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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Science & Philosophy vs Rosenism
Message-ID: <536@spar.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 07:15:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.536
Posted: Tue Sep 24 07:15:40 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Sep-85 08:25:48 EDT
References: <1495@pyuxd.UUCP> <2197@pucc-h> <1510@pyuxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 203

>>>All those who believe in free will must of necessity and implication
>>>believe in souls.  There is of course nothing to stop a person from
>>>holding two contradictory beliefs...

>>    Horsefeathers! You have only shown that YOUR definition of free will
>>    (spontaneous behavior) is not consistent with the decrepit a priori
>>    assertion:
>> 
>>       All actions are totally determined by antecedent causes

>Which is supported both by scientific study...

    What scientific study? You are ignoring the most accurate scientific
    evidence and analysis of this century!

    I have a question for you:

        How could we ever determine the truth or falsity of determinism? 
    
    Clearly we cannot roll back time and see if the same events
    transpire. The only way I know is to devise controlled experiments in
    which initial conditions are as identical as possible, and then see
    if identical results recur.
    
    Now the amount of experimental accuracy is constrained by the
    technological limitations of the day.  But until recent times, the
    scientific community had little reason to doubt that all `chance' in
    experimental results would not ultimately yield to ever increasing
    scientific accuracy.

    Certain nondeterministic scientific theories (such as the statistical
    ones used in thermodynamics) were grudgingly accepted in classical times
    as the practical consequences of the difficulty in gathering the
    enormous amount of data that corresponded to the initial conditions of
    zillions of particles -- in principle, scientists asserted, given
    perfect knowledge, we could totally determine the subsequent positions
    of each and every particle from the initial conditions alone.
    
    Similarly, the unpredictability of human behavior was explained as due
    to lack of knowledge. Such mere lack of knowledge is referred to as
    `classical indeterminism'.

    As I see it, the empirical evidence for determinism rests on the validity
    of such statements as:

	As we progressively refine our accuracy in controlling the
	initial conditions of an experiment, our ability to predict the
	outcome correspondingly improves without limit.

        In particular, as we narrow our focus to the simplest phenomena,
        all uncertainty in the experimental outcome approaches zero.

    Until science encountered quantum randomness, nobody ever had any reason
    to doubt that physics would not forever improve the accuracy of its
    predictions without bound.

    But when science finally reached the level of quantum phenomena, 
    our ability to predict outcomes encounters an empirical limit --
    a point where `chance' persists despite continued refinements in
    scientific technique. Consequently, the strongest advocates of determinism
    had to abandon empirical arguments in favor of metaphysical ones
    and hopes that the barrier might someday be overcome.

    At first, wishful determinists could successfully argue that the
    Heisenberg uncertainty principle represented nothing more than a
    threshhold of knowability -- they insisted that even if science cannot
    know the complete state of quantum entities, that at least in principle
    a precise state `exists' metaphysically.  This is referred to as the
    `hidden variables' hypothesis, and has been rigorously shown TO BE
    INCONSISTENT WITH  EMPIRICALLY VERIFIABLE QUANTUM PHENOMENA (Bell's
    interconnectedness principle), unless one is willing to abandon
    Einstein's locality principle (the notion that all effects must be
    propagated thru spacetime).

    If you abandon the locality principle, you and I have no
    disagreement, as you have then asserted that a person's present state
    is not striclty determined by antecedent causes, but additionally by
    noncausally related events occurring in remote regions of
    relativistic `elsewhen' (whose effects could otherwise not impinge
    until the future) not to mention the possibility of noncausal past (or
    even future) influences.

    Let me repeat -- the evidence against strict causal determinism is
    not just quantum randomness. 
    
    Rather, the arguments are rigorous logical analyses of such phenomena as
    the far more enigmatic instantaneous collapse of the Schroedinger
    probability wave, and noncausal interactions across macroscopic
    distances that have empirically verified Bell's interconnectedness
    principle, whose truth has been shown to be independent of QM.

>..and by many of the philosophers you quoted in your last article, whom you
>use as "ammunition".

    I think you failed to perceive the purpose of those quotes -- note
    that I included two anti-free-will arguments as well (Hume, Voltaire)
    -- what I first showed is that free will has had many definitions.

    And my "ammunition" outflanked your position by demonstrating that,
    even with the assumption of strict determinism, many of the most
    influential philosophers still upheld free-will by arguments that do
    not require `souls'. Below are the critical passages:
    
	Descartes: That we possess free will is self-evident: ..we
	perceived in ourselves such a liberty such that we were able to
	abstain from believing what was not perfectly certain and
	indubitable

	Leibniz: He made a rational decision, and therfore acted freely..
    
	Hobbes: A man's volitions, desires, and inclinations are
	necessary in the sense that they are the results of a chain of
	determining causes; but when he acts in accordance with these
	desires and inclinations, he is said to act freely. 

	Kant: ..he regards himself as determinable only through laws which
	he gives himself through reason. And to be determinable through
	self-imposed laws is to be free.

    I fail to see how the above arguments imply that free will
    necessarily entails a belief in souls.

>>>...It's just a sign that they haven't thought things through.

>>     As a libertarian (=freewiller), I take that as an insult!

>Now you know how your choice of words sounds to me.  

    You repeatedly dumped insults on others (me included) long before
    they were ever returned. Frankly, I take it as a compliment to
    receive verbal abuse from one who will not read or think.

>You could of course,
>show me how you HAVE thought these things through rather than just
>asserting that you haven't.  Your avoidances of consequences and
>implications of beliefs has been astounding.

    Baloney! What arguments have I ignored? I hardly deny that strict
    determinism is the conclusion of the classical sciences up to and
    including Einsteinian relativity. My point is that the conclusions of
    the vanguard of modern thought (relativity and Skinnerism excluded)
    convincingly demonstrate that strict causal determinism cannot
    disprove spontaneous behavior (your definition of free will).
    
    I have backed up my assertions with empirical evidence that is
    widely accepted within scientific community; and my philosophical
    claims are supported by quotes from well respected sources -- all of
    which required extensive outside research on my part.
    
    For what good? To have them glossed over by a person who would
    rather fill this newsgroup with opinions based on obsolete science
    and reluctance to read any philosophical literature whatsoever?

    May I humbly infer a desperate attempt on your part to justify your
    intellectual fossilization. Do you fear new ideas that might force
    you to reevaluate your moldy opinions? Have you lost all trace of
    youthful curiosity about the nature of things?
    
    On the contrary, I have not only examined your evidence and explained
    why I found it wanting, I used to hold your identical position until I
    encountered the evidence you refuse to examine. It is you who seem
    unable to grasp what many here, including myself, are saying.

    Several of us have REPEATEDLY presented hard scientific evidence which you
    simply ignore -- evidence that, by the way, not only also explains your
    precious causal determinism, but which has been rigorously shown to be
    inexplicable by causal determinism.

    And what astounding beliefs do I hold?  My claims agnostically suspend
    faith on all issues for which the evidence is not compelling. 
    For example:

    *I hold no belief about determinism in general; however I do insist
     that your causal determinism (where all effects are determined by
     temporally and spatially impinging causes) is contradicted by
     the empirical evidence and rigorous arguments (from Von Neumann,
     Bell, Von Fraassen, and unintentionally, from Einstein himself,
     who argued that QM and locality are contradictory).

     Such causal determinism is still, of course, quite pragmatically
     useful for many modern feats of engineering, just as behaviorism is
     a useful methodology for focusing our attention on that portion of
     human behavior that can be objectively understood.

     The weakness of your arguments is when you abuse perfectly useful 
     methodologies THAT ARE SCIENTIFICALLY KNOWN TO BE LACKING to `prove'
     that certain phenomena cannot exist.

    *I hold no belief as to the absolute existence of free will; instead,
     I insist each definition and corresponding set of assumptions should be
     analyzed on its own terms and given credence according to the
     explicative value of that philosophical framework.
    
     For example, if free will is "spontaneous choice", then it does not
     exist in systems where causal determinism runs everything.

     Conversely, if free will is "rational choice of a conscious agent",
     then it would seem to exist within any system where consciousness
     and rationality are real entities.

     "What's so great about science?" -- Paul Feyerabend

-michael