The question here is whether an illusion of free will is still free will for us.noam wrote:hayze99 wrote: Determinism is the very simple way of putting it. And I mean it in a way that's very very hard to distinguish from free will in any case.
I'm talking about billions of different events determining each millisecond of the thought process - a true testament to the brains incredible power. I think if we had machines which had the processing power to - not only collate these events, but figure out the events themselves (a feat which our minds are simply not capable of) maybe we could look into the future - but this is unrealistic. Remember the whole, I'll give you a penny this month and double it, and by the end of the month you'll have millions of dollars. The same thing occurs with the first wink of thought in your brain as you're developing; every second will spawn millions of thoughts built upon thoughts.
Original and unique thoughts can still be explained by this determinism. The ridiculously simplified version of an artistic thought could be:
(Previous pieces of art seen and appreciated) + (mathematics) + (emotional variables) + (physical conditions: temperature, etc) + the billions upon billions of things your brain contains which I could not possibly conceive of = your freshly baked artistic thought.
These different factors would relate to every single thought and decision your brain makes. Why did you choose to take the bus instead of the tube? The almost infinite formula came to that dice-roll. The result of the previous one is a heavily contributing factor to the next one adding to the snowball.
The fact that I said that our brains could not pick out the different events, only add them up is where the whole synergy in electromagnetic energy comes into play. All these thoughts build up on each other until something amazing comes out.
This basically makes our lives massive Rube-Goldberg machines, set out in stone since the universe started - along with everything else.
But now we have quantum physics...
the consequences of such a form of hard determinism are unappealing in certain ways are they not? lack of responsibilty for ones actions for a start - anyone with half an existential bone in their bodies will argue that ones decisions are down to oneself and not down to external factors entirely.
if we live in a closed system, where all future events are determined by the very first event (naturally, a problem in itself) then we are forced to reconsider everything about mans actions and the consequences of them - how can someone be considered guilty of a crime if they had no choice in committing it??
you could argue that the choices we make are a reflection of our internal desires coupled to the outside physical factors but that does little to incorporate a sense of justice or fairness in judging the morality of actions; in actual fact under such circumstances the only sensible way to look at things is without a moral compass at all. it seems irrational to create a system of chaos out of one of complete order; no morality (no law) from a system based on the fundamental idea that laws govern everything.
think about any situation where you need to make a decision: take 10 feasible options for a course of action and allow that some are more probable than others - would you allow that out of those 10 you are capable of choosing to act on either one, and this act was facilitated by but not entirely predicted by physical properties? this i suppose is one direct result of the quantum theory but does the quantum theory have any room for responsibility? is it simply a case of letting go of any idea of responsibility based on being able to act as a primary cause of your own actions?
Looking at it from a macro scale, I still believe that determinism factors into a massive aspect of morality and accountability. How many people who commit serious crimes have come from decent, normal backgrounds? It's a touchy subject, because it leads to a lot of racism and elitism, but it's simply undeniable. Yes, we can exclude the odd crimes of passion and accountable accidents, but it's almost negligible. How many serious crimes are committed by people who came from a decent household, who don't have a history of mental illness, who don't have any extremely harrowing events in their lives, who weren't molested as children, who were popular in school? How many people become selfish without commerce being involved?
Why is there such a wide difference in these statistics over geographical areas and demographics?
Okay, so that's only half the determinism - past events. What about current thought processing leading to the final decision?
Well, that's largely controlled by factors such as mood, fatigue, and other sensory aspects.
How many times have you made a decision, and regretting it, knowing that you would have done it differently if you were in a different mood/situation. How many days do you wake up hating the world, and make decisions selfishly? How many days do you wake up in adoration of the world, and make your decisions selflessly? We certainly don't walk around in a constant mood all our lives - and this in itself is contributed to by past events.
If your parents had decided not to go to dinner on that day, you would not be here. If your mother tripped over a step on that day, you would not be here. If your parents took another breath before they conceived you, it's unlikely that you'd be here. If that asteroid hit the earth even a millisecond earlier, it's unlikely you'd be here. If Henry VIII didn't take power back in the day, it's unlikely that you'd be here. And so on.
It may be far from a linear machine, but we certainly make our decisions and exist based on an overwhelmingly amount of different factors. Even if free will did exist, contributed to by quantum processes in the brain, or what have you - it still composes a tiny iota of our decision making.
but actually, we are here on our own free will, unlike the Matrix, which is one of my favorite movies btdubz... but hell, I think it'll work.