Virtues and the individual

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Maxcady10001
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Maxcady10001 »

I think it is a bit disengenuous of him to define free will this way, as the ability to avoid what you thought was the Future. If you are able to avoid it, it was never the future. He refutes his definition with his example of the brick. He was always going to duck, that was determined action, he even says so. But he is saying the ability to duck is free will, but its not, as he previously said the light reflected off of the brick into his eye and he ducked in time. At no point during this line of action did he was he free to do otherwise and accept the brick.
I think it is for some personal reason that he argues for comoatibilism.
Eduk
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Eduk »

Listen again. He is arguing about how free will is defined.
Are you certain you know what free will is? I am not.
The brick is perhaps a bad example of free will as it is a reflex action. Deciding to allow the brick to hit you would be an exercise in free will. For example because you were protecting your child.
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Maxcady10001
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Yeah I know he was saying free will is ill defined, but I don't see how anyone could arrive at a better definition. Even your example of protecting your child, can you decide that you don't want your child to be harmed, or is that a reflex out of love for your child?
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LuckyR
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by LuckyR »

Maxcady10001 wrote: January 3rd, 2018, 2:47 pm Yeah I know he was saying free will is ill defined, but I don't see how anyone could arrive at a better definition. Even your example of protecting your child, can you decide that you don't want your child to be harmed, or is that a reflex out of love for your child?
Free Will, like a few other topics, is better defined by what it is not than by what it is. The alternative to Free Will is Predetermination, which most can understand quite easily, without analogies etc to help the process.
"As usual... it depends."
Eduk
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Eduk »

I'll try to give my take.
Imagine you flip a coin. Mathematically you have a 50% chance of head and 50% of tails. In other words it is purely random. However in a predetermined universe there is no such thing as randomness as cause and effect means that given the exact same circumstances you would get the exact same result. However in practice the result of the flip is practically random. There is no way to predict, in advance, if the flip would be heads or tails.
Is being practically random random enough?
Unknown means unknown.
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LuckyR
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by LuckyR »

Eduk wrote: January 4th, 2018, 12:51 pm I'll try to give my take.
Imagine you flip a coin. Mathematically you have a 50% chance of head and 50% of tails. In other words it is purely random. However in a predetermined universe there is no such thing as randomness as cause and effect means that given the exact same circumstances you would get the exact same result. However in practice the result of the flip is practically random. There is no way to predict, in advance, if the flip would be heads or tails.
Is being practically random random enough?
It is matter of perspective. From the perspective of the human flipping the coin it is TRULY (not practically) random. From the perspective of an entity with superhuman calculation and observation skills, it is not random at all (assuming that predeterimination exists, which is very far from being proven).
"As usual... it depends."
Eduk
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Eduk »

From the perspective of an entity with superhuman calculation and observation skills
Well according to QM that is impossible due to the uncertainty principle. So that's one point.
But let us imagine that they did the impossible. Then they do this magic duplication and tell me the coin flip result in advance. Of course this would then change what I did so the result would change. So then they would have to duplicate telling me the result in the duplication, presumably infinitely. Of course if they did duplicate me perfectly, then isn't that me? So even if they got around the infinite regression they still have the problem of just moving the practical randomness into a different version of the same reality, as in it's still practically random.
Unknown means unknown.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by SimpleGuy »

The problem is, if there is a personal measurement , this is the truth. If the physical state |s> is projected onto your eigenbasis , let's say |y_i> for i in the natural Numbers , the probability to measure the explicit state |y_j> (where j is fixed) is: |<s|y_j>|^2. So for two different observables with two different eigenstate basis sequences, this evolves if the Expected value of the commutator doesn't vanish. Then the two observables like impulse and location (space) can never be estimated exactly. But, and now the great but, if we describe the "whole world" together with the person who does the measurment in one hamiltionian, you don't need to project , the whole world evolves after schrödinger and heisenberg with an exponential of a complex Hamiltonian in time. The problem of measurement is then to decouple the person who does the measurement with the physical system to observe and then to do an adiabatic decoupling and to get rid of isothermal parameters. But this is theory, the problem is, does this pertubative ansatz always hold for a real world physical measurement or not? !!!
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LuckyR
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by LuckyR »

Eduk wrote: January 4th, 2018, 1:48 pm
From the perspective of an entity with superhuman calculation and observation skills
Well according to QM that is impossible due to the uncertainty principle. So that's one point.
But let us imagine that they did the impossible. Then they do this magic duplication and tell me the coin flip result in advance. Of course this would then change what I did so the result would change. So then they would have to duplicate telling me the result in the duplication, presumably infinitely. Of course if they did duplicate me perfectly, then isn't that me? So even if they got around the infinite regression they still have the problem of just moving the practical randomness into a different version of the same reality, as in it's still practically random.
Of course QM is a descriptor we use to describe our experiences as humans, superhumans may have a different experience, or not (we can never know).

The superhuman does not have to interact with you (and thus change you) they could tell a remote human observer or write their predictions/calculations/knowledge on a paper and seal it in an envelope for you to read after the fact. Since their predictions (actually knowledge) would be 100% accurate, there would be zero randomness from their perspective, if you read their "prediction" after the fact, you may believe that what was indistinguishable from true randomness to you, was in fact predetermined.
"As usual... it depends."
Maxcady10001
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Even if everything is random, that doesn't give anyone free will, only randomness. I don't understand why people cannot get past this whole free will thing. It was only an invention of religious people to introduce moral accountability, other than religious reasons why would anyone care about free will? It's been refuted a hundred times over and I suspect people will continue refuting it as the years go by.
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LuckyR
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by LuckyR »

Maxcady10001 wrote: January 4th, 2018, 3:59 pm Even if everything is random, that doesn't give anyone free will, only randomness. I don't understand why people cannot get past this whole free will thing. It was only an invention of religious people to introduce moral accountability, other than religious reasons why would anyone care about free will? It's been refuted a hundred times over and I suspect people will continue refuting it as the years go by.
Very true, randomness does not equal free will, though both of these separate entities would be wiped out if there was predetermination.
"As usual... it depends."
Maxcady10001
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Maxcady10001 »

A completely random world would do just as well wiping out free will and moral accountability.
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LuckyR
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by LuckyR »

Maxcady10001 wrote: January 4th, 2018, 7:51 pm A completely random world would do just as well wiping out free will and moral accountability.
I'm sorry, what, exactly is: "a completely random world"?
"As usual... it depends."
Maxcady10001
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Were we not speaking about a world based on randomness instead of predetermination?
Eduk
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Re: Virtues and the individual

Post by Eduk »

I don't understand why people cannot get past this whole free will thing. It was only an invention of religious people to introduce moral accountability,
The statements that people present as unarguable fact simply boggle my mind. You were present when the first person 'invented' free will? They were religious and they told you explicitly their purpose? It's amazing how it caught on.
Kind of ignores the fact I was self aware before anyone told me I was self aware. Maybe a religious person whispered it into my ear and I forgot. What is a religious person by the way? How do I distinguish a generic religious person from anyone else?
Anyway, mind boggled.
Unknown means unknown.
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