[trimmed...]
>
>Brian, call me slow (please, in private mail ;^>), but I don't see how any
>of these contradict what I was saying.
>
>Sure if one -assumes- that conscious agents can -freely- affect the physical
>world, then of course there will be potentially enormous changes from even
>small amounts of freedom for the reasons that you spell out an order of
>magnitude better than I could.
>
No, you aren't slow, I just mistook the question. There seem to be
two concerns (1) are we free? and (2) if we are, does it make any
difference? This is why I considered in my original statement of
the question not only our ability to pick between various alternatives
but to have some influence (however limitted) on what those alternatives
are. I was considering the second question. Obviously, wrt the first
I was question begging.
JR:===
>But why, in a scientistic (science plus rejecting non-science based reasons)
>view, would one think that agents had any freedom whatever?? No doubt, in
>such a view, agents do have such causal impact (they are material objects,
>after all) -- but in the relevant sense, -freely-?
>
You know, this is a really puzzling question to me. What I would
like to ask in return is why someone would think that agents
such as ourselves would *not* have freedom?
OK, I have to first own up to perhaps having certain prejudices
aring from my background as an experimentalist :). But science
is founded first on observation. How is that we observe ourselves?
As robots? William James wrote in an essay on determinism that
his first decision as a free agent would be to behave as if he
were free. I will follow his example. Perhaps I'm deluded :).
But let's run an experiment. Let's observe the determinists in
their everyday lives. How do they behave? As if they are free?
Also, the scientific method itself seems to rely on freedom.
How can a rational agent introduce and test hypotheses and then
select the one most in agreement with the evidence if they
are not free? Was Newton's painstaking work in discovering
the laws of mechanics just written into the initial arrangement
of the particles at the time of the big bang?
Before I go on, let me try to clear the air of another source
of possible confusion probably due again to careless reading
on my part. The original question had to do with how TE's
view soul and freedom, which was what I was trying to answer
from my point of view, emphasizing what can be learned from
nature as opposed to my own personal beliefs and my theology.
But above, you are talking about a scientistic view. Is there
any implication that a TE is somehow constrained by that narrow
view?
>>
>> OK, to tie this back in. The language of physics is mathematics.
>> If there are facts that are true for no reason in mathematics
>> then wouldn't we at least expect that there may be things that
>> happen in the world for no reason?
>>
>
>While I don't necessarily like the phrasing "for no reason", and I haven't
>read Chaitin, it is easy to see vaguely how it would be an implication of
>Gšdel's incompleteness theorem. (Maybe that shows I don't understand it!)
>
Chaitin has written some on the relation between his findings and
Godels. They are closely related in some ways. I don't know that
that one is an implication from the other in the sense of being
derivable from the other. I think though that Chaitin is probably
not too surprising given Godel, which I guess is what you are
saying.
>Indeed, something -really vaguely- like this is the one way I can see to
>have determinism combined with a real sense of freedom and moral
>responsibility: our choices are ultimately rigidly determined by ourselves,
>flowing deterministically from our character, or minds, or souls, or
>something like that, BUT said character, etc., is NOT (completely)
>determined in turn by something else beyond our control. Maybe it
>just -is-, or ...?
>
>This is a long way from Chaitin, I imagine. And it's hard to spell out in
>anything but the purest speculation just how it would work out. (E.g.,
>something like eternally existing Platonic souls?) But it seems possible
>and maybe rational (um....), if not at all scientific just now.
>
This might be one way of looking at it. Of course, not all mathematics
necessarily has anything to do with physical reality. This is why
I offered this as representing a possible reason as to why the
world may not be deterministic.
As another clue as to the implications of Chaitin's work, Chaitin
has used his results to argue that mathematics should become
more like physics in some ways, in particular he calls for
an experimental mathematics. The reason is perhaps obvious from
what I wrote before. There are some mathematical facts that
are beyond reason. If you want to figure it out you have to just
go and look (i.e. do experiments).
In one of his papers, Chaitin mentioned that he thought it very
funny that mathematicians are now starting to use more and more
of an experimental approach, not because of his many arguemnts
over the years regarding randomness in mathematics, but rather
because powerful computers make the approach useful :).
Brian Harper | "If you don't understand
Associate Professor | something and want to
Applied Mechanics | sound profound, use the
The Ohio State University | word 'entropy'"
| -- Morrowitz