Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

Now there is a word I have been looking for for years... thanks.
Reification!

Perhaps Write4U could provide the mathematics that is Reification?

 

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Yes

Because it adds nothing to the argument.

No, it's because it doesn't add anything. Either something constrained is free, or it is not, that is the argument. Whether that is a dog's will, human will, a train, a sandwich, or anything else.

Not with you, at least. But then you can't seem to answer seemingly straightforward questions. If you want to change my argument to suit your own view then by all means do so, just not here.

I just wish to avoid irrelevancies, QQ.

So you're still not answering the question. Is something that is constrained to be considered free? I am not asking about the thing doing the constraining, but that which is constrained.

 

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good!

ahh but that is where you are mistaken it does.

While on the face of it this may be relatively true ( out of context) it doesn't apply to the human who can restrain his own will (in context).

It is that very ability to restrain his own will that affords him freedom to choose, to self determine. With out that restraint the human is in lah lah land singing booh booh bah bah bang doing circles thinking about the determinism of an ashtray.

 

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Question :
How does a completely reflexive organism manage it's reflexes?

key : completely reflexive, absolutely reflexive, nothing but reflexes... etc

 

No, it really doesn't. If something is not free if constrained then it is irrelevant what that something is, or who or what is doing the constraining.

But it does apply, QQ. Humans are a "something". Human will is a "something". A dog's appetite is a "something". A brick is a "something". The output of an interaction is a "something". Is something that is constrained to be considered free, QQ? You haven't yet answered that. Are you going to?

And is that ability (to restrain) free if it similarly constrained, or are you simply going to keep begging the question?

 

false!
think about it some more...
The "who" is pivotal...

I have... but you simply can't get it ....
I even offered a way for you to grasp the logic but you have so far refused to even consider it... ( see post # 484)
The first step in learning the logic involved is to find an answer to the question raised in post #484.
Once that is understood the rest is easier....
so to help I'll repeat it here:

Question :
How does a completely reflexive organism manage it's reflexes?

key note : completely reflexive, absolutely reflexive, nothing but reflexes... etc ( all moving parts are reflexive)

 

I get that you want to change the argument to something more palatable to you, but while you continue to think that the "who" is pivotal I'll be ignoring you, since based on your error you'll just be spouting irrelevancies to the argument presented. I'll reserve my efforts to those with something to offer that shows they at least comprehend the position they're looking to counter, and do so within the context of that argument. You? No.

 

If you refer to the original formulation I provided, it is actually a premise that if a system is constructed from deterministic interactions then it, too, is deterministic.
As such, on what grounds do you consider it "shaky"?
I'm not averse to the premises being questioned, but please try to offer something other than personal opinion.

So you say the logic is valid, and then say that the conclusion is invalid.
You seem to be accepting the logic as valid, then looking at the conclusion it arrives at, not like it, and so assert that it must therefore be invalid.
In all this time you've offered nothing else, other than this assertion that it requires an additional assumption, yet you can't bring yourself to show how the argument is invalid without it?
Moreover you seem to accept that it is valid.
Please can you explain this apparent inconsistency?

Why does it depend on how it was tracked?
Or by what it was?
Are you looking to special plead?
Either the logic is valid or it is not.
Valid logic has nothing to do with what things are... it is valid by dint of the logic itself.

Why does it seem to be involved?
Are you not already begging the question by assuming that dreams, information, and other stuff that is "you" is not beholden to the same logic?
If those systems are also similarly subject to the same logic then your efforts to move outside seemed fallacious, due to the question-begging.
Are you therefore suggesting that those systems are not subject to the same logic?
If so, on what basis?

Why do you put beknownst in quotations?
Is there some emphasis you are trying to make?

 

"They" is not a concept the universe has.

"This" rock doesn't know that "that" rock - or those eight other rocks - even exist. Each moves according to the forces directly affecting it, and nothing else. Aside from those local forces, each rock lives in a figurative vacuum.

It requires a human to step back and say "Hey, those ten rocks are all in a line. That's a pattern."
A pattern is a human association.

 

The universe has no concept that it is the "universe". Does that mean it doesn't exist?

 

No, it doesn't mean that. And that is not any kind of counter-argument.

 

That's a pattern." (Does it know it is a manifold?)

I agree, but it is also a physical expression (pattern) to itself . Determinism is a strict chronological set of mathematical patterns which determine the consistent orderly development of future patterns.

Yes it is. The Universe itself is a pattern.

There are two perspectives, the subjective human perspective of observed actions and the independent objective universal mathematical imperatives of the actions themselves.

That's why we can call it Determinism. The mathematics of physical interaction demand consistent adherence to (what we call) mathematical (physical) permissions and restrictions.
consistent with prevailing dynamical potentials.

You cannot say the universe is both deterministic because of its regularities and not deterministic because humans gave names to these regularities? That's just wrong.

 

This is simply an assertion.

You can't have a pattern with a dataset of one.

No, we don't. You do.

 

A demonstrable one.

Of course you can. The single dataset is a pattern all by itself. That's why we call it a "set". One point is not a pattern, three points create a geometrical pattern

No, I call human symbolic representations of mathematical values and functions "mathematics" just like everyone else. I just propose the universe actually functions in a way which is translatable into our symbolic representations of natural orderly functions.

I also call the actual relative values and functions as being translatable into human symbolic mathematical language. It's the way the universe works. It's really not complicated as a concept. I believe we call them "universal laws". Are you asserting there are no "universal behavioral laws" ?

Tegmark estimates a total of some 33 values (relative mathematical potentials) and a handful of equations which combined can account for all universal dynamical actions and conditions (patterns).

 

In all this time, you have not been able to do so.

A dataset with a single datapoint is not a pattern.

Good. That's settled at least.

 

LOL, our entire discipline of study in physics rests on observation of natural patterns.

A datapoint is not a dataset.....difference.

Was it ever in doubt? Don't answer that.......

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Indeed. Count how many times in that sentence you had to refer to humans:
'Our', 'discipline', 'study' 'observation'

That is exactly my point to you.

The universe is a single thing. It cannot be a pattern, since there is not even another one.

 

Once the supernatural notion of freedom is set aside, the argument is over the degrees of freedom possessed by the agent - not yes/no, but to what degree and how.
- - - -

And your conclusion, up to that point, before you jumped to free will, was that since physical systems are so constructed they are deterministic. We agreed - everyone agreed, I think.

Because the logic did not bear on the final conclusion, as explicitly noted. You reasoned, validly from your premises (granted), that physical systems are deterministic. You concluded that freedom of will was impossible. Your premises did not include the necessary assumption for that logical leap, and you deny making that assumption. So - - -

Because that is where a discussion of degrees of freedom would begin. (The deterministic fallacy here rests on bottom up determinism - on locating the "constraints" and "causes" and "tracking" in the substrates, for example)

Because it is the primary candidate for the location of cause, constraint, or whatever - and such things are involved.

Because it derives from a quoted term that is - in this context - dubious. A bottom up deterministic system would have no agents with "actual" knowledge per se - that would be another of those inherent illusions, appearances without actual observers
but the appearance of observers only.
- -

They have effects as patterns - they cause, as patterns - whether observed by humans or not. They exist, by presumption of physics, without being observed by humans. Their unseen and unmonitored behavior is governed by physical law. The pattern we name a "brick" has a mass and volume and shape of its own, for example, and will fall as a unit through the resistance of air, under the influence of gravity, as none of its constituent atoms individually would. If the human does not see it, make the association of all those atoms by observation, the impact on that human's head will nevertheless be as physical law predicts for the brick as a whole.

 

To make sure everyone understands the distinction I draw between human "symbolic" mathematics and the inherent universal orderly and consistent (which we have named mathematical) values and functions

Not the way I see it. A single data point has no intrinsic value relative to other single points.. A set of points creates a geometric line, a set with a value. A pattern. Thee points create a set , a pattern which we call triangle.

It's a dynamically changing geometric object, the "change" expressing itself in a myriad of predictable patterns, such as the Fibonacci sequence as can be observed in daisies as well as in spiral galaxies.

Ratios are (dynamic) relative mathematical values.

1. Google.

IMO, the Universe is a single dynamical compound set of patterns within sets of patterns or fields. A hierarchical ordering system (rational/mathematical in nature) of a near infinite number of points, from the very subtle to gross expression in reality. Hence the terms "manifold" and "dimensions"

Renate Loll calls it "causal dynamical triangulation" or "the fractal order in which the spacetime fabric itself unfolds".

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notice the emerging patterns (from chaos) at quantum scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_dynamical_triangulation

It's all very mathematical, and that is why we can understand what we are observing and use our symbolic language (mathematics) to describe the observed universal physical values and functions, i.e. the mathematical functional physical patterns of the universe itself.

Not your maths, not my maths, the universe has its own maths and it doesn't care how humans symbolize it as long as the symbolic model is compatible with the mathematical way the universe works.

In one of my links a cosmologist observes that, "if we want to know something about the universe we can ask it and if we ask it nicely (using correct mathematics) it will provide us with an answer."

This is a profound statement, IMO

 

Then as I'd guessed all along, what you meant to say is the universe contains patterns - not the universe is a pattern.