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According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

Two "possibilities" with different characteristics at the same place and time are contradictory.

That's a contradiction.
Not at all.

To make it a contradiction, you will have to define place in particular such that no two things can be in the same place at the same time.

You should already sense how preposterous as well as non-necessary such a definition would be.
 
you will have to define place in particular such that no two things can be in the same place at the same time
That's pretty much exactly how "place" is defined, yes.

It is one of the most basic ideas of physics and math, and one of the ways we specifically know something is hinky and requires more investigation.

It is the real corollary to "no contradictions", and the first intuition that drove us to understand quantum mechanics and how it can appear that two phenomena could appear that way.

Like, even with quantum superposition, the assumption there is that the fields can overlap only insofar as the "actual" position ends up entangled and complimentary in some way, implying some complimentary composition in some other-dimensional space that both end up rotating through.

Im pretty sure that's why quantum mechanics needs additional dimensional assumptions in most models, in the first place.

The whole point of physics is modeling it in a way that does not assume a spatial contradiction is to preserve that assumption.

It is the natural corollary to "there are no binary contradictions".

Otherwise, we could say "what if at that place where I observed A, I just didn't manage to observe the ~A property there", and makes the entire assumption of observation in science moot if we just assume nature can present in any way two different states at the same exact position in exactly the same way.
 
you will have to define place in particular such that no two things can be in the same place at the same time
That's pretty much exactly how "place" is defined, yes.

It is one of the most basic ideas of physics and math, and one of the ways we specifically know something is hinky and requires more investigation.

It is the real corollary to "no contradictions", and the first intuition that drove us to understand quantum mechanics and how it can appear that two phenomena could appear that way.

Like, even with quantum superposition, the assumption there is that the fields can overlap only insofar as the "actual" position ends up entangled and complimentary in some way, implying some complimentary composition in some other-dimensional space that both end up rotating through.

Im pretty sure that's why quantum mechanics needs additional dimensional assumptions in most models, in the first place.

The whole point of physics is modeling it in a way that does not assume a spatial contradiction is to preserve that assumption.

It is the natural corollary to "there are no binary contradictions".

Otherwise, we could say "what if at that place where I observed A, I just didn't manage to observe the ~A property there", and makes the entire assumption of observation in science moot if we just assume nature can present in any way two different states at the same exact position in exactly the same way.
Based on that definition of place, math and science fail to correspond with reality.

Your body is in one place, the same place as are your body parts and even your thoughts.

Likewise, in one place is the determinate condition which is the conjoining of the A possibility and the not-A possibility.

There is no contradiction.
 
Your body is in one place
No, it is not. My body is in many places across space. It isn't even necessarily in one distinct volume.
Your body is certainly not in one distinct volume across spacetime.

Nor are you equally free across spacetime.

Don’t make the mistake of identifying places with dimensionless points, because dimensionless points are not physically real.

As interesting as all that can be made, I expect some part of you already realizes that there was no contradiction.
 
Your body is certainly not in one distinct volume across spacetime
Yes it is shaped roughly like a spikey, 4d worm-like structure with "blobs" occasionally dangling off or around it.

Nor are you equally free across spacetime
Well, before it's shaped like a worm it's shaped kind of like a frayed rope, but much more squiggly, and it looks kind of "melty" at times

In fact, I recently saw an image that sort of looks like what "I" was before I was me, but in 2d frames in 3d, though I'm not sure this is what the intent was to depict... It looked kind of like a tree with vertical branches all extending off into unfurled particles going their own ways?

Then at the end, it progressively gets more confused until things start separating and the bundles that were start being consumed into other stuff and they lines of its cross section stop interacting, and then before you know it, what was all woven tightly drifts promptly apart.

This is in fact one of the reasons you bringing up the Trinity is SO ironic, though, because in addition to that element of me, the spikey worm with frayed ends, "me the child" as it were, there is another "me" more shaped like... Maybe you could represent it like with lines and structures and connections sent into the worm from tufts or "weaves" in tight bundles of stuff outside it, that causes its shape to conform in some way based on what it receives, and other lines extending out back into the more distinct "weaves" of the thing and those connect through and to past instances of other "spikey frayed worms", and they eventually come into and define part of the structure of the spikey worm. This "ghost" connects the whole worm to one or more such "frayed worms" and more bizarre shapes still (the points where bundles become tight weaves rather than diffuse frayed ones).

But some features of that frayed rope's.xross section themselves come to reflect a system which directs where and how the thing is woven together. When the right combination of structural elements (the symmetries of the cross sections of the "woven areas") form some structure among the diffuse connections to the worm, the worm's own weave of bundles shifts to conform to some new cross-sectional conformity.

Across parts of that the structure around this worm various constraints act as hard or soft walls which will prevent the worm from moving past their positions in spacetime, however abstract, owing to controls and lines connecting out, and forward, and into the worm so as to direct it. When these undue influences.

Sometimes the spikey frayed worm merely moves of its own accord, not in connection to another spikey frayed worm but because of something inside that volume.

Depending on whether the motion is due to a wall, even a wall formed of decisions made due to the threat of not achieving some position in the space, or whether that motion is due to the structural rules created inside the spikey 4d worm, we declare the thing "constrained" or "free".

Believe me, I might have spent some time actually thinking what shape I have through spacetime and what observations indicate the freedom and constraint in that shape.

But yes, it is strictly speaking a very strange 4d volume.

If you want I can TRY to draw a 2d version of it that paints it correctly, and extend concepts of area to volumes, and I would have to use spheres or dots to avoid implications of concurrence, or imply some 3d space.

I will admit, though, this is the first time I pushed myself to visualize it completely, so kudos on you for that.

The "human as a frayed spikey worm-rope through time" visualization is in fact one of the ways I've been pushing myself to visualize weirder shit, including block spacetime.

Doing so usually leaves me feeling like my head is full of lead -- which it might be given questionable choices of chewing material as a child -- though "full of piss" is more likely, given how metabolism works.
 
Well,

Points are not undermentioned in space-time, they have dimensions in meters in a coordinate system.

Common coordinate systems are Cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical.

Position coordinates define position of objections and patches. Volume is what is enclosed by a surface, like the skin of your body. That brings in calculus.

Words are imaginary. Free will vs determinism is an imaginary debate.

We certainly occupy a finite volume in space-time. Defined by the surface of our bodies comprised of real physical particles, IOW atoms.

If you doubt that try to standing where somebody else is standing. Bodi9es are real. Bodies are composed of a collection of atoms and molecules with finite dimensions, IOW volumes.

Points in meters in a coordinate system reference atoms in your body referenced in a coordinate system.

In Euclidean gentry points are defined to be massless and infinitesimally small.

However if actually modeling the body each atom or molecule can be assigned a finite volume within the coordinate system.

From General Semantics, 'the map is not the countryside''. It refers to taking words for objects as the objects themselves. In their philosophy that leads to a distancing from reality which leads to social and mental health problems.

When you kook at an object and think chair what does that mean?

Something to consider when debating free will and determinism. Metaphysics is abstractions not not reality.
 
you will have to define place in particular such that no two things can be in the same place at the same time
That's pretty much exactly how "place" is defined, yes.

It is one of the most basic ideas of physics and math, and one of the ways we specifically know something is hinky and requires more investigation.

It is the real corollary to "no contradictions", and the first intuition that drove us to understand quantum mechanics and how it can appear that two phenomena could appear that way.

Like, even with quantum superposition, the assumption there is that the fields can overlap only insofar as the "actual" position ends up entangled and complimentary in some way, implying some complimentary composition in some other-dimensional space that both end up rotating through.

Im pretty sure that's why quantum mechanics needs additional dimensional assumptions in most models, in the first place.

The whole point of physics is modeling it in a way that does not assume a spatial contradiction is to preserve that assumption.

It is the natural corollary to "there are no binary contradictions".

Otherwise, we could say "what if at that place where I observed A, I just didn't manage to observe the ~A property there", and makes the entire assumption of observation in science moot if we just assume nature can present in any way two different states at the same exact position in exactly the same way.
Based on that definition of place, math and science fail to correspond with reality.

Your body is in one place, the same place as are your body parts and even your thoughts.

Likewise, in one place is the determinate condition which is the conjoining of the A possibility and the not-A possibility.

There is no contradiction.

To say that two objects (however small) are in precisely the same place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist) is not a self-contradiction. Rather, that statement is a contradiction to the proposition that no two objects (however small) can possibly be in precisely the same place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist). Although most folks tend to accept that proposition as true, it is possible that the proposition is false and that two objects (however small) can be in precisely the same place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist).

Nor is it a self-contradiction to say that I suppose that a given object is both in a particular place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist) and not in that particular place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist). Rather, that statement is a contradiction to the proposition that a given object cannot be both in a specific place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist) and not in that place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist). Again, although most folks tend to accept that proposition as true, it is possible that the proposition is false and that a given object can be both in a specific place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist) and not in that place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist).

Even the law of non-contradiction, itself, is a valid basis for rejecting a proposition only if one accepts as true that a given statement cannot be both true and false and/or that a given thing cannot be both whatever it is and not whatever it is.
Non of these propositions is empirically provable. Nor are any of these propositions falsifiable.

At some level, all of these things are taken as a matter of faith, or not taken at all.

Of course, we do tend to live our lives "as if" these propositions are true, but we could be woefully mistaken.

--------------------------

Turning to the view of many folks on this thread who insist that a fatalistic determinism is logically impossible, that is so only if one takes as an ultimate truth that it is impossible for everything to be pre-determined -- which is an inherently unprovable and non-falsifiable statement that has no greater (or lesser) claim to truth than the claim of fatalistic determinism.

What then of the argument repeatedly asserted in this thread that the Big Bang could not possibly have written the Bible. How are the odds of that occurring any less fantastical than the odds of a complex universe evolving from the Big Bang into a place where human beings exist with free will to write the Bible? Indeed, how does one even go about calculating the odds of the seemingly impossible and without knowing the alternatives?

The proposition that human consciousness and free will somehow evolved over billions of years out of nothing, such that humans are now free from the physical forces of the universe that created humans in the first instance is no more or less fantastical than the proposition that the Big Bang wrote the Bible. Indeed, both propositions are no more or less fantastical than the proposition that a nearly infinite number of monkeys typing on a nearly infinite number of typewriters for a nearly infinite amount of time could produce the Bible, the works of Shakespeare and everything else that humans have ever written.

In the end, all we have is faith. That, or one version of reality is true and all others are false, but we lack the ability to discern which is which. And, it also is possible that there is no one true version of reality. Indeed, it is possible that there is no reality at all.

As Einstein famously said,"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
 
Although most folks tend to accept that proposition as true, it is possible that the proposition is false and that two objects (however small) can be in precisely the same place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist).
I would say it is in fact quite the contradiction to say that they can be so.

If you would like to demonstrate two objects being in the same place at the same time in the same way but also still two different objects rather than a distinctly new sort of third object, or rotated through new space, or any such notion...

Demonstrate it.

Just one, anywhere, where it must be so that the only possible explanation is this nonsensical contradiction, and maybe we can step past here.

Nor is it a self-contradiction to say that I suppose that a given object is both in a particular place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist) and not in that particular place / location (including howsoever many dimensions may exist)
Yes. It is.

Honestly, I think we're done now. You're at the point where you're pointedly "ducking out with the full abandonment of reason".

All of our notions in metaphysical discussions are based entirely on the notion that contradictions can't exist; that is the set of terms under which "possibility" as a notion is defined.

If we accept as possible that which is both A and ~A at the same time and place in the same way, that is a full abandonment of logic and reasoning and anything that could be considered valid metaphysics.

If that's how you want terminate thought, though, so be it..

"Pre-determined" is just saying "in the set of all sets that way and only that way in any place that could be considered similar".

It's a contradiction in premise, admittedly at this point.
 
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