Posted by skeptical on Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:49 | #

Conway is hideously smart.

Either believe free will is, in a strong sense, universal or deny your own free will.

How will scientists choose?

As a general rule, it’s not a good choice to deny the existence of that which is patently obvious (i.e. personal free will).

Posted by Define Religion on Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:33 | #

Evolutionary theory has a lot more room for religion than the determinists would have us believe.

Define religion.

Posted by Phalanx on Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:47 | #

I can tell most posters on this site are very intelligent. So I can only guess its out of good manners that they dont ridicule and shun you creationist wackjobs.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:41 | #

Define religion.

For present purposes, religion consists of working hypotheses which Richard Dawkins finds ridiculous in his intellectually crippled work—that is to say his work subsequent to “The Extended Phenotype”.

More generally, religion is a working hypothesis.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:11 | #

Phalanx writes: I can tell most posters on this site are very intelligent. So I can only guess its out of good manners that they dont ridicule and shun you creationist wackjobs.

How intelligent would they have to be, then, to get beyond your sophomoric insults and take John Conway’s analysis seriously?

Posted by Jupiter on Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:11 | #

John H Conway is one of my favorite mathematicians. If you are a math pig, you will like John Conway.

Simon Kochen is a superb mathematical logician. Conway and Kochen proverd a theorem three years ago that supposedly is a death sentence for the hidden variables interpereatation of Quantum Mechanics. If you accept the assumptions of their mathematical argument, the conclusions are obvious. It doesn’t mean someone very clever couldn’t find a loop hole in their argument. This happens often/sometimes with no-go theroems. It is good mental excercise to follow the debate. It is also interetsting stuff in and of itself unlike the debate mentioned in the next paragraph….....................

Godel has a mathematical proof or God’s existetnce. I have never read it nor do I intend to. These ontological arguments have a very strong mathematical feel to them. Very similar to basic model theory. Maybr it’s a good mental excercise to study these arguments. I think Chris with a very high IQ guy-the one James posted about-is pushung Godels argument. Obviously, not all philosophers think Godel’s argument is correct. I could care less either way.

Very few humans have the patience or moitivation to follow these rarfied arguments.

Interestingly one famous dinosaur fossil hunter-not Jack Horner-the guy with a beard and big hat is an ordaned Christian preacher. I suprised to hear this. I thought the opposite would be true.

I had anathesia recently for some oral surgery. As I began to feel drousy I started..“Hail Mary full of Grace….......

Posted by Jupiter on Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:49 | #

One of the issues I am deeply interested what are the is limitations of rigorous systems of thought-scientific and rigorous philosophy. But this assumes apriori that rigorous systems of thought by their very nature and construction imply that certain things can never be understood and that certain questions can’t even be entertained. So if this view is coherent and rational, the limitations of rigorous thought systems are revealing something very deep about the human brain/mind system.

I suppose what I am saying is this:the limitations of rigorous thought systems may not be something that can be determined empircally. It can be only established by logical analysis. In other words logical analysis may be the best we can do on this issue. This of course , is an on ongoing debate. But it is a very reasonable thing to believe in.

If you attempt to make very important decisions about your life based soley on logical rational analysis, you will very oftetn make bad decisions. Itis dangerous to ignore “gut thinking”. There is fascinating evidence comming out now that the central nervous system is a lot more extended than commonly beleived, extending possibly to the gut. The glial cells might be the bridge.

Possibility, humans may grasp the truth about something unknowable that is otherwise unknowable within a rigorous thought system.

Posted by skeptical on Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:52 | #

Soren,

skeptical, you should read the linked pdf. “Universal” means: even elementary particles have free will, if we do. Electrons and such. Personal free will—> picofreewill.

The difficulty with results like this lies not in the mathematical technicalities (Conway’s proof was rather elementary save for a reference to the Kochen-Specker paradox) but in the interpretation of any metaphysical consequences.

To wit, here’s a relevant passage from the linked .pdf:

It asserts, roughly, that if indeed we humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this valuable commodity. More precisely, if the experimenter can freely choose the directions in which to orient his apparatus in a certain measurement, then the particle’s response (to be pedantic—the universe’s response near the particle) is not determined by the entire previous history of the universe.
...
Some readers may object to our use of the term “free will” to describe the indeterminism of particle responses. Our provocative ascription of free will to elementary particles is deliberate, since our theorem asserts that if experimenters have a certain freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom.

So, the experimenter with a free will that is independent of physical mechanics may gift this independence to elementary particles at his discretion.  However, it does not follow that the metaphysical category of the free will enjoyed by elementary particles (under the conditions of the theorem) is the same as that of the experimenter.  Though, as noted by Conway, both experimenter and elementary particles share the very same free will from the perspective of physical mechanics.

Results of this nature reaffirm the medieval intuition that if God has free will then miracles are possible (from the perspective of physical mechanics).

Conway ends on a sober note:

Although, as we show in [1], determinism may formally be shown to be consistent, there is no longer any evidence that supports it, in view of the fact that classical physics has been superseded by quantum mechanics, a non-deterministic theory. The import of the free will theorem is that it is not only current quantum theory, but the world itself that is non-deterministic, so that no future theory can return us to a clockwork universe.

Too bad for the reductionists.

Posted by skeptical on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:03 | #

Jupiter,

All of the medieval proofs of God’s existence (cosmological, ontological, etc.) are just metaphysical applications of what mathematicians know as Zorn’s lemma.  Otherwise known as the Hausdorff maximality principle.  Otherwise known as the Axiom of Choice (one of the foundational axioms of all mathematics)!  Godel’s work on the ontological argument is fundamentally no different in this manner.

That such a nice mathematical principle should apply to the physical world is largely a matter of taste.

Obviously, not all philosophers think Godel’s argument is correct.

All contemporary philosophers and mathematician’s accept Godel’s work, although there was a great deal of confusion on the matter at the time it was published.  More notably, Wittgenstein and Russell could never fully accept Godel’s proof, though for different reasons.  In the case of Wittgenstein, he couldn’t because it contradicted his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (which he came to reject anyway).  Russell’s problem was more mundane, he got old.

Posted by skeptical on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:05 | #

I’m sorry, but what is the relevance of Conway’s work to creationists?

My apologies for all the comments.

Posted by Jupiter on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:19 | #

You need psychology experiments to make any progress on this issue. Brians are constructed a certain way as opposed to some other ways. Free Will, is dependent on a biological configuration-not just raw biology. The brian has to be structured and configured a certain way. That’s just the way brains are. There is a doctrine of functionalism in philosophy that argues for hardware independence. Biological configurations upon which free wills are dependent-to me at least-seems to way out of the free will realm.

Perhaps the more interesting question are deviations from Free Will. Maybe Free Will should be thought about in more probabilistic terms.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:06 | #

“Godel has a mathematical proof or God’s existetnce. I have never read it nor do I intend to.”  (—Jupiter)

For others, it’s discussed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel’s_ontological_proof#The_proof

(In the proof reproduced in the linked Wiki article, it’s obvious that in several places the symbolic logic symbols didn’t come out — must not have been in the Wiki software font or something, so don’t try to work through the steps unless you have a complete symbolic statement of it from elsewhere.)

“Interestingly one famous dinosaur fossil hunter-not Jack Horner-the guy with a beard and big hat is an ordaned Christian preacher. I suprised to hear this.”  (—Jupiter)

You mean Professor Bakker?  This guy?:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_T._Bakker

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:13 | #

“so don’t try to work through the steps unless you have a complete symbolic statement of it from elsewhere.”

I was talking, of course, about readers who’ve had sufficient symbolic logic courses in college.  If you haven’t done a certain amount of symbolic logic, forget it, you of course won’t understand the symbols, let alone be able to follow the proof steps at all.  If you know symbolic logic, get a full statement of the proof because symbols are left out here.

Posted by Define Him/It on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:10 | #

Inquiring fools want to know if something greater than God exists.

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:10 | #

skeptical writes: but what is the relevance of Conway’s work to creationists?

Creationism, in its broadest sense, posits that existence is an act of free agency—some sort of aboriginal free agency with which we identify as free agents.

Posted by skeptical on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 06:03 | #

James Bowery,

Creationism, in its broadest sense, posits that existence is an act of free agency—some sort of aboriginal free agency with which we identify as free agents.

Ah, I understand now.

Posted by Jupiter on Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:15 | #

James and skeptical

You might want to read the speech of physics Nobel Prize winner Robert Laughlin(fractional quantum hall efffect). Laughlin presents a very interesting case against reductionism in Physics.

Condensed matter physicist and Nobel Prize winner Phillip Anderson wrote a very importatant anti-reduction polemic a few years back.

Also, Nobel Prize winning physcist Fank Wilzeck documents-in his Physics today essays which I think have been archived on his website- how concepts from macro-classical physics have privided crucial concepts that have been incorparated into fundamental physics. I think this overlaps in a significant way with what Laughlin was talking about in his Nobel Speech.

Is any of this relevant to this thread you what you have written in this thread?

Posted by Jupiter on Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:23 | #

Skeptical

I wasn’t refering to Godel’s proof of his incompeteness theorem. I was refering to his abtruse “proof” of God’s existetnce. It has a very set -model theoretic feel to it.

The continuum hypothesis “controversey” seems to have attracted a certain number of insane characters over the years. Perhaps this continuum hypothesis is the real reason why David Foster Wallace committed suicide-in some possible world.

Laughlin’s Nobel speech can be found at the Nobel website along all the other Nobel acceptance speeches.

Posted by skeptical on Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:42 | #

Jupiter,

You might want to read the speech of physics Nobel Prize winner Robert Laughlin(fractional quantum hall efffect). Laughlin presents a very interesting case against reductionism in Physics.

Thank you for the reference, I’ll check it out.

I wasn’t refering to Godel’s proof of his incompeteness theorem. I was refering to his abtruse “proof” of God’s existetnce.

Whoops, I apologize about that.

Posted by name on Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:04 | #

>>>>cranks that insist on the literal interpretation of Genesis
What other part of the Bible is not supposed to be taken literally ?  Only cranks would take “no one comes to the Father but by me” literally ?