amercer said:

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I'm not sure there is a way to prove that.

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If we can stimulate some or all of the brain on a computer, then we will prove the brain is deterministic. I think there is progress in simulating parts of the brain.

TexAgs91 said:

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Another question relevant to free will is "does time flow?". There's reason to think that it doesn't, and if it doesn't then the future has already happened. There's no way for us to make free will decisions.

If time flows, how many seconds per second does it flow? The question is meaningless.

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Man I sat for hours one night in college thinking deeply about the passage of time.... and I wish I still had the notes I made to myself but I do recall walking away from that with a different perspective of time. That there only is the now. Let's assume that time doesn't flow, how is that deterministic? If cause and effect is an illusion then I'm not sure how to comprehending the concepts of will power or temptation.

I'm not sure if you're arguing for causality or determinism. They're different but you seem to use determinism to cover both concepts.

k2aggie07 said:

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I think you're falling into the same frame of reference trap I outlined above.

The future may be a static construct but only because of the entirety of the construct. Meaning, it still has to happen to happen.

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There is a case where the subject has a hand in the plot and a case where he doesn't but thinks he does.

AstroAg17 said:

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I don't think QM plays a significant role in our brains, but such a view does turn our brains into probabilistic systems, albeit predictable ones. A system is either deterministic or it isn't, and under the copenhagen interpretation reality isn't.

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The copenhagen interpretation has a huge hole in it. There's no description of how the wave collapses.

TexAgs91 said:

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AstroAg17 said:

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I don't think QM plays a significant role in our brains, but such a view does turn our brains into probabilistic systems, albeit predictable ones. A system is either deterministic or it isn't, and under the copenhagen interpretation reality isn't.

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The copenhagen interpretation has a huge hole in it. There's no description of how the wave collapses.

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It collapses when it is observed. This may imply some link to consciousness. A conscious observer collapses the wave.

k2aggie07 said:

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I'm not sure if you're arguing for causality or determinism. They're different but you seem to use determinism to cover both concepts.

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I asked before what's the difference, but I never saw an answer.

Time is a man made concept to explain motion. Particle X moves from point A to B to C. It doesn't move from C to B to A because the force that moved it was in the A to C direction.

Physicists being much smarter than me can describe this as a field, or force, or particle, or as entwined space time, but I think it's just motion.

bmks270 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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Another question relevant to free will is "does time flow?". There's reason to think that it doesn't, and if it doesn't then the future has already happened. There's no way for us to make free will decisions.

If time flows, how many seconds per second does it flow? The question is meaningless.

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Man I sat for hours one night in college thinking deeply about the passage of time.... and I wish I still had the notes I made to myself but I do recall walking away from that with a different perspective of time. That there only is the now. Let's assume that time doesn't flow, how is that deterministic? If cause and effect is an illusion then I'm not sure how to comprehending the concepts of will power or temptation.

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Cause and effect are not illusions. The flow of time may be though. The axis of time is not a spatial dimension, so it is different from the others. The interplay between the time and spatial dimensions defines physics in our universe. It is the axis that entropy increases along. The physics that comes from the interplay between time and spatial dimensions determines what happens from one time to the next.

Heh. Dark matter. Dark energy. Magic. Potato potahto.

AstroAg17 said:

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These conversations are always weird because the theist perspective is based on dualism. For me, and I'm assuming Texag91, the question of whether you can build something with free will out of atoms is extremely easy to answer. You can't. You'd need a soul or some other form of ill defined magic.

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Emergent properties.

#sciencemagic

How can you decouple causality from temporality???

bmks270 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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AstroAg17 said:

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I don't think QM plays a significant role in our brains, but such a view does turn our brains into probabilistic systems, albeit predictable ones. A system is either deterministic or it isn't, and under the copenhagen interpretation reality isn't.

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The copenhagen interpretation has a huge hole in it. There's no description of how the wave collapses.

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It collapses when it is observed. This may imply some link to consciousness. A conscious observer collapses the wave.

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There are other interpretations that don't require a mysterious wave collapse.

Causality is a chain of reason, that something happened because of a preceding event.

Determinism is causality's bigger brother, where every link in the chain is fixed at the initial condition of the system.

k2aggie07 said:

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How can you decouple causality from temporality???

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I didn't. I said the opposite: "The interplay between the time and spatial dimensions defines physics in our universe. The physics that comes from the interplay between time and spatial dimensions determines what happens from one time to the next."

amercer said:

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Time is a man made concept to explain motion. Particle X moves from point A to B to C. It doesn't move from C to B to A because the force that moved it was in the A to C direction.

Physicists being much smarter than me can describe this as a field, or force, or particle, or as entwined space time, but I think it's just motion.

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Time is real. In the eclipse experiment that confirmed General Relativity, Einstein computed how far the star would be deviated based on the warping of space by the sun. Before the eclipse he realized that time is warped as well, and made a new prediction which turned out to be correct.

TexAgs91 said:

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bmks270 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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Another question relevant to free will is "does time flow?". There's reason to think that it doesn't, and if it doesn't then the future has already happened. There's no way for us to make free will decisions.

If time flows, how many seconds per second does it flow? The question is meaningless.

---

Man I sat for hours one night in college thinking deeply about the passage of time.... and I wish I still had the notes I made to myself but I do recall walking away from that with a different perspective of time. That there only is the now. Let's assume that time doesn't flow, how is that deterministic? If cause and effect is an illusion then I'm not sure how to comprehending the concepts of will power or temptation.

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Cause and effect are not illusions. The flow of time may be though. The axis of time is not a spatial dimension, so it is different from the others. The interplay between the time and spatial dimensions defines physics in our universe. It is the axis that entropy increases along. The physics that comes from the interplay between time and spatial dimensions determines what happens from one time to the next.

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Cause and effect are what make time what it is by definition, at least as I understand. How can time not exist but cause and effect can? That's just something I can't comprehend and sounds illogical.

TexAgs91 said:

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bmks270 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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AstroAg17 said:

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I don't think QM plays a significant role in our brains, but such a view does turn our brains into probabilistic systems, albeit predictable ones. A system is either deterministic or it isn't, and under the copenhagen interpretation reality isn't.

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The copenhagen interpretation has a huge hole in it. There's no description of how the wave collapses.

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It collapses when it is observed. This may imply some link to consciousness. A conscious observer collapses the wave.

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There are other interpretations that don't require a mysterious wave collapse.

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Wow in a mater of minutes you learned of many other theories of the collapse. Minutes ago you said the cause of the collapse was unknown, now you know of multiple proposed theories?

k2aggie07 said:

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Causality is a chain of reason, that something happened because of a preceding event.

Determinism is causality's bigger brother, where every link in the chain is fixed at the initial condition of the system.

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Yes. That's how I see it too.
i.e. I put my sunglasses on, the reason is because I'm driving towards the west when the sun is setting and it's too bright. This can be broken down into orbital mechanics (determinism), angular momentum (determinism), the brightness of the sun (based on nuclear physics and deterministic), the fact that your eyes are not adapted to continuously look at the sun (evolution based on a long series of natural selection events).

Like biology is based on chemistry which is based on physics. Physics is ultimately the reason for things covered in biology, just as determinism is ultimately the chain of reasons.

bmks270 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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bmks270 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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Another question relevant to free will is "does time flow?". There's reason to think that it doesn't, and if it doesn't then the future has already happened. There's no way for us to make free will decisions.

If time flows, how many seconds per second does it flow? The question is meaningless.

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Man I sat for hours one night in college thinking deeply about the passage of time.... and I wish I still had the notes I made to myself but I do recall walking away from that with a different perspective of time. That there only is the now. Let's assume that time doesn't flow, how is that deterministic? If cause and effect is an illusion then I'm not sure how to comprehending the concepts of will power or temptation.

---

Cause and effect are not illusions. The flow of time may be though. The axis of time is not a spatial dimension, so it is different from the others. The interplay between the time and spatial dimensions defines physics in our universe. It is the axis that entropy increases along. The physics that comes from the interplay between time and spatial dimensions determines what happens from one time to the next.

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Cause and effect are what make time what it is by definition, at least as I understand. How can time not exist but cause and effect can? That's just something I can't comprehend and sounds illogical.

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I didn't say time was an illusion. I said the flow of time was an illusion.

You can have causality with an open system. Determinism is a closed system.

A computer is deterministic for a given input. But the human doing the inputting opens the system.

So again, it's all about frame of reference. And it doesn't take magic to define this.

bmks270 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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bmks270 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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AstroAg17 said:

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I don't think QM plays a significant role in our brains, but such a view does turn our brains into probabilistic systems, albeit predictable ones. A system is either deterministic or it isn't, and under the copenhagen interpretation reality isn't.

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The copenhagen interpretation has a huge hole in it. There's no description of how the wave collapses.

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It collapses when it is observed. This may imply some link to consciousness. A conscious observer collapses the wave.

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There are other interpretations that don't require a mysterious wave collapse.

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Wow in a mater of minutes you learned of many other theories of the collapse. Minutes ago you said the cause of the collapse was unknown, now you know of multiple proposed theories?

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I don't know where I said "many other theories", but I'm sure you'll be able to point that out. And minutes ago I said "The copenhagen interpretation has a huge hole in it. There's no description of how the wave collapses."

It's easy to go back and look what was actually said in a forum. Try it.

p.s. the other interpretation I'm thinking of is Hugh Everett's.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/pdf/dissertation.pdf

and yes, that's just one interpretation. I'm not ruling out that there are others without knowing this.

k2aggie07 said:

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You can have causality with an open system. Determinism is a closed system.

A computer is deterministic for a given input. But the human doing the inputting opens the system.

So again, it's all about frame of reference. And it doesn't take magic to define this.

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Can you have causality in a closed system too?

How does a person come to believe something that they at one point knew was false? (This goes to the question of choosing to hate your favorite band)

It's commonly accepted that a person can, if they want to badly enough, come to believe a lie.

Of course. Can't have determinism without causality but you can have causality without determinism.

k2aggie07 said:

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Of course. Can't have determinism without causality but you can have causality without determinism.

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So in a closed system causality and determinism is the same thing?

Yes, if the system is completely closed, it must be deterministic. This is astroag's point.

amercer said:

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How does a person come to believe something that they at one point knew was false? (This goes to the question of choosing to hate your favorite band)

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This happens when you find out some new information, like when swimmerbabe found out the lead singer of a band she liked was a sadistic pedophile.

Quote:

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It's commonly accepted that a person can, if they want to badly enough, come to believe a lie.

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Aren't there usually reasons for badly wanting to believe a lie? I doubt people just do that for the fun of it.

k2aggie07 said:

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Yes, if the system is completely closed, it must be deterministic. This is astroag's point.

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Ok. I'm not convinced of the Copenhagen interpretation though.

Or universalistic and every change spawns a new system.

TexAgs91 said:

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amercer said:

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How does a person come to believe something that they at one point knew was false? (This goes to the question of choosing to hate your favorite band)

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This happens when you find out some new information, like when swimmerbabe found out the lead singer of a band she liked was a sadistic pedophile.

Quote:

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It's commonly accepted that a person can, if they want to badly enough, come to believe a lie.

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Aren't there usually reasons for badly wanting to believe a lie? I doubt people just do that for the fun of it.

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So where is the experiment to prove your hypothesis?

If I say "I can't choose to hate my favorite band" you say "determinism! "

If I say "I chose to hate my favorite band " you say "something made you do it, determinism! "

And it doesn't matter if most people, most of the time have a reason. If any person, at any point in all of human existence has made a choice out of free will, then the human brain isn't deterministic.

amercer said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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amercer said:

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How does a person come to believe something that they at one point knew was false? (This goes to the question of choosing to hate your favorite band)

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This happens when you find out some new information, like when swimmerbabe found out the lead singer of a band she liked was a sadistic pedophile.

Quote:

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It's commonly accepted that a person can, if they want to badly enough, come to believe a lie.

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Aren't there usually reasons for badly wanting to believe a lie? I doubt people just do that for the fun of it.

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So where is the experiment to prove your hypothesis?

If I say "I can't choose to hate my favorite band" you say "determinism! "

If I say "I chose to hate my favorite band " you say "something made you do it, determinism! "

And it doesn't matter if most people, most of the time have a reason. If any person, at any point in all of human existence has made a choice out of free will, then the human brain isn't deterministic.

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Just show me where you chose to truly hate something you truly loved without any reason other than you just wanted to.

Then I'll say "insanity!"

Ha.

I would really like to come up with a good experiment though. I'm not a dualist, I see no evidence of the supernatural, but the world still doesn't seem deterministic.