Xiangsu

I have personally subscribed to the idea of determinism for some time now. One of the ideas that I have held to be true is that if we were to go back in time 1 week from today, and observe the events over again, they would happen the same way as long as no variables were changed. Because essentially everything has a cause, a reason for its action. Every choice you make is determined by environment and genetics, and according to Heisenberg I guess you could say the randomness of particles.

My question to my fellow TFP members is this: if one were to go back in time, would the events happen the same way if you don't change anything?

According to the uncertainty principle, just by observing the events and going back, the particles that make up everything would act differently because they act randomly. Some would say this would not affect the larger scale of things, but I can't help but think of the Butterfly Effect.

I personally feel that, as Einstein said, there is a reason, a cause for the movements of these particles. It is just beyond our current knowledge or understanding.

Perhaps someone with a better understanding of certain principles of Quantum physics could shed some light on the matter. Causal determinism is something that holds up better than most philosophical ideas when thinking about the way we live our lives. I wonder if someone with a background in quantum physics could give us a better idea of how much this really affects our lives.

If the choices we make are all determined by things we can't control, then is it right for an omnipotent being to punish someone for their "choices?" This has always been the key of the idea of determinism in its relation to me and is one of the main reasons I cannot believe in the Christian God. More of a side note on my personal feelings but I wonder what you guys think?



Just a few interesting things to get some good philosophical debate going on and hopefully in the end everyone will come to a better understanding of themselves and the world around them. Don't be shy, speak up!

asaris

I'm not a physics student, but doesn't the Uncertainty Principle merely state that we cannot both know the velocity and position of a particle exactly? That is, isn't it an epistemological principle, not an ontological principle? I mean, I hate to give determinists any extra ammunition, but I'd just as soon be accurate about this sort of thing.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Xiangsu

From what I've read, I think you are right in a sense. However, their stance is that the reason you can't know the exact velocity and position of a particle exactly is because they hold that its random. Einstein was saying that if we knew all the forces that acted on these particles, one could know the exact position and velocity. However, they held that there is no way to know and there is no cause for their movements, it is completely random.

Nothing else in the universe acts without cause, I find it more probable that it is just beyond our current technology to measure, or perhaps beyond our understanding.

Also, why is it you would hate to give determinists any extra ammunition? Is their some great flaw in Determinism that perhaps you could enlighten us on? Just curious thats all, its something that I have spent a lot of time thinking on.

Here are two of my favorite quotes relating to determinism:
-------------------------------

"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert Einstein

"A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills." - Schopenhauer

asaris

I've posted plenty here on determinism and why I think it's false; basically, it doesn't allow for moral action, and I take moral action as a given.

I believe that the interpretation you give is the Copenhagen interpretation, which is the more prominent among physicists. But I don't think there's anything about Heisenberg's law which compels it.

In any case, even if the activity of elementary particles is random, that doesn't help the free will case, since random activity isn't any more free than determined activity.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Xiangsu

I noticed another major thread on here about determinism and I posted on that thread recently. Your right in what you say about determinism, it doesn't exactly allow for moral action. However, that doesn't mean its not true.

You are right in the case of this argument and its affect on human morality. Either way, people are not responsible for what they do and you have no control over your life.

Why make that assumption that moral action is a given? Because its not fair? What is not fair is that someone is born into poverty and "God" gave them lower than average intelligence and when they kill someone else we see it as they made a bad choice. We hold them responsible for their decision, even though they didn't decide to be abused as a child, or to grow up starving half their life, etc.

Then, when someone goes through life with above average intelligence, and I can tell you anyone of you who would spend time in the philosophy section on TFP has at least average intelligence, maybe you grew up poor, and while, who knows but we will assume, that you may have been abused, you had the logic and other influences on your life to allow you to overcome that. With all those factors that one does not have control over, to take pride in your choices throughout your life is not right either.

roachboy

i have to say that i am following what is being asked about here less as the thread begins to unfold. i think this may follow from the kind of work that i do, which uses determinism in the ontological sense in quite a different way than it is being used here, and which views with great suspicion moves that jump across registers (from propositions involving subatomic physics and problems of observation to questions of religion/metaphysics for example)....

could you try to be clearer about the logic involved here?
i dont see it.
i could lay out a speculative framework that would link things together, but at the moment am pressed for time....

thanks.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Xiangsu

This is what I want to know, everything else thus has been more of a tangent:

"I have personally subscribed to the idea of determinism for some time now. One of the ideas that I have held to be true is that if we were to go back in time 1 week from today, and observe the events over again, they would happen the same way as long as no variables were changed...

My question to my fellow TFP members is this: if one were to go back in time, would the events happen the same way if you don't change anything?"

I admit my understanding of physics is limited by my knowledge and experience. However, my question really boils down to this.

If the movements of particles cannot be predicted and they act randomly without cause. Does this affect things on a larger scale? Because essentially everything would still have the same properties, the same amount of protons and electrons for example. I mean, could the randomness of particles affect say the ideas in our head. Because since you mind is made up of particles and if those are acting randomly that means I could type all this now, but if we went back in time 20 min. ago. Would it be slightly different? Personally, the more I think about it, the crazier it sounds.

My hope is was that someone with a better understanding of the physics and quantum physics could maybe enlighten me on how much of an affect the random movements of particles could have on people.

Daniel_

I was under the impression that chaos theory said that there are things that cannot be predicted even if you have all the data about the startign conditions.

This being the case, if you went back a week you cannot be certain that thgs will work out the same way.

It's not Heisenberg, it's Schroedinger. The random decay of a single radioactive nucleus cannot be predicted. The cat that died today in the box may not die in the tomorrow that we have if we go back to yesterday.

__________________

╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

filtherton

Roach, when i think determinism, i think of the idea that everything that happens is the direct result of what happened before it to the extent that all of existence could theoretically be reduced to a set of rules and a set of initial conditions. Then, if you had a ridiculously powerful computer you could program it with these rules and initial conditions, hit "run", and watch everything that has and will happen, and because of its deterministic nature everything you'd see would be the only things that could have happened. I don't know if you've ever played the card game "war", but if you're familiar with it, it's completely deterministic: the outcome is determined solely by the initial conditions, i.e. the cards each person starts with.


The problem with studying things at the subatomic level is that our observations can alter things- that photon that bounced off that electron and ended up in our eye altered the trajectory of the the electron. This doesn't mean that the electron necessarily has completely random behavior, it just means that we don't have the means to predict that behavior.

I think that it is important to make a distinction between things that are predictable and things that are determined. I don't think it is accurate to claim that the lack of a deterministic model implies a lack of determinism. Science shouldn't be confused with reality - they are two different things. Science attempts to be a useful model of reality, while reality just does what it does with little regard for the accuracy of science. Atoms didn't wait for the plum pudding model to be debunked to develop orbitals, they presumably had them all along.

Furthermore, i don't see how any dogmatic scientist could deny that the universe is completely deterministic - as far as i can tell, the scientific method is predicated on the notion that ultimately things behave in a predictable, explainable manner.

roachboy

thanks filtherton...so then determinism is of a piece with the assumption that mechanical causation applies across scales?
that seems among the first things that would go out the window when you juxtapose anything like quantum physics to actions that happen within the scale that we as humans percieve/inhabit.

so there's a question of scale.
another problem: projections as to cause lean on assumptions about the general characteristics of the system within which elements circulate. there is a kinda huge body of information out there on complex dynamical systems theories for modelling how life operates: because of the characteristics of these systems, any notion of determinism is inapplicable. instead you have processes that are geared around emergence, coupling of waveforms/oscillators, etc. there is obviously event that follows event, but causal links are really difficult to say much about in a meaningful sense, particularly if your notion of causation is locked into mechanics.


natural law seems like a name given to an observable regularity. so it would be a frame-contingent characterization. within particular types of systems, these regularities are predictable and so functionally are like laws. the frame-contingent status of this claim--that regularity x *is* a "nautral law" is at once obvious and overlooked.


this snippets outline problems, tant pis, let's cut to the question:
why is it that folk want to generate a simple, linear world for themselves?
here are some sentences from wittgenstein's tractatus.
he is most elegant:

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

I'd like to believe in time streams. That way, everything in a stream could be considered predetermined, but there are forks in the stream to accept every possibility, so there are still endless possibilities. I guess my answer is 'both'.

filtherton

Let me preface this by saying that i'm not a quantum physicist so some of this is coming out of my ass. With that out of the way, i think that quantum physics is what you get when you try to understand phenomena that exist at the very far end of what we are currently capable of perceiving. It's pretty esoteric shit, but to my knowledge all physicists operate under the assumption that things are predictable. Perhaps predictably unpredictable.

Anyways, i think that it is more of a philosophical question as to whether certain things truly are random, or whether we just haven't yet divined a means of understanding and explaining the underlying mechanisms.

To me, the idea of randomness is very similar to the idea of an all controlling diety. These notions occupy the opposite ends of a spectrum- both require a certain amount of faith in light of the constant trudging forward of scientific understanding. They're both somewhat romantic notions, too, when compared to the idea that because everything has essentially already happened all we can really do is experience it as it plays out.

Probabilistic models are interesting things. They're all assumptions and probabilities and differential equations. What's interesting is that, from what i've gathered in my somewhat limited experience with them, they're only necessary when you don't have enough information(for whatever reason) to form a deterministic model(though i imagine that's not always true). In the end, though, they're just models; they're only as accurate and useful as we can make them, and they expose just as much information about our limited perspectives as they do about how the world might work.

As for why folks would want a linear world: i imagine most of them don't. Most people enjoy the notion of free will, and determinism doesn't really allow for it. The other side of that coin is that a completely determined existence might conceivably completely absolve one of any sort of personal responsibility, i.e. "It's not my fault, i was merely swept up in the unwavering momentum of the history of the universe."

archetypal fool

I feel that I can clear up a few question flowing around this thread. I believe that the double-slit experiment , among its many interestingly insights, pretty much shows that the universe is random. Not too long ago, scientists were able to perform the double-slit experiment one photon at a time. During the experiment, located within a vacuum, a single photon was shot at a material which would register the impact though a screen with two slits. All the variables were exactly the same, and yet, every shot hit a random place. When the experiment was done, the familiar banded pattern was present. You can do this experiment many times, and yet you'll probably never get the same results (i.e, the first photon you shoot will almost never hit the same region the first photon hit last time you did the experiment, neither will the second, etc...), which basically slaps the face of conventional deterministic science.

Quantum physics says that you can't define any particle as an "object" the way we're familiar with them. Photons aren't "flying around" everywhere; your TV isn't "shooting" electrons at the screen. It's some pretty crazy shit, but until the photon or electron is required to exist (e.g, when it impinges itself in your TV, or when a photon reaches your eye, etc...) it doesn't. Before a photon hits your eyes, it exists as a wave of probability, not a sphere the way we imagine them, and the same applies to the electrons, and through correlation, protons and all matter. And as for the Heisenberg principle, it works like this: We can't measure the momentum or location of a particle not because we don't have the technological ability to do so, but because if the probability wave for the photon exists, and you attempt to measure the momentum or the location, you create a "need" for the particle to exist so that you can measure the property. Because of this, it has to "pop" into existence, then turn back into a new probability wave. You basically alter the original properties of the wave. There's no way to get by this, because you can't measure somethings which doesn't exist. Therefor, since matter exhibits wave properties, you can't predict exactly where it will hit, but you come up with a probability spread, and we're all familiar with the way probability works. You know that if you flip a coin, you have 1/2 chance that it will come up heads, yet you can throw it and get 5 tails in a row. There is randomness in probability, and since wave properties are defined by probability, there is randomness in the way matter behaves at the subatomic level. Like I said before, it's crazy, but if you read "Nature Loves to Hide" by Malin, it will hopefully make much more sense.

While these affects are only on the subatomic scales, all of the universe we see exists because of the interactions at these scales, so the tendency for randomness exhibited in subatomic interactions are, always have, and will always be affecting us in some way, even if we don't perceive them.

filtherton

archetypal fool, i know what some proponents of quantum physics claim the ramifications of their experiments are, i'm just not so certain i agree. Again, i'm not a quantum physicist, and don't think that i have the time to become one so perhaps i should stop digging myself a hole, but how is it that we can be sure that subatomic particles are random? Couldn't it simply be that we lack sufficient insight to predict and explain their behavior?

It just seems like quantum mechanics often just amounts to a mathematical model whose implications in the real world are broadly overstated.

Ourcrazymodern?

OP: If you don't change anything, the same things happen. Possibly over and over. (as they have and as they appear to tend to do)

__________________
BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

archetypal fool

It absolutely could be that we lack this insight, and the entire reason for science is to gain it. As it stands, the double-slit experiment using single protons is one of the most important ones. You can repeat the experiment many times, and it will never be the same. Perhaps one day a new model will come around which sheds light on something new and startling which explains it perfectly, but until that day, QM is the only things which comes close to explaining this phenomenon, and so I'll believe it until it changes. I'm not a quantum physicist either, but the way I see it, it's been around for nearly a century and produces equations which are incredibly precise, and I haven't heard a single scientist butt heads with it. That's got to mean something .

And yes, GM is mostly mathematical, but the derived equations are more accurate than the alternative ones, so long as we're talking about subatomic scales. That's why physics is divided into Einsteinian physics (such as relativity) and QM, and they are incompatible, which implies there is a more fundamental physics which hasn't been discovered yet. In fact, the only model which united physics currently is string theory, and even that has many unsolvable problems.

When it comes down to it, quantum mechanics implied some very counterintuitive and hard to swallow things about our universe, but nothing else accounts for the properties like it does. To believe in quantum physics is a true paradigm shift.

roachboy

1. thing is that even the possibility that mechanical causality applies only to limited scales/systems is enough to undo any committment to determinism at all.

2. to think that abandoning determinism means that therefore everything is random is an inversion of the same logic: randomness is more coherent defined as the inverse of determined. the assumption is that to be=to be determined, to have an a priori form. that meanings are transcendent, in short---the reverse of determinacy is indeterminacy, and the transposition of indeterminacy is a chain of words like randomness.

the problem is the way of thinking itself---the trouble created by frames of reference shaped by this way of thinking simply replicate them, follows from them.

3. the problem then is not determinacy/indeterminacy.
it is whether there is another way of thinking about ontology.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

filtherton

1. It depends on what you mean by commitment. I guess i'm only really casually committed to determinism in that though i think that everything should be able to be understood as being the direct result of something that happened previously, i also think the question of whether existence is determined or not is unanswerable and therefore more of a philosophical exercise. I think it's an interesting idea, and also that it's implicitly a natural extension of belief in the scientific method.

2. I think that randomness is a property of a system that isn't determined and that undetermined systems aren't necessarily completely random. I think that the level of randomness perceived in any system is inversely proportional to the amount of understanding one has of the system.

It's interesting because i think that you and i are approaching this subject from two different perspectives. I don't know how much math you've had, but the words "system" and "determined" have very specific meanings in linear algebra. All a system is is a series of relationships in the form of equations and the system is determined if there are as many equations as there are unknowns. If you have fewer equations than variables the system is underdetermined and you have a uncertainty. I know that it gets much more complicated than that, but the one thing (i think) that doesn't change is that the key to "determining" as system is finding as many relationships between the unknowns as you need to.

Now, i know that math isn't reality, but the two do quite often overlap. I think that if one had enough information concerning the relationships between different phenomena in reality, one could ultimately predict everything that will ever happen before anything actually has. All this is really theoretical, though, since that level of understanding seems a bit beyond the scope of human capability.

archetypal fool

I also believe it's a philosophical question, and as such, there is no true "answer" outside of the scientific establishment. Many things about quantum physics cause a lot of people to cringe because it's so...odd. To truly start to understand, you have to start a philosophical battle with yourself about how you think the universe works, and it's quite weird really, because who though philosophy would extend itself into science? Or, for that matter, the universe as a whole? I certainly didn't, and my friends recommended me to some books, and I'll tell you, for a solid month after reading, I was torn in half, because so many elements which we perceive and believe in are just that: our perceptions. That's where philosophy kicks in, and it goes something like this: Does the universe mold itself to our perception, or does it mold our perception? We are stuck in a universe which we can't change, and thus we have a reference point unlike that of any other entity. We are the products of our elementary particle, which are themselves made up of who-the-hell knows what, dancing a pointless dance in quantum space. We don't know exactly what theses things are doing, but whatever it is, it results in us, by some random chance, but we'll never see the randomness of the dance. The summation of these hopelessly random events leads to our "reality", and this reality makes sense to us; that's why, for example, when most people think about en electron, they see a little ball floating around an atom, because their relating our reality into some other scale; but because our reality makes sense, when we try to superimpose our sense and logic onto things which have none, then how can we describe this separate reality? It may not make sense to us, but its nonsense is what creates our sense (I know that sounded ridiculous), so any attempt to make sense of it will only lead to more nonsense. For example, consider a chemical reaction of two reactants (C1 and C2). If you mix them, they randomly assemble in pairs. There has to be randomness because consider the case where you have one C1 molecules and 2 C2 molecules. If the C2s are equidistant to the C1 and both move with the same momentum, which will couple with the C1? From our point of view, it doesn't matter; in fact, we can't even see it happen. But regardless of this, there is randomness in the elements, and the result of this randomness is the illusion of determinism (i.e, I added C1 and C2 together, and C3 was formed). In this case, C3 is our reality, which seems, in our point of view, determined, is in fact a simplified representation of the randomness of the universe.

Science shows that matter pops in and out of existence all the time, all throughout the universe, though you and I would never experience this, because when we think matter, we think physical, tangible entities, like cars and balls and shoes. How many times has a sports car just appeared in your driveway? Or when was the last time your shoe disappeared from your foot as you put it on? Yet experiments have shown that there is some force, even in a complete vacuum, and this force is generated by particles entering and exiting our universe constantly. Sounds ludicrous to us, but it's the way things probably work*.

There's an actual calculable probability that you will go to sleep tonight and wake up the tomorrow on Mars, but it's so small that it's almost entirely negligible. But that doesn't mean the possibility doesn't exist. And if it were suddenly to happen, where's the causation, as required by a deterministic universe?

I know I must sound like a broken record now, but the proof is in the earlier experiment I mentioned. The scientific method breaks down somewhat when dealing with the subatomic, as is the case with the double-slit experiment; and like roach said, if the fundamental elements of nature are random, then so are their derivatives.

*It's also thought that these forces might be relative forces created by dark matter/energy which we can't see or find or understand. Either way, it doesn't make any sense, but it doesn't have to, for the same reason I stated above.

filtherton

archetypal fool,

I see what you're saying, i just disagree with you.

For instance, your reaction example isn't necessarily illustrative since the two C2 molecules would react with each other and the C1 molecule in theoretically predictable ways. We wouldn't necessarily be able to predict the ultimate outcome, but i hope we can both agree that it would conform to all known and unknown natural laws.

The universe can definitely be modelled using probabilities. I don't think that this is sufficient proof that the universe isn't deterministic. The validity of a probabilistic model doesn't necessarily imply that the phenomena being modelled is indeed random.

Think about a bridge over a highway. You're standing on this bridge and you're trying to figure out a way to understand why the particular cars appear when they do and where they do. You'd probably want to come up with some sort of predictive mathematical model. As far as you can tell, the cars show up with a completely random pattern. Now, for the purposes of the model you could assign a certain probability to the event where a specific make and model appears in a specific lane at any given time. You could base this probability on previous observation if you wanted. You would observe and refine your model and observe and refine your model over and over and over.

Now, eventually you could come up with a pretty complex probabilistic model describing the likelihood that a specific car will show up at a specific time. This model will no doubt effectively model the phenomena that is the highway as long as you keep to your initial assumptions because it is based on your observations.

The fact that you have a probabilistic model describing the appearance of cars on the highway doesn't mean that the phenomena of the cars appearing is random, it just means that as far as your model is concerned the appearance of the cars is random. That any one car should appear on the highway underneath your bridge is actually the direct result of a, most likely completely unremarkable, chain of interrelated events.

I hope this example illustrates what i see as a very important distinction between mathematical models of observed phenomena and reality. There is a small probability that i will go to sleep tonight and wake up on mars, but you can be sure that if i did wake up on mars it would be the direct result of a completely natural chain of events.

archetypal fool

I've finally found a break between researching/writing my paper on bioinformatics to come back to this philosophical debate.

After reviewing the books I've read on the subject, I finally found the reference I've been looking for all this time. Bell's Theorem. Basically, the theorem states that if information can't travel faster than the speed of light, which has been both theoretically and experimentally verified, then there exists no hidden variable within a prediction by quantum mechanics which determines or affects the outcome; so there are no hidden and/or attainable/unattainable variables within quantum mechanics, so it is completely random. More to the fact, real-life experiments have verified the theorem (there have only been two experiments which didn't agree with the theorem, and since then those results haven't been reproduced)

This is obviously counterintuitive to what we would expect. Even in your example about the bridge, you make perfect sense, but one of the things which is so interesting about QM is that it doesn't make any sense to us, as I've already said; and yet it's sound.

-----------------

That being said, researching Bell's Theorem, I came upon another mind-shattering possibility: the apparent randomness of the universe isn't caused by the past, but by the future! So the cause-and-effect is backwards to the reality that the effect creates the cause, and all matter is entangled (implied by QM) so somehow this implies that the future dictates the present and...Fuck it, it doesn't make any sense either, but there's some very, very interesting empirical data which really makes this somewhat plausible on the first document from this site. I'll have to keep an eye out for any new developments. This shit is crazy.

filtherton

This is all very interesting. I'll read up on what you posted and get back to you.

roachboy

this is kind of an aside maybe. there is no reason (in principle) why philo and scientific work should be separated from each other. scientific investigations happen within particular sociological contexts which function to provide de facto definitions of socially legitimate variables, forms of explanation, etc...: experiments are not assumption-free, and there is a tendency to assimilate anomolous results back into the pre-existing explanatory frame or discount them (pce thomas kuhn and bruno latour)....so any experiment involves data and the categories that order it and the assumptions concerning how these categories link to or impact upon each other (models for particular types of systems) and so is an epistemological exercise (addressing questions of fit between ordering terms and results of actions) AND an ontological exercise (here as a term that designates any type of thinking about relations to categories that goes beyond questions operational or of "fit") insofar as the operations involved with experiment are also practical exercises in meaning-generation/creation (this swiped from latour, stuff like "pandora's hope")...so the sciences unfold within social contexts that are determinate insofar as the shared assumptions within a given community structure the results of work done within it--so you find a set of assumptions amongst folk who work on subatomic physics, another amongst those who work in mechanics, another amongst those who work on mathetmatical modelling, another amongst folk who operate with complex dynamical systems assumptions, etc. these sociological contexts may or may not line up with the institutional spaces (departments etc) within which research happens--they can function across, say, journals that link up researchers in various institutions with each other and new research etc....

because scientific investigation is not some free-floating operation involving unconditioned heroic Individuals whose Gaze is so trained that they have direct access to the Inner Workings of Things, but rather by actual human beings in particular types of social contexts, it follows that (a) there is inevitably conceptual frameworks that inform particular types of work and (b) that the embeddedness of researchers within particular communities would entail that questions about these frames would be differentially posed and differentially addressed--this because the weight of the community is not nothing, and it is simply not the case that anything goes in terms of "valid" experrymental results or extrapolations from those results.

philo is a space that is geared around interrogation of categories and systems of categories--so you'd think that in principle folk in philo and folk in the sciences would gain from dialogue. it is strange that there is so little of it. the differences in approach between philosophical and scientific work would perhaps, in the context of actual contact between them, open up space for the interrogation of limiting/problem-generating assumptions.

for example: questions of the interactions between different scales is sometimes understood as a result of assumptions about the self-contained-ness of the idea of scale. this is a recurrent issue above...the problem may well be epistemological, in that it follows from the application of a category (scale) along with assumptions concerning the relation of a category to data analyzed in terms of it (e.g. that one is looking at a discrete space the logic of which would have to be comprehensible as discrete)--and so problems of articulations amongst or across scales would be the result of the use of the category and the ways in which that category organizes information. this example is also stolen (henri atlan)...

if this is the case, then it would follow that interrogation of differing scales of, say, matter or, say, biological systems would be at once scientific and philosophical, and that from a certain viewpoint there would be only differences in social position and approach (that is sociological differences) separating the two types of activity.

it seems a peculiar state of affairs that folk doing science can understand what they are doing as other than a type of philosophical exercise.
perhaps this follows as much from the trouble that philo in general creates for the ability to make simple claims like "we now KNOW this...."
i suspect the root of the problem lay with the popular ideology of science and the extent to which this informs the work within these various fields themselves.

anyway, another snapshot

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

archetypal fool

I see what you mean, and I think I know why this particular section of scientific intrigue is so controversial. It's because this field of science, more than most others, is always changing, sometimes fundamentally, and so you're left with various schools and denominations of the same principle. In other branches of science, philosophy has already become an integral tool in the realization of the implications.

For instance, think about evolution. Though you have different levels of evolution (micro, macro, etc...) the principle is always the same. The general philosophy follows that creatures have gradually changed to what we have today, and are continuing to change. Though the evolution of bacteria may be different than that of macro-organisms, evolution is evolution, and they're all complimentary.

If you look at physics, though, you find a canyon between the two schools of thought, relativity and QM, and they are fundamentally incompatible. In such a case, the philosophy won't be clear, as is evident here, because there is an obvious conflict, and both sides will have a difference in their universal philisophy. Of course, this implies that there is still a unifying theory out there which will combine the two, and then a general philosophy can be gained from this. In reality, this will be one of the most important findings in the history of man-kind, right up there with relativity and evolution, and once it has been discovered, you can bet that everything about current philosophy will change, since the implications are found within all branches of science and reality. I'm really hoping they find the solution sometime in my life time .

asaris

There are a lot of reasons why the interaction between science and philosophy is the way it is, but it probably deserves a new thread.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

asaris: maybe. but given how the thread was framed, it seems legit/relevant here as well.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Suave

As a determinist, you don't believe that people can be held accountable for their actions then, do you?

__________________
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

Xiangsu

Determinism takes away accountability. Even if it turns out that these particles have no cause and are completely random. It still means that who we are is determined by things we can't control, the behavioral side of determinism is mostly unaffected by this debate.

You do not decide who you are. You cannot control your environment, genetics, and/or life experience.

filtherton

archetypal fool, i'm sorry it's taking so long to get back to you. Frankly, i'm finding the info on bell's theorem a bit dense. I guess all i can really say is that if certain phenomena are random it definitely does put the notion of some sort of absolute determinism in doubt.

I think that it could be claimed that people are held accountable for their actions very frequently, regardless of whether they truly chose to act in a certain way or not.

archetypal fool

The discussion we're having is about what would be the case if we were to go back a week in time. Would everything be the same? This question doesn't concern free-will and choice. Just because the universe may be random at the most elementary level, I still make the decisions and so does everyone else. Question is, if I went back a week, would I see myself make the exact same decision? Invariably, I'm still the one making the decision, and I didn't make it because the universe is random, so I'm still to blame.

Suave

That is the specific aspect of determinism that we're talking about, but determinism itself is based on the fact that all of our actions are determined by forces out of our control (as Xiangsu so aptly described).

And yes, people are very often held accountable for their actions, as our society does not take an entirely deterministic view of human nature (in fact, it's quite the opposite in many ways).

__________________
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

cyklone

I think that holding people accountable for their actions is outside the discussion of randomness vs determinism. Firstly, creating consequences (holding people accountable) changes their future behaviour. To not hold them accountable is to give them permission to repeat their action (be a parent for a while).

Where the real difference in determinism vs randomness lies, I think, is in whether people should be judged as immoral etc for their actions. I expect that most would agree that in some cases there is a clear link between a person's behaviour and their history and heritage. If their behaviour is determined by their past, they may not be morally responsible, but that doesn't mean that they should not be held accountable as a deterrent.

Ourcrazymodern?

I'm satisfied with time only going one direction. Not that I don't appreciate mental masturbation. Our futures are determined by our pasts.

__________________
BE JUST AND FEAR NOT