George Murphy wrote:
> >
> > I find such a proposal vaguely troubling, though I can't easily
> > put my finger on the difficulty. If
> > some wave packet collapses are "left to chance" then we've dropped the
> > principle of sufficient
> > reason. Perhaps we need to. But then to say that God determines the
> > results of some of these
> > collapses means that there is a sufficient reason for the results of
> > those measurements. Thus God
> > could provide a reason for all the other measurements, but doesn't.
>
> PR: Again, the principle of sufficient reason is a philosophical
> supposition, not a requirement of logic. But even if it were true, it
> wouldn't follow that God would have to "provide a reason" for _all_
> measurements. If we look at it from a theological viewpoint, God may
> decree that a certain mutation happens, in a second case he may decree a
> spectrum of possible mutations, and in a third case he may just do
> nothing, having decreed the mutation mechanisms with their stochastic
> properties at the beginning of life.
GLM: Again, you're focussing on biological issues but the problem
is
broader than that. It involves every case of an electron being observed
in
one place rather than another. I agree that we aren't required to
accept the
principle of sufficient reason but it seems to me, as I said,
"troubling," to
have to drop it and say that some things happen for no reason at all. &
this
is especially so because we would not be saying simply that there is no
natural cause that it happens that way. We would be saying that God is
not
even the cause of that event.
PR: OK, let me try a hand at "collapsing wave packets"! What would it
mean if God didn't collapse certain wave packets individually, namely
those he doesn't care about, because any result of their collapsing
would not make any difference in his plans? Instead, they could collapse
in a genuinely random manner, God having specified, at the big bang, a
global "hidden variable" describing the pattern to which their
collapsing has to conform (or would that not even be a hidden variable,
but the known probability distribution?). So, these really random events
would not "happen for no reason at all". God would truly be the Author
of the results specified individually at any given time in the history
of the universe, as well as the Author of those specified collectively,
as a Gaussian or other distribution, at the big bang.
If such a scheme could be acceptable in physics, maybe an analogous
distinction of individual vs. collective specifications could be applied
to biological mutations. God would be the Author of all elementary
events having usual probabilities, as well as the Author of
transastronomically improbable ones, which he would specify individually
and purposefully, thus introducing additional information into the
system at specific places and times.
Peter
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