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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Rosen on reason, etc.
Message-ID: <5168@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 5-Mar-85 10:09:03 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5168
Posted: Tue Mar  5 10:09:03 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Mar-85 10:09:03 EST
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Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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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!!''. 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? 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....

I know that you are insistent that the existence of free will implies
a soul. 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''. This assumes that the complexity of an organism has
nothing to do with it predictability, but only with the difficulty
in obtaining all the relevant facts.

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?


Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura