all sorts of invisible forces at play, "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." At least epistemically and scientifically, that I think should be the case. Let's focus on the facts for the moment and leave the nebulous area of metaphysics aside.There is as much science behind Determinism as they is behind the Sun God riding across the sky. That people believe it, gives lots of insight into the nature of human beings. Mythology exists throughout history. People choose to believe what they want to believe. — MondoR
Lets make some distinction between factual non-determinism and absurdism. What I mean by factual determinism is the experience, or at least the conjecture, that more then one possible outcome can arise from a given circumstance. And by saying possible, I mean it in the positivist sense, as in something that will happen at least once someday. Or we are again dealing with nebulous metaphysical statements in some intuition inspired terminological space. With only epistemologically positive considerations in mind, non-determinism has the burden of proof. So does determinism. There is no point of passing the burden around, because both are empirical statements and can be treated on their own. Both are stating something concrete that is subject to sense experience. Inclined non-determinism is different, because it deals with hidden propensities. It is even more presumptuous statement than determinism, because it relies not only on induction, as a prima facie concept, but on statistical induction as well. Both need to be taken on faith, before propensities/inclinations can even be considered as empirical realities. It still has the burden of proof in those new terms.Except determinism makes enormous claims, like the idea that this post I am now writing was predetermined since the Big Bang. When you make such a gigantic claim, you got the burden of proof.
Beside, science has decided on this issue. Modern science is undeterministic, on the whole. — Olivier5
Yes, the underlying concept doesn't change, but just its expression or application. Although, not just in relation to communication, but also its personal use. Concepts can be applied narrowly by the individual for recognizing objects by their superficial features, but then they are still entrenched in full detail in their mind. The concept is subject to change, as you described, because it is gradually refined by the individual and by society. The two, the popularly or professionally ratified one and the personal one, need not agree, and individuals may not always agree on their concepts. Not just superficially, by how they apply the concepts in a given context, but by how those concepts are explained in their mind. However, with enough experience, the collectively accepted technically precise definition is usually the best, because even if sparingly applied in professional context, it is the most detailed one and can be reduced to a distilled form, by virtue of its apparent consequences, for everyday use if necessary.For the purpose of conversations (and to use a visual arts analogy), da Vinci might draw the Vitruvian Man or a stick figure - it depends on the details that need to be transferred, the amount of shared conceptual knowledge we can rely on between us, and how much attention and effort each can spare in the time available. — Possibility
I simply... disagree. Not for pragmatic or legal moral accountability, not for abstract ethical one. I agree with you that QM non-determinism is necessary for freedom of the physical outcome, as in non-uniqueness of the relation between prior and posterior state in the temporal ordering. This type of freedom in the very definitional sense, is going to depend on non-determinism. But you are asking me to equate my personal accountability and responsibility to a coin toss, i.e. the aforementioned physical freedom. I think that the two are completely unrelated.Sure, there must be quantum indeterminacy for freedom to be actual; if everything were wholly causally determined there would be no freedom in the sense required for the idea of moral accountability to be rationally justified. — Janus
That is true. I rather cockily answered "yes and no". I do partly agree with you. There are many layers to the phenomenon.You seem to be arguing for definition of a concept as more important than identification of its instances, but this only reveals a subjective preference for certainty. There are variables that affect the predictive value of the concept map regardless of whether you start with a definition or identified instances. — Possibility
Why are claiming that the person is not their convictions, values and intentions. Are you suggesting dualism? If you are not, what do you propose is the person?Yes, but the point is the convictions, values and intentions must be freely chosen or the person is not responsible for holding them. — Janus
I think that you are objecting, because a person could technically abstain from applying their personality. But that is again due to their convictions, values and intentions. So, the personality can have complex internal dynamics and we don't judge its pieces, but the overall effect.I don't think this is true at all. People are not their values. People do have values, intentions and convictions, and sure they are judged on account of them, or at least on the actions which embody them. — Janus
They are what we identify you as. You don't really "have them" in that sense. We don't blame you for having them, we are more-so blaming them for having you, or having become part of you.If I couldn't bquoteut have had the set of convictions, intentions and desires then how can be held morally responsible, and fairly praised or blamed for having them? — Janus
I am not sufficiently literate, but I can give you my perspective. I believe that according to your expectation, what we would credit for the moral character of our actions is some entity that sits in the control room of your personality, consults your system of values that is manifested partly externally in your brain and takes executive decisions that affect the outcome. My logic is different. We are actually evaluating your convictions, intentions and desires, and we don't care whether they are deterministically related to the surrounding phenomena. They are yours per-se. There is no control room. You are your personality and system of values.But under determinism I have no control over what my desires are, and which are going to be the stronger in any situation. So, how can I be held morally responsible for something that was never under my control in the first place? — Janus
This reminds me of a Blackadder response - "Yes.. And no."This makes sense to me. Much of what you have written is difficult for me to follow, but I get the sense that we’re roughly on the same page here...? — Possibility
I think that according to your above statement, the technical definition of a class does not correlate to immediate sense experience, nor the conception from direct encounters between the subject and the object, nor to the recognition practices of objects in routine life. If that is the claim, I contend that technically exhaustive definitions are just elaborated countours of the same classes, but with level of detail that differs, because it is necessary for professionals that operate with indirect observations of the object. Say, as a software engineer, I think of computers in a certain way, such that I could recognize features of their architecture in some unlabeled schematic. A schematic is not immediate sense experience, but my concept does not apply to just appearances, but logical organization, so the context in which the full extent of my definition will become meaningful is not the perceptual one. For crude recognition of devices by appearances in my daily routine, I match them to the idea using a rough distilled approximation from my concept, drawing on the superficial elements in it, and removing the abstract aspects, which remain underutilized.I’m pointing out a distinction between the linguistic definition of a concept - which is an essentialist and reductionist methodology of naming consolidated features - and an identification of that concept in how one interacts with the world - which is about recognising patterns in qualitative relational structures. — Possibility
@T Clark already pointed out that it may be due to the fact that the evolutionary stage is already saturated with complex self-sustaining life and there are dominating forces already present. The evolutionary analogue of the first-to-market phenomenon. Another idea I can come up with, is that it is easier to create symbiotic relationship and leech to or collaborate with other lifeforms then to go your own way. The only way that the stage can be reset and start anew is if some grand catastrophy destroys the present status-quo, such as a meteorite tosses itself to earth, or a multi-host viral pandemic kills the apex species.One of the questions to ask, is if the origin of life occurs naturally as a result of the concatenation of favourable circumstances, why doesn't it continue to happen? Why are there no examples of transitional forms of living cells emerging spontaneously in the host volcanic springs (or wherever it is supposed to have happened) and recapitulating the origin process? Why is it that it is not occuring spontaneously today? Whereas, in reality, all organic life seems to encode a linear memory going back billions of years to the single point of origin. That must mean something. — Wayfarer
If by intention we mean complex multi-layered behavior, such as immediate reactions, situational tactical (i.e. modal) behavior, long-term strategic behavior, I am not sure that physicalists should oppose it. I wouldn't, with a physicalist hat on. What may appear controversial is why the behavior ends up being constructive to the sustenance of the organism. Why the intention is indeed directed towards life sustaining behavior. But considering that the spectrum of possible choices ultimately sorts into life-sustenance and life-cessation, I think that it is obvious that if life of both intentions (i.e. forms of complex strategic behavior patterns) proliferated at one point, the latter category would have become extinct, leaving the former to assume reign of our hereditary genetic chain.I think that is a well-formulated question. The problem it articulates is that of intention - that life, even the very simplest forms of life, seem to possess an intentional aim, namely, to survive and propagate. And it's hard to imagine how 'the intention to survive' could even be concieved in terms of chemical replication. It is precisely with the emergence of living things that intentional behaviour begins to manifest - yet 'intentionality' is just the very factor that physicalist accounts want to dispense with, because of its association with purpose and the dreaded 'telos' of Aristotelian philosophy. — Wayfarer
The designation can be attached to many other notions implicitly present in the context. The color designation can allude to whatever statistical correlations between ethnicity and living background are involved for the purposes of the discussion. Such as in my example, when talking about the access to and benefit from education, connection might be implied to the social strata, the culture (or mirco-culture) of upbringing, even the early exposure to crime of the individual. But there is nothing inherently wrong with recognizing the color of the skin, or those correlations, as long as it not weaponized to diminish someone. I think that considering all skin tones as non-white is just an excuse to censor the mention of skin color and sidesteps how we use such terminology in practice. If I say that someone has bright eyes, I don't mean a particular CIE colorspace lightness that we use to specify all "bright colors". It is a comparative term.Skin color is only one tiny factor here, in classifying people between 'white' and 'black'. Otherwise most people on earth would be classified 'grey' or 'in-between' or something like that. — Olivier5
People in developed nations want to keep their standards from being floored, which I can understand. The solution would require intricate maneuvers, because investment and labor markets are inherently adversarial. The issue will worsen with the advent of technological automation and there is another thread for this topic on the forum. But the EU states are experiencing political crisis on their own at the moment, and the overall global political situation is a fiasco, so it is unlikely to happen.As EU citizen it hurts me to see the huge differences between our different nations. I do believe in Europe and the future of the EU. But in its current form it isn't really successful it seems. Perhaps in the future I want to move to Brussels, to see if I can make a political change there. Some people in North Western Europe actually do care about more than their own happiness — TaySan
I have to be honest. If I start to respond with inquiries on that paragraph, I will first ask what "freedom" is and how is it different from having your agency in the world physically present. I understand that there are physical laws that govern human beings, but that does not change the fact that they are separable as state. That is, what is the difference between having a mind of your own, and a physical state of your own. Do we need anything else that we get from transcendence - non-determinism, sense of investment, sense of involvement. Also, why is a deity needed, such that we can justify the existence of external factors, other then through intuition. I think that I am too skeptical, and I know that we differ in opinion in this regard.But from the perspective of Christian philosophy, perhaps that 'principle of self-organisation' is what has been 'bestowed' by 'the Creator'. That is what it means to say that beings 'borrow' their being from God. Hence, the freedom of will that is an essential part of the theistic model. All sentient beings are, as it were, recapitulations of being, within their capacity. In man, this capacity can come to full realisation, which is what Eastern religions call 'realisation'. — Wayfarer
If reason is how things are, then why look for it beyond the things themselves? I don't oppose the idea that the world is divine, as in beyond our personal agency, but why look beyond it? We have to have some, apparently presently unmet, criteria for "ultimate reason", or otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this. Can you elaborate on what such "ultimate reason" would provide for us - fairness, peace, vindication of effort?So, in a sense, you can't 'explain' reason, because reason is 'that which explains'. The mistake of modern philosophy is to reduce reason to a Darwinian faculty. Reason, in modern philosophy, has become 'instrumentalised' - it only has value insofar as it serves ends, and those ends are determined by survival. — Wayfarer
Don't get me wrong. I relate to your suggestion as a feeling, but I believe that we are making projection of our ethical considerations into the world.That we are here for a reason. It’s not ‘a reason’ as in what, if you’re an actor, is given to you as a script. It may not be obvious or even meaningful to some other person. But there’s a reason why the universe gave rise to beings such as us, and even you in particular, and a large part of philosophy is in discerning that and responding to it. This is what the East calls your ‘Dharma’. — Wayfarer
By simplified, I mean that distinct in appearance phenomena were consequently accounted for by interrelated causes, which reduced the number of cases that had to be dealt with conceptually (even if not so much practically). By harmonized, I meant that theories were unified, that is, explanations were reconciled.Physical theories produce many practical consequences, not least of which the one you’re looking at right now, but saying that modern physics has ‘simplified and harmonised’ is almost hilarious, considering. — Wayfarer
I know that we should better agree to disagree. But I am a curious person. I try to understand or provoke different arguments and have always failed to fathom the essence of the perceived need for explanation. Not that I don't feel it. I do. But I think that it may not be what it appears to the person themselves. That I just need permanence and am grasping at air for immutable objective.Explanation for science means to simplify and harmonize, not to assume that something is foundational. Atoms are not more fundamental to chairs and stones, but they offer terms of understanding of the complex interactions that sometimes occur, such as burning and chemistry, without making every encounter with those phenomena a case by case study.Regarding the ‘laws of the Universe ‘ - important to recognise that science has no explanation for why there are such laws, or why the universe is lawful. — Wayfarer
Exactly, nomenclature or not. Not all philosophical differences translate to definitions and definitions are merely conventions. That is, there is always going to be some contention and heat on the issue, of who establishes the right linguistic terms for mathematics. I am contented to use either, as long as people understand the philosophical distinction and we can talk about thatSo there's some subtle philosophical difference between a coordinate system imposed on an object, versus the coordinate system being the object. — fishfry
Even if the Minkowski space were Euclidean, because there is room for disagreement on definitions (edit: its inner product is not suitable, so it shouldn't be), there is at least some pertinent relationship between time and space in it. There is specific distance that field interactions can traverse in a given amount of time, assuming no significant gravity.As it seems to me space-time is equivalent to apple-dollars. — TheMadFool
Ok. I'm out of ammo. Maybe you're right. — fishfry
No. In fact, it is one of the few places which concurs with the manner in which I was taught to think of analytic geometry. Not as working with numbers directly, but with coordinate systems that use vector bases to define numeric representations of the underlying coordinate free space.Can you at least tell me, did you come by your ideas solely from reading this article? — fishfry
When you copy Wiki paragraphs could you please give the full link? I can't search every Wiki article on coordinate systems, vector calculus, Euclidean space, inner product spaces, and so forth in order to see what the context is. — fishfry
But Euclidean space is in fact the coordinate system. Euclidean space is exactly the set of n-tuples with the usual norm, distance, and inner product. — fishfry
Despite the wide use of Descartes' approach, which was called analytic geometry, the definition of Euclidean space remained unchanged until the end of 19th century. The introduction of abstract vector spaces allowed their use in defining Euclidean spaces with a purely algebraic definition. This new definition has been shown to be equivalent to the classical definition in terms of geometric axioms. It is this algebraic definition that is now most often used for introducing Euclidean spaces.
...
A reason for introducing such an abstract definition of Euclidean spaces, and for working with it instead of R n {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}} \mathbb {R} ^{n} is that it is often preferable to work in a coordinate-free and origin-free manner (that is, without choosing a preferred basis and a preferred origin). Another reason is that there is no origin nor any basis in the physical world. — Wikipedia
It's not a big deal. You will live.Sorry to hear that. — TheMadFool
I'm all for contrarian thought, but I don't think I can help. Distances in the Euclidean geometry, where the theorem applies, are supposed to have units that persist in all directions. Your units change with direction, pure apples and pure dollars coaxially, and some shade in between in all other directions. The angles are also arbitrary. If you rescale your dollars to cents, you will skew the space (shear map it) and thus change all angles, yet nothing in the problem domain changes. You have no native semantics for your calculations and that makes our interpretations kind of, sort of, futile.I'm asking you to relax, bend, ignore, contradict the rules/principles/whathaveyou that's making you think that there's
no actual geometric model — TheMadFool