Hi there,
I've been thinking about determinism and causality a lot lately.
I think it makes sense that everything that is happening now was influenced by the past and ultimately the formation of the universe.
But if determinism is true, that means there is no such thing as random and the future could be hypothetically predictable (except for the fact that there are too many variables in the universe (chaos theory) and they may be infinite). Imagine the universe as a (infinte?) series of pendulums attached to the end of the previous one: the way that complex chaotic pendulum started moving created what we have today. If the universe is infinite, the variables (pendulums) are infinite, and therefore the future cannot be predicted with 100% accuracy (but we can't even predict the weather properly because of the enormous amount of variables on our solar system, so imagine on the entire universe, which again may be infinite).
Could that also mean that we're not responsible for what we do and therefore there is no free will?
But I also saw some arguments against this theory, like chaotic radioactivity and the random discontinuous motion of particles in quantum mechanics.
So what are your opinions about this?
Cheers
xadrez_pt
There is the "Schrodinger's Cat/Uncertainty Principle" type idea that any observation of an event alters it's outcome, so since we are observing the universe, it would imply that we change it, in the same way that it changes us and we react to its change and so on. So yes, in that respect we almost do not have free will, as it is impossible not to be influenced by events, and yet we also cause events. Your pendulum image reminds me of the "chess position tree" - except that this would make chess look easily solvable, and there is no known upper bound for the lifespan of the universe.
I think any ideas on whether the future could be accurately predicted would require a complete solution of all laws of physics (classical and quantum) as well as an understanding of all systems in which they operate, from the elementary particles to the universe as a whole. Also, we would need to know if "random" exists, and I'm not sure how that could be done, even with a Theory of Everything/Grand Unified Theory. How can you tell if the event is random - the theory could just be slightly wrong. If randomness exists than a GUT would be impossible.
Since I have no idea how to properly contribute to this thread, I'll just point out a datum I think is interesting… In a David Bourget's and David Chalmers' book entitled 'What do philosophers believe?' they did enquire 1,972 professional philosophers from 99 different insitutions and got responses from 931 of them; here's the result on 'Free Will': “compatibilism 59.1%; libertarianism 13.7%; no free will 12.2%; other 14.9%.”
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/04/29/what-do-philosophers-believe/
> Could that also mean that we're not responsible for what we do and therefore there is no free will?
Responsible to whom? I mean...
I see no contradiction between living in a deterministic universe and still being responsible for what we do. It is just a different level of discussion - one is laws of physics, other is laws of men.
Imagine a big autonomous robot factory, that builds autonomous robots. So at the final quality assurance phase, the robot building robots test newly built robots based on some criteria - responsibility, lets say. Some pass, some fail. Irresponsible robots get corrected, etc. whatever. So what if all actors involved are robots, there is still some concept of quality that is programmed there and works in that context. Now whether this concept is universal for all possible robots throughout the universe is another question. But still to whom?
@blunderman1 : if we do live in a determinism universe, whatever we do has been dictated by past events that we can't control (ultimately the formation of the universe), therefore we're just a screen that displays the only one possible outcome of the chaotic pendulum (universe).
"Determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with the existence of such free will" (
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will )
Well i am quite aware what determinism is, and how it is not compatible with free will. My point is that if we assume there is no such thing as free will, and the universe is deterministic, still i see no contradiction with the idea of responsibility.
Being responsible, that is, meet consequences for your actions, requires 2 parties. The one doing the action, and the one to which the first is responsible to (e.g. the society, or your conscious, or super-ego, or whatever) . So that is why i am asking responsible to whom.
On the other hand being responsible doesn't require those 2 parties to possess free will. They might just as well be robots, programmed with some concepts and criteria for right and wrong - thus my example.
As you notice, when i enumerate parties to which one might be responsible (society, super-ego, etc.) i intentionally omitted god, because that subject is quite controversial . But hope you get my point.
Ok to put it as simple as possible.
Everybody being robots, doesn't mean there aren't good robots and bad robots.
Be a good robot, stay in school don't do drugs etc. don't look for excuses in the laws of physics for being a douchebag.
:D
You guys seem pretty smart...Is it okay to set the alarm on my "atomic clock" ? I heard that if a certain time is set , that these clocks will explode ...killing everyone... because if one goes they all go.
