Philosophy Now Forum

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 4:35 pm

1. Do you accept that all known interactions obey conservation laws and the four fundamental forces?

No, not when it comes to persons.

2. Do you have any counterexample—just one—that demonstrates a choice or event occurring outside those constraints?

Yes, you.

There are no such things as "persons" or a "you" in BM's interpretation of reality.

No, there are just billions of agentless (mindless/soulless) configurations of matter ("smart rocks," if you will) that somehow developed the ability to exchange information between each other.

In other words, BM has no business using "personal pronouns" when referring to what, in essence, are nothing more than, again, "smart rocks"...

(or perhaps more accurately --> mindless chunks of "evolving code")

...rolling down a hill under the influence of forces of which the rocks have no control.
_______

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 5:04 pm I am composed of matter and energy, governed by neuroscience, biochemistry, and physics.

So is your corpse. And yet... there seems to be a functional difference between you and your corpse.

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 5:04 pm Show me a single, controlled experiment where a human being has made a decision that violates causality, conservation laws, or the fundamental interactions of physics.

Sure thing, drop a glass on the floor then put it back togerher. Under determinism the laws of physics are time-symmetric - they work the same whether time runs forward or backward.

And yet, entropy is not a conserved quantity.

Also...negentropic/living systems do locally violate/reverse the typical direction of the 2nd law by decreasing their internal entropy.

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 6:19 pm
Alexiev, your entire argument boils down to "We don’t know everything, so nothing is certain." That’s just intellectual laziness disguised as skepticism.

1) Yes, humans act as if the world is indeterminate because we lack complete knowledge, not because it actually is indeterminate. That’s just epistemic limitation, not a refutation of determinism.

2) Your claim that “scientific laws change” is meaningless unless you can show a fundamental principle—like conservation laws or causality—being overturned. Science refines its understanding, but never once has it discovered something that breaks determinism.

And no, my challenge is not "ridiculous"—it’s just inconvenient for your argument. You admit you have no counterexample, yet still insist skepticism is warranted. That’s just doubt for the sake of doubt, not a serious position.

You appear to have no idea what my argument comprises. I've repeated it several times in plain, simple English. Yet you continue to make idiotic statements, such as my position is "not a refutation of determinism."
Duh! I've stated exactly that repeatedly. Why you repeat my own words as if making an argument is unclear. I reiterated the point for the umpteenth time in my last post. Once again, you ignored (or, strangely, failed to comprehend) what I wrote and simply repeated your position, of which everyone in this endless thread is aware.

seeds wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 6:46 pmThere are no such things as "persons" or a "you" in BM's interpretation of reality.

And still he posts as though he is a person, an individual, a free will.

No, there are just billions of agentless (mindless/soulless) configurations of matter ("smart rocks," if you will) that somehow developed the ability to exchange information between each other.

As I say: he mebbe wants to believe that, but it seems to me he really doesn't.

In other words, BM has no business using "personal pronouns" when referring to what, in essence, are nothing more than, again, "smart rocks"...

Exactly.

His determinism is an odd thing. All the meat machines perfectly emulate free wills. If his spiel were true we'd expect at least some meat machines to act as the the bio-automata they are. That never happens. Even a hard core determinist like Mike keeps right on actin' and postin' as a free will would.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 6:51 pmSo is your corpse. And yet... there seems to be a functional difference between you and your corpse.

I wonder what Mike thinks is the difference between animate organics and inanimate organics, between the living and the dead?

Mebbe he'll tell us.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:57 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:46 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:00 pm

Neither of us can legitimately say those notions were universally accepted or believed. We can only say some folks accepted or believed those things. Unlike free will which everyone knows they have or are (even you).



The notion man is solely a biological machine governed by physical laws is recent and it is ridiculous.



Yes, exactly. Universally, as far back as you wanna go, all men, everywhere, recognize themselves as free wills. The ridiculous idea that man is a meat machine is a recent thing, not at all universally accepted and not self-evident.



Go look in the mirror: you are that single, testable case of an *self-caused choice

*None of us free willists say your choices are uncaused.

Henry, you mean your choices are caused, and who could disagree with you! But what you don't understand is what philosophers call "free will" is not caused at all by preceding events.

Not ENTIRELY caused by nothing but preceding physical events.

The caveat is important, B. "Free" does not imply "without contributing factors" or "without any prior circumstances." Those are present, and they are somewhat involved in constraining the choices available. Nobody questions that.

All it implies is that the choice of action that proceeds is not forced to be only one thing, but is selected by the actor from at least two (and usually more) possibilities that can be actualized.

So, for example, you were constrained and limited by Henry's message as to what possible replies would be appropriate. But you selected among the various possibilities that you deemed potentially relevant, and then you created your message. Your message wasn't pre-determined to be only the one you typed: you chose it, from a wide range of possible options. You could have agreed with Henry, aimed to refute Henry, or tried to modify what he said -- which is what you selected.

In your multiple choice scenario , which occurs very frequently, I would be predisposed to choose the one I did choose. Predispositions are caused by preceding events such as an immediate threat, by contemporary circumstances such as my personality, and by laws of nature.

I may have been so indecisive that I chose at random maybe by a sort of lucky dip involving pieces of folded paper in a bucket.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 8:50 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:57 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:46 pm
Henry, you mean your choices are caused, and who could disagree with you! But what you don't understand is what philosophers call "free will" is not caused at all by preceding events.

Not ENTIRELY caused by nothing but preceding physical events.

The caveat is important, B. "Free" does not imply "without contributing factors" or "without any prior circumstances." Those are present, and they are somewhat involved in constraining the choices available. Nobody questions that.

All it implies is that the choice of action that proceeds is not forced to be only one thing, but is selected by the actor from at least two (and usually more) possibilities that can be actualized.

So, for example, you were constrained and limited by Henry's message as to what possible replies would be appropriate. But you selected among the various possibilities that you deemed potentially relevant, and then you created your message. Your message wasn't pre-determined to be only the one you typed: you chose it, from a wide range of possible options. You could have agreed with Henry, aimed to refute Henry, or tried to modify what he said -- which is what you selected.

In your multiple choice scenario , which occurs very frequently, I would be predisposed to choose the one I did choose.

You don't know that at all. What you do know now is that you DID choose to modify what he said; you don't know whether or not that was the only choice you had.

And even the word "choice" implies there were alternate possibilities -- which is a denial of Determinism in itself.

BigMike wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 6:59 pm "...Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?..."

It's a question that never fails to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure....

...I’d love to hear your thoughts—especially if you think there’s a way to bridge this gap between religious belief and scientific reality.

That second bolded bit is quite the porky, for I've never felt any love whatsoever coming from its author.

Furthermore, I highly doubt that BM would "love to hear" (be open to) any so-called "bridge" between science and religious belief that even remotely involves any sort of supernatural (non-provable) speculations.

Anyway, with that being said, I need to address the fact that BigMike's thread title is confused and has things backwards.

The religious don't reject science, no, the religious reject the notion that this fantastically ordered dimension of reality that human science is attempting to decipher and explain, is a product of the blind and mindless meanderings of "chance."

Sure, the religious knuckleheads have come up with some amazingly lame ideas regarding the possible form of the intelligence responsible for the order of the universe, but they are at least on the right track.

Whereas, on the other hand, if anything, it is the proponents of the chance hypothesis - derived from scientific (materialistic) theories - who are truly "embracing the impossible" (hence, BM's thread title confusion).

What gets me is that if science is showing us how in just a few billion years, life and mind (on just this one planet alone) have been able to evolve from one-celled creatures into super-conscious beings who are capable of building skyscrapers, computers, and vehicles that can take us to other planets, etc., etc., ...

...then considering that it is at least possible (no, make that probable) that the process of the evolution of life, mind, and consciousness has probably been taking place as far back as eternity itself,...

...then why is it so difficult for the BigMike's of the world to imagine that the process of evolution - over the span of eternity - may have allowed for the manifestation of a singular living consciousness who acquired the capabilities necessary for creating a universe (as we see it) out of the living fabric of its very own being?

Anyway, BigMike asked for a possible way of bridging the gap between religious belief and scientific reality, and I have thus provided one that involves evolution.

And the only things it (my "bridge" offering) eliminates from BigMike's materialistic theory is...

1. the utter nonsense that the unfathomable order of the universe is a product of chance.

...and...

2. his insistence of the nonexistence of "free will."

And that's because any living Entity that has evolved to the point of being able to create a universe out of the fabric of its very own personal mind, surely possesses the free will to not only intervene in what seems like purely deterministic processes in order to guide creation along a "preferred" path,...

...but also possessed the free will to have never created the universe in the first place.

Now, if you're wondering if said higher Being possessed the free will not to employ the seemingly deterministic processes that led to the present state of the universe, then that's a different issue, and the answer to that may indeed be no.
_______

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgvDrFwyW4k

Robert Sapolsky on determinism.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:02 am https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgvDrFwyW4k

Robert Sapolsky on determinism.

Then I guess I was determined by the laws of physics to say this. It's not like I have a choice on the matter...

Determinism's false.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:23 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:02 am https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgvDrFwyW4k

Robert Sapolsky on determinism.

Then I guess I was determined by the laws of physics to say this. It's not like I have a choice on the matter...

Determinism's false.

I find it interesting that Sapolsky doesn't mention anything about conservation laws. If they are that important, then it seems like that would be a big deal to him given his position.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 7:06 pm

seeds wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 6:46 pmThere are no such things as "persons" or a "you" in BM's interpretation of reality.

And still he posts as though he is a person, an individual, a free will.

Were you aware that you, "bigmike", and others have different definitions for the words 'free will'?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 9:17 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 8:50 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:57 pm
Not ENTIRELY caused by nothing but preceding physical events.

The caveat is important, B. "Free" does not imply "without contributing factors" or "without any prior circumstances." Those are present, and they are somewhat involved in constraining the choices available. Nobody questions that.

All it implies is that the choice of action that proceeds is not forced to be only one thing, but is selected by the actor from at least two (and usually more) possibilities that can be actualized.

So, for example, you were constrained and limited by Henry's message as to what possible replies would be appropriate. But you selected among the various possibilities that you deemed potentially relevant, and then you created your message. Your message wasn't pre-determined to be only the one you typed: you chose it, from a wide range of possible options. You could have agreed with Henry, aimed to refute Henry, or tried to modify what he said -- which is what you selected.

In your multiple choice scenario , which occurs very frequently, I would be predisposed to choose the one I did choose.

You don't know that at all. What you do know now is that you DID choose to modify what he said; you don't know whether or not that was the only choice you had.

And even the word "choice" implies there were alternate possibilities -- which is a denial of Determinism in itself.

Wrong AGAIN.

These ones REALLY WERE NOT YET FULLY AWARE that they USED DIFFERENT definitions for the words that they were USING. Or, if they WERE FULLY AWARE, then they CERTAINLY DID NOT SHOW this.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:47 am

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:23 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:02 am https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgvDrFwyW4k

Robert Sapolsky on determinism.

Then I guess I was determined by the laws of physics to say this. It's not like I have a choice on the matter...

Determinism's false.

I find it interesting that Sapolsky doesn't mention anything about conservation laws. If they are that important, then it seems like that would be a big deal to him given his position.

Gary, that's because conservation laws are the backbone of physics—they’re not just "important," they define what is physically possible.

In fact, almost every law of physics is a conservation law, or a combination of two or more conservation laws. Conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum, and charge are fundamental to everything—from the motion of galaxies to the firing of neurons in your brain.

This is why determinism isn’t just a biological or neuroscientific claim—it’s a foundational truth of physics itself. Any process, including thought and decision-making, must obey these conservation laws. There’s no wiggle room for “uncaused” choices because nothing in nature violates conservation laws—ever.

BigMike wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 10:30 am Gary, that's because conservation laws are the backbone of physics—they’re not just "important," they define what is physically possible.

Which is not even in the same ballpark of determining what's impossible.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

BigMike wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 10:30 am In fact, almost every law of physics is a conservation law, or a combination of two or more conservation laws. Conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum, and charge are fundamental to everything—from the motion of galaxies to the firing of neurons in your brain.

That's called a reification fallacy.

The very "laws" you are speaking about are formulations of human brains. Codified in the "laws" of Mathematics.

The entire sleight of hand, this "conservation", this "symmetry" you observe is beause of the equality sign in Mathematics.
It's a zero-sum game>

1 = 1
1-1 = 0
0 = 0

You are confusing the map for the teritory.