Bust Nak wrote:
Divine Insight wrote:
How can you say this until it's actually been resolved?
I don't really know how to answer that, perhaps you can help by explaining why we can't say it can potentially be resolved until it has been resolved? We figure out how the brain works, see if it is equivalent to a deterministic machine or not and resolve the debate once and for all.
What you suggest here sounds simple enough on the surface. But what if it's not as simple as it sounds? The brain is not a simple machine.
Are you familiar with Chaos Theory? And in particular with the concept of Lyapunov time?
The reason I ask is because complex brain functions may ultimately fall under the behavior described by Chaos Theory. And I certainly have valid reasons to suggest that the Lyapunov time associated with even the most trivial of human thought processes may indeed be quite small. Potentially on the order of milliseconds or less. The reason I propose this is because of the millions of synapses involved in any brain activity. If there are indeed small quantum effects playing a role in synaptic activity (which is a reasonable assumption since these synapses communicate using subatomic entities, even molecules can exhibit quantum behavior), then the Lyapunov time associated with any given though could be extremely short.
In other words, human thought patterns may not be anymore deterministic than long range weather patterns.
If this is the case, then any hope of understanding "how the brain works" in terms of actual deterministic thought processes would be futile, because it's not deterministic.
What you suggest about understanding how the brain works sounds like you are already presuming that it will work very mechanically deterministic and we can follow every logical path precisely. But that may simply not be possible.
Although, having said all of the above, I do agree that it may be possible to determine that the brain is indeed non-deterministic. And in that case we will have at least shown that thought processes are "free" from determinism.
Precisely what that would mean in terms of a concept of "Free Will" is another question entirely. We might then ask if we are free from Chaos? I have thoughts on that question but it would be a side-track to go into that here.
Bust Nak wrote:
I think the argument I've given in the OP is already pretty strong that the world cannot be fully predetermined. And if it's not fully predetermined, then there must necessarily be events within the universe that are not fully deterministic.
To be frank, I see it as appeal to consequences, that boils down to "It would be bad if the world is fully predetermined, therefore it isn't fully predetermined." So what if everything that any human has ever done is predetermined from the dawn of time?
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not placing any judgement on whether anything would be "bad" or "good". I'm simply pointing out that every motion, action, (i.e. every jot and tittle to use an exact description) of every behavior of the universe would have needed to have been predetermined from the very beginning of time.
It's not that this is "good" or "bad", but rather it's highly improbable. In fact, established areas of Chaos Theory coupled with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, already tell us that this is not even possible.
So as far as I can see, pure determinism has already been proven to be an outdated obsolete idea. It's one of those purely philosophical notions that simply don't apply to the real world. No different from the philosophical idea of an infinitely old and static universe. That may be a valid philosophical thought, but it doesn't apply to the universe in which we live.
I would suggest that pure determinism is on the same level as the idea of a purely static eternal universe. We already know that this philosophical guess is wrong.
Bust Nak wrote:
However, is every "cause" determined? That is really the question. And the answer appears to be no, not every cause can be shown to have been determined. In fact, quantum mechanics demands that this must be the case.
Right, but there is still a question of if uncertainty in the quantum scale, translate to uncertainty in the macro scale. But that is yet another way to resolve the philosophical debate.
Chaos Theory demands that it must. So as far as I'm concerned, this has already been resolved. Uncertainty in the quantum scale most definitely translates into uncertainty on the macro scale. The question isn't whether or not this occurs, but rather the question is how long do quantum effects take to change macro systems.
In the case of something like the weather I would suggest that quantum effects would take a very long time to change the weather, simply because quantum effects would affect the current state of the weather in such a small way. Clearly the "butterfly effect" would have a much more profound effect. In other words, a butterfly flapping its wings is going to create a far greater atmospheric disturbance than any quantum events.
However, when we move into the brain this changes dramatically. The reason being that the very mechanisms a brain uses to process thoughts are highly dependent upon quantum entities (i.e. electrons, photos, and even molecular ions, etc.) all of which exhibit quantum behavior on a regular basis.
So it makes sense that quantum effects could have a huge affect on a thought process, even though they may only have a very tiny effect on the weather.
We can't view the functioning of the brain as being "removed" from the quantum world. That would be a mistake. Our brains are intimately connected with the quantum world. It could be said that within our brains we have one foot in the macro world, and one foot in the quantum world at all times.
Bust Nak wrote:
But it doesn't follow from this that everything must therefore be determined. And so a philosophy of pure determinism doesn't appear to have much support. There are clearly problems associated with pure determinism, as I have pointed out in the OP.
I said determinism makes more sense than solipsism because it can at least be resolved; Seems like you are going on further step then me, and is saying it does not make more sense because it has been resolved against its favor.
I believe that it has already been resolved against pure determinism. For the reasons I outlined above.
From my perspective it would be as naive to philosophically propose that the universe is deterministic as it would be to philosophically propose that the universe is infinitely old and static.
We simply have information about the universe now that makes both of those philosophical guesses simply incorrect.
In the OP I was attempting to appeal to a common sense layman approach. It should be enough to realize that if the world is deterministic then everything that happens would have needed to have been predetermined from the dawn of time. Surely you can see just how weird and spooky that would be?
In other words, humans had no choice but to believe in witches and believe that the only way to kill them is to burn them alive, etc. And all of this was predetermined from the dawn of time?
Surely you can see why I compared this with the idea of solipsism?
For one person to think that they are all that exist and all other people are just a figment of their imagination is something that most people reject as simply being utterly absurd.
Surely the idea that all of human history, and ever single person who lived and died, what they did was predetermined from the dawn of time is equally absurd?
In fact, in that kind of deterministic universe no one could be born or die so much as a second earlier or later than they actually do. Yet Chaos Theory already tells us that this is not the case. Stormy whether that has been responsible for the deaths of people would violate determinism right there.
The whether clearly isn't determined very far ahead of time. It's clearly free from determinism to a large degree. The human brain is no doubt free from determinism as well, and much more so than even the weather.
