a philosophical matter of free will and science

[mpendragon]

Scientific determinism is the idea that with enough information about the state of objects/particles around you, you can predict the resulting future events using sufficiently advanced scientific models. One problem with Scientific Determinism is that you can never know the position and velocity of a particle at a given instant due to the Uncertainty Principle. Just because we cannot know enough to know our fate doesn't mean we aren't still governed by it. The scientific model of life as a series of chemical reactions and the notion that matter's behavior in the universe is dictated by reliable forces implies that choice is an illusion. No matter how complicated the series of events that leads to someone making a choice each of those events was the natural result of every event that occurred before it.

On the other hand we have an argument that is centuries old. How can an omnipotent God(s) exist and the result of that God(s) choice and every event leading up to those results not be known to that God(s)? In short, if God(s) is omnipotent then we cannot choose anything because the result of our choice is already known as was the choice itself. The historic answer to this is the contradictory: "God(s) can make choice because God(s) is omnipotent".

This leaves us with:
1. Science implies that choice is an illusion
2. Religion implies that choice is an illusion unless God(s) creates a paradox allowing choice
3. I'm wrong about what I've written above

[trotsky]

1. Free will is an illusion.

But it's a very useful illusion.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. It's (probably) 3

"Science" doesn't exist as a thing, although there have been any number of "sciency" movements and quasi-cults in the world (e.g., Lysenkoism). It's usually used to describe a methodology of inquiry.

Religion is usually founded on a non-rational (but not necessarily irrational) set of ideas that collect everything from wacky delusions to humanistic ethical philosophies.

The enthememe in your argument, "choice", is usually the object of Existential philosophy. I don't think that either scientific or religious arguments can properly handle it.

Of course, I myself might be wrong, too, so don't take that as Gospel from the Ivory Tower.

--p!

[A-Schwarzenegger]

3. It all comes down to how you

treat yr neighbor, the suffering one.

[ret5hd]

4. re: the uncertainty principle...

as i understand it, the issue is not just that one cannot know the position and velocity of a particle at a given instant...it is that the position and velocity are not manifested until measured. the "particle" exists as a "probability cloud", never in this place or that, never at this velocity or that, merely existing as a probability that does not manifest until a particular property (position or velocity) is taken, while the other property remains a probability.

This leaves open (to me, an atheist with a strong belief in science AND a belief-with definite limitations-in scientific determinism) the possibility of NO OMNIPOTENT GOD AND FREE WILL.

[PATRICK]

5. Stephen Hawkings

seems to have settled in part on positivism. I like the way Voltaire skewered Leibniz as a general approach to all inclusive philosophy- which seems often an attempt to reduce God to one's thesis and hence to one's personal property. We really are not that intellectually distant from ancient magicians who organized phenomena into what works or seems, then wove emotional myth around it.

The content of determinism or anything else is more important in how it changes our emotions and response to the the universe, sort of an ironic joke we play on ourselves to relieve our proper sense of proportion as infinitely small cogs rattling about briefly.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. I'd still argue that the best philosopher to read on this question is

Henri Bergson.