What you don't understand is that it isn't just "one guy" but many many more. — dimosthenis9

It's not even one guy atm. The above is what you've been asked to evidence. You're not doing that. From a scientist's standpoint, the claim of a scientific consensus that viruses are alive is pretty big news and needs basing in evidence. Your refusal or inability to do this speaks volumes.

Schopenhauer claimed that though we can do what we want, we can't want our wants; true as that may be, we can, at the very least, refuse to comply to our unchosen wants. — Agent Smith

I think this is somewhat overly linear thinking. The brain, the unconscious side of it, is teachable. It's not a blank slate, but it can relearn priorities and associations. What is a heroin addiction if not an acquired want (that is, contrary to Schopenhauer, very easily chosen and very difficult to say no to)? But less extreme, habit is an acquired want. I don't care about football and don't want to know who has acquired who for what price with what merit, but it's very easy to imagine making myself care, to the point where I feel I must find out. Nerds are bundles of acquired wants.

He states that he finds them alive indeed even if the definition doesn't "cover" them. — dimosthenis9

That's also incoherent. "alive" is a word with a definition. What you're admitting here is that the definition of "alive" excludes viruses, but viruses are nonetheless "alive".

I've asked you twice to back up the false claim of a scientific consensus that viruses are alive, not according to what one guy thinks the definition should be, but what the definition is. I can see that you can't even cite one person without spiralling into incoherence so I won't ask again.

And I answered you already. — dimosthenis9

With an article that I think you didn't read. The pro argument isn't saying viruses are alive according to current definition of life.

Where exactly i stated that the only reason that I find possible viruses to have some kind of will is not to be humanly manufactured??? — dimosthenis9

Okay, this is a bit like:

ME: What time is it?
YOU: Eight o'clock.
ME: Shit, I'm late! Hang on, the clock says 3!
YOU: I never said it was eight o'clock in this country.

I.e. there's no obvious distinction between being wrong and being tricky. I kinda have a feel for the answer though.

Please back this up.
— Kenosha Kid

Sorry but I m not backing up on it. — dimosthenis9

"Please back this up" means, in this context, "please provide evidence". Stupid English and it's ambiguities. If someone with a truck handed you some keys and said "Please back this up," it would mean what you thought I meant. :rofl:

Fairy nuff, thanks.

I wasn't talking about intuition alone. It's as clear as day that the universe makes sense in a rigorously logical sense - there are laws, mathematical to boot, that govern the universe and that extends far beyond mere gut feelings. — Agent Smith

Right, which also holds for quantum theory, a thoroughly logical, mathematical theory but that is intractable for macroscopic systems, hence why a) people don't get it, and b) we can't answer macroscopic questions with it. Quantum theory doesn't want for mathematical foundations: it wants for a compelling narrative for human minds.

Again, the photon is described by a time-dependent wavefunction, which will disperse both in real and reciprocal space thermodynamically. It's still the same wavefunction and same photon. I think we're doomed to just repeat the same statements at each other. (Yours is wrong though :razz: )

What I meant was that the emission of a photon produces a different photon field configuration as the field used for for exciting an atom. — Raymond

I don't know what you're trying to say (and I have read on). What is the difference here between a "photon" and a "photon field configuration"? If they mean the same thing, you can just say "photon". Or if you mean the wavefunction, just say "wavefunction". If you mean the state of the EM field, there's only one field, not different fields for emission and absorption.

You say:

the field emitted looks different than that of a photon coming from it. — Raymond

What's emitted is a photon, an excitation of the EM field caused by the de-excitation of the atom, in particular a self-sustaining one (as opposed to virtual photons also excited in the EM field by the presence of electric charges). What's absorbed is that same photon in the example I gave. I'm not following your terminology well enough to be more surgical in my response.

You can't see though what direction time goes. — Raymond

Yes, it too is a reversible process.

For absorltion/,emission both photons have the same energy and angular momentum but their states differ. — Raymond

What does this mean? State is what is described by the wavefunction. This can be cast as a sum of eigenstates of some measurement operator like the Hamiltonian (the energy operator). Different states can have the same energy, but they have different other properties: momentum (positive and negative have same energy), and angular momentum. But the momentum and angular momentum absorbed are also the same as that emitted. It's the same photon.

The _wavefunction_ will be different at absorption to emission, but that doesn't mean it's a different photon: wavefunction are time-dependent.

Again, I'm not following your terminology well enough to know exactly what to say.

According to Daniel Dennett, those "unreal" pictures are projected onto the Cartesian Theater screen. — Gnomon

Iirc Dennett's description here is meant to be disparaging. Good post though, I enjoyed it a lot.

A curious question is, supposing consciousness comes first, how exactly does it tie into this? Are the cells what is conscious and does that mean we originally consisted of two consciousness that became one? Or is the very process our consciousness, making us, so to say, our parents sexual desire? — Hermeticus

:up:

In fact from the search that I did seems that the majority of scientists believe that. — dimosthenis9

Bold claim alert. Please back this up. The article you cite is a debate between a person saying that viruses don't adhere to the definition of the word "life" and another person who agrees but thinks the word should be redefined to include viruses. From the latter:

The question of whether viruses can be considered to be alive, of course, hinges on one’s definition of life. Where we draw the line between chemistry and life can seem a philosophical, or even theological argument.

Nonetheless we have a definition of life which includes the independent ability to replicate, which viruses do not have. I asked you about whether viruses are alive or not, not whether we should redefine what we mean by "life".

Then we can move onto you backing up your claim that RNA, an acid, itself is alive.

I stated that computers are human made no living things and can't be compared to living organizations. — dimosthenis9

In response counter to an argument that computers can optimise like evolution does. I.e. it was a counterargument. If you're abandoning it, fine (and good).

If I don't believe in this approach (I do though), then one can say whatever they want about quarks and leptons, they existing whatever I think about them, but if I don't belief in the approach, or if I don't value it, the quarks will be non-existing for me. — Raymond

Or rather ought to say nothing. Conserved quantities themselves are in fact just statements about the apparent behaviour of the world (empiricism). Quarks are just sets of these quantities. Throwing out empiricism and therefore science ought to delete the concept altogether.

About absorption and emission. Isn't the emitted photon different from the absorbed? A creation and destruction operator are applied in asymptotically free perturbative approach, and can't be applied to a bound system like an atom. The photon absorbed is a different one than the emitted one. Only in Compton scattering they can be interchanged, so it looks. Do you agree with this? — Raymond

No, I've never heard the idea before nor know how to make sense of it. In fact, I tend to go the other, more phenomenological, way. The _least_ we can say about the photon is that it is the transfer of a set of conserved quantities from one system to another, in this case energy, momentum, and angular momentum. Whether it exists in the space-time between those events is debatable (photons are clicks in photon detectors). But if it does, as it is assumed to do, it's a worldline (or rather many worldlines: sum over histories) between its creation and destruction (plus a load of other worldlines that disappear if you believe in collapse, which I don't).

Compton scattering is a destruction of a photon that necessitates the creation of a different photon by a charge that is excited but must immediately de-excite. So on the contrary that's a description of two different photons, not the same one.

Whatever Tyson was talking about, it's obvious that the universe, save quantum physics, makes sense as in it behaves in ways that a sensible, intelligent being would — Agent Smith

The obvious counterexample comes from Einstein himself. One can understand relativity, which is what Einstein meant, but there's nothing intuitive about light having the same speed regardless of whether and how fast you're moving toward or away from it, or that one twin could be years older than another. These are not phenomena that manifest in the day-to-day world and most people (who aren't Einstein) have great difficulty wrapping their heads around it. This is why equations and diagrams are essentially, but they are still abstract to intuition, building upon lots of simpler knowledge via analogy.

Common sense, intuition, and generally what our brains are equipped to deal with, is extremely limited to what happens or appears to happen here on Earth where we live and evolved. It is not equipped to understand what happens on the cosmological scale or the subatomic scale, inside black holes or outside spacetime itself.

Nutso theories that turn out to be true, like molecular theory, germ theory, atomic theory, are things that are already long-accepted in the world we, our parents, and our grandparents were already born into. They are, in that sense, normalised. Relativity is (ahem) relatively normalised, though you'll still find plenty of people on here who think it's pseudoscientific gibberish. We lack a way of explaining quantum theory to lay people as youngsters that would normalised it in the same way.

When Feynman says "You don't understand quantum theory, you just get used to it," he doesn't mean the lay person, he means quantum theorists. Lay people are still far from being "used to" quantum theory in the way they are "used to" atomism. Neither are intuitive, but one of them had a good story. If and when quantum theory has a good story, people will get "used to" it, and think they "understand it". Quantum theorists may get to actually "understand it" in the way they understand relativity (a prerequisite of coming up with a good story to normalise it). (Btw, before the inevitable accusations of elitism and knowledge siloing, there's no barrier to a lay person becoming a quantum theorist beyond putting in the reading time.)

Brains aren't magic or divine. They evolved on Earth to solve problems on Earth. The notion of setting a gold standard for theory on the basis of amenability to intuitive understanding is extremely myopic and has nothing to do with how we really (claim to) understand science beyond the mundane. Layers of analogy down to intuitive ideas are key, not intuitive ideas themselves.

I can always say that you see quarks because you only belive in them — Raymond

The quark model (and it is just a model) is based on empiricism, not belief. Believing the model to be a high-fidelity representation of reality is, yes, a belief. But the word itself is a label for a hypothetical set of values of conserved properties. The credibility of that model is based on its predictions matching empirical data. We do not "see quarks". We see the world acting as if it is partly comprised of quarks. So the utility you wish to "throw overboard" is empiricism, which is a call to ignore facts in favour of... what? How we'd like the world to be?

When quarks were introduced in the sixties it took another 10 years to prove their existence and Feynman didn't believe in them, though he believed in partons. — Raymond

Beliefs are irrelevant, beyond that manifest in the requisite confidence that an experiment is worth paying for. Newton didn't believe in quarks either, nor did Einstein, because the concept didn't exist. Ad hominem has no place here. The only questions are: 1) does this predict new or previously unexplained phenomena?, 2) does this contradict empirical facts? Beliefs come _after_, not before.

But what spreads out? If it spreads out it can collapse. — Raymond

Assuming collapse is a thing. But to answer your question, the spatial distribution of the wavefunction spreads out over time. It's just thermodynamics again: if you put the wavefunction in a highly ordered state (measure its position), it will tend toward a less ordered state (spread out).

Something isn't a way? — Raymond

Autocorrect, sorry. "... isn't a wave". A wave by definition is a thing that interferes and diffracts. Electrons interfere and diffract. Positing that electrons aren't waves is therefore gibberish (unless you reject the empirical fact that electrons interfere and diffract).

No it doesn't precludes will. Where did I mention that? — dimosthenis9

You certainly stated its artificiality as a counterargument. If you're backtracking on that, good.

You find that it isn't alive? — dimosthenis9

Oh, not just me. In fact you're the only person I've ever met who thinks viruses are alive.

No it isn't. Not everything man made is the same. Again, a clone is the same with computers? I can't understand why you find that so weird. — dimosthenis9

I don't find it weird, I find it incoherent. If being man-made precludes will, it should do so whether alive or not. If it does not, it never should. Changing one's values to fit different desired conclusions is just weak argumentation.

Not all. But RNA is. — dimosthenis9

RNA is alive. Yeah okay. :yikes: We're a long way from science, Toto.

The physicist wants his quarks and leptons (or subs within them, to which muon g2 anomaly seems to hint) to be real. What's thought real or not varies and there is, especially nowadays, no consensus, not even for the fundamental, what the right picture is. — Raymond

I'll agree that there are hierarchies of ontology. I don't _believe_ in quarks the way I believe in houses. But it's not just a case of wanting. By that logic, it's equally sensible that something that diffracts and interferes isn't a way, which is linguistically incoherent.

I don't think though that the absorption of a photon is the reversed process of absorption. The absorption involves a different photon state as the emitted photon. So one can see the difference. Or not? — Raymond

Absorption backward is emission, and vice versa.

What about the evolution of the wave function? Reversing motion will still produce collapse. Collapse is insensitive to time reversal. Still, if you reverse the movie of a collapse, a superposition magically appears. — Raymond

Collapse is irreversible, for sure. But probably not real. (Fight! Fight! Fight!) Another aspect is the thermodynamics of the evolution of the wavefunction: its dispersion. If you measure a particle, it has a very localised wavefunction. As time progresses, it spreads out. It never does the opposite.

Well yeah it is. — dimosthenis9

Well now we're in a realm where words don't really mean anything. Is it your belief that all organic molecules are themselves alive?

Even if the virus is man made it is a living thing. — dimosthenis9

Therefore being man-made is irrelevant to being alive. And yet:

Computers are children of the human mind. — dimosthenis9

is somehow relevant. This is incoherent thinking.

I understand your post in and if itself, but have no idea how it relates to order being good and chaos being evil. A mass grave of Jewish corpses in a concentration camp is highly ordered compared with a cemetery, yet is a symbol of utmost evil.

If you want to distance yourself from Hitler, you don't go for a toithbrush moustache. Why muddy the already muddy waters? — Agent Smith

Oops.

Viruses designed naturally or in a lab are both something alive (well it's an open issue if they are but let's assume yes). — dimosthenis9

So:

Computers are children of the human mind. — dimosthenis9

is irrelevant? I'm inclined to agree.

So earlier we established that it isn't the living (or life-modifying) individual that demonstrates will, but the RNA over many generations. Is RNA more alive than a computer? Is a the source code of a computer program more alive than a computer?

They do are designed by humans and they aren't alive indeed. So this can never be a convincing argument for me. — dimosthenis9

Well this is a bit of a dodgy argument, isn't it? In the case of a man-made virus which you want to argue has a will, you held the fact that it's man-made irrelevant to the question of it having a will, only that it's alive (even though it isn't). Yet in the case of a computer which you wish to argue has no will, the fact that it's man-made is relevant. I feel the problem here is that taste rather than logic dictates your arguments, leading to contradictions.

If you are honest, then I wonder how the hell you determined going to a philosophy forum is "as rational as possible." — Yohan

Easy. The desired outcome was: discuss philosophy with people more knowledgeable about it than me. The chosen course of action -- to visit a philosophy forum -- was the optimal one.

I don't think the universe computes all these different histories, assigns them complex probabilities, and ĺets these interfere. All these procedures are human inventions, not truly present in nature. — Raymond

Well it's still all to play for, but by my reckoning, if it diffracts like a wave and it interferes like a wave, it's a wave. That's not to say the science is exact, but it would be weird if it was far from the truth given the sheer amount of testing it's undergone.

Well, in theory all processes are time reversible. Just reverse all motion present in the system... in practice this needs quite some effort, and the means you reverse all motion with go forward in time. — Raymond

At a macroscopic scale it's nigh on impossible because of pesky thermodynamics. But elementary processes are almost all reversible. A thing moving from A to B is a physical process. Reverse the footage: it moves from B to A, also a physical process. Atom A emits a photon which is absorbed by atom B. Reverse the footage: atom B emits a photon which is absorbed by atom A, an identical physical process. Throw a ball in a vacuum from point A, it follows a parabolic trajectory and lands at point B. Reverse the footage, and it follows a parabolic trajectory from point B to A. Same goes for strong and most weak forces.

The only weird one is particle decay. Most are reversible: neutron decay and electron capture, proton decay and positron capture, pair creation and annihilation.

You mentioned the 2nd law of thermodynamics — Agent Smith

You think that the 2nd law is antiscientific new age guff? Or was a rofl emoji warranted there?

Well no it is not will. But still I could never accept these comparisons with computers. — dimosthenis9

And I can argue all day against comparison to the evolution of virus DNA, or any other competence without comprehension.

Computers are children of the human mind. An alive creature and its mind manufactured them. — dimosthenis9

So are you saying that a virus genetically designed in a lab has no will but an identical virus naturally evolved does?

But computers aren't alive.
I got what you mean and the analogy you use here. But though there are many similarities sometimes I can't accept them working exactly the same. — dimosthenis9

I also don't accept that computers have a will: I introduced them as an example of something with no will that can optimise. Saying "but they're designed" or "they're not alive" isn't a response. No one is willing the particular transmission of a particular message at a particular time. The underlying mechanics are opaque to most. No will involved, and yet it optimises.

But it's us who vary the path, it's us who determine the track. It's not that the particle chooses it beforehand. more paths are in fact possible. — Raymond

I see what you're saying, but it's not like a hydrogen atom is figuring out the frequency it should oscillate at: it is constrained to aim toward a particular frequency by purely physical behaviour. That said, the best computer you could design for modelling the universe exactly would be... the universe. You could think of it that way.

More to the point, hydrogen is (not) figuring out what frequency to oscillate at whether we know what that frequency is our not, whether anything figures it out or not. I detect a desire here to see teleology in everything, but it's simply not justified. In the case of specifying initial and final boundaries, it's not like one is actualised and the system has to know how to reach the other. Rather there is a 4D worldline that is actualised as a whole, and we just experience one before the other. The system doesn't need to "know" either boundary, rather it's entire history is predicated on both.

Does determinism need a first cause? I think it does. At the BB singularity particles needed a first push to come in existence. Without such a first push, nothing could have come into existence.The initial pushes determined the subsequent development, which would result in life for a wide, maybe continuous and infinite set of initial conditions. Maybe these pushes were even determined by a previous big bang, where time has reached infinity (I tend to think that once the universe has accelerated away to infinity, this triggers a new big bang behind us). — Raymond

But again what you're describing here is sequences of events related by an overarching character of determinism, not the birth of determinism per se. In our local view, there's no 'before' the big bang to cause determinism. We'd need to be able to look at other universes to get a picture of whether determinism is optional or variable and we can't. It's not only perfectly viable but very likely that determinism is the same in all universes (if there are multiple) and even a characteristic of the multiverse, putting it well outside of time's domain, whether that's the statistically emergent determinism of QM or some harder, fixed version as per my view.

In reality, there exist practically no reversible processes. — Raymond

In reality, almost all elementary processes are reversible. That was the point of departure for the thread I linked to in my previous post.

The will is a determined one. Will can't exist without determination. Determination doesn't rob the will from its freedom. The determined action of a will can impair the will of fellow men though. It's in this context that we can speak of a free will, or a free wont. — Raymond

:up: :lol: I like free won't.

Whoever runs the place. But what influenced them to make all the choices? — Yohan

Follow the same procedure. Ask them what their options and restrictions where, what factors were overwhelming at the time, how they justified choosing one option over another... Likely they'll know the answers, which is to say that, while they were the ones who had to whittle down all possibilities to a single course of action (what will does), there were reasons for the particular choices they made. On which:

But maybe I'm just clinging to an excuse to believe I have some power over my life. — Yohan

I am certain I have power over my life. I am the thing that deterministically does that whittling. I'm in the equation, making myself known. It wouldn't help my ego one iota to know that there was anything non-deterministic involved. I wouldn't be able to describe that and claim it for my own. It's essential to me that my decisions are as rational as possible or, if irrational, I can at least explain them in retrospect. This has all the qualities of free will I'd want to preserve, the bits that matter. The whole "could do otherwise" thing is just a nonsense that was never on the table in the first place. One can never "do otherwise". One can only "do". Do the do. Doop doop dewoop.

:rofl:

What's reference frame? — john27

So it might be the case that the thermodynamic arrow of time is local and appears to point in one particular direction from a particular point of view, specifically the point of view of intelligent creatures who need the second law in order to learn things (including the second law). This is a homocentric bias: we believe that the thermodynamic arrow of time is privileged because we have a psychological arrow of time derived from it.

Getting out of our own egos, there's no particular reason why the psychological arrow of time should privilege anything. It's just as reasonable to say that order increases with time, but we're just seeing it back to front. This is a frame of reference: we point the time arrow in a particular direction, but it could just as well be in the opposite direction (constituting a different frame of reference). We can already do the same thing with space. Your forward is not my forward.

I wrote about it at length here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9506/cosmology-and-determinism

Note that this is merely illustrative, I'm not championing it, nor is it orthodox. The TL;DR version is that, yes, thermodynamics could be a consequence of the geometry of the universe, i.e.its initial and final conditions. In this curved space-time with time symmetry picture, there's no privileged ordering to events: an initial condition from one reference frame could be a final condition in another. As such, one could imagine many such boundaries, not just two.

But yes, essentially, thermodynamics could be caused by boundary conditions.

OK, but the second law of thermodynamics, is a practical view of determinism. Would then, the second law of thermodynamics necessitate a first cause? — john27

It's difficult to imagine it. Whatever the initial conditions, whatever the strength of gravity, if you have a partioned box with gas in one side and a vacuum in the other, and you remove the partition, there are many more configurations where the gas occupies the whole box than where it stays in its original side, and one would expect this equilibrium to be attained after a while. This would suggest that it is independent of first causes.

It might be dependent on reference frame though. It's one I think about a lot and have started a thread on a while back, the relationship between the initial conditions of the universe (infinite order), the second law, and determinism. It's possible that thermodynamics is a hangover from the initial state of the universe (infinite order).

Sorry Raymond, I didn't give you a very comprehensive response.

Like genes playing puppeteers of our body, as I once saw depicted? This exists in the mind only. — Raymond

Let me separate that into two parts because a puppeteer is not only controling the puppets, it's doing so consciously, with volition and purpose. As I said before, that's a metaphor that can help but also hinder. Determinism does not suggest a godlike overseer anymore: that's what science has done for us.

So... 1) does determinism control us, dictate our decisions for us? and 2) does this determinism itself suggest some sentient higher power?

On 1), putting aside twisty exotic definitions of will designed to give a preferred answer and taking it to mean the decision to act in a particular way toward a desired end, yes, I'd say will itself necessitates determinism. Otherwise I could decide that, because I am hungry, I wish to eat the apple before me and therefore choose to chop off my right hand with an axe. It wouldn't make a lot of sense and I don't think we'd have gotten far as a species if we were apt to behave in this way. I might tell people that I want to eat the apple then choose to chop off my right hand in an extreme and misguided demonstration of my free will but then my chosen outcome is "demonstrate free will by chopping own hand off" not "sate my hunger".

I assume this is true for you, but when I make a decision it's based on various considerations. I haven't eaten many vegetables recently. I am worried about my health. So what shall I eat for dinner tonight? I really fancy a burger with pulled pork fries. But I know I need vegetables, and lots of them. I have multiple options for outcomes: joyous gluttony or healthy body, and the thing that will select between them is... me! That's a good definition of free will in my book. But is it deterministic?

Well how do I choose? Today I chose healthy: a tasty vegetable stir fry. Was this random? Would it even be will if it were? No, I chose healthy because currently I feel bad about Christmas gluttony and I knew that I'd like myself more for choosing vegetables. Also, I knew that I'd physically benefit from it. Plus, I had the vegetables, so all the barriers to making it are removed. I find I have no reason to eat unhealthily other than gluttony and that's a bad reason.

But a few days ago, I had a bacon and brie sandwich for breakfast. That's not healthy. I thought I was all about being healthy as the moment!!! But then again I had the bacon, the brie, the bread. I didn't have anything healthy for breakfast that I like eating. And I was making breakfast for three people. I'm not going to make them bacon and brie and deny myself, that's borderline martyrdom.

Both choices make sense in the light of my state and situation even though they seem practically schizophrenic, which is to say that there are reasons I whittled down my options from many to one in the particular way I did. If I had wanted burger and pulled pork fries a bit more, or if I'd been out of noodles, or if my partner had been home and said "I really fancy that burger tonight, how about you?" then the deterministic whittling would likely have gone in the other direction. Likewise if my partner had asked me to make her a caprese for breakfast the other day and we had some nice fresh basil, fat and firm beef tomatoes, and some light mozzarella, then I'd probably have eaten healthily then instead. These aren't demonstrations of non-determinism, quite the opposite: if I could have listed the important factors without actually making a decision, my decision could easily be predicted.

As for (2), no, none of this requires a puppeteer imo. I simply need to be in a particular state, which I always am, in a particular environment, which I always am, and with the mental apparatus to weigh factors and desired outcomes, which I have. A good demonstration of this is what happens when we have no basis to choose one outcome or course of action over another. Sartre writes about this in his Sketch of a Theory of Emotions. Under experimental circumstances, when subjects are forced to choose between equally unattractive options, something weird happens: they become irrationally angry. Sartre's theory, which I believe and recognise in myself, is that this sort of emotionally violent reaction is a psychological trick to get us out of rational deadlocks. If, in our current situation, there are no particularly good options, change the situation. Fuck shit up. By the end, there will typically be a least bad option (usually: clean up the mess you just made), at which point you calm down again.

I think this exemplifies the deterministic nature of will, the idea that we choose a over b because, after consideration of all factors, it is clear to us that a > b is made most evident in the edge cases where a = b.

Ok better put, how can determinism exist without a first cause? — john27

Determinism isn't an event though. Effects need prior causes. Determinism doesn't. It fits more into the role of characteristic of nature (although see below). In particular, it appears to be a time-independent characteristic of nature, therefore not requiring a history. There's lots of questions we could ask about that. For instance, is it really time-independent, or could effects become decreasingly correlated with causes over time? Does the possibility of determinism necessitate this particular determinism (time-independent or -dependent), or could different universes with different boundary conditions have different determinisms, or even no determinism at all? None of these necessitate a _prior_ cause of a particular determinism, although perhaps an eternal inflation type picture could allow for something like the exact conditions of a big bang to dictate causality.

An alternative to no cause at all and prior cause is underlying causes, and that's where the scientific orthodoxy lies. My background is quantum theory but I have a minority view about it so I'll take care to separate popular beliefs and my own. Most quantum theories have some kind of probabilistic collapse or branching mechanism: causes are sufficient but not necessary conditions for their effects. Copenhagen ontologists believe that nature selects from _possible_ effects in a weighted but otherwise random way. Many worlds enthusiasts believe that all possible effects co-exist independently, with the more probable ones having greater contribution to the whole. In short, whenever you do quantum theory with only one (initial) temporal boundary condition, you end up with multiple effects for every cause and therefore nature is only backwards deterministic, i.e. every effect is fully explained by it's causes, but those causes don't fully explain the effect.

So then why does the macroscopic universe appear deterministic at all? The answer is... the principle of least action! Determinism is a statistically emergent quality in this sort of QM. Because each particle in the stone you throw in a vacuum has a tiny probability of being located a centimetre off its expected trajectory, the stone as a whole has a negligible probability of being found a centimetre off its expected trajectory. Effectively, when you sum over the histories for each particle being a centimetre off in the same way, most of those histories undergo destructive interference, meaning that the total probability of the stone as a whole going off course is so tiny you wouldn't expect to see it happen once in the entire history of the universe. It's not an impossibility, just an overwhelming likelihood that the principle of least action as we know it holds true.

In this way, no prior cause is needed for determinism, as it's an emergent characteristic from another, more fundamental version of the principle of least action (sum over histories, essentially the integration of action over all possible paths).

Another possibility is that final, as well as initial, boundary conditions of systems should be specified, i.e. that time flies backwards as well as forwards, in the same way that space spans left as well as right. In relativity theory, time and space are on equal footing, and thus it is my view we should solve the equations accordingly: two spatial boundaries per spatial dimension, two temporal boundaries for the time dimension. The results are more or less the same, except that determinism occurs more fundamentally.

If you consider my wife a natural law, then yes. But a real existing law, like a god? — Raymond

I have heard she's a force of nature :rofl:

A law isn't like a god, it's more like a track.

Remove the master and there is no slave. Remove the slave and there is no master. They can't exist, as slaves or masters, without each other. — Yohan

True. I cede the point intended. Although we're all slaves of, and none of us masters to, causality! :scream: Fatuous but technically on-topic :rofl:

How then can determinism verify itself? A deterministic view necessitates a first cause, does it not? — john27

Determinism doesn't verify anything at all, it's not in assurance.

Even if we are determined sums over histories, and if bound systems could be described non-perturbatively, or if some truly fundamental particles were found, do the laws of qft govern us? — Raymond

Or something very like them, along with general relativity or something very like it, along with the particular boundary conditions of our universe. At least, the idea hasn't been contradicted, and has been verified in all conceived and possible tests (out of-the-gaps window of opportunity).

Could determinism not incorporate non-deterministic free will? — john27

By definition, no. Determinism covers deterministic process only.

I did arrive wanting to believe in free will.
I still do, but can't. Free will doesn't appear to have any explanatory power. — Yohan

Ah okay,I misunderstood sorry.

Master and slave is a co-dependent relationship. — Yohan

Is it? The slave might seem to depend on the master feeding him and sheltering him, but only in the context of the slave's maximally restricted liberty. Remove the master and the slave is free, including free to obtain food and shelter by other, less criminally insane means. So off-topic now... :rofl:

where is this principle situated, and how does it determine? Is there some mad Principle Puppeteer directing processes with strings? — Raymond

The trend in scientific history is that such laws derive from fewer, more fundamental laws. The principle of least action is not fundamental according to quantum field theory, but derives from systems exploring every possible path from the initial point to the final point and the interference effects across those paths (sum over histories). The second law of thermodynamics also reduces to quantum mechanics, in particular the concept of degeneracy. Perhaps there are other simplifications to be made. If the principle of least action and the second law of thermodynamics derive from the five postulates of QM, what is making those postulates manifest in reality? And so on...

Yeah, you misunderstand Occam's razor. It's not saying "go with what's easiest for you personally to grasp". It says "go with the theory with the fewest free parameters". 2 is twice as many as 1.

Well in terms of the predictability of humans and their choices, regarding the analysis of consciousness and thought I'd say 2. is simpler. — john27

Just checking your arithmetic here. (2) consists of two things. (1) just one thing. To clarify, you're going on record that two things is simpler than one thing, yes?

So in general, if I got it right, your point is that as everything, viruses variants are just an automatical mechanical procedure and includes no transmission of any kind of information as to go on existing?Right? — dimosthenis9

No, state is an example of information, reproduction an example of transmission. But none of that requires a will. Your computer does this well enough without a will of its own. (In before, "But computers only do as we tell them, which is will!": Most computer users are oblivious to how information is stored and transmitted but can still operate them fine. They are not "willing" messages around circuits, and yet that happens.)

Free will, as we all know, is central to ethics. Does ethics make scientific/mathematical sense? The 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy) implies that disorder (evil) is more likely than order (good). — Agent Smith

I'm not going to get drawn in to antiscientific new age guff about disorder being evil. The basis for the argument in your OP was a scientific one: the principle of least action.

If I act contrary to the principle, which I do, by every action I perform. My will is nor free, nor tied to determinism or any other abstract principle. The will simply is. — Raymond

But you don't act contrary to the principle. This is a conflation of mechanics and ethics. When you decide to walk the long way home, every molecule of you is still obeying the principle: when a conservative force acts on it, it changes via the trajectory of least action. This has nothing to do with your decision about which way you're going. If you fancied the scenary, your choice was an effective one. If you wanted to burn some calories, your choice was an effective one. If you were pressed for time, your choice would be a questionable one, but still every molecule in you subject to conservative forces would obey the principle of least action. It isn't something effected by choice.

Even if it were so, the principle doesn't hold for real processes, maybe by approximation only. Are we approximately subjected to it? — Raymond

That's true of everything. If you pretend gravity is all there is, you're disobeying it right now by not falling through the floor thanks to electrostatic repulsion. Gravity isn't all there is: there's also electromagnetism. Likewise the principle of least action is not all there is when you're applying it at a macroscopic level. (The Langrangian does specify the laws of motion in quantum field theory though, though so if you _could_ calculate a human being catapulted through the air at this scale, the principle of least action would be sufficient. Something being mathematically intractable is not the same as it being approximate or untrue.)

The principle is even teleological, as it supposes a final point in spacetime that can't be known at the start, except for isolated systems. — Raymond

I think that's you imposing your preferred interpretation, ironically. Fundamentally these are boundary conditions only. An alternative interpretation is that causality proceeds in both directions of time. The usual interpretation is that the final point is merely one of many explored by the system until measurement occurs, after which the true final point is selected probabilistically. None of this requires sentience.

I did arrive as a non-physicalist but that is unrelated. — Yohan

It's very related, since there's a huge gap between the OP and your convincing.

My partial ignorance could be funded by an enormous chain of deterministic causes, or I could just have free will. Occam's razor? — john27

Occam's razor chooses the simplest explanation for the whole. Which is simpler?
1. Determinism.
2. Determinism + non-deterministic free will.
Since determinism itself is not being disputed here.

Also, Occam's razor is not an excuse to make stuff up. You could say everything is a goat, that's nice and simple, but counter to empiricism.

But wouldn't a human's partial ignorance be funded by his free will? — john27

No, it's funded by the second law of thermodynamics. You can choose to be ignorant about something (or do your own research in contemporary parlance), but it doesn't follow that all ignorance is voluntary. We are born ignorant of almost everything.

Is she subject to the principle — Raymond

And the answer is what you quoted.

After the launch friction will influence the motion, so the principle is not applicable anymore, as only conservative forces are implied. — Raymond

Well you can look at that in three ways. One is that you'd have to perform the experiment under ideal conditions. Another is that you factor dissipation, which is still deterministic, into the calculation. Another is that you add "in principle" on the grounds that, on a molecular level, there are no dissipative forces but, on that level, the calculations are untenable.

None of which suggests that failure to obey the principle of least action is free will: indeed, you've just cited examples of its violation that are deterministic.

I just can't see mechanistic domino effects producing symphonies or the works of Shakespeare.

I'm convinced! — Yohan

I think you arrived already convinced, no?

Like a primal mechanism of making the virus "decide" to go on existing. To include the information as "to know what to do" as to keep existing. If that makes more sense. — dimosthenis9

It's common to use terminology like this as a shorthand or metaphor even among scientists, especially scientific communicators. But one shouldn't take the metaphor as then being literal.

Evolution of any species or virus is an optimisation procedure. There is a space to explore (RNA), a source of noise (genetic mutation), usually a mixing procedure (e.g. sexual reproduction), and a feedback from the environment that effectively ascribes a fitness to each individual.

It's a very passive, dumb procedure that you can simulate on a computer very easily* (at least for simple models) but one capable of incredible flexibility, resilience and complexity.

*In my first job after leaving academia, I wrote an algorithm that tracked mobile phones around supermarkets. This consisted of 1000 candidates each with a unique state akin to DNA (position, orientation, various device biases), a source of noise akin to mutation (small additions of pseudo random numbers added to state variables), a combination procedure akin to sexual reproduction (the next 1000 states drawn probabilistically from the probability distribution of the previous 1000), and environmental feedback akin to survival fitness (closeness of phone magnetometer and WiFi strength measurements to objective mappings) that would alter the probability of a candidate spawning offspring. The result looked like the candidate cloud had a purpose: it moved around the store very confidently after initial catastrophes killed most of the initial candidates, stopping wherever I had stopped, turning around when I had done... But it all came from about 500 lines of very straightforward Python code. Of course, we talked about the cloud pausing at the hot sauce shelf, moving on, then changing its mind and going back for that hot sauce... It's a good, metaphorical narrative technique. But really it was just state and noise exploring a particular state space and dying off when it didn't fit the environment any more.

The appearance of will and purpose and design in evolution is the same. It's a foot in the door to understanding the mechanics through metaphor, especially in large state spaces and complex environments that are otherwise difficult to grasp. But at heart it's just dumb numbers doing dumb things according to statistics and feedback mechanisms.

Human behavior, if you'll take the time to notice, breaks this easiest route rule - we do things in very inefficient ways, most of the times failing to take the shortest route between beginning (of a project) and its end. In essence we violate the Principle of Least Action. — Agent Smith

I'm pretty sure if you fire a human from a trebuchet, they will follow the path given by the principle of least action. So in an example that is equivalent to the physical behaviour you cite, people behave as expected.

What you seem to have in mind is that people do not always make the best possible decisions, and you're using action as a metaphor. But people are also ruled by other physical laws. One is the second law of thermodynamics, which forbids people from suddenly and opportunely knowing something they did not learn. As such, humans always make decisions in partial ignorance, leading (deterministically) to a high probability of suboptimal choices.

There are many other factors that influence decision-making (for instance, exercise in order to get fit), but none of them violate the principle of least action.

T Clark nailed it as usual. One subtle but important point: mutations occur between generations, not within an individual's lifetime. Will is persuant to an individual: evolution is not.

The alternative then would be some Beckettian purgatory in which everyone is obliged to sleepwalk through the same debate again and again, regurgitating the same irrational, meritless arguments and rational, patient dismantlings thereof until the racists and sexists, frustrated at their own inevitable intellectual impotency, hit the reset button. — Kenosha Kid

Which now I've described it I realise is Qanon.

But on this issue, irregardless of the fact that there is nothing close to a scientific consensus on the issue, and that there are obvious arguments for either side, if you argue for inequality, you get labeled a racist and/or sexist — Qmeri

In what sense, when you argue for racial inequality, are you not a racist? That's what racism is. In what sense, when you argue for gender inequality, are you not a sexist? That's what sexism is. I don't get how you're rationalising this to yourself, nor do I believe you can get to this place by way of:

I used to very strongly associate myself with the equality movement of the time… — Qmeri

If we were to take you seriously, and obviously we shouldn't, you've volte faced from egalitarianism to not only championing racial and gender inequality but demanding some kind of immunity from being described as such, a sort of Emperor's New Prejudice. It seems rather that YOU changed a lot, not egalitarianism. If we were to take you seriously...

Racist and sexist theories are long debunked. No one except racists and sexists bother pretending there's anything more to them than hatred and prejudice. The notion that there is anything more is itself debunked. The alternative then would be some Beckettian purgatory in which everyone is obliged to sleepwalk through the same debate again and again, regurgitating the same irrational, meritless arguments and rational, patient dismantlings thereof until the racists and sexists, frustrated at their own inevitable intellectual impotency, hit the reset button.

One book, which looks at this is, 'The Myths We Live By', by Mary Midgley. She queries the neutrality of science, saying,
'It struck me as remarkable that people answer questions about science in two opposite ways today.
On the one hand, they often praise science for being value-free: objective, unbiased, neutral, a pure source of facts. Just as, as often, however, they speak of it as being itself a source of values, perhaps the only true source of them.' — Jack Cummins

I think the only extent to which that is done rightly is the extent to which it's preferable to base one's values on objective reality rather than fantasy, delusion, ignorance, or error. Just as one wants a consensus around facts to establish a (ever putative) scientific truth, one would like access to and consensus about facts pertaining to, say, whether or not an election was rigged and an insurrection justified. For many, such a standard is not required. To that extent, a scientific-like standard is reasonable, and there's no contradiction as implied by MM: if one's values are based on anything, valueless facts seem a good shout.

That aside, it seems like mere innuendo to me. I don't think science is valueless, objective, or unbiased, nor do our values derive much from it, except in the above conscientiousness _sometimes_ (rarely). Our values are largely derived from nature and nurture, from experience, and if anything the scientific community is apt to manifest values through its constitution than be a credible source of them.

The requirement to simulate an objective picture through agreement about the results of repeatable experiments keeps science mostly in check, relegating theories that attempt to implement bad values, such as racism via phrenology or eugenics, to the lunatic fringe while still making way for other value judgements around emotive areas like stem cell research, abortion safety, and climate action. It's perfectly viable to have a science that observes the facts of climate change but makes no recommendations, or even be in favour of apocalypse. We don't tend to get much of that because the intersect between people dedicating their lives to understanding this stage we briefly step onto and people who would sign humanity's death warrant for an easy billion dollars today, or be fine with others doing so, is almost zero. Personally I don't find quantum theory and the general theory of relativity particularly relevant to my values :rofl: