According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[Jarhyn]

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.

Your persistent insistence upon demonstration is demonstrably limiting.

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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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Ah, argument by muppet.

Seriously, demonstrate your invisible pink unicorn or whatever.

In fact the impacts to energy and rotation are quite exactly what we would expect from these other spaces where superposition is hypothesized on being "into". Where QM gets the many worlds interpretation is that there is a whole world where every "possible in terms of ???" Is expressed.

The whole quest of quantum mechanics is, in fact, to resolve or to understand why we can't resolve what determines which of those abstract possibilities such weird events cause.

Up in the Newtonian world, however, we can very clearly see that when you shove two masses together, you don't eliminate the volumes, all the way to molecules, which are surrounded by vast gulfs created by the exchange of forces through particles/waves, which as stated, really don't end up even "occupying different places in strange spaces" for very long.

I really really would appreciate you just taking my advice, and taking a physics class.

My point on the early portion of your visit here was to actively acknowledge a mechanism that decides such things with regularity in exactly the same level of "unpredictableness" as we observe in quantum mechanics to resolve qualities of those spaces.

IF you want trite bullshit, maybe I can quote "fools professing they are wise reveal their foolishness".

You are this thing. I have treated myself as a fool for thinking such as you and now I think such as I do now. I treat myself as a fool for thinking what I do now, in fact, and I look forward to when I discover the justification for that.

Nothing you have said impresses on me that you have tried to understand behavior in some fundamental way, and you are honestly trying to talk down with trite muppetry to someone who went to school, studied all manner of behavior and especially their own, about a core aspect of behavior: whether we can identify responsibility within it.

If it comes down to the fact that we can point to the edge of the universe in some way and say 'this happened because that happened to be shaped that way', this is deterministic; but the sorts of events that happen in our brain are specifically organized to resist statistical stuff like that, the same way a binary transistor switch resists all noise under a threshold of energy when voltage is over a threshold.

I mean fuck, are you suddenly a libertarian?

 

[Jarhyn]

Describe "concrete", because, by your presentation, your demand comes across as a non-necessary requirement. Then describe "relational" and "functional", and I might be able to render your remark communicative.

Take a fucking math class. These are basic terms. That is me being charitable, in the charity that you may actually learn something and quit bothering people with contradictory bullshit.

Your hollow you-too fallacies are also tired.

I will be as charitable to you as I was to myself when I thought as you do: take a class, and learn how doubt works.

Google is your friend here. In fact

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=functional+vs+relational+math

*I guess it was hard. I had to add 'math' to get it to work.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Describe "concrete", because, by your presentation, your demand comes across as a non-necessary requirement. Then describe "relational" and "functional", and I might be able to render your remark communicative.

Take a fucking math class. These are basic terms.

You are a modal fallacy incarnate. Yes, they are basic terms, but, since they are not necessary terms, you were given the opportunity to express yourself differently and in a way which did not make it seem as if you were insisting that those terms were necessary which is to say to the exclusion of other possibilities - because that would be begging the question, given that you never established your manner of expression as one which was exclusively appropriate.

 

[Jarhyn]

Describe "concrete", because, by your presentation, your demand comes across as a non-necessary requirement. Then describe "relational" and "functional", and I might be able to render your remark communicative.

Take a fucking math class. These are basic terms.

You are a modal fallacy incarnate. Yes, they are basic terms, but, since they are not necessary terms, you were given the opportunity to express yourself differently and in a way which did not make it seem as if you were insisting that those terms were necessary which is to say to the exclusion of other possibilities - because that would be begging the question, given that you never established your manner of expression as one which was exclusively appropriate.

They are terms used specifically so that you can understand the metaphor and why deterministic causation is functional causation, namely that at no time is anything undecided.

Rejecting that is exactly libertarianism, which you accept is thrown out in the position of determinism.

I want you, very much, to demonstrate for physics this thing.

If you can demonstrate two things, inverse in some nature, at the same exact time and place in every way that can be accorded to any manner of context, you will win a Nobel prize.

Possibly all the Nobel Prizes.

In fact several discoveries on the way to that would also earn you such prizes.

Usually the people getting the prizes get them for discovering the inverse.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

deterministic causation is functional causation, namely that at no time is anything undecided.

I have no idea whether you are being metaphorical with that "undecided". Since minds decide, and since determinism has been a central topic, and since determinism has been described as a description rather than a function thus making it unnecessary to restrict determinism to causal determinism, the term "undecided" is to be disambiguated for the sake of broad(er/est) compatibility and more extensive or the most extensive possible consistency.

Instead of undecided, there are alternatives such as undetermined, not determined, etc., but determined might likewise suggest an active agency upon which the determinism description does not actually have to rely. Terms such as fixed and settled have been employed previously, and, of these two possibilities, settled is the one which at least at first seems least tied to actual non-metaphorical agency. So, for the time being, "at no time is anything undecided" is being regarded as "at no time is anything unsettled".

An unsettled condition (or situation or context) is one which can effect or give way to another condition, but an unsettled condition would be more completely or thoroughly unsettled were it also unsettled with regards to exactly what condition is to be given way to or with regards to what condition becomes actual. This more thorough unsettledness presents as alternatives - as possibilities - regarding what condition is to be given way to or what condition is to be actual. This unsettledness need not present as unlimited possibilities, and this is what I previously described in terms of the indeterminateness which at least some persons think they perceive on occasion within an otherwise determinate context.

that is exactly libertarianism, which you accept is thrown out in the position of determinism.

If determinism necessarily denies (meaning: if all versions of determinism deny) that there is the aforementioned unsettledness (and, for reasons explicated previously, the discussion context now regards the macrophysical level at which humans function when they think they choose/decide/select/settle), then determinism denies that there are alternatives (hence possibilities) regarding what condition is to be given way to or what condition is to become actual subsequent to a sequentially prior condition.

You believe that there are those very possibilities which you say are denied by determinism.

I want you, very much, to demonstrate for physics this thing.

If you can demonstrate two things, inverse in some nature, at the same exact time and place in every way that can be accorded to any manner of context

Physics is not (at least currently) sufficient to establish that the unsettledness, the possibilities perceived by humans at the macrophysical level are definitely, assuredly non-actual and, as a consequence, illusory. Unlike physics, scientistic physicalism holds that the possibilities perceived by humans at the macrophysical level are definitely, assuredly non-actual and illusory.

My focus has been - and remains - on the experience of human being.

Even so, with regards to the matter of "the same exact time and place" and "context", I previously warned against identifying those descriptive terms with dimensionless points. That is because, logically, it is not necessary to regard time and place in terms of dimensionless points. Time can sensibly be considered in terms of the extension commonly called duration; likewise, place can be extended as space, for instance. Indeed, that is what at least some humans do when they regard time and place; this is the time and place of human experience. These extensions can be and tend to be indefinite, and this means that "context" is in itself an indefinite term. This is why it can be perfectly sensible - and not a contradiction - to describe alternatives/possibilities as present within a particular (even if indefinite) context, within a particular (even if indefinitely extended) spacetime.

Is it necessary that you speak in terms of indefinitely extended spacetime contexts? Of course not, but you are still wrong to claim that there has been a contradiction.

 

[Jarhyn]

Interestingly, the few people who have proposed the inverse of one-place-one-thing have proposed some more libertarian interpretation, to resolve the decision of which they lean on probabilistics to answer. Still, this pushes the objects inevitably out of whatever space they were in into some more exotic direction in space, in any theory with explanatory power, and generally the properties of that extension of space can be modeled in some way.

But again, this is always proposed in an attempt to resolve the one-place-one-thing problem to the best of abilities to do so.

It doesn't matter insofar as from our perspective, it's just as much a valid assumption that the 'tiles at the edge' are being placed willy-nilly however they'll fit, to go to the metaphor; the math works out the same either way. In fact many pages ago it was addressed that probabilistic and deterministic systems can be represented either way, when the information "coming in from that edge" is not correlated to what has been seen before.

Some pages before that, perhaps in a different interminable thread years earlier, I proposed instead modeling it like an infinite field of "dice towers" while admitting I didn't know how they would be loaded, as a model for modeling such "assembled willy-nilly" systems repeatable as deterministic ones.

Later, I considered that we can use encryption keys and encryption algorithms to populate a finite version, and a placement regime on any aperiodic tile field to do it in an infinite way.

That's why I discussed those things in particular: to resolve the one-place-one-thing thing at a quantum level.

In large scale physics, though, we see fairly clear conservation of mass and energy: if you put two things in the same place, it's all that same stuff just arranged differently in space.

We ascertained that this was true on small scales between matter and energy and discovered nuclear fission and fusion.

Hell, when you pick up paperweight in one hand and a desk toy in the other, and move to intersect them, they collide with one another because whatever spatial structure that holds electrons there just won't allow electron fields to occupy certain spaces, and if you try, you will crush the two into paste and make some suspension, solution, or paste of the same mass, same number of atoms, and all those atoms all smashed around and maybe a tiny bit extra for all the force you used to mush them.

And to say otherwise IS to take a libertarian position, and many people will accommodate that with "sufficient determinism" but quite pointedly... Its also not a deterministic model, and it doesn't broadly describe anything of how or why our thoughts are as they are; it presents a sort of exotic noise?

But we are beings of signals, and so then the discussion would move to "sufficient determinism", and compatibilism would be totally vindicated from hard determinism because at that point we would have already stepped away from fatalism.

We get a lot of folks who believe a lot of things through here.

I have no idea whether you are being metaphorical with that "undecided"

So, you take the sum total of ways that the sum total of parts of a system CAN end up being determined (as a finite patch of some system with respect to all the surrounding patch structures can be ordered), and then present some set of axioms. With those axioms, do you have information to reach a next state, of the states that you know are expressed in the set of the observed range? If the answer is NO, it is "undecidable" with the information you have.

In computation this is expressed as "an output for all inputs yields a correct yes or no answer".

When options for answers become less binary the math gets weirder, but the same kinds of questions still pop up, specifically if the system yields just one answer on the variables.

This is why I bring up functional vs relational math and these ideas specifically about where information can come from in a deterministic system that contains apparent "randomness" of the "could just as easily be placed willy-nilly right as we observe them" sort that results from the "undecidable" problem of "where you are in the system from the perspective of only having local observation to work with".

You understanding the language that I use is important because a LOT of formal concepts of VERY abstract nature have been proven using that language and it's strict analogues in other professional disciplines.

By learning even ONE such strict logical language, I think most, or hopefully at least "many" people could understand these concepts... But that's the extent of the charity I offer here, because the folks arguing for spatial contradiction are "not-even-wrong" at this point.

I mean shit, spatial contradiction would be.. well, libertarian.

 

[DBT]

a deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system

Ah yes, off the cuff definitions given 7 years ago: the standard itself of accurate discussion.

What was given seven years ago or seven days ago doesn't alter how determinism is defined.

It's a standard definition.

You can't just cook up any old terms because you don't like how determinism is defined, or what the implications are.

That said, you don't understand "randomness" so you don't understand what that definition even means in the first place.

Crock, I know exactly what randomness means. And randomness is not a part of a deterministic system.

If you insist that determinism includes random events, you don't understand determinism.

Worse, you don't understand that randomness doesn't help you to argue for free will.

Decision making is not random. It is a process, where random events disrupt, not aid decision making.

Do you not know how insulation works? The thing that keeps the charge in the wire independent of charges and ions in the air such that circuits do not close except on the pathway of the wire itself?

Hilarious. Do you know how a brain processes information in order to respond to the objects and events of the world?

A hint; it is not the work of 'independent' electrical activity within a system that has, by definition, no components that are outside of or independent of the system itself.

Your example has no relevance to the issue of free will.

You are scraping the bottom of an empty barrel.

Field isolation creates relative independence, which is yet again why I BEG you to get some sort of education in systems theory, and to actually debug a deterministic system some time to understand that determinism doesn't imply choices do not happen.

Only fatalism implies that by stealing all choice and attributing it to a nonsensical God.

Which shows that you don't understand how determinism is defined or the implications of it.

What you do have is an incoherent mash up of incompatible principles.

 

[DBT]

For instance, Pood has endorsed constant conjunction and adequate determinism, which do not permit alternate choice or action, yet argues for free choice.

Yet I have pointed out that you have never yet defended the claim that determinism does “not permit alternate choice or action,” whereas I have pointed out that because determinism is a mindless descriptive process, it is not the sort of thing that can permit, fail to permit, or coerce, anything.

That determinism does not permit alternate actions is inherent.

determinism, in philosophy and science, the thesis that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable. Determinism entails that, in a situation in which a person makes a certain decision or performs a certain action, it is impossible that he or she could have made any other decision or performed any other action. In other words, it is never true that people could have decided or acted otherwise than they actually did.''

I await your answer to my longstanding request to explain how hard determinism paints pictures, writes novels, composes symphonies, and designs buildings.

The answer has been given multiple times;

Conditions on earth have evolved, microbes to multicellular organisms, to the point where creatures capable of writing, painting, landing spacecraft on other planets, etcetera, have evolved.

Our abilities were not freely willed, we played no part in deciding what we would become or be capable of, but how events unfold as the system evolves from past to present state, a species capable of art, science, books, music, where the present conditions, the current state of the world in turn determines future states of the system.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's a standard definition.

Ah yes the standard of all good arguments: argument from tradition.

That determinism does not permit alternate actions is inherent

And argument from necessity...

Our abilities were not freely willed, we played no part in deciding what we would become or be capable of

Yes they were, in part, by people along that timeline.

People said "I want smart kids" so they went out and fucked smarter people.

In fact, I've met people exactly with those goals as stated before.

In fact, we even have this whole big thing called "artificial selection" that humans are very well known for.

Jesus fuck, it would be nice if your religious bullshit wasn't so transparently obvious.

 

[DBT]

It's a standard definition.

Ah yes the standard of all good arguments: argument from tradition.

It has nothing to do with tradition. Given the dispute is about free will, and compatibilists claim that free will is compatible with determinism, it is how compatibilists define determinism.

It is how you, yourself defined it to be. Now you seem to be backing away and trying to make it out to be something that suits your needs.

That doesn't work.

That determinism does not permit alternate actions is inherent

And argument from necessity...

Just how determinism is defined and the implications of that definition.

You appear to be denying the implications and setting your own special terms. A form of pseudo determinism that is closet Libertarianism.

An incoherent argument.

Our abilities were not freely willed, we played no part in deciding what we would become or be capable of

Yes they were, in part, by people along that timeline.

Crock, you don't get to will your genetic makeup or your neural architecture, etc, these formed before you even became conscious, learned language or developed self identity.

People said "I want smart kids" so they went out and fucked smarter people.

Oh, for sure, and these babies got to choose their parents, rich parents and not those living in the slums of Calcutta.

Hilarious.

In fact, I've met people exactly with those goals as stated before.

Goals are determined by circumstances and inherent abilities. You don't get to choose to be a genius.

In fact, we even have this whole big thing called "artificial selection" that humans are very well known for.

Jesus fuck, it would be nice if your religious bullshit wasn't so transparently obvious.

You have no idea of what you are talking about. Not in relation to determinism, compatibilism or free will.

You make things up as you go along, regardless of the given terms. Even your own terms.

Here's a clue
''Human behavior is affected both by genetic inheritance and by experience. The ways in which people develop are shaped by social experience and circumstances within the context of their inherited genetic potential. The scientific question is just how experience and hereditary potential interact in producing human behavior.

Each person is born into a social and cultural setting—family, community, social class, language, religion—and eventually develops many social connections. The characteristics of a child's social setting affect how he or she learns to think and behave, by means of instruction, rewards and punishment, and example.

This setting includes home, school, neighborhood, and also, perhaps, local religious and law enforcement agencies. Then there are also the child's mostly informal interactions with friends, other peers, relatives, and the entertainment and news media.

How individuals will respond to all these influences, or even which influence will be the most potent, tends not to be predictable. There is, however, some substantial similarity in how individuals respond to the same pattern of influences—that is, to being raised in the same culture.

Furthermore, culturally induced behavior patterns, such as speech patterns, body language, and forms of humor, become so deeply imbedded in the human mind that they often operate without the individuals themselves being fully aware of them.''

 

[Jarhyn]

I have no idea whether you are being metaphorical with that "undecided"

As I said, decidability is a concept in math. I strongly advice you look it up.

It has nothing to do with tradition

You seem to not understand what an argument from tradition is.

Given the dispute is about free will, and compatibilists claim that free will is compatible with determinism, it is how compatibilists define determinism

Dude, you don't even understand the terms in the definition and how they apply and when and where, or even what "randomness" is in this setting.

You just are not qualified for the conversation in the first place.

Anyone can get qualified, or "anyone willing and able to pass a few university level classes on math", but you have not done that. Ever.

Crock, you don't get to will your genetic makeup or your neural architecture

Yes you do.

Crispr is a thing.

So is both learning (slow, small, cumulative changes to the neural architecture through learning processes), and direct modification (see also neuralink). Do you think when someone gets a tumor that is causing issues to their present architecture removed that the architecture does not change?

I mean seriously your examples are trivially easy to point how they may be changed specifically because my entire career is about pissing in the face of such "we cannot change" garbage.

I mean fuck, why am I even responding to this drivel?

 

[Jarhyn]

You don't get to choose to be a genius.

Actually many people DO get to choose, namely those who have the option before them.

I can definitely understand how it is like with people who lacked that option.

You have my deepest condolences.

Hopefully by the end of my life, we who got to choose that will have the means to present it to the less fortunate.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

decidability is a concept in math. I strongly advice you look it up.

I am well aware that "decidability is a concept in math". That is one reason why I wrote what I wrote in the way that I wrote it.

 

[Jarhyn]

You don't get to choose to be a genius.

Actually many people DO get to choose, namely those who have the option before them.

I can definitely understand how it is like with people who lacked that option.

You have my deepest condolences.

Hopefully by the end of my life, we who got to choose that will have the means to present it to the less fortunate.

I understand how arrogant it is to look right at it but many people choose. They stand at some precipice, seeing the series of actions they need to take to reach some goal or idea, and they keep working at it.

Part of this was demonstrated in fact when a parent decided that his daughters would be chess geniuses.. and then did all the things that we know make people chess geniuses with them from an early age...

Little surprise here: they turned out to be chess geniuses.

So if someone else can make that decision for you, you can clearly make it for yourself, especially if you take the time and effort to force yourself through classes to learn a subject matter, and force yourself to do the exercises that build the understanding.

Later on those choices become harder and harder and harder, because there are fewer and fewer and fewer free neurons to present switchings and distinctions across ideas.

But this means that yes, people do choose to become geniuses, though perhaps not in such direct ways as they understand the outcome of the choice.

And some people make all the actions in space over time that turn that potential into so much "not".

You could argue that I did both. I decided to become a not-genius, through my actions, in a great many things.

But I will say that I spent the time learning about behavior and became a genius about behavior because I was obsessed and decided like that person of their two daughters to become a master of low-level behavioral understanding.

I took jobs that looked at complex systems, tasks at those jobs that required disassembly reverse engineering, a few years in I/O systems wherein I built what is essentially an industrial PLC system (sensory and expression surfaces really), and then a number of years working on high level control scripts and requirement satisfaction.

You might not be able to decide today to have the capability to become a genius, but not because of lack of physical possibility (possibility under the rules of physics), but because of a lack of momentary opportunities. That can be changed, especially if the thoughts of the brain and capabilities are about the order of neurons in it.

I would give a lot so that people could just have my understanding of the mind, but without wasting 20 years in a career they actually hate?

But that was a decision and I knew I hated the industry way back on 2001. I did not not because I wanted to do that work, but because that was the work that both made money (which I DID want), and that taught me about how behavior was expressed by physical systems.

It might even be recognized that "deciding to be a genius" about some things might also simultaneously be a decision to be an idiot about other things, or that the cost of doing it might not be a a bill payable here with the resources at hand, for all there is a hypothetical path among possible worlds.

But some people do decide it, for themselves and others, and it, like any capability of humans observed anywhere, is transferrable and buildable.

Hence why instead of saying to most people to "quit" I instead encourage them to get the education that they need to grasp these concepts, in the hopes they are not in the population of people requiring much more extreme, expensive and momentarily unavailable interventions so as to achieve the goal of understanding the topic.

 

[Jarhyn]

decidability is a concept in math. I strongly advice you look it up.

I am well aware that "decidability is a concept in math". That is one reason why I wrote what I wrote in the way that I wrote it.

Clearly you weren't because you still asked a stupid question.

Actually take the classes I recommended if you haven't already, and get schooled by the compiler for a while.

But do not do this with the goal of learning "how computers work" but to "fill in some of the mystery of how behavior is expressed".

I equally recommend taking some behavioral modification courses, meaning at least auditing a few undergrad psych courses that BM lists as a requirement, while being ready to set aside many beliefs in the field as "mostly junk".

More than anything, I would encourage you to try watching Carrier's interview on the subject, since Carrier is a compatibilist, and is one of the most preeminent compatibilists out there.

 

[pood]

For instance, Pood has endorsed constant conjunction and adequate determinism, which do not permit alternate choice or action, yet argues for free choice.

Yet I have pointed out that you have never yet defended the claim that determinism does “not permit alternate choice or action,” whereas I have pointed out that because determinism is a mindless descriptive process, it is not the sort of thing that can permit, fail to permit, or coerce, anything.

That determinism does not permit alternate actions is inherent.

determinism, in philosophy and science, the thesis that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable. Determinism entails that, in a situation in which a person makes a certain decision or performs a certain action, it is impossible that he or she could have made any other decision or performed any other action. In other words, it is never true that people could have decided or acted otherwise than they actually did.''

I await your answer to my longstanding request to explain how hard determinism paints pictures, writes novels, composes symphonies, and designs buildings.

The answer has been given multiple times;

Conditions on earth have evolved, microbes to multicellular organisms, to the point where creatures capable of writing, painting, landing spacecraft on other planets, etcetera, have evolved.

Our abilities were not freely willed, we played no part in deciding what we would become or be capable of, but how events unfold as the system evolves from past to present state, a species capable of art, science, books, music, where the present conditions, the current state of the world in turn determines future states of the system.

We have been over all this.

The cite you give also discusses soft determinism, which is different from hard determinism, so there are different definitions of determinism and not, as you keep insisting, a univocal definition.

You keep mistakingly claiming that (hard) determinism does not “permit” alternative actions. As has been endlessly pointed out, determinism is a descriptive and not a prescriptive process, and thus in no position to “not permit” anything.

The Britannica cite commits the modal fallacy, which has been explained to death.

You still have not explained how the Big Bang designs buildings, paints picture, etc. You just assert it.

 

[pood]

Either the Big Bang designs a building or an architect does. If an architect does he must make innumerable choices.

There is no evidence that the Big Bang has any capacity to design anything.

Ergo an architect does it.

And therefore he must make choices.

QED.

 

[steve_bank]

deterministic causation is functional causation, namely that at no time is anything undecided.

I have no idea whether you are being metaphorical with that "undecided". Since minds decide, and since determinism has been a central topic, and since determinism has been described as a description rather than a function thus making it unnecessary to restrict determinism to causal determinism, the term "undecided" is to be disambiguated for the sake of broad(er/est) compatibility and more extensive or the most extensive possible consistency.

Instead of undecided, there are alternatives such as undetermined, not determined, etc., but determined might likewise suggest an active agency upon which the determinism description does not actually have to rely. Terms such as fixed and settled have been employed previously, and, of these two possibilities, settled is the one which at least at first seems least tied to actual non-metaphorical agency. So, for the time being, "at no time is anything undecided" is being regarded as "at no time is anything unsettled".

An unsettled condition (or situation or context) is one which can effect or give way to another condition, but an unsettled condition would be more completely or thoroughly unsettled were it also unsettled with regards to exactly what condition is to be given way to or with regards to what condition becomes actual. This more thorough unsettledness presents as alternatives - as possibilities - regarding what condition is to be given way to or what condition is to be actual. This unsettledness need not present as unlimited possibilities, and this is what I previously described in terms of the indeterminateness which at least some persons think they perceive on occasion within an otherwise determinate context.

that is exactly libertarianism, which you accept is thrown out in the position of determinism.

If determinism necessarily denies (meaning: if all versions of determinism deny) that there is the aforementioned unsettledness (and, for reasons explicated previously, the discussion context now regards the macrophysical level at which humans function when they think they choose/decide/select/settle), then determinism denies that there are alternatives (hence possibilities) regarding what condition is to be given way to or what condition is to become actual subsequent to a sequentially prior condition.

You believe that there are those very possibilities which you say are denied by determinism.

I want you, very much, to demonstrate for physics this thing.

If you can demonstrate two things, inverse in some nature, at the same exact time and place in every way that can be accorded to any manner of context

Physics is not (at least currently) sufficient to establish that the unsettledness, the possibilities perceived by humans at the macrophysical level are definitely, assuredly non-actual and, as a consequence, illusory. Unlike physics, scientistic physicalism holds that the possibilities perceived by humans at the macrophysical level are definitely, assuredly non-actual and illusory.

My focus has been - and remains - on the experience of human being.

Even so, with regards to the matter of "the same exact time and place" and "context", I previously warned against identifying those descriptive terms with dimensionless points. That is because, logically, it is not necessary to regard time and place in terms of dimensionless points. Time can sensibly be considered in terms of the extension commonly called duration; likewise, place can be extended as space, for instance. Indeed, that is what at least some humans do when they regard time and place; this is the time and place of human experience. These extensions can be and tend to be indefinite, and this means that "context" is in itself an indefinite term. This is why it can be perfectly sensible - and not a contradiction - to describe alternatives/possibilities as present within a particular (even if indefinite) context, within a particular (even if indefinitely extended) spacetime.

Is it necessary that you speak in terms of indefinitely extended spacetime contexts? Of course not, but you are still wrong to claim that there has been a contradiction.

I think this post makes my case that science is not philosophy. When one works with physics one is not interpreting or philosophizing. One thinks in terms of applying a theory proven by experiment. Of course experiments are based in instruments and we have no way of knowing if theories actually reflect true reality, we have no way to know. All we have are instruments.

When developing a theory one thinks of an experiment to demonstrate it, with instruments and measurements. When String Theory came out some in science considered it philosophy because there was no way to experimentally test it.

All measurements are made relative to arbitrary points of reference. Today it is Systems International. The meter, kilogram, ad second. If you buy a kilogram of potatoes it is relative to the mass standard in Systems International. Wherever you go in the world a kilogram of audiotapes are the same. Regardless of whatever philosophical spin you put on it. Regardless of how you think about it.

The difference between science and philosophy.


SI units are unambiguous and not subject to interpretation. Unlike philosophy in which definitions are always open to interpretation. In this thread debate overt what determinism and d free will means. Unlike science there are no unambiguous defined philosophical reference points that are agreed upon throughout global philosophy.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

I think this post makes my case that science is not philosophy. When one works with physics one is not interpreting or philosophizing. One thinks in terms of applying a theory proven by experiment.

What you describe there is what in Kuhnian terms would be normal science. Normal science works with/from interpretations previously provided by others.

When developing a theory one thinks of an experiment to demonstrate it, with instruments and measurements.

Theory development requires interpretation. Data becomes evidence by fitting with an explanation, a theory, a narrative, a story - whatever it is to be called or however it is to be understood. Of course, understanding is also a matter of personal interpretation; otherwise, that understanding is simply rote repetition of interpretation had by someone else.

Sometimes theories are developed with the mere hope that means for experimental testing will eventually be realized. There are often thought experiments in the meanwhile. In any event, the interpretation which effects a theory precedes the experiment testing the theory no matter how soon after theory development empirical testing can be done.

All measurements are made relative to arbitrary points of reference. ... SI units are unambiguous and not subject to interpretation.

That's fine, but not all terms used in the sciences are unambiguous. Nothing new ever comes about without someone seeing/interpreting matters differently.

Anyhow, insofar as there are interpretations in science, scientific thinking is a matter of - is a product of - philosophical thinking. The quality of philosophical thinking and, therefore, the scientific thinking which brings about discovery is ultimately linked to thinking in terms of possibilities leading to the pursuit and realization of possibilities not previously recognized.

 

[Jarhyn]

deterministic causation is functional causation, namely that at no time is anything undecided.

I have no idea whether you are being metaphorical with that "undecided". Since minds decide, and since determinism has been a central topic, and since determinism has been described as a description rather than a function thus making it unnecessary to restrict determinism to causal determinism, the term "undecided" is to be disambiguated for the sake of broad(er/est) compatibility and more extensive or the most extensive possible consistency.

Instead of undecided, there are alternatives such as undetermined, not determined, etc., but determined might likewise suggest an active agency upon which the determinism description does not actually have to rely. Terms such as fixed and settled have been employed previously, and, of these two possibilities, settled is the one which at least at first seems least tied to actual non-metaphorical agency. So, for the time being, "at no time is anything undecided" is being regarded as "at no time is anything unsettled".

An unsettled condition (or situation or context) is one which can effect or give way to another condition, but an unsettled condition would be more completely or thoroughly unsettled were it also unsettled with regards to exactly what condition is to be given way to or with regards to what condition becomes actual. This more thorough unsettledness presents as alternatives - as possibilities - regarding what condition is to be given way to or what condition is to be actual. This unsettledness need not present as unlimited possibilities, and this is what I previously described in terms of the indeterminateness which at least some persons think they perceive on occasion within an otherwise determinate context.

that is exactly libertarianism, which you accept is thrown out in the position of determinism.

If determinism necessarily denies (meaning: if all versions of determinism deny) that there is the aforementioned unsettledness (and, for reasons explicated previously, the discussion context now regards the macrophysical level at which humans function when they think they choose/decide/select/settle), then determinism denies that there are alternatives (hence possibilities) regarding what condition is to be given way to or what condition is to become actual subsequent to a sequentially prior condition.

You believe that there are those very possibilities which you say are denied by determinism.

I want you, very much, to demonstrate for physics this thing.

If you can demonstrate two things, inverse in some nature, at the same exact time and place in every way that can be accorded to any manner of context

Physics is not (at least currently) sufficient to establish that the unsettledness, the possibilities perceived by humans at the macrophysical level are definitely, assuredly non-actual and, as a consequence, illusory. Unlike physics, scientistic physicalism holds that the possibilities perceived by humans at the macrophysical level are definitely, assuredly non-actual and illusory.

My focus has been - and remains - on the experience of human being.

Even so, with regards to the matter of "the same exact time and place" and "context", I previously warned against identifying those descriptive terms with dimensionless points. That is because, logically, it is not necessary to regard time and place in terms of dimensionless points. Time can sensibly be considered in terms of the extension commonly called duration; likewise, place can be extended as space, for instance. Indeed, that is what at least some humans do when they regard time and place; this is the time and place of human experience. These extensions can be and tend to be indefinite, and this means that "context" is in itself an indefinite term. This is why it can be perfectly sensible - and not a contradiction - to describe alternatives/possibilities as present within a particular (even if indefinite) context, within a particular (even if indefinitely extended) spacetime.

Is it necessary that you speak in terms of indefinitely extended spacetime contexts? Of course not, but you are still wrong to claim that there has been a contradiction.

I think this post makes my case that science is not philosophy. When one works with physics one is not interpreting or philosophizing. One thinks in terms of applying a theory proven by experiment. Of course experiments are based in instruments and we have no way of knowing if theories actually reflect true reality, we have no way to know. All we have are instruments.

When developing a theory one thinks of an experiment to demonstrate it, with instruments and measurements. When String Theory came out some in science considered it philosophy because there was no way to experimentally test it.

All measurements are made relative to arbitrary points of reference. Today it is Systems International. The meter, kilogram, ad second. If you buy a kilogram of potatoes it is relative to the mass standard in Systems International. Wherever you go in the world a kilogram of audiotapes are the same. Regardless of whatever philosophical spin you put on it. Regardless of how you think about it.

The difference between science and philosophy.


SI units are unambiguous and not subject to interpretation. Unlike philosophy in which definitions are always open to interpretation. In this thread debate overt what determinism and d free will means. Unlike science there are no unambiguous defined philosophical reference points that are agreed upon throughout global philosophy.

I argue from the application of known principles of the math around computer science to discuss terms.

Computer science is one of the most powerful of the applied sciences, because it directly links concepts of "+/-" or "1/0" or even sometimes "±1/2".

The magic of this is that anything that can be expressed in that language are thus proven to be capable of existence, and several constructions are proven incapable of existing under the axioms underlying the math underlying physics underlying the engineering.

We can extend this with floating point and continuous math, and we get similar answers, where opposites cancel rather than coinciding.

My point here is that science has, through linking something physical to something mathematical through linking physical structures to logical ones, given us some grand ability to transfer such statements about reality.

I just feel bad for all the people who grew up my age or older who missed the train and didn't get involved with computers "as they grew up for the hobbyist's hands".

Any bit of philosophy that can be grounded in terms of software engineering concepts can be grounded in terms of physical reality.