Cito di Pense wrote:
Well, this isn't about determinism and stochasticity nearly as much as it is about positivism and the hope that we can establish answers to ill-formed questions.
Can you clarify what you mean by that?
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Cito di Pense wrote:
Well, this isn't about determinism and stochasticity nearly as much as it is about positivism and the hope that we can establish answers to ill-formed questions.
Mr 1 wrote:I find it hard to get my head around how that exactly affects the cause-and-effect day to day workings of a human being?
hackenslash wrote:In QM realms, it's entirely meaningless to talk of such things as 'cause'.
Let me be among the first to inform you that average behaviour is not necessarily determined, regardless of what precision you can apply to predict the outcome of an experiment.
DrWho wrote:hackenslash wrote:In QM realms, it's entirely meaningless to talk of such things as 'cause'.
That's a popular myth even among scientists. But it's obviously wrong.
Any measurable result of a QM test is clearly a necessary consequence of (caused by) the initial conditions. If this were not the case, then there would be no result at all. Testing, itself, would be meaningless. If causality did not exist, the relation between turning on the test equipment and getting any result at all would be pure chance. I don't think anybody believes that.
hackenslash wrote:Tell you what, then, here's your experiment. Take a single atom of caesium and a photon detector, and tell me when it decayed.
Your puny intuition is as useless as your ignorance.
Mr 1 wrote:
I'm just asking these questions because determinism seems such an intuitively sensible concept.
DavidMcC wrote:
This point, or any other. The laws of physics are unlikely to change within human history.
hackenslash wrote:Tell you what, then, here's your experiment. Take a single atom of caesium and a photon detector, and tell me when it decayed.
Your puny intuition is as useless as your ignorance.
romansh wrote:hackenslash wrote:Tell you what, then, here's your experiment. Take a single atom of caesium and a photon detector, and tell me when it decayed.
Your puny intuition is as useless as your ignorance.
I don't think DrWho was saying that ... he was saying the decay of the caesium atom sets off the detector.
Also just because we can't predict the moment a single atom decays does not meant there is no underlying cause.
And yet if we have enough radio active atoms we can see they follow first order rate laws.
Mr 1 wrote:
What I meant was; if we look at a human being and focus on any particular action/choice on any particular day, determinism tells us this action/choice was the result of a series of causes, which themselves were the result of a series of causes, ect...
Let me be among the first to inform you that average behaviour is not necessarily determined, regardless of what precision you can apply to predict the outcome of an experiment.
Right. But do you understand how this notion actually affects the cause-and-effect day to day workings of a human being (as i've defined it above)? Would you agree with David McC that "the probabilitic nature of some events at the molecular level in neurons create the possibility of otherwise impossible generation of random signals that don't come from the background of neighbouring neural activity. " Or is it some other way? Are you sure of the matter, or is this question still very much up in the air?
I'm just asking these questions because determinism seems such an intuitively sensible concept. And to be clear I'm using the philosophy definition of determinism here; Determinsim: the philosophical doctrine that all events including human actions and choices are fully determined by preceding events and states of affairs, and so that freedom of choice is illusory."
DavidMcC wrote:Quite so. IMO, hack is mistaking causality for determinism. IIRC, you used to make the same mistake yourself, DrWho.
DrWho wrote:And what is not a matter of chance is a matter of causation.
But as usual your petty rudeness makes the potentially interesting discussion unpleasant and pointless.
romansh wrote:Also just because we can't predict the moment a single atom decays does not meant there is no underlying cause.
romansh wrote:
I think I agree with you Hack. I have no idea whether quantum phenomena have an underlying cause (and for me it is a little bit irrelevant). Quantum phenomena as far as I can tell do have an effect. And if people want to argue that our wills are (at least partially) an effect of quantum phenomena and call that free, then fair enough.
If I believed in free will, I don't think I could argue my free will was a result (partially) of some hypothetical cosmic dice shaker.
DrWho wrote:romansh wrote:
I think I agree with you Hack. I have no idea whether quantum phenomena have an underlying cause (and for me it is a little bit irrelevant). Quantum phenomena as far as I can tell do have an effect. And if people want to argue that our wills are (at least partially) an effect of quantum phenomena and call that free, then fair enough.
If I believed in free will, I don't think I could argue my free will was a result (partially) of some hypothetical cosmic dice shaker.
I have a question for you. Is there a chance that the atom will never decay?
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