deepndark wrote: ↑06 Aug 2017
But, on the other hand - we are not living in 100% determinism either, and this is something I have been arguing with some people. They claim that the whole universe and it's physics-laws exclusively rule everything. I stated that biological units i.e. human beings and animals mess up the determinism, by free choice. If sun is shining on the grass and I cause a shadow, then the grass gets less light on it, right?
I'm going to take this as a springboard to try and clarify some of the things I've been saying, and I don't want you to think I'm making some kind of specific attack on your viewpoint, this is more being directed at the general audience.
Imagine you (the universal "you", all of you) have a box of dominoes. Now, you could stand the dominoes up and make a pattern with them, so that when you tip one over on one end of a line, they all get tipped over in a chain-reaction. Or, you could flip the box over and let all the dominoes fall in a jumble onto the floor.
One action may appear to be more random than the other, but it isn't, from a viewpoint of causality. One is just easier to track. In the orderly line of dominoes, one can see the progression - this domino hits that domino, which hits the next domino, and so on. However, just dumping the box has its own progression, it's just harder for humans to keep track of. Each falling domino has its own mass and shape and trajectory, which will determine whether it hits any other domino in mid-air (and therefore rebounding and changing direction), and there may be a large number of interactions before the group of dominoes hits the ground and spreads out in a messy, random-
seeming spread. The human mind can't keep track of or predict every little bump of every last domino, and so it seems chaotic, but every motion involved is a result of the rules of physics, and so long as the initial conditions are exactly the same, the end result will also be
exactly the same, because the rules of physics don't change. (Or, for the more persnickety, we have not yet witnessed them changing, and are unlikely to.)
Which brings us to free will. People like to think of free will as being completely untethered from any sort of causality, but if one seriously considers the matter, there's no real reason to assume that. Our brains are meaty organic computers that take in various inputs and judge situations and make decisions based on all the info that we've absorbed up to that point. But there is so far no indication that there is anything to human consciousness that is outside of the bounds of accepted physical laws. We don't fully comprehend the brain's workings, to be sure, but without even the slightest hint of some other factor, science has to operate as if the laws we know are the laws that work, which is why neurological study is pretty much bounded within accepted physical science.
For you to be where you are right now, this very instant, a chain of causality, like a row of dominoes, had to occur. Your parents had to meet at a certain time and place to eventually produce you. You had to grow and learn and develop your individual personality, your likes and dislikes. You had to take an interest in making music, making music with computers, and specifically using the program Reason in order to bring you here to this forum where you could read a discussion on determinism. All along the path to this point, your brain was making constant decisions, some more conscious than others.
Now, if an equation is entered into a calculator, it's only going to give one answer no matter how many times you enter it - and if it changes its answer it's probably malfunctioning. It's a little trickier extending this analogy to a human brain, because being an organic computer there are many things that can affect its functioning. Are you well-fed? Rested? Are you suffering from any illness at the time? Taking drugs? Drinking? All these things and more can affect the chemical balances in your body, and so also your brain, and can influence your brain's effectiveness at making any given decision.
All these things are factors that the human mind can't fully track or predict, and yet they are there, and subject to the same laws of the universe and causality as anything else. So were you blocking the sun? Well, your brain decided that you wanted to be there at that moment. It may have been a deliberate conscious decision, or a mere subconscious whim, but your brain guided you there.
And that guidance was one domino in a chain of events that stretches all the way back to the beginning of the universe.
Suppose you are standing there, by the grass blocking the sun, and an out-of-control drunk driver runs off the road and is coming directly for you. His chain of dominos led him to that point. He might have not gotten drunk if circumstances had been different, but they weren't - he felt the way he did, his feelings (a biochemical state inside his brain) influenced his decision to pick up that alcohol, he drank, and then, affected by the chemical reaction of the alcohol in his brain, he went driving. Now he's coming at you.
Your brain was not thinking about this possibility until this very moment. From your point of perception, you do not see the other person's chain of dominos, and you're not considering how your own chain of dominos put you in this other person's path. Your brain has to decide what to do next.
You might panic, and freeze in indecision. Or you might give all your effort to leaping to one side, out of the way of the car. Or perhaps your attention was caught by a particularly interesting flower and you don't even notice the guy coming. It seems like there are many possibilities. In reality, only one outcome will occur. Which one? That depends on your surrounding conditions. If you are well-fed and rested, you may be more alert and ready to act if you see the car coming. If you are emotionally distressed for some reason, you may be less likely to dodge. If you are also drunk, you may be oblivious to the danger. But in the end, all the circumstances will come into play at that exact moment, your brain will do its work, and you will do whatever it is the situation allows you to do. Since the laws of physics don't change, the decision you make at that moment is the only one you could have made under those exact circumstances. Do you think it could have been different? If the conditions don't change, then what factor could make your brain come up with any different decision? And if you think there is some such factor, what is its nature and how do you prove it exists?
If the brain is subject to the laws of physics, and if the laws of physics don't spontaneously change, then it logically follows that at any given instant the brain makes the only decision it can make under those exact circumstances. The domino is pushed down by the domino that precedes it, and in turn it pushes down the domino after it. Your brain has done its job - it has actively worked to make a decision based on everything it's learned and the current info it has. It could not have predicted that move until it happened, but that move depended on everything that occurred before that instant. If one tiny thing had been different, the decision might have been different. But nothing was different, nor could it be.
Your actions, your will,
feels free. You don't actively perceive the constraints of causality, you don't usually think about the long chain of dominoes that brings you to any given moment, and you don't have the ability to track and account for every single factor that may influence any given decision you make. In a practical sense, you may as well say you have free will for all the effect it has in your life. But is it really free, in an ultimate sense, if each decision is determined directly by all the events that precede it, and if all those events dictate that an event could have happened no other way?
In the end, this is not a moral judgement on my part. I do not say that determinism is a good or bad state of being. What I say is that, with what evidence science has, determinism is the logical result. If you believe in the science, there is no really sensible alternate explanation that doesn't rely on hypotheses or "what-if"s for which there is, at least at the moment, no serious evidence.