> >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.
Okay -- now I see what you were getting at.
> 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?
Many leading scientists, though few I think who are Christians (who will not
be materialistic; though many [by no means all!] Calvinists may actually
adopt a thorough-going determinism for theological reasons), adopt the view
that people do not have freedom because they see no way that such is
compatible with a scientific view of the world.
Now in my experience they usually mean a scientistic view, i.e., not "what
science teaches taken in context of science's limits and other justified
beliefs we have", but rather "taking what science says as the last word, as
the exhaustive sum of our knowledge on the subject."
Given not so much their commitment to science but rather their exclusion of
everything else (though they'll typically see it only as the former),
there's no room for freedom or responsibility. Why not?
Because science teaches us (they think) that nature is all there is, was,
or will be; or at the very least that human beings are demonstrably physical
objects. (Throw in some words here about how ancient superstitions have
been debunked, and Descartes was wrong in his view of mind.) Utterly unlike
other physical objects in their wondrous complexity and power, they are
nonetheless utterly like any other physical objects in their conformity to
the same inviolable laws of nature that govern the farthest reaches of the
cosmos.
Therefore, though this seems counterintuitive, human behavior is completely
determined by events outside anyone's control. Freedom may be a
evolutionarily useful fiction (to help maintain social order, say, by
inducing the fiction of moral, rather than mere causal, responsibility), but
it is a -fiction-.
Pre-quantum, such scientists would have said that all of our behavior is
completely determined by the laws of nature and the state of the universe
before our birth -- obviously neither of which are under our control.
Post-quantum, such scientists say that all of our behavior is completely
determined by the laws of nature, the state of the universe before our
birth, and random quantum events -- obviously none of which are under our
control.
So in any case, whether physics is indeterministic or not, we are not free
or responsible.
Or so they argue. :^>
> 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?
I agree completely, but they would say (very unpersuasively, to my mind)
that this is just another superstition, perhaps one evolutionarily induced.
The more radical but consistent of them go so far as to include
consciousness in this category of primitive folk science with no rational
(i.e., scientistic) basis. I admire their consistency, but not their noetic
structure as a whole. :^>
> 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?
Agreed -- rationality seems particularly a problem for atheistic
materialism, in that not only is everything beyond our control, but
everything -- even rationality -- is ultimately non-rational. Not good.
(Alvin Plantinga wrote a criticism of -naturalistic- evolution along these
lines, but he was careful to point out that it did not apply to theistic
evolution, since there the ultimate causal reality is deeply personal and
rational rather than impersonal and non- or irrational. That's one reason
why I was annoyed that the guy who wrote the Tower of Babel book lumped him
together with Henry Morris or even Phil Johnson. In my view, he is head and
shoulders above them wrt clarity and subtlety of views; it's going to take
more than a little forced stirring to make them seem from the same batch.)
> 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?
-Not in the least.-
But it's important to realize that to avoid this, a Christian (or any other)
thinker need go beyond science alone, beyond what current science
countenances in its fundamental ontology and causality. Science-plus, not
science alone. To me (and I suspect you), this seems like undefeated common
sense; but to those who are scientistic, it seems superstitious, irrational,
retrograde, bad, etc.
> >>
> >> 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 :).
>
One question: how do they computationally discover these truths for which
there are no reasons without thereby demonstrating the reason for their
truth? Or does he just mean (ala Gšdel) that they do not follow from
particular popular sets of axioms?
John