Logic

Originally posted by DeepThought
My post addressed what was in yours with some precision.

It may or may not have addressed it with precision, but it certainly didn't address it with any accuracy.

Originally posted by DeepThought
No, the characters in the Matrix were entirely forced to do what the scriptwriters wanted them to do. 😉

In the post I responded to PatNovak said the following:

If free will is dependent on anything, it is freedom, not information. Free will does not disappear when a certain level of information is achieved.

Which I don't agree wi ...[text shortened]... ot have a moral decision to make, so free will or at least self-restraint wouldn't be necessary.

To me "FREE WILL" is simply the ability to make a choice. I don't see anything so complicated about understanding what it is.

Originally posted by DeepThought
Principally because science is empirical and in the case of God there isn't a consistent phenomenology to investigate.

Isn't there? Why is that? Does God act purely randomly, ie are his actions indistinguishable from noise? That seems to be what you are claiming.

The claim that someone is anti-science because they believe in an unprovable first cause strikes me as too extreme.
I don't think that was the claim.

I therefore think Suzianne is justified in her claim that there is no contradiction between either scientific method or any given scientific result and her belief in a God.
There is a contradiction between that claim and what she actually does.

I don't think there's even a problem with the notion of a God that intervenes in the world, since it is a trivial matter for such a being to ensure any interventions could be rationalised in terms of natural explanations.
And science is about rationalizing those interventions in terms of natural explanations. So Suzy cannot honestly reject that rationalizing whilst simultaneously claiming to accept science.
Science discovers the laws of gravity. Science rationalizes the orbit of earth in terms of the laws of gravity. Suzy will say: 'the orbit of Earth is testimony to the intelligence our Creator who put us in this orbit'. In other words she does not accept the findings of science as satisfactory explanations, she believes they are wanting and hence point to (are testimony for) something about a creator.

Originally posted by RJHinds
To me "FREE WILL" is simply the ability to make a choice. I don't see anything so complicated about understanding what it is.

Those little vacuum-robots make choices.
They don't have free will.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
They don't have free will.

Don't they? What is your definition of 'free will'? I think you will be hard pressed to find one that doesn't include them.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I disagree with your first two paragraphs because of scope. You are insisting on applying scientific method to a question science has no answer to. Since the claim "not God" has not been absolutely disproven you might want to apply your reasoning to atheism.

The problem with applying Bayesian reasoning to the existence of God is that you have no evi ...[text shortened]... til they discovered black swans it was, perfectly reasonably, assumed that all swans were white.

I disagree with your first two paragraphs because of scope. You are insisting on applying
scientific method to a question science has no answer to.

This is wrong. Science does have an answer to this question.
But more to the point, if a question [about the nature of reality] cannot be answered by science
then it cannot be answered.

Since the claim "not God" has not been absolutely disproven you might want to apply your
reasoning to atheism.

Nothing about reality can ever be proven [or disproven] absolutely.
As I said, all science [and correct reasoning] is Bayesian, which is probabilistic not absolute.
And I do apply this reasoning to my atheism.

The problem with applying Bayesian reasoning to the existence of God is that you have no
evidence to use.

Um what????

The fact that there is no evidence FOR the existence of gods doesn't mean that there is no evidence.
In this question EVERYTHING is evidence.

Also an absence of evidence IS evidence of absence.

So what you are currently demonstrating is that you do not in fact understand Bayesian reasoning.

So I will recommend these two videos where it is explained exactly how you apply Bayes theorem
to the question of the existence of god from Skepticon 4.

YouTube

YouTube

Those two videos are in the order they should be watched, not the order in which they were given.
Which is commented on in the videos.

As a final note. Occam's razor is a RESULT of Bayes theorem, in that it's Bayesian reasoning that
demonstrates that it is actually valid.

And [correctly done] Bayesian reasoning always gives the correct answer.

However that answer is a probability.

What Bayesian reasoning does is allow you to assign the correct probability to an explanation of
observed facts. Discovering new facts will change the probability, but that doesn't mean that
you got the old probability wrong.
Because what science, and Bayesian reasoning does, is tell you the most likely explanation for
the facts we currently know. And as we learn more facts, our answers get better, and we get
a closer approximation of the truth.

This is how science progresses and it's absolutely and fundamentally Bayesian.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Don't they? What is your definition of 'free will'? I think you will be hard pressed to find one that doesn't include them.

Actually it's dead easy. Just find an incompatibilists definition of free will.

As the actions of the RoboVac are deterministic the incompatibilists definition
will say that the RoboVac has no free will.

Originally posted by googlefudge
As the actions of the RoboVac are deterministic ...

Are they? Have you seen the source code?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Are they? Have you seen the source code?

No, however I do not believe, in fact I am pretty certain, that a current
binary computer cannot be non-deterministic.

Even if it included a 'random' number generator, that would;
A) not make it non-deterministic
And
B) you cannot make a true random number generator... Or at the very least
they will and have not put them on RoboVacs.

Originally posted by googlefudge
No, however I do not believe, in fact I am pretty certain, that a current
binary computer cannot be non-deterministic.

Even if it included a 'random' number generator, that would;
A) not make it non-deterministic

So what would make it non-deterministic?
What device do humans have that allows for non-determinism, that cannot be implemented in a computer?

Most computers that need non-determinism simply use environmental inputs to create randomness. I can see this may be declared an 'input' rather than coming from the device itself, but I think it is a somewhat weak argument. We could equally declare whatever humans use to create randomness to be an 'input' rather than internally generated.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Isn't there? Why is that? Does God act purely randomly, ie are his actions indistinguishable from noise? That seems to be what you are claiming.

[b]The claim that someone is anti-science because they believe in an unprovable first cause strikes me as too extreme.
I don't think that was the claim.

I therefore think Suzianne is justifie ...[text shortened]... she believes they are wanting and hence point to (are testimony for) something about a creator.

I was responding to what were at the time the last few posts in the thread. I can't be expected to go through every one of Suzianne's posts and make a decision about whether she is consistent or not. Since Suzianne seemed to me to be going for a first cause position I felt that the claim was indeed along the lines of "all believers are anti-science". Besides the bulk of theists posting here are Christians so the real meat of the argument is with the Christian God.

On to the main point. If God is omnipotent then acting in the world in an undetectable fashion is not a problem - that is undetectable to current and future scientific technique. There are various routes that a God could use, personal revelation to a prophet who then acts for them is a popular one in holy books. Even with neurobiology so good that it can read all memories science is going to have a job distinguishing the intervention from a schizophrenic episode.

I think there is an agenda from the atheists here to attempt to create a false dichotomy between Science and Religion. I do not see how you can claim that belief in a moderately interventionist God is anti-science. For one thing you are focusing on meta-physics, the bulk of scientific effort does not address such large questions.

I hadn't noticed Suzianne claiming that orbital details were due to God. She seems to reject the intelligent design hypothesis. My impression is that she has the position that God simply produces enough potential worlds that one more or less ours is likely to arrive. If the universe is spacially infinite and full of galaxies it is a certainty.

Originally posted by twhitehead
So what [b]would make it non-deterministic?
What device do humans have that allows for non-determinism, that cannot be implemented in a computer?

Most computers that need non-determinism simply use environmental inputs to create randomness. I can see this may be declared an 'input' rather than coming from the device itself, but I think it is a som ...[text shortened]... lare whatever humans use to create randomness to be an 'input' rather than internally generated.[/b]

You're talking to someone who doesn't believe free will exists and who isn't
convinced that the universe isn't deterministic or deterministic with random
number generation.

So I am not sure I can give you any examples of non-deterministic systems
as I am not sure any exist.


However that's not really important for the point at hand. You don't have to know
the best move in chess to be able to definitively class a move as a bad one.

A RoboVac has a 'brain' consisting of a [relatively speaking] simple computer
program that takes sensory inputs in the form of binary number streams and
manipulates them via a fixed set of mathematical rules. it is for all intents and
purposes [and certainly for our purposes] deterministic.

Originally posted by googlefudge
A RoboVac has a 'brain' consisting of a [relatively speaking] simple computer
program that takes sensory inputs in the form of binary number streams and
manipulates them via a fixed set of mathematical rules. it is for all intents and
purposes [and certainly for our purposes] deterministic.

What I was initially getting at, is the fact that most people haven't really thought through what 'free will' actually entails. They nevertheless feel comfortable pronouncing judgement on what does, or does not, have free will.
I am not convinced that you have found a definition of free will that works for humans but not for the RoboVac.

Do you believe there is something about human brain function that is different in some fundamental way from a RoboVac, or is it just a matter of degree?

Originally posted by twhitehead
What I was initially getting at, is the fact that most people haven't really thought through what 'free will' actually entails. They nevertheless feel comfortable pronouncing judgement on what does, or does not, have free will.
I am not convinced that you have found a definition of free will that works for humans but not for the RoboVac.

Do you believ ...[text shortened]... tion that is different in some fundamental way from a RoboVac, or is it just a matter of degree?

I don't believe humans have free will either.

There is no contradiction here.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I don't believe humans have free will either.

There is no contradiction here.

Under what definition? I believe we do under some definitions but not others.

I hadn't realised that the original post was by Wolfgang and not you. It seemed to imply that he felt that robots make choices that were not free will choices but that humans make choices that are free will choices, hence the argument that the ability to choose is not what constitutes free will. I was seeking clarity as to what he thought does constitute free will.
I don't think I yet know what you think constitutes free will (that we don't have).