On Determinism

Mark.Wright@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Lance <LanceGary@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

These are two interesting arguments Lance. For me, the emotive and
philosophical arguments and scientific arguments point in opposite
directions.


They do?

There is no scientific basis for determinism on one hand -- and on
the other hand one can equally well posit emotional reasons for
believing in determinism.

I can see plenty of emotional reasons that one would cling to a
belief in determinism: an emotional attachment to "beautiful" theories
that describe the universe completely and in a determinate manner, a
desire to escape the responsibility for one's actions, an escape from
facing the difficulty of making choices under genuine uncertainty,
perhaps a psychological need to escape guilt and so on -- all of them
emotional factors that can cloud one's judgment on the matter.
So emotive arguments can very well be the cause of a belief in
determinism.

As far as scientific justifications of determinism go, they are a
joke. The micro world is full of events that are both beyond the
predictive power of our theories and without any good reason to believe
that such detailed prediction is possible. (And the world seems to have
plenty of chaos-like properties, in which uncertainty at the
micro-level translates into uncertainty at the macro level.)
It is true that by this, determinism is not disproved, but that is
just a consequence of the fact that said determinism is unfalsifiable
-- a property it is has in common with many mystical beliefs.


I want to believe in free will, but still cant see where it
fits into the laws of physics.


"Free will" vs. determinism is a false dichotomy -- at least by
many traditional definitions of free will.

As far as how one can "fit" free will by some definition, with the
laws of physics, I think that's more a question of how to fit
randomness with free-will -- that randomness fits well with the laws of
physics is beyond doubt.

My take on fitting randomness with free-will is this: I have
free-will because the randomness that is original to my brain is in
fact part of _me_ -- hence, in combination with my abilities to reason,
emote and make judgments, it becomes is _my_ free-will. Randomness is
the essential component of the spontaneity of most acts of my will, and
hence the essential component of my free-will.

I realize that this may not fit well with many traditional
interpretations of free-will, but I don't see why that should be of any
concern to anyone.

Cheers,
Alex

.

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