----- Original Message -----
From: Bruno Marchal
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 7:51 AM
Subject: Re: Free will: Wrong entry.
Hi Brent,
We have discussed this a long time ago. Ah, perhaps it was on the FOR list.
Free-will can only diminish when indeterminacy is added.
It is a product of awareness of ignorance on oneself, that an high level
construct. I appreciate infinitely both Kochen and Conway, but on "free will"
they make the beginners' error, like Penrose makes the beginners error on Gödel.
You can use the self-duplications iteration thought experiment to illustrate
that indeterminacy is not needed, and even annoying if too big, to let free
will develop itself.
Or to let the will develop itself. free-will is an oxymoron. Do you believe
in free free-will ? :)
Bruno
I think the question, "Do you believe in free will?" could as easily be, "Do
you believe in Santa Claus or God or Fate and on and on." We loudly assert: "I
do what I want!!" But without considering the factors that influence
(determine?) our wants and desires. No. I don't suppose I 'believe" in free
will.
On 12 Mar 2010, at 00:04, Brent Meeker wrote:
My apologies. I forgot that Lawrence National Laboratories no longer
hosted the physics archive. I should have cited:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079
The Free Will Theorem
Authors: John Conway, Simon Kochen
(Submitted on 11 Apr 2006)
Abstract: On the basis of three physical axioms, we prove that if the
choice of a particular type of spin 1 experiment is not a function of the
information accessible to the experimenters, then its outcome is equally not a
function of the information accessible to the particles. We show that this
result is robust, and deduce that neither hidden variable theories nor
mechanisms of the GRW type for wave function collapse can be made relativistic.
We also establish the consistency of our axioms and discuss the philosophical
implications.
And here's a later, stronger version that uses some weaker premises.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3286
Brent
On 3/11/2010 2:16 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Brent, nice statement:
"But it's certainly not a deterministic universe"
I have to take your word, because the reference you gave said: "NOT
FOUND"
So what kind of a 'universe' is it? bootstrap, self reflecting
autodidacta? Creator-made?
John M
On 3/11/10, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
On 3/11/2010 1:26 PM, m.a. wrote:
Bruno and John,
The confusion is my fault. I copied the
URL from a Kurzweil page heading when I should have gone to the article itself,
so the wrong feature appeared. This is the one I requested comments about:
http://www.physorg.com/news186830615.html
(Excerpts)
PhysOrg.com) -- When biologist Anthony Cashmore claims that the
concept of free will is an illusion, he's not breaking any new ground. At least
as far back as the ancient Greeks, people have wondered how humans seem to have
the ability to make their own personal decisions in a manner lacking any causal
component other than their desire to "will" something. But Cashmore, Professor
of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, says that many biologists today
still cling to the idea of free will, and reject the idea that we are simply
conscious machines, completely controlled by a combination of our chemistry and
external environmental forces.
To put it simply, free will just doesn’t fit with how the physical
world works. Cashmore compares a belief in free will to an earlier belief in
vitalism - the belief that there are forces governing the biological world that
are distinct from those governing the physical world. Vitalism was discarded
more than 100 years ago, being replaced with evidence that biological systems
obey the laws of chemistry and physics, not special biological laws for living
things.“I would like to convince biologists that a belief in free will is
nothing other than a continuing belief in vitalism (or, as I say, a belief in
magic),” Cashmore told PhysOrg.com.
There seems to be an evolutionary rightness and inevitability to the
idea that free will is taking its place as just another illusion like vitalism,
religion, aether, absolute time and space, geocentric universe, single-galaxy
universe and so on. But I think people will have an even tougher time dealing
with the implications of strict determinism. It's an idea that could tear
through the entire fabric of society even though acceptance needn't change
one's behavior in the slightest respect. marty a.
But it's certainly not a deterministic universe.
_http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0604/0604079.pdf_
Brent
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