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From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Rosen on reason, etc.
Message-ID: <153@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Mar-85 01:49:50 EST
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.153
Posted: Sat Mar  9 01:49:50 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Mar-85 05:17:56 EST
Lines: 85
Nf-ID: #R:utzoo:-510800:ISM780B:27500063:000:4453
Nf-From: ISM780B!jim    Mar  7 15:17:00 1985

>When you start looking at physical laws, though, you are left with
>things which, at some point, have no explanation. Why do you get
>a liquid when you mix the 2 gases hydrogen and oxygen? No matter
>how much chemistry you tell me I can say ``why?'' until you are
>backed up against teh wall and forced to say (shout in frustration)
>``because that is the way the universe works!!''.

All this behavior is derivable from some (not necessarily discovered)
unified field theory.

>From one perspective,
>Special Relativity looks like a kludge -- a bag -- stuck on the edge
>of the nice perfect model of Neutonian physics. Why do particles behave
>differently at high speeds than at low speeds?

This is a very shallow view of physics.  Particles most certainly do not
"act differently" at high and low speeds.  The behavior of particles
is different at low and high speeds *relative to Newtonian predictions*,
because the Newtonian model is wrong.  Newtonian physics is an
inaccurate model which is close to reality at low speeds and far
from reality at speeds near c, just as y=x is a much better
approximation to y=x*x for values near zero than it is for values
far from zero.

>Why is the speec of light
>that precise value and no other? Why is *that* value Plank's constant?
>Why is there a universe at all? Because, you know, the universe works
>that way....

This is a semantic problem.  Let us suppose the speed of light were a
different value.  Then what would your question be?  The same.
Suppose there were no universe at all?  Then you would not be asking
the question.  The point is that
"person asking why universe exists" => universe exists.
In universes in which the speed of light is c, the speed of light is c.
There is no implication that there are no universes with different values,
or that there are no absenses of universes, whatever that may mean.
It is tautological that the primitive parameters of this universe are what
they are.  It is tautological that the universe exists, otherwise the "word"
"would" "have" "no" "definition".

This same approach applies to lottery winners and in other cases of
"synchronicity".  "Why was I so lucky as to have won all this money?
God must be smiling on me".  Nope; someone had to win, it happened to be
you, and to think that makes you special beyond the mere circumstance of
winning is egocentric.  One argument that has been put forth for the existence
of life on other planets is "Why, out of all the universe, should we have
been singled out?"  But, if the statistical odds of life arising were very
very low (which I don't believe), then *of course* it would arise on those
planets where people end up standing around and talking about it.
If this doesn't click for you, then you probably got the coins in the drawers
problem wrong too.

>I know that you are insistent that the existence of free will implies
>a soul.

I wish people would stop talking this way with words they have not defined.

> I think that you are insistent that ``if all the relevant facts
>were collected then it would be possible to predict the actions of
>any given individual and thus demonstrate that they were not really
>free at all''.

First, quantum mechanics argues that all the relevant facts aren't sufficient.
The multiple worlds view allows infinite futures from a given state.
Second, please define "free" in a way that isn't dependent upon your
assumptions about whether freedom exists.

>You may be correct in this, but, on the other hand, is it really a
>stranger, or less plausible notion that out of complexity arises real
>(as in cannot be predicted by anyone, even a theoretical someone who
>could obtain all the facts and understand them) freedom? Is this
>notion any ``stranger'' than the notion that matter and energy are
>the same? or that space and time are not independent?

I don't find the latter two notions strange, but I do find "strange"
people talking about free choice without having demonstrated the agent
of choice.  And I see no relationship between complexity and freedom.
Complex entities have complex behaviors.  In my view, freedom is interesting
in regard to human beings but not rocks because human beings go around talking
and thinking about it.  Most of these philosophical "problems" take on
a completely new appearance when you recognize how completely inescapably
enmeshed you are in the semantic net which *is* you/your mind/your soul.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)