Eise

In line with the other reactions you already got: I distinguish between wild speculations and scientific speculations. Speculations are an essential part of scientific praxis. Our observations and experiments do not bring ideas by themselves: scientists doing them generate ideas, and when they are not tested (yet), they are speculations. But well-founded speculations. Scientists know the present theories, and about possible shortcomings of them. Speculations without sufficient knowledge about present theories, that are based on gut feelings, and contradict established science, are scientifically worthless. And yes, this is a science forum. Your illustration with Einstein is therefore as wrong as it can be. He knew about the problems of harmonising electromagnetism with classical mechanics (he was also not the first to work on this problem), and aimed at solving this, without using many additional hypothesis. This became special relativity. And if you meant general relativity: Einstein soon saw that Newton's law of gravitation could not be the last word, because it allows faster than light communication via gravitation. This turned out to be the harder problem, e.g. while a much more complicated mathematical toolset had to be used. But when Einstein succeeded, he immediately applied it to the orbit of Mercury, which shows an extra movement that Newton's law of gravitation could not account for, and Einstein succeeded in explaining it with his equations. So Einstein's 'speculations' were firmly rooted in his knowledge of physics, and he was aware of the necessity to check his ideas. So if you have a firm knowledge about the physiological basis of memory, can show why present ideas fail, and can show that your ideas fit very well in what we do know, please, present your ideas. But as said, why not publish them in a scientific journal? And if you are not sure: just ask if your ideas have any merit. But accept the answers, even if they are negative. And being polite always helps. Also, not throwing in conspiracy theories about science oppressing new ideas helps. Scientists love new ideas: but they should not be in clear contradiction with established science, or not testable at all.

I do not recognise my OP at all. If this is an interpretation of my OP, you are also very far off. It seems to me you are especially good in misinterpreting texts, and it looks like you do it intentionally. That is close to trolling (not sure on which side of the line...).

This. Exactly this. We could cope with the crisis, but only when also really see it for what it is: a life-threatening crisis. Otherwise we will gloriously fail. Spreading lies about climate change for me is the equivalent of 'wir haben es nicht gewusst'. (I hope I do not have to translate that.) +10 if I could. (But I am not free to do that... 😋)

But not in this thread. This is NonScientist's thread about his existential crisis around the problem of free will. Please continue the discussion in 'our' recent thread. 2 Things. In the first place science does not say we have no free will. Only scientists who make methodological unjustified extrapolations, using childish concepts of what free will is, do. In the second place (and iNow could be the most valuable discourse partner here), is that most people who think we have no free will, do not, to say the least, suffer from this belief, and many, much stronger, are positively happy with that. Really, you should explain to me why disbelief in free will necessarily leads to you being in a crisis. Every time somebody uses the 'nothing but' operator (also know as the 'just' operator) you can be sure that he leaves out that what is most important. A steam train is nothing but iron, coal and water. Problem is that a heap of iron and coals, and a lot of water, bring you nowhere. A steam train however does. The essential thing about a steam train is, that it is an object that can transport you. And we can easily see it, e.g. modern electrical trains also can transport you, i.e. the essence lies in the way the object is structured. Same with you: what you are essentially is not your chemical ingredients, but the way they work together. This gives rise to all kind of higher order phenomena: reasons, beliefs, actions, rules, beauty, and last but not least, meaning and free will. Of course this is not the free will of most religions (with the notorious exception of Buddhism): a soul steering the body, overruling even natural causality. It is also not the free will denied by the kind of scientists mentioned above. Both make the error to think that free will must be based on some (meta)physical objects or attributes. Obviously the same error you make. Free will is the capability of yours to let your actions be determined by your own motivations. And believe me, even iNow can do that. Freedom of the will also is not choosing who you are. You are born and grew up with a biological and personal biography, which made you what you are: i.e. you are determined by these. But on their turn, your actions are determined by you. If you do not like brussels sprouts, that cannot be changed. But standing for a buffet you are free not to take them. 'Freedom of the will' is not freedom from previous causes, but freedom to act according who you are. As iNow already noted: of course not. 'You' are the higher order processes running in your body, not your body itself. A train standing still brings you nowhere. So do not identify with a non-moving train; do not identify yourself with the substances you are made of. Most philosophers are compatibilists (Wikipedia), so do not blame them! I am a tiny example of such philosophers.

My opinion on the situation is very good illustrated by this cartoon. I think you will be able to translate the French words (If a translation is needed...)

But I think it is an important question, and I think you really should try to answer this. Many people who say they do not believe in free will live a happy life, without any problem. There are even, also more than enough, people who defend that not believing in free will is a good thing: believing in free will leads to blaming, unjustified punishments, harshness ("Everybody is responsible for his own happiness"), to the heavy kind of free will that Jean-Paul Sartre was defending ('We are doomed to be free'. Yes, there are people who get depressed just by the opposite idea you say you need!). So for me at least there is no necessary connection between what one thinks about free will, and one's happiness, or even having an existential crisis. You are using the word 'pre-determined', which is not the same a 'determined'. I don't know if you are aware of that difference. 'Determined', at least in a naturalistic world view, means that every event follows from the state of the universe just before. 'Pre-determined' has its main usage in certain kinds of religion, especially the mono-theistic ones. God has planned everything, and humans are powerless to change anything. Confusing 'determined' and 'pre-determined' can lead to fatalism. Where we in fact are determined, we tend to see everything as 'pre-determined'. Fatalism is the position that whatever we do,we have no influence. But this is in its extreme a self-refuting position if one supposes determinism. What you decide, and how you act makes a difference per definition. You can doubt on what grounds you decide and act, but not that your actions do make a difference. Fatalism has at most a meaning in the meaning of 'powerless': e.g. I am very hard on the way to become a fatalist about the climate crisis. The powers in people, politicians, companies, etc to continue our present lifestyle are so much stronger than mine (our.. Greta and me...) to want to save the world, that I am close at giving up. And about being a robot: at least your a conscious robot. And that makes a huge difference. To be conscious means, amongst others, that you are aware of reasons to do something, and act according them. If you can, you are free. If you can't, e.g. because your actions are obstructed by others, you are not free.

Yes and no. You have evaded my question, by heaving it to the 'general case'. I ask it a bit more pointedly: is there, according to you, a difference between you, controlling your car, and you, not controlling your car, and therefore have an accident? If yes, what is the difference? Understood, and part of the problem here is that the language of neurobiology and so called scientific usage of concepts has not yet caught up to what we've learned in philosophy about free will in these last few decades. 😉. You see, such arguments do not work very well. I see your point that we should not wag the dog. But that is not exactly the way I am arguing. Say you go into a restaurant, and order an expensive tenderloin. After 10 minutes you want to leave, and the waiter stops you, and says 'Hey, the meal is nearly ready, you must pay'. You say 'Sorry, it is my brain, I cannot help it, I am determined, and my brain just changed my mind. You cannot blame me for that'. First question: is your statement neurologically seen, correct? Secondly, if you were the waiter, would you accept such an argument? Next day, you go to the same restaurant, and order the same expensive tenderloin. But the waiter says, 'no way, get out of my restaurant'. You say: 'Sorry I am not in control of my brain, I can't help it, you cannot punish me for that.' The waiter, in the meantime has refreshed his neurological knowledge, agrees you cannot help it, so he should not punish you by throwing you out of the restaurant, and accepts your order. After 10 minutes you leave again. Do you see that it simply does not work that way? You cannot avoid to be made responsible for your actions on basis of 'I am not in control'. If you would do that consistently, you would find yourself, well, maybe even in a neurological clinic... As said, the concept of free will is meaningful (that means it applies only) in a discourse where things like promises, responsibility, actions, reasons, etc also have meaning. 'Free will' does not apply on the level of neurons. Neurons are free, nor not free. The same way as you cannot speak of the colour of a single electron. It makes no sense to say that an electron is not white. It is a category error. Yes, but. Some definitions are useful, and others aren't. Defining a free action as an uncaused action just makes no sense, as with its counterpart, a coerced action. Let's do a speculation: imagine a much more advanced level of neurological knowledge. Neuroscientists can exactly trace what happens in the brain when a person acts. The difference between a free and a coerced action would be that in the first case just before the action the reward system of the brain is activated and is triggered by it, in the second case the circuits responsible for fear are activated, and the action is triggered by this 'fear system'. (I assume that this is highly simplified, but I hope you get the point.) Both actions are physically determined, but in different ways. The 'free' or 'coerced' aspect of the action does not lie in 'being determined or not' but in the way how they are determined.

No, that is completely correct. One could even say (I don't think this is a usual concept, but hey!) I am a 'hard compatibilist'. Stated in one simple sentence: without sufficient determinism free will is impossible. The consequence argument seems to be very in your line, yes. My problem with it is that it thinks in absolutes. Something is in control or it is not. If it in itself is controlled by something else, then it is not in control. But this makes the way we normally use the concept of control useless. Say, you drive in your car, and your crash into a streetlight (and you survive). You will be fined for not controlling your car. Do you think the police or judge will be convinced by your argument that you are not in control anyway, so there is no difference? The problem still is that you, and the consequence argument, look for free will in physical reality, as an extra component which is causally effective, but is not caused in itself. No, it pops up in the discourse that we use daily, where we use concepts as 'promise', 'law', 'marriage', 'obligation', and especially, 'actions', 'reasons', 'meaning', 'coercing'. You won't find any of these concepts materialised in the brain as things. 'You' is also not a thing found in the brain. Free will emerges from the same underlying processes as above concepts of 'actions', 'reasons', 'meaning', and 'coercing'. If there are reasons and actions, then we can apply the concept of free will: if you act according your own reasons, it was a free free action. If your action was coerced, it was not.If a person more or less consistently is able to act freely, he has free will. Above also means that the concept of free will does not even apply to physical things, because they do not act after deliberation on their reasons. So it makes no sense either to say that things have no free will: they have no will at all, so the adjectives 'free' or 'coerced' do not describe anything about these physical things. (You know, from this funny way of thinking raises questions, as we had on the forum here too, like 'how do the laws of nature force objects to behave as they describe?'. Sorry, that 'force' does not belong to the physical discourse. With your position about free will it is just the opposite. You treat 'free will' as something physical but that is just the same kind of category error.)

It was just one of many examples mentioned in Curious' definition, nothing more. I think you don't. The question why science works is another one than the question if science works. The latter we know. Otherwise you would technically not be capable to participate in this forum. So the meaning, in 'a first order approximation' is that we can use its results by creating new technologies. So why did you say that 'we know what metaphysics is'? Science does no work with abstractions? Wow...

There are two ways to answer the question of the OP: - try to find the definition in a dictionary, with google (i.e. the thread was more or less ready with the posting of Curious layman), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, etc - ask a philosopher Everything else is based on vague ideas, personal convictions, ideology etc.

I think you must be careful about what belongs to 'philosophy of science' and to 'metaphysics'. Most points you mention would be from philosophy of science. Here I cite a part of Curious layman's citation: It is not everybody's beer of course. But sometimes these kind of questions pop up in discussions that can be important. E.g. the question 'Does every event have a cause?' can be relevant for the discussion of free will. And what one thinks about free will in its turn can be important how we treat criminals (do we punish or do we heal them?). So anybody who thinks nobody needs philosophy, read my disclaimer (just citing it here because I might change it one day): There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. Daniel Dennet, Darwin's dangerous idea And it is not just true for science, but also for art, morality, politics etc etc. Stick to Curious layman's definition. It is quite good, I think. And just to add: mistermack's viewpoint about metaphysics is as valuable as his viewpoint on climate change...

First I never heard of it. But thinking would it could mean, the answer of Curious Layman is very to the point.

Can you explain what this means? Maybe with a few real examples? (I hope these are positive questions...)

Of course I am not! This is the philosophy forum! Once entered a philosophical discussion, retraction is not allowed. Philosophical discussions end when: the discourse participants agree (but then comes a third one who does not agree, and...) at least one of the discourse participants dies (ideally both at the same time during the discussion) at least one of the discourse participants is insulted so much by the other one that they will never talk to each other again. OK, now serious. That is definitely a difference between us, and I think you are too stringent in your view. The way you see it there exists, seen from a naturalistic world view, no control whatsoever. We agree there is no soul (or more naturally said, no independent agent), so there is nothing in your position that exerts control. That also means that you always have to throw the concept of free will in your concept of control. I don't. Control is a necessary condition for free will, but by far not a sufficient one. Maybe I can explain this with your example: No, I would not say that. So I agree that 'control' is the wrong word here. I only would call it 'control' when there are at least two components: a component that reacts on the process and generates an alarm that a process is going out of bounds a component that takes this alarm as input, and changes the process in question so that is not out of bounds anymore So in your case, when there is a measuring device that checks how big the flow of water is; and something like a faucet that reacts on the output of the measuring device, and regulates the flow of water. That we have physical explanations of how these components work, and how they work together, does not mean that there is no control. The way the control works is explained, not explained away. Further I would never use the concepts of 'passive' or 'active' in this context. When we talk about a causal relationship, one could call the causing event (a) 'active', and the caused event 'passive' (b). But of course, the causing event (a) was also a caused event by some previous causing event (c). so is (a) active or passive? I think that concepts that are so much dependent on the accidental view we have should not be used in an explanation. They suggest more than what really is going on. Therefore I must also say I personally never use the concept of 'control' when explaining free will. But the topic pops up again and again, mostly because a 'free will skeptic' says something like 'we have no control over our determining factors'. In this case it was already in the question of the OP.

You said that 'striving for equilibrium' is something else than control. I am saying that the kind of equilibrium that keeps organisms alive needs a control mechanism. Please leave consciousness out of the game for the moment. These control mechanisms do not need consciousness perse. And that is simply the first point I am trying to explain: a system can have control over something even if we exactly know how the mechanism works, e.g. because we designed it our selves (the thermostat example). Of course there is no inner agent in a thermostat, even less a conscious one. Explaining the mechanism, as you do with the neural channels, does not mean there is no control. You only explain how it works. To keep up the healthy equilibrium in organisms, a lot of control mechanisms are needed. But that does not need necessarily an agent (i.e. somebody who consciously does the controlling). For short: there is no contradiction in saying that a system is in control of something, and that it is determined. So in your way of speaking: nothing enters the mix to be in control. And I am not saying that these mechanisms contradict the law of entropy: I am saying that without the control mechanisms the processes, parameters or substances which are controlled by that mechanism will find another equilibrium, and big chance that is not a healthy equilibrium for the organism... To give 2 opposite examples. The gravitation of the sun would compress it completely, if there was nothing else. But because of the heat produced by nuclear fusion, there exists an equilibrium. But there is no mechanism that continuously must probe the size and the temperature of the sun, and correct its pressure, or temperature or whatever. A Boeing 737 MAX 😕. Without the MCAS System, the plane would reach an equlibrium we do not like. Therefore MCAS corrects the angle of ascent so that the plane does not stall. So MCAS controls the angle of ascent when it gets to steep: that is what it is designed for. It is designed to reach another equilibrium, one which we prefer, which it keeps it flying in the air.

No. There are (at least) 2 kinds of balance: one is due to the law of entropy, the other one needs energy to be sustained. For the latter some mechanism is needed, and life provides such mechanisms. If it is pure internally (e.g. body temperature or pH of blood), or also externally (cow walking into the shade), without a mechanism that controls the environment, you would fallback to the first kind of balance, which in case of an organism is equivalent to death. And I also gave the example of a cat rolling downhill (but not for long of course). When a threshold is crossed due to temperature change and an electrical circuit gets triggered to activate a specific response pattern. Passing that threshold results in the circuit becoming complete I already answered my own question (maybe that is bad rhetoric, but it is a long time ago that rhetoric belonged to the philosophy curriculum...):

I know. But I give TakenItSeriously the benefit of the doubt. In one posting he was even trying to clear up where the viewpoints of the different 'discutants' lie. And as I said, you never know when somebody because of a certain formulation or explanation is seeing the light (redshifted or blueshifted...).

Well, TakenItSeriously is at least, well, serious. He argues with others, does not claim that we are all idiots, and does not refer to some conspiracy theory why physics hides the truth; and he keeps being polite. But he obviously has a blind spot in his understanding of relativity. I just chimed in in the hope that another formulation would help him to see his error. Others in this thread know relativity much better than I do. (For me, Janus' explanations are becoming legendary...) If people get tired, they can just stop reacting and reading the thread.

And I was reacting at: So what does the negative square root physically mean? Then you should realise that the Lorentz factor is dependent on v2, where the Doppler effect is only in the first order dependent on v. That means you must distinguish between Doppler effect and time dilation. So when I have a light source moving fast to me, 2 things happen: Due to its speed there is time dilation, so the frequency of the light source becomes less, i.e. we have a red shift due to its speed. Due to its direction to me, I have a blueshift You must consider both to get the full picture. You must distinguish between what Bob observes, and what he concludes. A blueshift does not mean that there is no time dilation. If Bob takes Alices blueshift in account, he concludes that her clock runs slower compared to his. And Strange reacted: Do you see this is correct? In the example the Lorentz factor is 0.6 independent of the direction. However, the Doppler effect is dependent on the flight direction. But then you said: On which I reacted with my post. What would be the physical difference wen you use the positive solution, or the negative? Again, what is longer: a stick with length 0.5L or one with a length of -0.5L?

But first, this is physics, not mathematics. One must always check if both solutions make sense physically. Second, the direction of the velocity has nothing to do with the choice of the positive or the negative result, as Strange already showed, because you must use v2. So third, what do you get if you take the negative value as possible outcome? Say you compare two sticks, one flying in the opposite direction of the other, with the same speed. Due to the length contraction, one stick has for you a length of -0.5L, the other +0.5L. Which one is longer? 😈 So what is the physical meaning of a negative length?

Ethan Siegel has a critical article about it.

Assuming that the world is deterministic, you mean nothing controls anything? Let's say a stone rolls down a hill. This is a simple deterministic process. But now consider a cat that momentary loses its balance on that same hill. In no time it will stand on its feet again. So the cat has control over how it moves downhill. Of course it is still a deterministic process, but much more complicated than the stone rolling down. As I said earlier, life is all about control. If it is the pH of blood, the closing or opening stomata of a leaf of a tree to regulate water loss, the walking of a cow into the shade of a tree to get less warm etc, are all examples of how organisms control their inner or outer environment. Somehow it seems to me you are thinking about control as absolute control. In this sense, I see a strong parallel with the Christian idea of the ultimate responsibility of the human soul. In your sense, something is in control only when it for itself is not under control of anything else (to specific, previous, causally related events), just as the human soul can be responsible only when it is not influenced by anything previous at all. So where does the control of a thermostat enter the mix? Well in the way it is built up, and the way it functions, namely as a negative feedback system.

First, I think you are just overstretching the word. As I said in some other posting, a thermostat also has control. But of course it is a very simple device, without consciousness, desires or beliefs; no mental events at all. And second, life is everything about control, of the inner and outer environment. With consciousness a new kind of control comes in: observing, anticipating possible futures, choice and action. That these processes are implemented in a (very complex) determined system does not change the fact that you have a certain level of conscious control. Determinism and control can perfectly go together. Every engineer of negative feedback systems could tell you that.

This is a bit speculative, but might be interesting. Key point to answer the question of why reality can be described mathematically is causality. Hard sciences approach reality as a causally related whole. But how do we get the idea that certain events are causally related? Hume gave a good point: we are inclined to 'see' causality if: there is only a short duration between the events there is only a short distance between the events we see the same relationship between events that are similar Latter point means more or less that there are regularities. Without observing any regularity, how could we propose a causal relationship between events? I do not see how. And then the next step is: can you think of a regularity that cannot be describe mathematically? Without any proof (I confess) I would say that every regularity can be described mathematically. But I am open to arguments against my idea...