Posted: Sep 13, 2017 9:47 pm
archibald wrote:John Platko wrote:.....some may doubt but others have proved.John Platko wrote:....The concept was introduced in a paper that proved the possibility of agential indeterminism underpinned by physical state determinism.......
Proved, huh?
Proved as in:
If (or suppose) there are supernatural entities.
They may plausibly be the cause of mischief.
And they may live in rocks.
So elves may exist.
That sort of proof?
The proof that agential states must be multiply realizable is proof based on known physics. It becomes more obvious that is what I was referring to once the quote mining
is eliminated: The first quote you used was part of a discussion on the best approach to use for showing why agential states are multiply realizable.
The second quote was about something different - multiple histories. I think it a misrepresentation to present them as you did.
But you've been away perhaps you missed the important part of that discussion.
I prefer to think of it as backing up my ideas. And pointing to a paper, especially one that has been published and reviewed, is a great way to communicate complicated ideas that some may doubt but others have proved.
You could reflect at how you danced around the issue of 'multiple histories' in this topic before gradually being pinned down to some variant of MWI, and then still dodged clarification of how MWI enables free will for humans.
I didn't dance around "multiple histories" The concept was introduced in a paper that proved the possibility of agential indeterminism underpinned by physical state determinism. And when there was some confusion about the authors rather (well mostly) clearly worded paper I introduced another paper that fleshed out the foundation of the idea of multiple histories. That is how one actually pins things down.
But rest assured that I'm not done with multiple histories. And rest assured that I will not always wave a dense paper to do my heavy lifting.I will shortly elaborate on how multiple histories, as defined by List, provide a useful mode of explanation for quantum entanglement and spooky action at a distance. Once we understand the role multiple histories play in this phenomenon it will no longer be spooky.
We might need a show of hands, but I'm thinking you may be the only participant in the discussion who doubts agential states must be physically multiply realizable. Although there seems to be different points of view on how best to go about the proof. Others seem to prefer a less formal route than I took.
Perhaps GrahamH will explain it to you. this will give you some idea of that mode of explanation. And I gather that GrahamH thinks it's a simple point.
And DavidMcC's explanation is along this line of thought.