Free Will

I don't know 'owt about physics. This is frustrating, because though I can spot a dodgy piece of textual criticism at 50 yards and probably am not too shabby at detecting manifest illogic, when it comes arguments about the physical nature of the world, I don't know what I'm working with.

Never mind, I can but try.

I already said this in my own comments boxes (makes me look more popular see), but Norris' argument seems pretty dodgy to me.

No one has free will. Every thing that people do is predictable provided you have enough information, except for some quantum randomness. But, if you had several universes, with the same starting conditions, you could predict how many would have each outcome.
The future is as definite as the past. It just for some reason, we remember the past, entropy increases and the universe is expanding.

K. So firstly there's this business of qunatum randomness. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a little bit of randomness serve to completely undermine the idea of perfect order? Someone said this to me about gravity. The odd thing about gravity, right, is that for it to act as a force, or whatever, it must take into account the whereabouts of all matter simultaneuosly. I think. So every change affects everything else. So to write off "quantum randomness" is wrong.

But Norris has a solution. It involves mulitplying out universes so that you can predict a general trend of probability. To which my response is "Yes, and?" It's still just probability. You can have as many universes as you like, but if you single one out to predict what's going to happen in it you can only say that it might belong in such and such a group of universes with a particular outcome. Of course you can predict the outcome of a universe - it's a different thing to say you can predict it accurately.

And then there's there's idea of "enough information". I think enough information would have to be all information really, wouldn't it - correct me if I'm wrong? The person whose mind could contain that would have to be, in a sense, greater than the universe. Let's call him God Steve. I suppose you might try and say that Steve was in fact the universe, simply consisting of all the requisite information, but predicting is an action, so it takes both the intellect to process the information and the ability to act, which, for the sake of brevity, I'll call will. So you have the material of the universe, um - M, the intellect of the universe, I, and the will of the universe, W.

So at very least, Steve is M+I+W.

Actually, if Steve is the universe, he'd be himself plus the requisite intellect and will to predict with. (M+I+W)+I+W.

No, it'd have to be ((M+I+W)+I+W)+I+W.


I think I can see where this is going. And yes, I am aware that the brackets don't really add anything. So a pantheistic, or materialist Steve, ends up as perpetually being an I plus a W short of self-awareness. And naturally, a being less than Steve hasn't a hope in hell of predicting the universe.

There you are, a little bit of epistemology for you.

"But Mark, isn't this getting a little close to nihilism, the denial of the individual's ability to know anything? Steve's not even self-aware, and if he doesn't know what's going on, how am I meant to?"

But I don't believe in a pantheistic Steve.

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