Most people dismiss solipsism as simply being unworthy of consideration. Solipsism holds that only one person is having an experience and everything else (including all other people) are just an illusion in the mind of the one single person who is imagining life to exist.
Solipsism can't be disproved. We have no way to determine whether other people are actually having an experience. Yet, dispute the fact that it can't be disproved most people dismiss it as simply being a highly unlikely hypothesis. It just seems more rational to believe that all humans and even animals are actually having an experience just like us.
And this is a very rational position to take.
~~~~~
So now, what about the question of "Free Will"?
Is it rational to dismiss the concept and demand that there can be no such thing as "Free Will"?
Well, we can ask what that would mean.
If there is no such thing as "Free Will", then J.R.R. Tolkien had no choice but to write "The Lord of the Rings" precisely as he wrote it. He could not be credited with having any creativity because ultimately he didn't even come up with it. He was just doing what he deterministic had no choice but to do. Frodo Baggins and Gollum were determined to be characters in this fantasy billions of years ago. Potentially it was carved in stone at the Big Bang according to hardcore determinism.
Not only that, but the same it true of everything, including the Christian Bible. Every jot and tittle of the Bible would have needed to have been determined by the universe long before humans (who have no free will of their own) would be determined to write it out precisely as we see it today, including all of disagreeing versions.
Same is true of Greek mythology too, of course, and everything else that any human has ever done. Every song, comedy act, you name it. Everything would have needed to be predetermined from the dawn of time.
Question for debate, "Does this make any more sense than solipsism?"
Is it even remotely reasonable to hypothesize that humans have no free will, meaning that everything they do has already been determined ahead of time?
[center] Spiritual Growth - A person's continual assessment
of how well they believe they are doing
relative to what they believe a personal God expects of them.
[/center]
Blastcat wrote:
I am not aware that a single particle can travel through both slits and interfere with itself.
Well it can. A single particle fired at two slits does not take a straight path through one or other slit, but "bends" to land where we expect on a diffraction pattern.
As far as I know, a photon is not a wave of photons.
As far as I know, a drop of water isn't a wave of water droplets.
Sure, instead a photon is both a particle and a wave.
The fact that a photon can be nonlocalized has nothing to do with the fact that it doesn't have a varying proper time Ï„. When we observe interference, it's because two different parts of the wave coincide at the same coordinates (t,x,y,z) in some frame such as the lab, and not at all because the part of the wave we may call a PART or a PARTICLE or a PHOTON is interfering with itself.
Alas, a particle of a wave is not a wave, as the part of the whole is not the whole itself.
No idea what you are talking about here. What does it even mean to say two different parts of the wave coincide. If it is one wave and it coincide, then how is it not the same part? What does "a particle of a wave" means? A particle is a wave.
More to the point the fact that a photon can be nonlocalised, demonstrates undetermanism.
Blastcat wrote:
I am not aware that a single particle can travel through both slits and interfere with itself.
Bust Nak wrote:Well it can. A single particle fired at two slits does not take a straight path through one or other slit, but "bends" to land where we expect on a diffraction pattern.
Well, it can.
You say that it can, but I don't know how one particle makes a wave. Are you saying that one particle is a wave? Or as in a BEAM of light, there are many particles, that can be observed to cause a wave, much as water particles can be observed to cause a wave?
As far as I know, a photon is not a wave of photons.
As far as I know, a drop of water isn't a wave of water droplets.
Bust Nak wrote:Sure, instead a photon is both a particle and a wave.
It's just so?
Is it just the one photon being observed, or many?
The fact that a photon can be nonlocalized has nothing to do with the fact that it doesn't have a varying proper time Ï„. When we observe interference, it's because two different parts of the wave coincide at the same coordinates (t,x,y,z) in some frame such as the lab, and not at all because the part of the wave we may call a PART or a PARTICLE or a PHOTON is interfering with itself.
Alas, a particle of a wave is not a wave, as the part of the whole is not the whole itself.
Bust Nak wrote:No idea what you are talking about here. What does it even mean to say two different parts of the wave coincide. If it is one wave and it coincide, then how is it not the same part? What does "a particle of a wave" means? A particle is a wave.
You say that a particle is a wave, and I am asking you about it, remember?
You might want to demonstrate that one particle constitutes a wave.
You might have noticed that I am saying that the whole is not the same as the parts.
The interference patterns that we can observe are two parts of a wave coinciding. But you say that the wave itself is composed of one particle. I am questioning you about this.
What you don't understand is that just because something isn't localized, it doesn't mean that it doesn't ARRIVE at the measuring position at the same time. One particle AT A TIME may show up as a wave, and different waves, causing interference patters, but it doesn't mean that what we are looking at is ONE particle of light.
The double slit isn't about ONE particle being shot through two slits, it's a WHOLE bunch of them.
I think the following observation shows that free will exists.
Scientists have discovered that it is possible to artificially activate a part of a persons brain and make his hand move. Now, when this is done, the patient experiences his hand moving, but when asked, he will say that he did not choose to move the hand, his brain did it by itself.
In comparison with a scenario where the person actually chooses to move his hand, there is clearly a difference at play here. In the latter scenario he experiences making a free choice. The comparison unveils the truth about free will, it is a difference in the experience of the patient.
instantc wrote:
I think the following observation shows that free will exists.
Scientists have discovered that it is possible to artificially activate a part of a persons brain and make his hand move. Now, when this is done, the patient experiences his hand moving, but when asked, he will say that he did not choose to move the hand, his brain did it by itself.
In comparison with a scenario where the person actually chooses to move his hand, there is clearly a difference at play here. In the latter scenario he experiences making a free choice. The comparison unveils the truth about free will, it is a difference in the experience of the patient.
I'm sorry, but this isn't what the free will issue is about at all. HERE'S one explanation.
Thanks for the very informative video. Alas! it explains in detail why you are wrong.
In this video, Jim Al-Khalili never talks about ONE particle or ONE photon becoming a wave.
Here are a few examples of how this source proves the exact opposite of what you have previously claimed:
1) At 0:33 Jim Al-Khalili says "Imagine you have a source of light...." this isn't about ONE particle of light.. but many particles of light.
2) At 1:04 he says "As the light hits the screen ... this isn't about ONE particle hitting the screen, but waves of light, as he explains just a bit earlier. There are many particles of light. Not just ONE particle.
3) At 2:02 he says "Imagine doing the experiment again, but with particles..." Notice the plural of the word "particle". He isn't talking about ONE particle but many particles.
4) At 2:03 he says "Do it with grains of sand..." Again, not ONE grain of sand, but many grains of sand.
5) At 2:15 he says "here we have individual grains of sand..." Again, not one individual grain of sand but many individual grains ( plural ) of sand.
6) At 2:38 he asks "What if we do the same experiment with atoms?...Again, not one atom but many.
7) At 2:44 he asks us to imagine "what if we had an atom gun, something that can fire atoms...." Not one atom, but many.
8) At 2:45 he clarifies that the gun shoots out a "stream of atoms".. Not one atom, but a stream of them.
9) At 2:58 he says that the dimension of the slits "is chosen appropriately to show us how atoms do things".... Not how one atom does something but how atoms do things... plural. He seems to be talking about more than one particle at a time.
10) At 3:05 he says " you see a lot of atoms...." Not just one, but a lot of atoms.
11) At 3:09 he says " so the atoms are arriving ... " Not just one atom arriving, but more than one .... enough for him to use the plural.
12) At 3:25 he says "of course, a lot of the atoms will be blocked by the first screen..." Not one atom but a lot of them..
13) At 5:12 he asks what would happen if we didn't send the atoms all at once, but sent them through "one at a time". Again, we are not sending one atom, but many atoms, one at a time. ( I presume he means one of many, at a time.. not two at a time, but only one at time, as there are many that could go together.. )
14) At 5:32 he says "slowly we will see that the atoms...." Again, not one single atom, but enough atoms to make his use of the plural for "atom" appropriate.
And the most telling is at 5:47 when he states that:
15) "Each atom, by itself, is somehow contributing it's small part to the overall wave-like behavior that we see in the interference pattern. "
And the video goes on like this for another 4 minutes.. I stopped at 15 examples.
I think it's safe to say that Jim Al-Khalili is telling us that an atom is a PART of a wave interference pattern.. it's not the wave, the two waves, or the interference pattern that the two waves generate.
As I have tried to explain to you before, a part is not the sum of the parts that it is a part of. One of my beer mugs is not the entire collection of beer mugs, but just one of the many ( 2 dozen ) beer mugs in my collection. The mug itself is NOT the collection but only a part of the collection.
Please provide some source for you claim that the double slit experiment only uses ONE particle to make a wave, and interference patterns of two or more waves. This source completely fails to demonstrate it. So, I still await a source for your claim. In the meantime, I contend that you are just wrong. One particle isn't a wave of particles, not photons, not atoms, not water droplets, not grains of sand.
I claim that waves are not particles, and particles are not waves. I claim that particles are PARTS of waves, instead. You hope to refute the claim, with a counter-claim that science demonstrates to be true and use sources to back you up. Great! I need to learn a bit about quantum physics and the double slit experiment in particular.
But it would be preferable for us to use sources that agree with our claims, and not those that disagree with them.
Is it still your claim that a particle is a wave at the very same time?
Bust Nak wrote:
Lets continue this on the Science And Technology board.
Let's not.
How about you get some source for your claim and then I'll be interested. As it stands, you have sent us an exposition of your claim by yourself and then a source that rather CONFLICTS with your claim. I won't be interested in debates or opinions about the question .. I want a source, and one that DOES support your claims.
If you can't find a source to support your claim, then it falls flat.
Good luck with that..
In the meantime:
Is it still your claim that a particle can interfere with itself?
Last edited by Blastcat on Mon Sep 21, 2015 1:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
