FRDB Archives

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.


Go Back   FRDB Archives > Archives > IIDB ARCHIVE: 200X-2003, PD 2007 > IIDB Philosophical Forums (PRIOR TO JUN-2003)
Welcome, Peter Kirby.
You last visited: Today at 05:55 AM

 
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 07-30-2003, 06:55 AM   #111
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Canada
Posts: 639
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
I suggest you re-read what I was asserting, because the fact that quantum mechanics has predictive power is the only reason we accept it.

(But honestly Normal, are you really so ignorant as to think it has no predictive power?)
Of course QM has predictive power, you are misunderstanding my argument if you think I'm saying otherwise.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
Although I understand by now that you insist on totally literal analogies.
No, I just insist on coherent analogies. There has to be considerable overlap between two ideas in order for me to really accept an analogy, that includes the demonstration of a definite cause arising from things that are necessarily uncaused, which is what we have observed in the totality of human science.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
We see totally blind, impersonal forces that have no opinion on the human species.
That is your interpretation of the forces. They may, in fact, be blind to the human species, I have no problem with that, but are they purposeless? Are they unintentional?

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
1. No, in fact, it doesn't. This assertion is of the utmost triviality and patent truth.
If you take "systematically predictable" to mean "somewhat probablistically predictable", then no, I guess it doesn't. But then that definition doesn't answer the question.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
2. What is HUP and how do you suppose it overthrows all common-sense, all science and everything coherent?
HUP is indeed counter intuitive to many leading scientists, including Einstien. It is the Heseinburg Uncertainty Principle.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
The reduction is not merely inductive, we KNOW that macroscopic objects are composed of things like electrions.
Exactly.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
These computer simulations permit us to predict observable (and lo and behold observed!) consequences. So the fact that macroscopic systems who's statistical composition approximates the properties associated with
I'm going to have to ask you to cite these simulations at this point, so I can investigate.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
The brain is a system made of chemicals, chemicals man! Think on it.
Chemicals follow deterministic processes.
Normal is offline  
Old 07-30-2003, 06:58 AM   #112
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Canada
Posts: 639
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by Jinto
Chair: a piece of furniture designed to be sat upon. How the hell is that absurd?
It includes sofas, couches, benches, stools, swings, japanese floor mats, exercise bikes, etc. etc. etc.

Care to try again?
Normal is offline  
Old 07-30-2003, 06:59 AM   #113
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Canada
Posts: 639
Default Re: question atheists tend to ignore

Quote:
Originally posted by DOLBAC DENIS
Astrophysicists, biologists have replied in detail to the question about thirty years ago, Monod even got a Nobel prize for it.
The reply is "CHANCE AND NECESSITY"
Monod won "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis"

http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1965/index.html

Normal is offline  
Old 07-30-2003, 07:53 AM   #114
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Canada
Posts: 639
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by StillDreaming
There are two kinds of unpredictability here:
1. The unpredictability of individual events of a random process that behaves according to a certain probability density function.
2. The unpredictability that a certain process will continue to behave according to a (supposed) probability density function.

In case 1, it is trivial that an apparently deterministic system can arise from unpredictable components. It is clear that the sum of a billion rolls of dice will be close to 3,500,000,000 in virtually all cases, even though the individual outcomes can not be predicted. Given that the process has a uniform probability density function, there are just way more possible outcomes that result in a sum close to 3,500,000,000 than there are outcomes that result in a sum close to 1,000,000,000. In fact, these kind of processes are not *entirely* unpredictable, since we *know* already it will behave according to a certain pdf.

So I guess your problem is with 2. Which is, in fact, the question "why does process X actually behave according to pdf P"? or "how does this process 'know' it should behave according to P?"
Of course, any process can be described by a certain pdf - there is nothing necessarily prescriptive here. So why do we observe the ones we observe? I would say that this is just a 'brute fact'. And I think it is related to the fine-tuning argument, in the sense that if the actual pdfs would have been (very or slighly) different, this universe could not exist, and we wouldn't have been here to observe this apparently deterministic behaviour.

Besides that, maybe one could defend the claim that these pdfs actually are prescriptive, i.e., that for one reason or another, it is necessary that 'process X shall behave according to pdf Y, it cannot be otherwise'. This seems to imply a form of causation, though.

(and of course, I might be missing the point... )
This continues to be the best answer I have received in this whole thread. Although the treatment of case 1 is using the law of large numbers.
Normal is offline  
Old 07-30-2003, 07:55 AM   #115
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: FRANCE PARIS
Posts: 19
Default MONOD

aND THE BASIS OF THE WORK IS that genes get organized by chance and necessity so does life at all levels.....:banghead:
DOLBAC DENIS is offline  
Old 07-30-2003, 07:57 AM   #116
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Canada
Posts: 639
Default Re: MONOD

Quote:
Originally posted by DOLBAC DENIS
aND THE BASIS OF THE WORK IS that genes get organized by chance and necessity so does life at all levels.....:banghead:
Are electrons alive?
Normal is offline  
Old 07-30-2003, 08:57 AM   #117
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: FRANCE PARIS
Posts: 19
Default Electrons

All what glitters is not necessarily gold.

All the things in movement are not necessarily alive.
Ex : A rolling stone. which by the way gathers no moss...
:boohoo:
DOLBAC DENIS is offline  
Old 07-30-2003, 01:19 PM   #118
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Alberta, Canada
Posts: 2,320
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by Normal
Of course QM has predictive power, you are misunderstanding my argument if you think I'm saying otherwise.
I was positing that the systematic temporal relationships are the sort of thing for which the notion of causality is useful. As it turns out, those relationships are of an unexpected nature - but the reduction of causality to quantum mechanics is patently tenable so long as such relationships hold.

Quote:
No, I just insist on coherent analogies. There has to be considerable overlap between two ideas in order for me to really accept an analogy, that includes the demonstration of a definite cause arising from things that are necessarily uncaused, which is what we have observed in the totality of human science.
The point being made was directed towards the topic of intertheretic reduction. I was positing that we can speak of high-level objects (like the square or like 'deterministic' systems) in languages that are not useful (like the imaginary world of micro-spheres or the flitting wavefunctions in the real world).

In this context, the overap was purposefully limited to prevent getting distracted by the analogy itself. Evidently the tactic failed.

Ultimatly, my point is quite simple. Your contention that the atheistic materialists' use of inter-theretic reduction is 'unparimonious' betrays a misunderstanding of just what a reduction is.

Quote:
That is your interpretation of the forces. They may, in fact, be blind to the human species, I have no problem with that, but are they purposeless? Are they unintentional?
A road sign is blind to the human spcies, but is purposeful and intentional. It was intended by lawmakers as a means of reinforcing road safety and expediting traffic flow.

I am justified in saying that it has a purpose because I am familar with the organizations who make such decisions. I know the kind of risks and large-scale interactions involved in the machines which travel the roads. I know the governmental structures have been advised to take such actions on the basis of the reasoning and observations of various experts.

The question you are posing to me is whether the structure of the universe is purposeful, since to ask questions of the laws of all that exists is to ask a question about the universe itself.

This does not make sense to me in the same way that asking about the intentionality of a particular object does.

The Laws of the universe are logically prior to the perceptual systems, the cars, the government - in general, the structures requisite FOR intentionality.

That question being discarded, one might ask if there is a meta-universe where the requisite intentional structures exist, that intended our subsequent universe to have it's particular laws and makeup. Some god on his gigantic holographic computer, for instance.

The idea of a meta-universe in which there is an intelligent being that plans and sets out to build the universe in which we exist has a poetic appeal, but is baroque (unparsimonious) to the extreme. It's like explaining that my pool ball went out for a drinking binge, assasnated Oday Hussein and founded a major financial institution in order to explain how it ended up in the corner pocket.

Yes, it's possible, but it's damn near the back of the bus when it comes to the priority of the theories to which we grant serious consideration.

Quote:
If you take "systematically predictable" to mean "somewhat probablistically predictable", then no, I guess it doesn't. But then that definition doesn't answer the question.
Your question is just what I was attacking, because it misrepresents what is intended by a reduction of causality to a nondeterminstic system.

The use of causality in science is just an example of a reducible concept. You have acknowledged vital similarities between causal concepts and QM, enough in fact to make causation a useful concept.

Quote:
HUP is indeed counter intuitive to many leading scientists, including Einstien. It is the Heseinburg Uncertainty Principle.
Counterintuitive it may be, but it clearly does not support the claim to which you assigned to it.

Quote:
I'm going to have to ask you to cite these simulations at this point, so I can investigate.
Well pretty much any major work developing prediction for any quantum systems (chemicals, for instance) require computers, since the amount of processing is otherwise unmanageable.


Quote:
Chemicals follow deterministic processes.
I hope you mean that chemical processes can be approximately described in a large-scale deterministic manner which can be reduced to the non-deterministic quantum mechanics describing ALL chemical interactions.

In that case you aren't objecting at all to what I said.
ComestibleVenom is offline  
Old 07-30-2003, 04:02 PM   #119
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 715
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by Normal
... Although the treatment of case 1 is using the law of large numbers.
What's wrong with that?
Individual outcomes of known random processes are entirely unpredictable, only certain properties of a large number of outcomes are predictable given the characteristics of the random process. The only thing we need to know in order to predict such properties is that the process *does* behave according to a specified random process; it is entirely irrelevant *why* or *how* it does so.
StillDreaming is offline  
Old 08-01-2003, 07:56 AM   #120
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Canada
Posts: 639
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
I was positing that the systematic temporal relationships are the sort of thing for which the notion of causality is useful. As it turns out, those relationships are of an unexpected nature - but the reduction of causality to quantum mechanics is patently tenable so long as such relationships hold.
The notion of casuality might be useful, but it is still illusionary if there is no explanation for it.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
In this context, the overap was purposefully limited to prevent getting distracted by the analogy itself. Evidently the tactic failed.

Ultimatly, my point is quite simple. Your contention that the atheistic materialists' use of inter-theretic reduction is 'unparimonious' betrays a misunderstanding of just what a reduction is.
But I was exposing an error in logic that if used the same way with the apparent square, could not be used the same way with apparent casuality, and that is: dots are partial lines, we know how dots can form into lines.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
The Laws of the universe are logically prior to the perceptual systems, the cars, the government - in general, the structures requisite FOR intentionality.
So intentionality logically precedes intentionality?

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
The idea of a meta-universe in which there is an intelligent being that plans and sets out to build the universe in which we exist has a poetic appeal, but is baroque (unparsimonious) to the extreme.
In order for the solution to be unparsimonious, there would have to be a simpler explanation available.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
The use of causality in science is just an example of a reducible concept. You have acknowledged vital similarities between causal concepts and QM, enough in fact to make causation a useful concept.
Useful perhaps, but again, it's usefulness does not negate it being an unparsimonious fanatasy.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
Counterintuitive it may be, but it clearly does not support the claim to which you assigned to it.
That QM systems are systematically predictable?

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
Well pretty much any major work developing prediction for any quantum systems (chemicals, for instance) require computers, since the amount of processing is otherwise unmanageable.
I was asking for some documentation on the systems you described.

Quote:
Originally posted by ComestibleVenom
I hope you mean that chemical processes can be approximately described in a large-scale deterministic manner which can be reduced to the non-deterministic quantum mechanics describing ALL chemical interactions.

In that case you aren't objecting at all to what I said.
I would not object at all to that.
Normal is offline  
 

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 03:24 PM.

Top

This custom BB emulates vBulletin® Version 3.8.2
Copyright ©2000 - 2015, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.