madmax2976

<shrug> Its fairly clear to me.

<strong> If laws are prescriptive, then the rock must fall a particular way and land in a particular spot due to the laws of gravity, motion, energy, etc. . It has no choice in the matter and any sense that it could fall differently is illusory.

If laws are descriptive, then they simply describe how the rock falls when affected by gravity, motion, etc. . There is no "force" involved. Its just falls they way it does based on the properties involved and the laws describe that action.

Extending the prescriptive description, all events would occur they way they do because they are forced to do so by the various laws of nature. This would include all human events as well.

<strong>[quote
If descriptive laws allow for human choices, then why doesnt this apply to computers and rocks?
devilnaut</strong>[/QUOTE]

Do you believe rocks, stars, galaxies, or eco-systems, make choices? Or do they do the things they do because the laws of nature force them to?

[ December 13, 2001: Message edited by: madmax2976 ]</p>

Devilnaut

And you have yet to refute this. Basically the argument goes that if everything in the universe follows the law of cause and effect, which everything seems to (save occurances at a quantum level, but we will leave that out for simplicity's sake) then everything about our universe is already written in time, including which way a rock will tumble down a hill and including each and every choice we ever make.

I've yet to see a refutation..


devilnaut

Devilnaut

Then the laws of nature evidently are prescriptive, at least in some sense. Otherwise they would have no predictive power.

You are telling me that there is no law of gravity, only the fact that every single thing that has ever been dropped has happened to have fallen? Out of pure coincidence?

We have no evidence that anything has ever been able to break a physical law, hence we have no reason to believe that this is possible, and this is what is implied by calling the laws of nature descriptive.

devilnaut

Edit to add:

You continue to mention that if I believe that we have choice, then I must believe that rocks have choices when they tumble down a hill. This is rather funny because your qualification for our having choice includes rocks as well. I guess you think rocks choose their paths down hills, since the laws of nature are merely descriptive, and all.

[ December 13, 2001: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>

crocodile deathroll

One theory I have around the free will problem would be quantum tunneling between two conflicting parallel universes. Like if you made a choice and registered the time you made the choice on a stop watch, and an EEG records neural activity about a second before you made the choice suggesting that your "free" choice was predetermined about a second prior to the time was registered on the stopwatch. This does indicate determinism for sure, but due the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle there are many other parallel universes where you did not make the choice and you can only observe the finding from a vantage point this universe and as such the instruments will only record the physical effects in this universe. There will be identical instruments in a parallel universe which did not show this brain chemistry activity at all and thus no decision of your part to stop the stop watch.
Sounds familiar, this is strongly reminiscent of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment!
Up until that moment you feel you made the free choice both brains were paralleling the same thought processes and the same memories, they both felt the same feelings, feeling they were the same person but as soon as the situation arose you cut to one a took a different path.
The results of the EEG test just give a readout of the observations it does not show precisely what initially coursed those neural process in the first place, and if that happens to be a QM effect would be far too small to be measured with an EEG
So if you are in a car show room and you were very undecided between two models, a sporty coupe One theory I have around the free will problem would be quantum tunneling between two conflicting parallel universes. Like if you made a choice and registered the time you made the choice on a stop watch, and an EEG records neural activity about a second before you made the choice suggesting that your "free" choice was predetermined about a second prior to the time was registered on the stopwatch. This does indicate determinism for sure, but due the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle there are many other parallel universes where you did not make the choice and you can only observe the finding from a vantage point this universe and as such the instruments will only record the physical effects in this universe. There will be identical instruments in a parallel universe which did not show this brain chemistry activity at all and thus no decision of your part to stop the stop watch.
Sounds familiar, this is strongly reminiscent of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment!
Up until that moment you feel you made the free choice both brains were paralleling the same thought processes and the same memories, they both felt the same feelings, feeling they were the same person but as soon as the situation arose you cut to one a took a different path.
The results of the EEG test just give a readout of the observations it does not show precisely what initially coursed those neural process in the first place, and if that happens to be a QM effect would be far too small to be measured with an EEG
So if you are in a car show room and you were very undecided between two models, a sporty coupe or a sedan and you chose a sporty coupe. So then you drove your sporty coupe out of the showroom, down a country road a high speed and into a tree and were killed and as a result. well it doesn't all end there, you just experienced had you life all over again. and at the precise moment you made the choice between the sporty coupe or the sedan. This time, oblivious to the fact you chose the sporty coupe in a parallel universe and were killed, you choose the sedan this time.
This may well explain that age old question "why are we here?. We are here because we are dead or yet to be born in an infinite number of alternative worlds.

This if my theory

crocodile deathroll


crocodile deathroll

excreationist

I'm talking about a selection now - I didn't use the word "choice".
There are dozens of legal valid moves that a chess player could make in that situation. It is true that a deterministic chess computer will select one particular move though.
But that doesn't change the fact that the move it selected wasn't the only valid move available. e.g. it might be valid for it to move a pawn or a knight, though it determines that it is better to move its knight. It determined which course of action was better by looking at the possible consequences.
So what about the idea of selecting between alternate courses of action?
The selection may be inevitable, but there are still alternate courses of action. e.g. if a person is deciding whether to have chicken or fish for dinner and they inevitably select chicken, this doesn't change the fact that they were initially evaluating the options of fish and chicken as valid courses of action.

Yes, ultimately a particular selection is made, but before it is made, there are a number of options or alternatives that must be considered. In my last post I gave two examples. One was:

"The biggest volume:
1) 20 x 20 x 20
2) 30 x 30 x 9
3) 70 x 10 x 10
4) 10 x 60 x 12

Here the selection criteria is to maximize l x w x h."

This could be programmed in a computer and the computer could tell you which option gives the largest volume.
So what would you call those options or alternatives? Would you say that one was the answer? But what are the rest called?
Can you describe the elements of that example *without* evaluating the answer?
Since you haven't evaluated the answer yet, what do you refer to the options that may or may not be the answer? "options" or "alternatives"?
And remember that I'm talking about selections here - I didn't use the word "choice".

If it is deterministic, there is no choice, but the question remains, what do you call those options? Is "options" an acceptable term, since it implies choice? If not, what term can be used to describe those deterministic options or alternatives that is acceptable to you?

malpensante gave a link about this:
<a href="http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/kitdraft.htm" target="_blank">http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/kitdraft.htm</a>
In that link I quoted from above talked about this. Saying that the way atoms interacted together or that the arrangement of atoms in the universe one second after the big bang caused a certain behaviour isn't very informative.
Those things were sufficient to explain that behaviour but it wasn't all necessary.
e.g. a light will turn on if you jump up and down, drink some water, flip a light switch and sneeze.
And it will also turn on if you tie your shoelaces, flip a light switch and brush your teeth.
In both cases, a light turned on. To explain why it happened, you don't need to list all those other things you did.

In the same way, you could say that your intention to brush your teeth is what mainly led you to brush your teeth. There would have been many other things that happened before hand, but your intention is a necessary and sufficient condition.

Anyway, could you answer my questions from this post - note that I was mainly talking about "selections" and "options" or "alternatives" rather than "choices".

[ December 13, 2001: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

excreationist

crocodile deathroll:
Are you saying that we can sense hypothetical futures by interacting with parallel universes? I think we just construct models of how we think the world works in our head and then we predict what outcome particular courses of action might lead to.
Perhaps every single variation of electron spins, etc, does happen in parallel universes. That would explain how seemingly unlikely things, such as life, could occur. But I don't think that explanation is necessary to explain our decision making process.

crocodile deathroll

I am saying we choose "worlds" rather than "things". We choose one of many possible worlds. In the light of the findings of the veteran neurologist Benjamin Libet I feel we cannot willing choose objects in the same world. That is determined by our preexisting brain chemistry, but we can choose another world which does or does not have the have the brain chemistry to influence our decisions.
One thing very intriguing about our thought processes it the process of "gestalt switching" like you may view some photographs of rodents and at the end of it all be shown a line drawing of what you describe as a rat.
Then you are shown some photographs of some people's faces and in the end you are shown the same drawing and this time you describe it as an old man.
Then at a closer look you really can see that drawing switching from looking like a rat to looking like an old man like turning a switch.
We can in effect use our decision making thought processes to make it appear like a rat or like an old man, and we "really" feel convinced we are doing it at will.
I feel this may be a good mechanism for switching from one parallel universe to another. The differences between the two may only be extremely subtle. One has the preexisting brain chemistry to influence us to move one direction and the other has the brain chemistry to influence in the other direction.
The inflationary cosmos as proposed by Alan Guth and Andre Linde could easily well explain the existence of unlikely phenomena such as life or even the much more unlikely even of one's person's existence. In a universe so stupendously huge with our observable portion of the universe being a minute cosmic bubble of something larger than anything we could ever imagine. It would be not at all surprising that life "will" inevitably emerge in such a huge inflationary universe purely by accident. And with Quantum Mechanics limiting the universe to a finite number of states, there would be plenty of scope for every possible parallel universe in the inflationary cosmos
No God at all will be necessary.

crocodile deathroll

excreationist

crocodile deathroll:
I don't think you need inter-universe communication to explain something like that.

You should read some books on things like NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). And Anthony Robbin has a refined version of this called Neuro Associative Conditioning (NAC).

First I'll start with another example:
The famous young woman-old woman example.
I found the picture with only one web search.
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22old+woman%22+%22young+woman%22+%22opti cal+illusion*%22+picture*" target="_blank">google search for "old woman" "young woman" "optical illusion*" picture*</a>


Since I can't find the picture you're talking about, I'll talk about this one.

I think this one is similar to the one you're talking about - it is ambiguous and it can either look like an old woman or a young woman. Your picture would either look like a rat or an old man.

About a month ago, I went to a job skills seminar. The woman there was talking about people's different perceptions - that people can perceive things differently and that no-one is necessarily wrong. She gave the example of that ambiguous woman picture. She asked us what it looked like - if the woman in it was young or old. I had already seen it before so I could easily see both.

She told us about an experiment that had been done where one group had been thinking all about young women, and when shown the picture they saw it as a young woman. Another group had been thinking all about old women and saw it as an old woman. Then when the groups were brought together, the groups fought about what the picture was over and they were convinced they were right.

But when they eventually can see both things then they can switch between both perceptions.

Let's say you're with the group that was thinking about old women. They may have been shown some pictures of old women for stimulus. They'd recall a lot of common traits that make up old women - they may be ugly, with warts, big noses, big chins, daggy hair, thin lips and droopy eyes. They might also be shown pictures that look similar to that one of the old woman except that they are impossible to mistake for a young woman. e.g. the old woman could be looking ahead or have her head tilted up more.

The other group would be familiarized with the components of young women - e.g. they might look very beautiful and delicate and have nice hairstyles. They could also be shown a picture that looks almost like the young woman here except that there is no possiblity of it being mistaken for an old woman - there could be a side view and a front view.

The old woman group would have the concept of "old woman" recalled into their short-term memory. This concept is made up of many components, such as the elements that make up an old woman's face.
The concept of an old woman would be at the front of their short term memory and when it comes time to try and classify the ambiguous picture, they simultaneously see how closely it fits other image types they'd learnt before, and one of the first image types they'd intuitively (automatically) analyse is that of an old woman. They'd (subconsciously) try and account for the elements that make up the old woman. There would be a match and you would be informed of that, so you'd receive a message that "this is an old woman that is looking down to the left".

For the group that was familiar with the young woman, they would subconsciously compare the picture with things associated with young women (such as pictures of young women) - they'd also simultaneously compare it to other familiar image templates learnt by their neurons.
There would be a match with the "young woman concept" and the consciousness would be informed of this - that the picture is a young woman who's body is facing left and her head is turned away.

To switch between the different perceptions you'd bring a "trigger" to the thing you're looking for (e.g. the phrase "young woman") to the forefront of your short-term memory. This gives it a high priority during intuitive reasoning. So the task for your subconscious would then be to look at that picture with the additional stimulus "young woman". In your long-term memory would be a pattern which associates that image with the details of the young woman picture and the phrase "young woman". There would be a match, and the remainder of this pattern - the details of where the young woman is - would be recalled into your short-term memory.

When you want to see the old woman, you'd say "old woman" and there would be a pattern in your long-term memory that associates the phrase "old woman" with that picture and the details of where the old woman is. So then your consciousness would be informed about where the old woman is.

Or you could switch between the two by seeing one of them and thinking the equivalent of "not that one". Then your subconscious would try and reclassify that image. It would first repeat the same classification. Then it would see if that is a good match. Well in your short-term memory you said "NOT that one", so then your subconscious would look for the next strongest match. The next strongest match isn't the same as the original so that "NOT that one" contstraint would be satisfied and your consciousness would be made aware of the new match.

You could also try and draw that picture from memory. To do this, you'd think about both the "old woman" and "young woman" concepts as well as "optical illusion" and "picture" (or related words or concepts). This would be a good match for your memory of the experience when you viewed that image. So they you should have a lot of clues about how to draw that ambiguous image from memory.

Basically I think that's how it works. Though your theory about us accessing parallel universes is a lot more amazing.

[ December 14, 2001: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

madmax2976

I'm not here to "refute" anything. I started this thread to get other people's views on determinism, randomness, and choice.

If you don't believe we have the ability choose, like the eco-system never has the ability to choose the events concerning it, thats your perogative.

<strong> Hence you don't believe we have the ability to choose - the events that will occur are all predetermined. Thats fine. I disagree, but the purpose of this thread isn't to talk you out of that position.

It might be an interesting topic for another thread though...

madmax2976

By saying that laws are "prescriptive" this implies that laws are physically necessary and exist a priori. The acceleration due to gravity on planet earth will be 9.8m/s squared because there is a law to this effect which somehow directs that it must be this way. The charge of an electron will be what it is(-1.6E-19), because there is a "law" that dictated that it would be that way. The universe would be "governed" by these physical necessities.

On this prescriptivist view, I am unsure of what a "law" actually is. Is it a force of some kind? An energy beam? How would a "law" direct gravity to have the force that it has, or how would it mandate that the electron have the charge that it does?

On the descriptivist view. a law is our description of what is, imperfect and subject to change as our knowledge changes. I can understand that, but not the other.

<strong> Not true. Laws are human formulated descriptions of what is. We have no reason to believe they are absolutely correct, but rather that they are approximations of the truth, subject to revision and refinement as we continue to make new discoveries and observations. Newton's laws had to yield to the Theory of Relativity and that in turn has had to give way to quantum mechanics. Of course now we're interested in a unified field theory to further refine our understanding.

To say a law has actually been "broken" implies something like:

- our understanding of how the universe operates is absolutely perfect and true and we couldn't possibly be wrong.

- Anything that violates our understanding, would "break" what is absolute and true. But that is impossible because our understanding is absolute and true.

- Therefore, there can be no "breaking" of laws.

This would seem to be an exceedingly arrogant and unsupportable position.

[b] You continue to mention that if I believe that we have choice, then I must believe that rocks have choices when they tumble down a hill. This is rather funny because your qualification for our having choice includes rocks as well. I guess you think rocks choose their paths down hills, since the laws of nature are merely descriptive, and all.
[ December 13, 2001: Message edited by: Devilnaut ][/QB][/QUOTE]

First of all I never "mentioned" any such thing. I've asked whether or not a rock "chooses" which way it will fall down a hill. I've yet to receive a direct answer.

Since you believe laws are prescriptive I'll be interested in hearing your answers to the questions I posed. What are laws and through what process do they mandate the physical constants of the universe to be the way they are?