Eise

Yep. Funny isn't it? The words are different, but they work semantically exactly the same: "Zagen": present tense of 'to saw', past tense of 'to see' "Met': 'with', with (!) the same ambiguities as in English. You have a talent for Dutch!

I assume you've got the correct four meanings... Yes, It works in Dutch too.

Example I once read about AI in the domain of language understanding. It has 4 (at least?) meanings: "They saw the girl with the binoculars."

There have been done several experiments that show that 'experienced time' must not agree with 'real time'. E.g. with brain surgery they have done experiments where the brain area that reacts on touch of the fingers and the fingers themselves were triggered at the same time. Which order would you expect, was reported by the conscious subject? Yes, the tickling of the fingers was reported to have occurred before the tickling of the corresponding brain area.

I like that. Just to add: there is also no single time. And to the topic in general: I recently read somewhere this interesting bonmot: the brain is hallucinating constantly, the senses filter out which hallucination fits best for our survival.

In 1976 I visited a talk about lasers, for interested laypeople. One of the applications of lasers that were presented was nuclear fusion. I remember the presenter told that in fact the only problem that had to be resolved was to fire the lasers at exactly the right time, to avoid that the pellet would be thrown out of the mid-point of the lasers. That is 46 years ago... Just to add another anecdote to Moontanman's. I think when we had invested all the money in durable energy sources and develop technologies that use less energy, instead of nuclear fusion (including Tokamak and other methods), we would have solved our CO2 emission problems...

"About the quadrant. How one should make the hour lines in the quadrants" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrant_(instrument)

Yes, that is the first problem. So any question or answer on this topic should clarify first which definition of free will one is using. I think measuring free will without treating a human as a subject, but as object only, will never succeed. Compare it with 'meaning'. From the physical properties of ink, it is not possible to derive the meaning of the sentence that it forms. To assess if somebody acted from free will, you need to know her motivations and reasoning. You did not make your definition of free will explicit. What you say here fits to the 'libertarian' definition of free will, or even stronger, a dualistic definition. Something like 'the soul interferes with the physics of the brain'. Same holds for this: I agree that this can be true for certain definitions of free will, as the one you were using above. Personally I think we should adhere to the daily use and experience of free will, but only to an empirical notion of it. Why do people say they did something freely, or just the opposite, were coerced to it? The compatibilist notion of free will comes closest: somebody acts according her free will, if she acts according her own motivations, and not those of somebody else. However, such a definition only works in a deterministic universe. This guarantees that my motivations and actions can be related. Don't throw randomness in it, because then this relation is disturbed. Also, to anticipate the results of your actions, the world better functions in a regular, and therefore predictable way, which can also be guaranteed by determinism. So determinism is a necessary condition that free will can exist; there simply is no contradiction between determinism and having free will. Ah, I know you are joking, but the remark is interesting. It presupposes that a cat can limit your free will. But how can a cat limit something you would not have at all in the first place? I would prefer to say that there are different discourses: you won't find meaning, consciousness, or free will if you only study quarks, electrons, molecules, or whatever. That is because they simply do not exist in that discourse. But they exist in a discourse about choices, beliefs, feelings, ethics, laws, etc etc. The second discourse is not invalidated by the first.

@mistermack: You made up your mind, I made up mine.

What do we really know of Luke? Next to nothing. But historians assume that the author of the gospel of Luke and Acts are the same. No. It is taking the text 'as is'. The strategy of mythicists with text fragments very often is: It cannot be true, so it is a falsification the author did not mean what he wrote And then again Flavius mentions the execution of James: You know that different versions of the Testimonium Flavianum have been found? Some of them are shorter, and missing the obvious insertion by Christian scribes. You are preoccupied by 'your own book'. Surely you think the same of me, so let's end this fruitless discussion. Textual analysis shows that the author very probably is the same. See my link above.

Sigh... Here we go again. You do know the difference between the articles 'a' and 'the' I hope. Further, James was also called 'the brother of Christ' in Flavius Josephus Antiquities of the Jews. And I hope you know 'Cephas' is the disciple Peter. Expectations? Whose? Yours? Carrier's? The Pauline epistles are letters to churches he grounded, and meant to react on all kind of problems and theological questions that arose there. He was spreading his variation of believe what was Jesus' aim: not just reinstate the laws of Jews to them, but to prepare for the apocalypse also for the gentiles. This point was probably that which Paul quarreled about with Peter and James. I do not assume 'your book' is a scholarly work based on classical text analysis, put in the historical context in that time. Basically, you are just saying "I don't like it, so it is not true". I am not a Christian, but assuming he existed, makes a much better understanding of the development of early Christianity: the change in character of the gospels the later they are written, the bending of the story of Jesus' birth to fit the prophecies in the old Testament, the mentioning of John the baptist (also mentioned in non-Christian sources), and the mentioning of Jesus (or 'Christ') in a few non-Christian sources (including his crucifixion). So instead of taking the texts as they come to us, compare them, set them in historical context, you base your opinion on a psychological 'analysis' of Paul's character? There go many suppositions in such a stance. Above I wrote what the epistles of Paul were meant for. You find out by reading the texts, and analysing them in their context.

Yes, I was one of the participants, arguing strongly that Jesus more probably existed than not. I am missing reference here to the fact that Paul mentions meeting Peter and Jesus' brother James (in a letter that is considered genuine), and that James is also mentioned by a few (two, if I correctly remember) historians in the Roman age. There is also the strange fact that according to one gospel Jesus was simply born in Nazareth, but in Luke there is the complicated history where Joseph and Maria had to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem, obvious bending history to get it in sync with the prediction that said the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Such a bending would not be necessary if the story was a myth from the beginning. Most classical historians agree that the evidence hints at a real existence of Jesus. But 'hints' does not mean 'proves'. Read e.g. Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus really exist?. But the picture of who Jesus really was, is very different from how he is pictured by (modern) Christianity. He seems to have been an apocalyptic preacher, expecting to see the 'youngest day' (the Apocalypse) on Earth (not in heaven!) in his own lifetime, or at least very soon. I will not repeat every argument here, there are many posts of me in that thread.

I hope you see that you exactly make my point: as I said earlier that it makes no difference if a traffic jam consists of horse cards, diesel or gas cars, for a computer it makes no functional (or logical) difference if it implemented in a completely different way. I happen to work, as most of us, with computers that are transistor based, not gear based, but to write my programs I do not need any knowledge of the computer's physical principles. So another way of seeing this, is that emergent properties have some independence of its physical substrate. No question, a physical substrate is absolutely necessary, but there are many cases where different kinds of substrates can do the job. I do not exactly get your example of day and night. Not knowing the cause of a phenomenon does not mean it is emergent. It is essential that the emergent phenomena arise from their components, mostly many of them (molecules for the Gas Laws, neurons for mental phenomena, vehicles for traffic jams, etc). Definitely.

Yes, you may. Your introduction from this other 'natural kind', D2O makes your world view more precise. None, if you ask it in this way. But I would say, based on the regularities we see (perihelion precession e.g.), we know there must be at least some mathematical explanation. It is 'just' a theoretical insight that differential geometry does the trick.

You can only see if a phenomenon is emergent, when you can explain it from simpler constituents. My hunge with the Schrödinger equation is that it is not emergent, given that physicists already do not not agree if it is just a calculation algorithm, or is ontic. The Schrödinger equation already 'lies deeper' then our direct experience. E.g. we cannot observe its phase. We can only observe that it describes our observations statistically correctly. Well, since we know it we can derive the Gas Laws from statistical mechanics, we know they are emergent. (But, btw, I understand swansont's doubts that it is a good example of emergency, because the effects of more or less bouncing particles in a bottle can be linked to the macroscopic pretty directly; I like my example of the traffic jam better). Do you mean 'light' and 'darkness', or your seeing of them. (Hopefully Koti is not around... ) I nowhere implied that! Of course, my expectation is that we live in 'natural world' through and through. If somebody would not accept natural explanations, he is simply enforced to introduce new metaphysical entities, like souls, or God. So yes, I am interested in neurology, to a certain level, but for certain questions we do not have to know much about it. That's fine. It surely will pop again when some newbie starts a new thread, saying 'We are determined so we have no free will!'. Then the great free will defender will do his work again (if he is not too stressed at that moment...). No, you did not understand me me correctly. I only said it is possible to describe phenomena at a higher level than its composite parts, not that our understanding of the phenomena incredibly increases when we know how they are rooted in more fundamental parts. The other way round: there are things we, as humans, simply cannot understand at its fundamental level. I do not need quantum physics when I write programs for my databases, but the workings of computers is only understandable from quantum theoretical technology (PNP layers, and so). (Here you see an interesting example 'the other way round'. First there were the 'quantum discoveries', then the question 'what could you do with it', build a transistor, put millions of them together, et voila, a computer!).

Trying to challenge me? I think we can talk about emergence when following condition applies: The phenomena can be described without knowing or needing from what they exactly emerge. A few examples: the gas laws of Boyle and Gay-Lussac: without knowing that gas is made of flying around particles these laws cna be fixed empirically (but not explained, of course, then we have to get to statistical mechanics, assuming smallest particles bouncing around) One of my favourite examples: traffic jams. These can be mathematically described without knowing if we are talking about horse cards, diesel or gas cars And yes, of course, free will. The problem of free will and determinism can be decided without reference to the brain, neurons and neurotransmitters. Just take determinism for granted, and ask if in a determined world free will is possible. That simply means that neurologists have nothing to add, if you take determinism for granted. The exact details are of no importance. About time as an emergent phenomenon I have nothing to say: ask Carlo Rovelli, or Lee Smolin... It is of course highly speculative. But a fact is that all our established theories can work very well without knowing if time is emergent or not. Wow, 4 weeks later. Sorry....

Sorry for neglecting the forum for such a long time. It is a stressful time (corona (homeoffice) and stress at work), and I seldom have the peace to do more 'thinking' for this forum. Here an observation about this topic: I wonder if it is really so astonishing that math is so effective describing the world around us. In my opinion we need only two aspects of nature to more or less guarantee that we can use math to describe it: regularities in natural phenomena, to begin with simple phenomena like the yearly rising of the Nile, sun sets etc. I cannot imagine a regularity that cannot described mathematically. If somebody can, please give an example. the existence of 'natural kinds', like water molecules. Simply said, if you acquired knowledge about one water molecule, you know it is valid for all water molecules. Life would would be impossible without these. So just add the smallest bit of anthropic reasoning (if above aspects of nature would not be the case, no observers could exist) and your are done. No?

What Studiot is aiming at, is that a space-time diagram is not a plot, but a map. However, you cannot put time into a drawn map. So it makes sense to use time multiplied by a velocity to get a distance. 'c' is used because we already know from relativity the importance of 'space-time distance', which is similar to the normal 3-D distance in space, but not the same: instead of the 'space version' of Pythagoras (s2 = x2 + y2 + z2 ) we have s2 = x2 + y2 + z2 - (ct)2, or in just one space dimension s2 = x2 - (ct)2, which means that distances are distorted compared to a normal map of Euclidian space. Still, it can be use to create a mechanical device that transforms distances in space.time correctly (see e.g. the space-time globe).

Just too late to edit it. Read: There is no 'given time of the universe' in a block universe.

Yes, for the simple reason that the space-time distance between two events is the same for all observers. However, there are many combinations of x, y, z, and t that give the same space-time distance. What the values of the coordinates are depends on the movement of the observer relative the train. So asking what the length of the train is without knowing how the observer moves relative to the train, is impossible. BTW, that you did not know about this space-time distance, tells me you do not understand what is meant with the 'block universe'. And if you have a wrong picture of it, your conclusions will be wrong too. Otherwise you would also not say something like this: There is no 'given time of the universe' is a block universe.

What I am about to say was probably already said in several variations, but you did not get it yet. So here my try: You cannot simply imagine the 'block' universe as a simple extension of a 3-dimensional block: just add another dimension and voila. The block universe is not a block with just 4 space dimensions instead of 3. Time stands in relation with the space dimensions, but in another way. This is especially true for Pythagoras theorem. So the metric of the block universe is not: s2 = x2 + y2 + z2 + t2 (Invalid!) When this were the case you would be probably right. But you are then just extending the Euclidian metric with one dimension. Instead you must use the Minkowski metric, in which 'Pythagoras' is: s2 = x2 + y2 + z2 - ct2 This is the so called 'space-time' distance, and it is a distance all observers agree upon: all observers in the block universe agree on its value. Now a god-like high-dimensional alien creature, looking at our block universe would take that as the distance between two events (e.g. the train's passing of a point, first event is the passing of the locomotive, second event is the passing of the last wagon). However when an observer in the block universe prays to the alien, and asks 'how long is that train really in my 3 dimensional space?', the alien must first ask (or look) how the observer is moving in respect to the train. Only then he can answer the question. But the answer will be different for another observer. This is also true for an observer that is in the same inertial frame of reference as the train. There are conventional reasons to take the length of the train as the length measured in the frame of reference of the train, but these are not physical reasons.

I think one should not see philosophy too much as a separate subject, but looking in a special way to a subject. When a physicist is trying to find a particle at CERN he is doing physics. When a physicist is trying to find a new theory he is doing physics. Both activities are about physical reality. However, when it e.g. turns out that a conceptual framework does not work anymore (e.g. rise of quantum theory in the 1920s), when there are questions about the validity of certain methods, or about a demarcation criterion for science (e.g. string theory, multiverse) then one is doing philosophy. And one does not necessarily need a philosophical education for that: the interest in conceptual clarity and the intellectual capacity to do so, are enough. Latter should not be a real problem for physicists. First of course is really a question of what one is interested in. It's not everybody's thing. So not philosophers should push scientists to philosophical questions, so to speak from another discipline; the need for doing philosophy should arise in themselves because e.g. methodological or conceptual problems. Philosophers might be helpful in methodological and conceptual discussion, they are well trained in such discussions.

It has an easy answer: consciousness has no influence for a given setting of the experiment. Consciousness might decide what kind of experiment you are doing (e.g. a 'which way' experiment, or a 'phase' experiment), but once chosen the experimental setup, consciousness has no influence whatsoever. The only 'real problem' I see is the problem of QM at large: the measurement problem. (± collapse of the wave function). Right. Physics present basically 2 options: classical determinism or quantum probability. Both do not work together with the idea of libertarian free will. Whatever free will 'really is', that your actions are random does not belong to any reasonable concept of free will. So QM is no help here. But one can define free will pretty clearly. One of the reasons however that these discussions are so difficult is that people often refuse to stick to a single definition. Above I mentioned one kind, libertarian free will, but there are other definitions. Just to clarify Incompatibilism: determinism and free will are incompatible a. Hard determinism: determinism is true. therefore we have no free will b. Libertarian free will: determinism cannot be completely true, because we have a direct experience of free will Compatibilism: there is no contradiction between determinism and free will a. Conceptual compatibilism: mind, motivations, beliefs, actions, etc are a complete different way to look at our human world than looking with a physical (chemical, biological, neurological) eye to humans. Both are valid in their domains, and you shouldn't mix them up. b. 'Hard compatibilism' (I never found a real name for this): Determinism is a necessary condition for free will. This means for 'real free will' that the world must be 'sufficient determinism'; with other words too much randomness will make our character and with that our actions to chaos. 1b is inconsistent (we would need non-physical causes: what would those be? The soul?) 2a might hide an inconsistency. But 1a and 2b seem consistent to me. But both must be explained in much more detail before one can start a fruitful discussion. But predictability has nothing to do with free will. Free will means just that I am able to act according my motivations and beliefs (to the latter belong justified true beliefs, i.e. knowledge). You mean "Where does that leave libertarian free will?" Yep, nowhere. But there is no contradiction with the compatibilist concept of free will. And btw, I think libertarian free will would be worse than wrong from a none-dualistic viewpoint.

You're welcome. Therefore my reactions. But before I start, until now I never declared what my position is: I only defended that Davy asked reasonable questions and also had reasonable arguments. So, here we go: I have no idea what 'true nature' of anything means. For me it is the believer in the 'true nature' of anything, who should tell me what the method is by which she can declare this is a justified claim. I am pretty sure that most philosophers would shoot holes in such a justification. So my answer would be the same as in the Zen koan 'Does a dog has Buddha nature?'. I agree only with the first part of your sentence: the minimum one can say about scientific theories is that they are useful. I think one could say that science also aims for truth, but surely not in the sense of 'The Truth', but for a simpler concept of truth: that they can predict observable phenomena. 'Reality' cannot be an aim, that is a category error. Theories are 'language entities', not the reality they describe. See my answer on 1. We simply cannot know. So, no. Here we agree, as long a we do not fall for the illusion of 'absolute certainty'. In limited contexts we can have absolute certainty, but not if we start talking about the 'true nature of things', or the 'Truth about the Universe'. No, see my reaction at 4. True propositions are surely possible, 'reality' only as far as it appears to us. It is impossible to determine that we found it. It presupposes that we can look' behind the scenes'. We can't. Ah, well. It is because of what you wrote before: These are all more or less practical results. And that is not trivial for me. The use humanity makes of technology has given us very much, no question. But it also gave us a lot of problems, and some of them might kill us all (but that would be another discussion). See it as an ambiguity in my position about science: on one side we are on the brink of destroying ourselves because we do not make reasonable use of the results of science; on another side, science is warning us about this fact, and shows us possible ways out; and on still another side, as I said before, I love the insights science gives us about the world we live in.

Don't get me wrong, I am highly interested in physics and astronomy, why else would I have taken them as subsidiary subjects in my study? A difference between you and me is that I like the deep insights that physics deliver (I think my notorious winner is Noether's theorem, but there is more of course), less the results. Technology, the immediate child of science, has also given a lot of problems, for which we should not close our eyes. In Einstein's words: Davy's question, and why I chimed in, aims, as I said several times, on the selfunderstanding of physics. He wanted to discuss that with physicists here.