Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!laura 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 References: <147@ISM780B.UUCP> <5108@utzoo.UUCP>, <616@pyuxd.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 31 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