Re: Einstein might have had a point

Hi Peter -

You wrote: "Why this ache to have free will? I've been quite content
without it for
years. "

----------

Would you care to expound on the meaning of the phrase, "could have
done otherwise"?

When someone slips, and in struggling not to fall accidentally strike
you, we feel that you may be upset but you should not blame the perosn
- he could not have done otherwise. But when someone is intentionally
rude to you we may feel that your anger is righteous for he could have
done otherwise.

Yet if determinism is true, right down to the quantum level, then
truly, the insult that guy aimed at you was implicit in the the make-up
of the universe at the time of the big bang, and he could not have done
otherwise. Your anger is inevitable but not righteous - for neither you
nor he could have done otherwise.

So what are we to make of the phrase "could have done otherwise" in a
deterministic universe?

Lance

---------------
Peter H.M. Brooks wrote:
There's a good article in the New Scientist of a couple of weeks ago. It
references these web-sites that explore the underlying determinacy
beneath quantum mechanics.

The joke, of course, is that even if the soul re-inventors had managed
to tie consciousness to microtubules, and you can't say that they hadn't
tried everything short of duct tape to do it, they'd have failed in
their ultimate mission:

http://www.arxiv.org/quant-ph/0604079

Why this ache to have free will? I've been quite content without it for
years.

.

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