Eise

My wrath. One citation I like: Tractatus, Proposition Nr 6.53 OK, it has nothing to do with mathematics.

Hi Studiot, I think I understand what you mean. But I think you are looking for the possibility of free will at the wrong place. It does not lie in physics, because we do not need some hole in the causal fabric of the universe. The only thing we must be sure of, that there is sufficient determinism in nature. 'Sufficient determinism' means that we can trust nature: if I do something, the results are the same (or at least very similar). It makes it possible to learn what works, and what does not. In order to be able to do what you want, you must have some guarantee, that when you act a certain way, similar results arise when you act the same way. This guarantee is given by experience. events are repeatable, and they lead to the same results. That is the kind of determinism that we need, and physics tells us that in daily life this view holds. Only when we descend into the deepness of matter, this guarantee is lost, but that should not bother us, walking along streets, driving cars, and repairing electrical devices. As long as we see that 'free will' just means 'being able to do what you want', there is no conflict with determinism at all. Only when one defines 'free will' as 'interfering with the causal universe, but no caused itself' you clash with determinism. But as said above, this is an ideological concept of free will, not rooted in our experience. I assume this concept came into existence because of the problem of evil in the world, how this can be combined with the idea of an all loving, omnipotent and omniscient God. That we can do evil, is because God gave us free will. We can do things that are not caused by the universe, otherwise God would be responsible for our evil deeds.

So you are too lazy, and therefore others should do it? Hmm... Let's see, if I can represent your way of thinking: You do not understand how physics explains gravity. Therefore you need an explanation in terms of electricity, which you think you understand (but in fact don't). Then you ask physicists here, and they answer you that we already have explanations of gravity, already know what holds protons and neutrons together. Then they explain also why your ideas will not work. Then you ask if they please want to 'visualize your model though and see it has some merit'. (You do not seem to realise that nobody will even try, because ((1) and (3)) we already have very good models for gravitation and nuclear interaction that contradict your ideas), and because (4) people have told you your ideas simply are wrong. You think you are not taken seriously, because nobody is prepared to support and/or test your model. And as an aside, you want to explain the 'space drive' of UFOs, (where we pretty well know what UFOs are: 95% observations by people who do not understand what phenomena can be seen in the sky, and 5% unexplained. 'Unexplained' does definitely not mean 'alien spaceships'), with micro waves, of which you do not understand what what they are, and what they are capable of. If you are too lazy to learn some basic physics, then better do not hypothesise any idea about physics, because (I say it again, maybe you will get it if it is repeated enough): you do not know how physics explains phenomena you do not understand you do not know how your ideas conflict with established science (you know, 'established science' is e.g. science on which technology is based, and that so prove the theories behind them, like computers, nuclear reactors, particle accelerators and detectors, GPS, micro wave ovens etc.) Ready to start reading on real physics? (I hope others have good suggestions for elementary introductions to physics).

Can you elaborate a little, maybe with an example? I do not understand what you are getting at.

empleat, Seems you have not read my posting at all. You make exactly the same philosophical errors again. Are you here just to complain that you do not have free will, or do you really want to reflect about it? - You use a concept of free will that is ideological, instead one that is firmly rooted in experience - You think free will must be ultimate free will, the freedom to do everything, even the physically impossible. And it is Sabine Hossenfelder, and Gerard 't Hooft. @Studiot, This was the OP: The 'because' is just wrong. What we need is sufficient determinism to have free will. Even if quantum randomness plays some role in the brain, it at most would disturb, breaking the determined chain from sensory input, processing in the brain, and the motoric output. It would explain 'jerks' in our behaviour, not e.g. acting on grounds.

Hi empleat, Markus gave an excellent overview: Except that I think there are only three. The 'hard incompatibilist', who says that free will and determinism do not go together, must take sides: being a hard determinist, or a libertarian. Of course he can be agnostic on the topic, but that is intellectual cowardice. With a little irony, I would say I am a 'hard compatibilist': without determinism free will could not possibly exist. So it is not that determinism and free will go together, but determinism is a hard condition for free will. Now we know that in reality there are none-determined processes: quantum processes. But as you guessed, randomness cannot be a basis for free will. Markus already said that there is no basis to think that quantum randomness plays an essential role in the functioning of the brain. The problem lies in the concept of free will that most people use: that under exactly the same circumstances I 'could have done otherwise'. Determinism denies this, and so do I. But this kind of free will is 'magic'. Even worse, it is the 'original sin' taken over from 2000 years of Christianity. Philosophically said, it is an ideological concept, not rooted in our experience. It naively seems so, if we say 'I could have done otherwise'. What you really mean, is that you had several options for acting, and you chose one (hopefully on good grounds). Because there were more options it makes sense to say that you 'could have done otherwise'. But that is a counterfactual statement, not a factual one. It expresses that all the external circumstances being the same, your acting only depended on your choice. Just realise: counterfactual statements can be true or false: they are not expressions of facts however, but about possible relationships between facts. 'If my car would fall in the sun, it would meld' is a true sentence. But it has not happened, and I will expect it never to happen. So the experience of free will (not the ideological concept!) is this: that we do what we want, from ourselves. Not coerced by somebody else. Another point you have to consider is that free will is not an absolute: to have free will does not mean you can do anything you want, e.g. jump to the moon. Physics stands in your way. Same is with your genes, upbringing, culture you live in, etc, in short everything that made you to what you are now. You are nor free to be who you are: you are free to act as you want. It might be biologically determined that I like broccoli, and despise of Brussels sprouts. Having free will means that I can choose: I take the broccoli. The experience of being not free has a lot of forms. One I mentioned already: being coerced by others, to do something that you would not do, given your beliefs and convictions. Another one follows from the fact that psychologically seen, we are not individuals (we are not 'individable'). We have many inclinations, and often they are not at peace with each other. Depending how strong some of my drives are, and how strong they conflict, this can really hurt, and give me the experience that I am not free. I cannot choose (so I do nothing), or one of the drives always works out bad, but I cannot help doing it (addictions are an example). To conclude: yes, you are free. But as you mentioned, you are depressed and bored: but that has nothing to do with the philosophical problem of free will. Do not hide your real problems behind a theoretical philosophical topic. Philosophy is for intellectual freaks, not for people with personal problems.

You mean if relativity were not true? Well, if you take the finite speed of light into account, a 'universal now' would mean that all clocks show the same time for a local observer, but not for a remote one: if I could see a clock in the Andromeda nebula, I would see it running 2 Million years behind. But if I take the distance the light must travel into account (2 Million lightyears), I could conclude that it shows the same time as my clock. And that independent of the velocity of the Andromeda nebula. It would be impossible however, to set the clocks in such a way that everybody sees all clocks having the same time: when all the clocks show the same time for me, they do not for anybody else. So I cannot see a universal now, but I can conclude that a universal now exists. But of course, relativity does away with this. So yes, a universal now is disproved.

No. It is a practical concept in daily use. Like 'here'. Both have no meaning without any context. Both are called 'indexicals' in linguistics and philosophy. And, alas, there is nothing that corresponds with it in physics. The idea of 'universal here' does not make sense already in classical physics. The idea of a a 'universal now' would mean that all watches in the universe agree on the time, and have the same pace. Since special relativity we know this idea does not make sense either.

Found it. It is on youtube.

I do not consider myself as depressed, I definitely do not see the world as garbage (it seems you did not read my posting at all: do you think that after I talked about this miracle world, the thankfulness of being there, that I think the world is garbage and that I am depressed?). It seems to me that you, by your own experience, get depressed with the idea that death is the end of it, and that you conclude that therefore people who think that death is the definite end, must be depressed. Obviously, you get angry when you discover here that this shouldn't be the case at all. One of the essences of Buddhism is to help others in their suffering, to relinquish it. But if people want to stick to their unhappiness, we let them be. It seems to me that you cannot cope with your fear of death, or even stronger, you seem even to cultivate this fear. Please don't, it will not make your life better. Acceptance of the facts of life is an absolute precondition of reaching equanimity. I am sorry for the hell you went through when your brother's life was threatened. I did not do that: I just warned you that you should not build your life on 'metaphysical comfort'. And I did not claim you are bad. At most I am claiming that you are full of prejudices about science, about the relation between (scientific) truth and the meaning of your life, and about people with an atheistic and/or scientific worldview. You really should be more open minded, instead of just sticking to your prejudices. Ignorance is one of the causes of suffering... Hoping you will get on terms with life as it is, Eise

Because you can't see it, does not mean it cannot be true. Obviously you can't stand the idea, so you just adopt the opposite idea. So you are wagging the dog: you take as true what pleases you. But I do not see this as religious or spiritual. It is dogmatic. Here, I have an exercise for you: imagine a life after death for eternity. Really meditate on it. If you do not find out that this would be hell, you did not do your homework... It is also interesting, that i.e. in Hinduism, the declared objective of yogis is to leave the cycle of reincarnation, i.e. get liberated from it. Isn't that funny? Some very religious people want to stop their 'eternal life', instead of living forever. There is no hard problem of consciousness, whatever Chalmers (who coined this phrase) might say. When all the 'easy problems' are solved, people will find out there is no problem left. And another exercise: imagine the 'hard problem' is solved by science, and there is no soul surviving death. What would you do? Commit suicide? (Which would be pretty inconsistent if you fear death.) Or learn to cope with it? Why not start now? You do not know what science will discover, so why bet on an unfunded idea? Thinking that life is only worth something when it is based on 'metaphysical comfort', is living a false life. Yes, it makes a pretty stubborn impression. I also think you are pretty hard with (atheist) scientists, based on lack of knowledge of what science really does and says on one side, and your own unfunded ideas on the other. I would say, relax a little, use the time you have left (which if you are lucky is obviously pretty long, when you are only 30 years old) to really get to know this miracle world you live in, and be thankful that you are born so you can enjoy this incredible fascinating universe. Doing so will make you more resilient against the daily misfortunes that happen in everybody's life. Then a real spiritual path may open for your eyes. You might discover, that it was already there all the time, but you just did not see it because you eyes were troubled by your ideas. Tonight there will be a total moon eclipse, and I will really enjoy it, to see the beauty of the universe, and realise my smallness in this giant, wonderful universe.

The gist of my posting still stands: there is no contradiction between a materialistic worldview and a religious outlook on life. And that contradiction is a central point of your postings. The contradiction exists only in your mind (and everybody who thinks life can only be worth living when certain ideas are true). If you make your life dependent on some metaphysical 'truths' you have built your life on quicksand. There is a difference between 'truth', and what you hope is true. You choose obviously for the latter. That is not a spiritual way. You must stand the insecurities of life, which necessarily includes death. Stephen Batchelor once said it very clearly: Buddhism is a teaching that tries to help you to cope with the radical contingencies of life.

I stand corrected:

I hope you have references for this story. Just speculating a bit in advance: I've been practicing Aikido for many years. One of the exercises was 'reading the intentions' of your opponent, so you can react correctly in time. I can assure you, there are many bodily but subtle signals when somebody starts a movement. So a samurai might be able to react even before the gun was shot. It is not magic, it is practice (and talent, I suppose, I never made it to the black belt... ). Seems so. But because you corrected me elsewhere, now I correct you . The Chinese Room is from John Searle. But it is the case, that many people believe he has a point with it, and recently I saw an interview with him on Swiss Television, and Searle still adheres to it, even that I also think that it was definitely debunked by e.g. Hofstadter and Dennett in 'The mind's I'. Dennett therefore calls it a false 'intuition pump'. BTW, I once hat a chance to have a small chat with Penrose, and he is really a very nice, bit excentric (in the positive sense) guy. And he is not very dogmatic. He clearly saw that his and Hammeroff's 'Orch-OR' theory is still a hypothesis, and definitely not a full blown picture of reality. He did not become angry when I confessed I did not so much believe in his theory. Edit: Now I got a +1. But it was there before my remark on Searle and Penrose was merged with my comment on the samurai. So whoever gave me the point, read if you still agree with the new part. Otherwise you can remove it again. (no please don't... ).

A possible explanation is that those that are arrogant and cynical are the loudest. But there is definitely not a logical or even psychological connection between atheism and arrogance and cynicism. If it comforts you, I consider myself as a materialist (in the philosophical sense, not in the ethical sense of 'being only interested in as much richness as possible'), or to be a bit more precise, as a functionalist. I know it may be a challenge because on the surface it seems contradicting the value of life. But that is really a very superficial viewpoint. The idea that we are 'only' a function of our bodies, especially the brain, might look discomforting, but on the other side, taking into account the idea that we are a 'cosmic accident' makes our lives (well the whole earth with all its life forms) more precious than if we were just 'slaves of God'. And I am not anti-religious too: I meditate, and once a year I go into a Zen-retreat, a week in silence. Which brings me of course to Buddhism: it knows of no god, and believes in the law of 'dependent co-arising', which is a version of the law of cause and effect. In the case of the 'soul', Buddhism says that the 'soul' does not exist independently. It comes into existence, and when we die it is dissolved. (Therefore this is better known as the idea of 'no-soul', which just means that: there exists no independent soul: if we look for the ground of the soul's existence in itself, we find... nothing.) It is one of the most important pillars of Buddhist ethics. So one might say I am a religious atheist. I try to keep on a spiritual path, which is not easy, but the difficulties lie in the temptations and animosities of daily life, not in my scientific worldview: the physics of the soul might have changed since Buddhism, but there is a core element that fits to modern materialism: that we are caused, that we are a function of different elements (in Buddhism called 'skandhas', nowadays one could say chemical elements). So together with some of the other posters in this thread: nice to meet you! I do not despise religions. But I hate stupidity, the quick condemnation of other's ideas, without understanding them first. And believe me, there are also a lot of people with a scientific worldview, that are just as stupid as their religious counterparts. It is easier to live with a quick judgment, than with the insecurity that you still might not have understood enough. People hate insecurity, which is a cause of many troubles. That is not quit true. Georges Lemaître came to his 'primordial atom' by applying the general theory of relativity, so based on theory. Only a few years later, Hubble came with the first observational proofs that galaxies are running away from us.

Just wanted to add something to this from a pretty spiritual book: the Mahabharata. The Yaksha questions Yudhishthira. One of the questions, and Yudhishthira's answer:

20 mHz? 0.02 Hz? That means you are aware only 1 time in 50 seconds? (1/50 = 0.02). I assume you mean 20 MHz, 20,000,000 Hz. But neurons cannot fire that fast. The individual components of the brain are, e.g. in comparison to computers, very slow (a neuron fires at a rate of about 6 Hz, computers are at a few GHz now). It is only due to the massive parallel processing in the brain, that it still can fulfill certain complex tasks in fractions of a second. But it is interesting to note that the fastest reactions people are capable of, are not aware immediately, but often only afterwards (this is one of the aspects of sport training: to learn to react automatically on situations, because first becoming aware is just too slow). Of all the process in the brain, awareness is one of the slower ones.

Well, at least your specific existence is an accident. When you were conceived, the sperm that made it was one of about 1 Billion. If another one had made it, you would not have existed. Is that depressing? If not why would it be depressing for the universe as a whole? I think panpsychism is nothing more than the statement that 'all matter is also conscious'. I have no idea how you can make science of that. If you accept that the more complex a system is, the chances increase that the system can be conscious (our brain is a very complex structure), what does the addition that 'all matter is conscious to some degree' helps? Or do you think every corn of sand is just as conscious as we are? On what would such a belief be based? Consciousness is not a thing, it is a process, and it is normal for processes that they can stop. Where is the wave, when it has broken on the shore? Where is the clock, if you hammer it to pieces? Where is your proof of the law of conservation of consciousness? 'I cannot imagine', or 'it does not make sense to me' are not very strong arguments. Spirituality is not some kind of (meta)physics, i.e. there are no spiritual entities. 'Spirituality' is a way to relate to the world, whatever this world really is like. So there is no contradiction between leading a spiritual life, and having a materialistic world view. As a counter-example: take the big religions. Most believers have no spiritual attitude at all. They just have a set of beliefs. But it is interesting to see that nearly every religion, has its spiritual corners, i.e. those people that want to experience what they take as true as intense as possible. Same is true for a materialistic world view. You can just believe it (in contrast with religions however there are very good grounds to believe in the results of science), which I think the majority of science minded people does, but you can also try to deeply feel this, and stand in awe for what science discovers: the working of the universe at the grand or micro scale. Let me just add that many mystics, if you look at their life stories, went through a crisis, before they could accept what they took for true, and found a way to live a happy life with what they accepted as truths. Bending the truth, based on how the universe needs to be so that you feel comforted ('it does not make sense to me') is wagging the dog, and means you have left the spiritual path.

I did. It is a nice try, but will not work. Sources? I mean, sources for research, not just chewing the idea (pseudo-) philosophically. But awareness is slow. Also, awareness is not continuous, even if it seems so. (There is a difference between being aware of an interruption, or an interruption of awareness itself.) The attention of Penrose and Hameroff maybe, but not many more people I know of. But maybe you have some links to research programs about the role of microtubules in consciousness?

Interesting point. The only thing I can think about, that obviously gravitation just as speed also changes the perspective. In the end, when you are falling in a gravitation field, nothing in your (small) falling laboratory can distinguish between falling in gravitation field or being in constant motion. But a test mass follows just a strait line (its geodesic). When you think about Newtonian gravity, you are right: then gravitation is a force that causes changes. But not in GR. That is also an interesting point. I was astonished lately that it is possible to formulate GR in flat space, see Is spacetime really curved? Kip Thorne also mentions it in his book on black holes. But what would your view be? It seems to me there is an essential difference between physical objects, existing in spacetime, and spacetime itself. I cannot ask you to change the time, or space itself. However we can change events in space an time, e.g. we can change an appointment to another time and place.

Silvestru already commented on this. You cannot learn the unpredictable, otherwise it would be predictable. However, what one can (try to) learn, is to live with the unpredictable. Yes, you are completely right. Where do you think new theories come from? Nature does not impress them upon us. They come from scientists' imagination. But after the imagination, the new theories must be tested: on internal consistency, on consistency with established facts, and against observations and experiments. But I am afraid that what you mean with 'imagination' is in fact ideas contradicting established science. I think your position is due to the fact that you have no idea about how science is progressing, and what the status of its results are.

There is a difference between two questions: Do electrons really exist? What are electrons really? The first question, using my definition of 'physically real', we can say that electrons exist: they play a role in causal processes. So this question was solved when the electron was discovered. To know what electrons really are, one must know exactly how it behaves in all possible causal relationships. Now on purely methodological grounds one must say that one can never surely know that we know we have covered all possible causal relationships of electrons. But your list shows how in time we understood more and more causal relationships of the electron. As there is no way to make observations of what lies behind our observations (in the end that is already a self-contradiction), we could very well say they do exist. There is no way to solve the question if electric fields just seem to be real or are real. So from a practical point of view, I would say they exist. Exactly. 'Interaction' is more or less another word for 'causal relationship'. And it is my opinion, as sketched above, that if we know all the possible interactions of 'something' we know everything about the object in question; with the amendment that there is no way to know if we really know all possible interactions, which explains why science still can progress, and even change its models of reality. Now, nothing of this applies to space and time: space and time do not interact with physically real objects. E.g. the Lorenz transformations do not describe physical processes. They describe more or less how the perspective on physical processes changes dependent on how observers move relative to each other. There is no causal mechanism that slows time down.

When one integrates speed against time, one gets distance (as mathematic already corrects). Against what would you like to integrate space? What would the meaning of integrating space against time? Or try a dimensional analysis. An integral is a sum of products. So it makes sense that if you integrate (m/s) speed over time (s) you get m*s/s = m, so a distance. Now do this with distance (m) and time, you get m*s. What would that be? OK, via Mr Google I found this: Absement. Had never heard of it...

Ah, I understand. Formally you are completely right, but I really meant 'regular'. It is easier to measure time using a periodic process where every period has the same duration, and so we can safely assume that 'time' goes linear with that process. It basically 'reduces' timekeeping to counting (you have such an easy job... ). In my example processes, the falling stone and the water leaking from the can, the processes are not linear with time, which makes them not very practical for timekeeping. OK, this depends on what you call 'real'. My definition is as follows: something is physically real if it has causal effects, or can be causally effected by physical processes. According to this definition a magnetic field is definitely real: it causes moving electrical particles to change their paths, attract iron, repels most other substances, etc etc. How would time and space in themselves play a role in causal processes? I think it is even exactly the other way round. Think about how Hume, as an empiricist philosopher, treated causality: not as a law of nature, but as a tendency of us humans. According to Hume, we tend to describe causality to events that: happen at the same place happen at the same time and similar events are observed repeatedly (or can repeatedly created) I do not completely agree with Hume, but he has a point. I would take his points methodologically: not just as a tendency we have to associate events, but a the way we recognise the causal relationship between events. But as you see, time and space are the necessary background for causality, but they cause nothing in themselves. So they do not exist physically, according to my definition of physically real. I am happy to see another definition of what is physically real, so that time and space become just as real as processes, objects, fields, etc etc. That is not the question as I see it. The question does not arise when you do not take space and time as physically real. Then they are neither fundamental, nor emergent. They are more or less substitutes for an imagination: that in every physical system there is, we have a scale for distances and durations, and that we can normalise these scales in such a way that we can compare processes in these different systems. In this comparison, we e.g. discover that in systems that are moving fast in relation to each other, we need a scaling factor (the 'gamma' of special relativity) to correctly compare how long distances and durations are of processes in the respective systems. That is an interesting point. (When a philosopher says something like that (or e.g. 'that is a good question'), it means 'I have no idea'. Yet.) Let me think about it. Or better in this context: 'Give me some time.' Answer is not guaranteed...

Ehhm... Use 'predictable'? Instead of what? You mean my 'plotting'? I just pictured a graph of the amount of water at the x-axis and the distance the stone has fallen at the y-axis. Of course you can predict then one value out of the other (and because it is a bijection, it goes in both ways). Is that what you mean? At least it fits to what I am arguing for.