RE: Oh no not another free will thread.
April 24, 2018 at 4:40 pm
(This post was last modified: April 24, 2018 at 4:43 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(April 24, 2018 at 4:22 pm)henryp Wrote: Getting back into it, instead of free will, which is already complicated because it's hard to define and many already question whether it exists or not.
I don't think it's difficult to define. We just have to be clear which of the two kinds we're talking about: The one compatible with determinism or the one incompatible with determinism.
The problem is that people tend to talk at cross purposes if they don't say which one they're talking about first. That's why I explained both versions in the OP.
Quote:How about we do this same problem with quantum randomness?
It is a non-causal event. Determinism can't be used to predict whether you'll get result 1 or result 2.
Of course quantum randomness may actually be pseudo-randomness and ultimately be entirely causal. All we really know is that scientists aren't able to find the causes, and it doesn't seem causal.
My intuition is that all randomness is pseudo-randomness. The notion of the entire universe being causal, it's just some elements to reality (i.e. quantum randomness) are so strange that we are unable to pinpoint the causes... that's all more parsimonious to me than the idea that the universe mostly seems causal and to make sense but then on the quantum level it's acausal suggesting that what seems causal all over the universe is actually probabilistic. To me, causality makes sense of everything, it's more parsimonious to assume the universe as a whole makes sense... as the universe certainly does seem to be governed by laws that make sense. Gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, general relativity, etc.
The way I see it... when things stop making sense that's a failure of us as humans. I have the same view with regard to the idea that humans are able to eventually figure everything out: I don't think so. I think there are many things that we may never know... but I always think there will be more to know. There's always something to know, always something to learn, always more information to be gathered, always more to learn
about the universe. But I don't think we could ever possibly grasp it ALL... and I think there must be some things that are completely beyond our senses including all our senses of extensions of our senses: ultimately we are limited entirely by experience. The only unvierse we can ever experience... is the unvierse as we experience it, whatever it's filtered through. When it comes down to it, we live in a world of phenomena, and no matter how deep we go, whatever reality is noumenal or truly objective outside of ourselves... we, by definition, can never reach.
Quote:Larry somehow gains knowledge of the future and knows that the event ends up having result 2. But Larry still doesn't know why the event will end up having a result of 2.
Well, I don't know what it would mean to know something but not to know why. When you know something will happen with an absolute certainty it tends to only be because you have figured out that the opposite is logically impossible. So I can't make sense of the idea of absolutely knowing something without knowing why (or how).
Quote:Larry's knowledge doesn't provide a cause, meaning the result is still non-causal, meaning it was the product of randomness.
Well, if the universe really is acausal... then yes.... Larry would know which of the randomized possible universe would occur. Surely that's what you're saying. Like, the unvierse could turn out to be an infinite number of ways... but the way it happens to become he knows that it will be that way.
Of course, none of this says anything about free will... because as Strawson explains... randomness doesn't give us any more free will than determinism does.
