Determinism Is Self Defeating

[pocaracas]

"High-level" lol.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that we cannot know precisely both the speed and position of any given particle....
But... just because we can't measure it, it doesn't mean that the particle can't be at a given location and with a given velocity... does it?
Well, all particles must have some length, so a precise position is a strange concept, unless you go for the position of the center, where QM gives you the maximum of the wave function... which tends to be the same.

However, on a slightly less nanoscopic level, these uncertainties become a bit less pronounced and statistics takes over... the averaged wave function gets interpreted as a probability distribution and you get a very accurate (as far we've been able to measure it) probability for each state of the particle.
And, armed with those probabilities, you can determine the what's going to happen and how often.

But what do I know? I'm just a low-level physicist...

Great news!

Okay, given the starting position of the balls in a lottery machine, and their tumbling time in milliseconds before being dropped down their little chutes for display, tell me the winning numbers. Or tell me what the weather will be like on my next birthday.

You will say, "If I had accurate enough information, and enough computational power, I COULD tell you those things." But that's like saying, "If I could go faster than the speed of light, I could . . ."

The reality is you can't calculate the individual particles of even a simple system, and probably will never be able to. You can calculate ONLY on the statistical level, and in many cases not accurately. This is hardly a strong enough foundation on which to establish an absolute philosopy like that of determinism.

First semester of college: the set of natural numbers, N.
They are infinite, I can't count them.
But we all know that they are countable.

Just because something is so complex that I , pocaracas, a mere human, even if aided by a super-computer, can't determine it's outcome, that doesn't mean that the determinism of that outcome isn't there.

---

My brain works based on the laws of physics.
Everything that happens in my head is then deterministic... highly complex, I'll grant you that, but determined by the laws of physics... even if we may have missed some of them.
My brain sends electrical impulses which cause my body to move and type these things on this forum.

Do you have any reason or evidence that states that the brain works non-deterministically?

Show the rules by which physics manifests as subjective awareness-- and not just the appearance of it.

This whole thread is basically a process of begging the question-- "Well, we know that everything is dictated by the rules of physics, including the brain. Therefore, the mind is deterministic." I have a serious problem with this, for three reasons:
1) Nobody has created a physical description of mind, or interacted directly with one. Nobody has measured one, created one, or even provably destroyed one. Nor have you explained in a sensible way why the subjective perspective exists at all in a universe which could function perfectly well without it.

2) You are assuming that because the mind is supervenient on the brain, it cannot offer anything beyond the function of the brain. That's like saying "Casablanca is just a complex interaction of QM particles, and doesn't offer anything beyond the function of a movie projector"-- it doesn't actually explain how something like Casablanca exists, or describe its symbolic importance to the human minds watching it.

3) You ( and by this I mean you and the other physical monists ) keep asking people to furnish evidence that any competitor to the physical monist determinism you take as the default is wrong/incomplete. However, at no point have you actually established the truth of determinism, particularly with regard to mind. Instead, you point to brain function. However, this begs the question-- kind of the point of non-determinism is that mind on some level transcends the pure physical mechanism of the brain. As for evidence, I take as evidence the existence of the subjective perspective, aka sentience, itself. Why should a purely objective physical process manifest as subjective awareness? So far, Dennett has made the most famous attempt at this, but I find it pretty unconvincing.

Now, go back and tell me where I used the concept of "mind"... -.-'

But if you're so eager to use it, here: to me, mind is the high-order perception we have of brain functions.

Think of this "order" as programming classes.
You start with the basics: integers, floats, strings, functions. Build a class with them. Then build another and another, and another.... Then you start building classes that have these other classes in them. And then go up an order.
Keep going up and, at some point, you have no notion of the basics and everything seems to work as if by magic.

A human brain has billions of neurons arranged in a highly complex network. How does that network work? no one knows... although new models keep popping up.

No brain scan has detected an external energy floating by...
Missing parts of the brain represents missing parts of the person's psyche, the person's mind.
So, as far as I see it, the brain is the source of the mind and that should be the default position.