Eise

No. free actions are a subset of all determined processes. It is the subset in which causal explanations based on wishes and believes are valid. E.g: a stone does not fall to the earth because it wants to: a stone has no wishes or believes. However, when a human chooses to do something, based on his wishes and believes, and acts according to them, then it is valid to say that his wishes and believes caused his action. We cannot be fully responsible who we are. Who we are is determined by my biological inheritance and my personal biography. Only as soon as I can get control of my life, I become responsible: not especially for what I am, but for what I do.

First of all, 'determinist' and 'compatibilist' is not an opposition. A compatibilist is a determinist, per definition. What you probably mean is what usually is called a 'hard determinist'; but I find this also a wrong term. The determinism of a compatibilist and a determinist is just as hard. Compatibilism is not determinism mixed with just a 'little free will'. So the best term is 'incompatibilist determinist'. The compatibilist claims that, how hard the determinism might be, that there is a meaningful concept of free will that covers all necessary concepts that presuppose free will, such as blaming, praising, responsibility, punishment, etc, except a few wrong ideas that people have about free will. The basic idea is that all is needed is that people can act according their own wishes and believes, i.e. that their own wishes and believes are part of the causal fabric of the universe. That also means that the concept of free will that the compatibilist has, needs determinism. Without determinism, free will would be impossible, what people do would be random. It is difficult to see how random actions can be a basis for responsibility. The biological basis of free will is the capability of animals to anticipate the future. Depending on what they expect, they act. They need to be able to see how their own future actions influence the future. Simple example: my cat says 'mow' when he is hungry, knowing that I will notice him and fill his top. But the biological basis on its own is not enough: we need insight in our reasons for actions. Having such insights might evolutionary have arisen by the capability to have a 'folk psychology': to assign reasons to other animals. The next step is to assign reasons to yourself, and being able to evaluate them. At this moment 'free will is born'. I think that the clearest sign in other species is behaviour that only can be reasonably be explained by animals that try to manipulate on the basis of what they think that other individuals think. So if we recognise compassion with other animals that are in pain, trying to hide food when nobody looks, cheating and mobbing, then these might be indications that we are justified to assign free will to them. So that would mean: certain crows, apes, whales and dolphins, and elephants can be assigned free will. One important aspect of having free will is the capability to limit the free will of other individuals: one can coerce other individuals by creating a situation in which he does something that he normally would never do; or let him believe something to be true, which in fact is not true. Then this individual does not follow its own wishes or believes, but of somebody else. Seeing this should clarify the whole free will discussion: the opposite of free will is coercion; the opposite of determinism is randomness. There is no opposition between free will and determinism.

Genecks, I think you do not understand Popper. A theory is not scientific because it is falsified or so. A theory is scientific if it does definite predictions, that can be tested. Being able to test the predictions means that the theory can be falsified in principle. But if the tests are done, and the predictions turned out to be correct, then the theory has survived falsification, and we can take it to be true for the moment. The theory might still be falsified by other tests on other predictions. If a theory stands many and many tests, if even working technology is based on it, you can safely assume it is true, at least in the domain where it is applied. The special theory of relativity is such a theory, and until now the same seems to hold for general relativity. A scientific theory that is falsified has turned out to be a wrong scientific theory, but it could be called scientific, because it did definite predictions. I think what Popper did was just a kind of clarification what actually happened in science already for hundreds of years. But Popper's ideas gave also a a demarcation criterion between science and pseudo-science. Except clarification, Popper's idea of falsification did not contribute much to scientific development. It only made it more understandable. But it was a clear weapon against pseudo-science.

Well, Awe, there are many possible reactions to your ideas: - if everything is determined, so are our reactions to blame somebody for his actions - in line with the quote of Hakwking: our intentions and believes are part of the causal chain that leads to our actions, so what we intent or believe does matter - if you think we cannot blame somebody because his actions are determined, then you are doing a moral claim. And the moral claim does matter: the outcome of our considerations make a difference. But assuming we have this capability, we might expect the same capability of the person we consider to blame for his action. And therefore we can blame him for his action. Not doing this is a performative self-contradiction (Karl-Otto Apel).

See how difficult it can be to find the reguarities and the mathematical formulations to describe them? sorry hoola, that is all too speculative for me.

No, reality is not mathematics. Mathematics is describing physical reality. But only that counts as (physical) reality, if there really is an object that is described. And a lot of mathematics does not describe anything in physical reality. From the repeatability and the reguarity of events in reality it follows that reality can be described by mathematics. If you can give me examples of regularities that cannot be described by a mathematical rule, then tell me.

The OP asked why there are laws of nature. The fact that from the constancy of the laws of nature one can derive the law of conservation of energy is one of the deepest scientific truths that I know. But it does not answer the question why there are laws of nature. It 'only' shows a deep connection between concepts that on first view are not related. Now of course I did not answer the 'why question' either. But I tried to show that there is even no reason to regret that there are laws of nature, as the OP seems to do. So lamenting about the question why there are laws of nature does not make much sense: you would not like to live in a world where there were none. Or worse (?): you would not even be there to ask yourself the question (a rather global application of the anthropic principle). But that has not much to do with physics. That is really more philosophy. But not every mathematical truth correspondents to some law of nature. And the 'exposition' is not very clear: otherwise laws of physics could be easily found. History learns that it is not that easy at all. Or did you mean something else?

Hi Marshalscienceguy, First of all previous posters are right in saying that your questions are not scientific: they are philosophical. So the only thing you can do is to try to clarify the question. Then you should ask yourself how our lives would look like when there were no laws of nature. It would mean that your capability to act for purposes would become impossible. If there were no laws of nature you would not know what the result of your action would be. One day it is this, another day it is something completely different. So the laws of nature are a prequisite of being able to act rationally. It is the regularity of the consequences of your action that enable you to act. So their existence is a pre-condition for the possibility of free will. You should also realise that laws of nature do not dictate how nature behaves: they are descriptions of how nature behaves. Laws of nature are not causes of how things happen: they describe how causality works, but cause nothing themselves. As they are descriptions, they also do not force anything. Your behaviour is also just described by the laws of nature, not forced. Maybe you also see now why magic would not be any solution. Magic exists just in another universe (in your phantasy) where there are different laws of nature. If there were no laws of nature in a 'magical world' you also could not get experience which magic works, and which does not. The better one knows the laws of nature, the more power you can have over your world. So if you want to be powerful, get to know yourself, the people around you, and the world (in that order). The better you understand them, the freeer you get. Eise