[extropy-chat] Best To Regard Free Will as Existing

scerir scerir at libero.it
Wed Apr 18 18:26:46 UTC 2007


> Isn't it obvious that determinism is *required* for the experience of
> free will?  How meaningless a concept if there were no experience of a
> causal link between subjective choice, action, and consequences.
> 
> - Jef

Maybe. But note that 'determinism' has 
a double meaning.

One sometimes speaks of systems (or quantum 
states) that evolve deterministically in time,
and such systems (q. states) are contrasted
with those systems (q. states) whose temporal
evolution is stochastic, or even worse.

One sometimes speaks of determinism meaning
the definiteness (probability = 0 or 1) 
of the predicted outcome of the possible 
observation (measurement) performable 
on a system (or q. state) while it is 
in a given (pre-assigned) state.

The problems came when people began to
use expressions like 'deterministic causality',
or 'causal determinism', or 'statistical
correspondence' (W.Pauli), or 'statistical
causality' (Fock; N.Bohr; etc.), since
in these expressions both aspects of
determinism are mixed up.  




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