Is a deterministic universe a predestined universe?

You're the one claiming moral values are an illusion while at the same time claiming to "personally" believe in them. Why do YOU think raping and killing a child is wrong? Or is it still an illusion for you? Do you really assume that there is no value in letting a child grow up without such horrible scarring? That it serves no objective end for our species to eliminate needless suffering whereever we find?

If you don't think human nature plays a role in what we value as wrong you are being naive. Human nature as defined by the majority attributes of our species values compassion and empathy and the protection of children. It's as in our natures as our genes are. These values have evolved in us and so in this sense ARE objective principles we can apply to real situations. I took issue with your term "objectively wrong" because that implies that wrongness can just exist as an objective trait without being judged as such by another consciousness. That there can be deviation from a standard without an act of measurement by such a standard. There cannot. But evil? Yes, it has an objective existence. There are humans out there we call sociopaths who have no empathy or moral values whatsoever. Sometimes they commit horrible acts too. That is evil. We call it such much as you might call Angelina Jollie beautiful or a good steak delicious. We make judgements based on real objective information that we infer about objects and about people. And those judgements, moral or otherwise, describe real properties that are legitimately projected upon people. Evil is thus objective to some extent just as beauty is. Most people agree when an act is evil or good. There is an objective consensus based on our shared moral values.

Plenty? Really? Who do you hang out with?

Our eyes and brains create the color red from the data contained in the wavelength of light. From there it is projected as a property belonging to the apple. In fact there is no such property inhering in the apple. Ever look at an apple in a dimly lit room? Good and evil are likewise properties we project on certain acts based on certain data we receive about them. The properties are mentally constructed as "out there" just like all properties are. THAT is the basis of their reality, that our consciousness projects them upon an essentially neutral landscape of mere objective data. Is it reliable? Yeah. Pretty much. When we react with horror at someone raping and killing a child we want them locked up. We have an uncanny sense that such people should not be allowed among us. Thus morality serves to protect society in eliminating its derelicts based on these projected moral properties. It is a system that has worked for tens of thousands of years and continues to work today. Why are you trying to undermine it?

Then you have Sarkus Syndrome: the stubborn tendency to call something an illusion and then claim it isn't an illusion because illusions are real. If moral values are illusions, how are they valid?

The moral imperative to protect children has not changed, extending so far back as to even exist in our simian ancestors.

 

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And on the other hand, I found this Wired article linked to that website:

ScienceNews for Your Neurons Brains and Behavior
Disbelieving Free Will Makes Brain Less Free
By Brandon Keim05.27.114:32 PM
Categories: Brains and Behavior
Edit


"If people are told that free will doesn’t exist, their brains might follow suit.

A test of people who read passages discrediting the notion of free will found an immediate decrease in brain activity related to voluntary action. The findings are just one data point in ongoing scientific investigation of a millennia-old philosophical conundrum, but they raise an intriguing possibility.

“Our results indicate that beliefs about free will can change brain processes related to a very basic motor level,” wrote researchers led by psychologist Davide Rigoni of Italy’s University of Padova in a study published in May’s Psychological Science.


‘Abstract belief systems might have a much more fundamental effect than previously thought.’

Rigoni’s team asked 30 people to read passages from Francis Crick’s 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Half read a passage that didn’t mention free will, while the others read a passage describing it as illusory. All were hooked to electroencephalograph machines that monitored electric activity known as “readiness potential,” which is linked to the neurological computations that occur in the milliseconds before voluntary movement.

The test subjects were then asked to press a mouse button when a cursor flashed on a computer screen for several seconds. Those who read the passage dismissing free will displayed significantly lower readiness potentials. Their actions seemed to involved less voluntary control than the control group’s.

Tested on when they decided to press the button, the non-free-will group reported doing so a fraction of a second before their counterparts. To lose confidence in free will seemingly introduced a lag between conscious choice and action.

Earlier psychological studies of free will have found that discrediting free will seems to trigger an increase in cheating aggressiveness, encourage people to be less helpful and generally sap motivation.

The latest findings extend the effects of disbelieving to a more basic physical level. Whether there’s a relationship between free will, motor activity and more complex behaviors is yet to be determined, but “abstract belief systems might have a much more fundamental effect than previously thought,” wrote the researchers."---http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/free-will/

 

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Maybe. That idea assumes that the event in question is law-governed. It also seems to suppose that, assuming that the event is law governed, that the law in question isn't probabilistic in nature and that precisely defined initial conditions exist to be plugged into it.

I strongly doubt that laws of history, society or psychology even exist. That creates major problems for the so-called "social sciences". These arose in the 18'th and 19'th century as part of a rather scientistic program that assumed that if people could just sweep away medieval obscurantism and adopt the successful methods of Newtonian physics to understanding human affairs, people could create a progressive paradise. (Hasn't exactly turned out that way.)

I do think that human behavior and collectively, human society, are the product of human neurophysiology. And the physics and chemistry occurring in neurons does seem to be law governed. OK, so does that suggest that it's at least theoretically possible to logically and mathematically derive laws of psychology and society from the laws governing the behavior of neurons?

I'm skeptical. It seems to me to be likely that systems as complex as the human brain are probably going to behave chaotically (in the scientific sense), in a non-linear fashion. There's going to be all kinds of butterfly effects and stuff. The implication of that is that we are probably never going to be able to predict human behavior with anything like the accuracy that we currently predict the weather, where far less complex non-linearities exist. And that's basically what human beings already do in understanding each other.

There's also the quantum mechanical stuff. My understanding is that while the Schroedinger equation is deterministic, it's deterministic with regards to probabilities. And there's the uncertainty principle stuff. I don't know enough about physics (does anyone?) to say whether that kind of micro-scale fuzziness is built into the nature of reality itself. But if it is, and if we proceed to combine that idea with the idea of non-linear functions where even an infinitesmal difference in initial values can result in dramatic differences in the value of the function itself, we might have the basis for an argument that there conceivably could be quite a bit of unpredictability built into the nature of things. At least for certain kinds of systems, which might just include human nervous systems.

 

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I don't think that moral values are illusions. They probably are relative to human beings and to similar social animals. (I'm convinced that my dog had some sense of right and wrong). And the details of human moral systems often seem to be relative to culture and to historical circumstance.

That doesn't mean that they are illusory, just that they are local.

 

What an idiotic wast of time and money on a so-called study which proved absolutely nothing! I say "idiotic" because only an idiot would try to draw a conclusion based on two groups of 15 individuals. Such a small sample is stupid. The test subjects were MUCH more likely to have been influenced by how well they enjoyed their last meal than they were by anything they read. Those "researchers" should be forced into a different line of work - like washing lab glassware and/or sweeping the floor. <shrug>

 

That study is only one of many that seek to expand upon Benjamin Libet's work regarding readiness potentials, and is far from the only one that raises questions about the validity of the conclusions we've drawn from it. See the following Wikipedia article, the references in particular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

I'm not arguing that libertarian free will definitely exists, only that the question has not been definitively settled.

 

I've just read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/alejandro-rodriguez-madrid-predicted-pope-francis_n_2884418.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl2%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D284360



''A 22-year-old man in Madrid apparently predicted who would be the next pope last month -- just a few hours before the pope emeritus announced his resignation.

Alejandro Rodriguez de Cabo's girlfriend, Yolanda De Mena, sent out a tweet on Feb. 11 claiming that earlier that morning her boyfriend had awoken with a strange premonition.

"My boyfriend woke up last night at 4 a.m. saying he had dreamed of a new pope called "Francis I" and Benedict resigned today," the message read.


Around the same time De Mena posted that tweet, news of Pope Benedict XVI's shocking resignation pronouncement began circulating around the globe. And this week, the second half of Rodriguez's remarkable "dream" came true, as the papal conclave selected Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now known as Pope Francis.

It just might be one of the greatest spoilers ever, user José Enrique Cabrero tweeted:


De Mena's tweet has since become a media and viral sensation, and by Friday morning, the message had been re-tweeted more than 80,000 times.

Rodriguez de Cabo, who seems mystified by the whole affair, has had his social media account flooded by well-wishers, as well as a few skeptics who wonder if the tweet's date might possibly have been rigged.

But despite the timestamp, some point out it's hard to argue with the Francis part of the prediction.

"There's no way to have altered the tweet to add Francis's name," The Daily Dot's Kris Holt writes. "It was either a lucky guess, or a prophetic dream about the new pope."

For his part, Rodriguez de Cabo thanked his new followers for their support and "those who've made me laugh."

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Congrats on the lucky guess, Alejandro.

 

If we are nothing but biomechanical blobs, then notions of responsibility are a farce.

Extreme moral relativism is a possible consequence of the idea that we are our bodies.

 

If anything, such studies might show that people may have a tendency to be easily influenced simply by the fact that they have been told something - and not by what in particular they have been told.


I'd love to see such studies done with, say, police detectives, lawyers, special task agents, professional negotiators and other such people who in their line of professional duty have to maintain a centred and unaffected mind.

 

If you expect me to bother engaging you in discussion ever again, you'll do me the courtesy of not projecting your bullshit nihilistic conceptions onto my comments before you respond to them. When you do this, you're basically just having a conversation with yourself. I've spent time with you in the past hashing out some of the finer points of my own agnosticism with respect to certain greater possibilities. I've also spent time, at the risk of being set upon by the hungry sciforums wolves, sharing some rather wild metaphysical speculation related to the nature of being, some of which was designed to correct your misconceptions about the way people like me really think. But here you are again, characterizing my position in a wholly nihilistic way. It doesn't come from me, it comes from you, and there can be no meaningful dialogue between us until you cut it out.

That's all I have to say to you, as things stand now.

 

That's a mighty big "IF" - and there's absolutely nothing to indicate that that's all we are. Individuals who refuse to accept responsibility for their actions have NO place in the human race. They are nothing more than lazy, hairless apes.

 

Is a deterministic universe a predestined universe?

The answer is, it depends on your reference. If you consider the wisdom of age, since it has gone through the cycles of life, it can anticipate the fate of the teenager as they struggle with adolescence. The teen may have puppy love that they think will last forever. The adult can look at this from the 20/20 hindsight of age and see the final result. If it does not happen the teen assumes fate is random. But if the adult sees it does not work, this was quite predictable.

The difference has to do with the scale of time perception. The more in the moment you are, the less ordered the universe will appear since one can't see long term patterns, using a short time scale. Picture a graph as a function of time. If we only look at the first 10% of the graph, we can't see how the entire curve looks or how the 10% is connected.

As you think longer term, you start to notice trends that only develop within the longer term. This allows things to become more predictable. If we look at the entire graph above, we see both short and long term trends. This eliminates irrational imagination that tries to extrapolate into the darkness outside time perception.

The old man can see the cycles of life, by looking at the entire curve of his life. Often if they could do their life differently, they would make differently choices at certain points, because the cause and effect of the curve would have added up differently; casual. But in the short term, there is no reference to gauge, so the choices appears indeterminate or determined in an irrational way, which seems random. But the old man sees the cause and effect because of longer term perception.

 

If you compare conservatives to liberals, conservative implies longer term traditions (conserving the past) resulting in a longer term time perception. Liberal is more about constant change and micromanaging because it sees more in the short term. Conservatives tend to promote self reliance. This is easier to do if you have a longer term time perception, since you can spot trends and prepare ahead. Liberals tend to promote dependency which is easier to do with short term time perception. One can't see the bigger graph and anticipate the future (appears in the fog). This benefits by others shaping the future for you.

The long term planner does not need as much nanny state to think for them, since they can see trends. The short term planner gets nervous in the long term, since it all appears random and chaotic. They seek others to light the way.

Much of this time perception difference has to do with the two sides of the brain. The right brain is more integral or 3-D. It connects the data into 3-D curves. These 3-D data balls build, like a snowball into a snowman, with time. There is a holographic trend even when small. The left brain is more differential and will see the slope of a point of a curve in space and time. It is not designed to integrate or summarize but to differentiate a point in time-space.

As an example, say we are hungry and use the left brain. Since this side of the brain will look for the slope of the hunger curve at this point in space and time, it may lead to creative impulse for a unique snack. The right brain is more 3-D and will try to integrate this hunger impulse into the longer term trends of eating. This might be a predictable routine snack.

To continue the analogy, say spicy food gives you heart burn. The left brainer, since he is looking at the slope of the hunger curve at a point in space and time. might still eat the spicy food and get heart burn. This action is consistent with the moment since at that moment in time and space, what is desired is the hot spicy flavor. It is not looking longer term.

The person using the right brain is thinking in terms of the integration. This offers more of a check and balance for the impulse since including in the impulse to eat that spicy food is the memory of the heart burn. They may avoid that food. The nanny state is not needed by the latter since they look ahead. But it may be needed to short term left brainer who will do this again and again simply because they are not using enough right brain to integrate the entire experience. You may need to remove the spicy food from sight.

Mayor Bloomberg tries to help the left brainers but this insults the right brainers who don't need to be controlled since they are capable of seeing the longer term cause and effect and adjust.

 

An interesting application of left and right brain and long and short term perception, was the crucifixion of Christ. Jesus was initially thinking long term, recognizing the series of events that would lead to his death. But after he is on the cross, and the pain of his suffering hits him, he changes to the left side of the brain and starts to live in the moment lamenting about being forsaken. He switches his time perception from longer term right brain to shorter term left brain, or from the integration of what is to be, into the slope of that curve at a very specific point in space and time; the pain of the now.

He empathizes with both sides of the brain and says forgive the left brainers, they know not what they do. One can get so rapped up in the sport of pain, on the slope of the curve, they could not see the long term. He saw this.

 

There is another sense in which the future may be predetermined besides just due to strict causality. Or at least another way of seeing it. It's called eternalism or the block theory of time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

In this model is freedom therefore as well as indeterminacy just an illusion? I don't think so. Or rather, it depends on your perspective. From INSIDE 4D time actions really are undecided until the moment they are decided. The future really is indeterminate, at least in the case of chaotic complex systems. From OUTSIDE 4D time, looking at time as an extended 3D space where past, present, and future all coexist, all actions and events are predestined to occur from all eternity. Paradoxical to say the least!

 

Trying to defend eternalism requires one to call upon a seemingly never-ending stream of contrived possibilities to make sense of it's implications. That doesn't make it false, just apparently absurd. But it's interesting enough subject matter in any case.

 

And yet - here they are.

Now what?

 

It's not clear what exactly the problem is in this topic.

Is it about the apparent meaninglessness/inefficacy of human action?

 

I think the answer to this question lies largely in two areas: 1) whether free will is real, and 2) whether everything else in the universe operates upon absolute, unchanging laws, in which there are no inherently random elements.

What is clear is that the universe has laws. The rest, I think, is unclear. It's hard, maybe impossible, to determine whether there is actually an intrinsically random property anywhere in our universe. Things often appear random, but whether that's due to true randomness, or lack of complete information is unknown.

As for free will, we appear to have it, but we're not certain.

If free will is real, then that certainly constitutes a random element, in which case even a deterministic universe may not be predestined. This is true also if, aside from will, there exists some inherently random property anywhere in the universe.

However, even if free will is real, the universe may still be predestined, though "predestined" may not be the appropriate word. This may be due to the very article you quoted, regarding Eternalism. If Eternalism is true, then all points in time already exist, really, and the future is set. This doesn't necessarily negate free will, though.

A way to understand Eternalism may be like this, though it is a crude analogy: You have a string that extends from point A to point B. The string, the whole string, already exists. Now you set an ant down on the string, and it starts making its way along the string from point A to point B. It encounters the string in succession, until it reaches the end.

The analogy is crude, but it's a way to understand it. A big shortcoming of the analogy is that, in Eternalism, the ant is already at every part of the string, and only it's consciousness moves along it linearly. This seems to quash the idea of free will, but it may not. If the total set of time arises simultaneously, what determines the set? Is it some outside entity? Or is it the entity(ies) inside of the set? Perhaps we make all of our choices through time simultaneously, at once, but consciously experience our choices linearly, in succession. It might seem that our choices are already predetermined then, but actually we're still the ones making the choices.

At any rate, that is a speculative hypothesis, for which it may be impossible to collect evidence.

In my personal opinion, we have free will in a deterministic universe, which is both definite and eternal.