David Bailey1
New
(I am the same David Bailey, but I lost my password and the password reset mechanism seems to get confused! Andy has very kindly transferred a lot of my properties.)
I want to argue that science would be impossible without full (libertarian) free will - which I will refer to simply as free will from now on.
Suppose you want to do an experiment - say measure the voltage/current relationship across an electronic component. The value of the experiment really lies in the fact that you have free will and can set the voltage to any value you like, and measure the corresponding current.
A person reading about this experiment, would naturally assume this, so that, for example, if the experimenter detected a lot of extra structure in the curve at some point, he would explore it, or at least comment on it. If the experimenter only has compatibalist free will, he would, in effect, be part of the physical system he was trying to observe.
This may sound a bit contrived, but if you think about compatibilist free will - evolved to suit our ancestors on the plains of Africa - it might well contain all sorts of inappropriate heuristics. For example, it might be entirely reasonable to assume that if some proposition P(n) was true for n=1.....10 (say), that it was always true. This would greatly limit the abilities of an experimenter or mathematician, and there would be no way to transcend such limitations - at least in general.
Paul would like to exclude libertarian free will because it has consequences in the physical world which are neither deterministic nor random. He should remember that people used to think of the physical world as purely deterministic, and even Einstein found it hard to accept a random component. Given the overwhelming evidence of our own consciousness, I think it is reasonable to postulate free will as independent of the other two mechanisms.
Note that would mean that free will could not be reduced to the other two mechanisms - so it is absurd to ask for an explanation for free will in terms of a mechanism - just as it seems to be impossible to find a mechanism for quantum randomness in terms or deterministic physics.
David
I want to argue that science would be impossible without full (libertarian) free will - which I will refer to simply as free will from now on.
Suppose you want to do an experiment - say measure the voltage/current relationship across an electronic component. The value of the experiment really lies in the fact that you have free will and can set the voltage to any value you like, and measure the corresponding current.
A person reading about this experiment, would naturally assume this, so that, for example, if the experimenter detected a lot of extra structure in the curve at some point, he would explore it, or at least comment on it. If the experimenter only has compatibalist free will, he would, in effect, be part of the physical system he was trying to observe.
This may sound a bit contrived, but if you think about compatibilist free will - evolved to suit our ancestors on the plains of Africa - it might well contain all sorts of inappropriate heuristics. For example, it might be entirely reasonable to assume that if some proposition P(n) was true for n=1.....10 (say), that it was always true. This would greatly limit the abilities of an experimenter or mathematician, and there would be no way to transcend such limitations - at least in general.
Paul would like to exclude libertarian free will because it has consequences in the physical world which are neither deterministic nor random. He should remember that people used to think of the physical world as purely deterministic, and even Einstein found it hard to accept a random component. Given the overwhelming evidence of our own consciousness, I think it is reasonable to postulate free will as independent of the other two mechanisms.
Note that would mean that free will could not be reduced to the other two mechanisms - so it is absurd to ask for an explanation for free will in terms of a mechanism - just as it seems to be impossible to find a mechanism for quantum randomness in terms or deterministic physics.
David