Regardless of if it's practical to live that way in daily life, the world seems pretty determined. Everything happens because a vast amount of interactions between infinite factors causes it to. You can't really say you choose between things as many influences have been taken in by you and many things have affected your psychological state. Has everything been practically decided by the big bang? Now, this is not to say we can know everything or predict the future, but we know what's likely. Socialism or extinction may be inevitable, but we don't know yet. Socialism can only happen if people keep fighting, regardless. People will be convinced or principled or not. Science seems to agree with this, and only few, like the wrong Sartre would propose we have ultimate free will. So are there any arguments against determinism? I know there is a saying that you're freer when you recognize how your freedom is restricted, and that recognition may make your actions better, but isn't there ultimately no freedom?
There's one practical scientific argument against free will. And that is that: that:
Given the base of all decision-making, and even thoughts, in humans is on chemical reactions in the brain.
The chemical reactions we are referring to affect neurons firing. Neurons firing is actually how the brain works.
The action potential is what determines whether or not a neuron will fire. The action potential is based on a ton of teeny tiny interactions at the chemical level.
Those teeny tiny chemical reactions are quantum.
Quantum things are inherently unpredictable. No, I do not mean they are difficult to predict. I mean, even with perfect knowledge, they are literally unpredictable.
Even with perfect knowledge, you will not understand entirely if someone is going to have particular neurons firing, and they can have many downstream effects because there are billions of neurons, and sometimes entire thoughts are caused by only only thousands of them, and literally that would be unpredictable.
Okay, but here's some caveats.
A. Just because something is unpredictable does that mean you have free will. In fact, in theory, if it's completely unpredictable, even if you have perfect knowledge, then that actually means you don't have free will and that your actions are just random. So I wouldn't call that better.
B. Anybody who claims they understand quantum mechanics is lying. Even here I'm kind of just using it as a philosophical tool because I have no idea if you can actually predict anything in quantum mechanics. I just know that the quantum mechanics scientists basically say that you can't.
Back in my liberal, scientific, neurological, philosophical days. This is basically the end of the conversation I made it to in terms of free will. I haven't really thought about it much since then. Food for thought if you are interested in thinking about it further.
The thing I think you're missing with the quantum angle is that its unknowable currently but that doesnt mean its unknowable, we might get to a point where that level of computation is possible for us to work out. I think the best way to put it is 'no current models can predict this but thats not to say a model couldnt feasibly scale up large enough to work it out'; its something that might be a frontier we can work out if quantum computers ever become a feasable thing to apply to this.
Thats not to say it will disprove free will, it might very well become a 'shit we need a post-quantum quantum computer for this'
I agree with you, it is a principle of materialism that the world and its laws are knowable, we constantly prove this concept by scientific advancements.
Certain mysteries of nature may seem impossible to understand currently, but in 1000 years they may already be solved
Everything is divisible into infinitely smaller parts, so yeah there probably will always be more to know no matter how much you know.
It starts to beg the question that if everything is computable with a big enough theortical computer pointed at a paradigm that exists, but is either found or not found given the unknown, doesnt that mean free will is moot?
Untill we find the unparadagimable matter its still up for debate.
I still don't see an argument for free will here. Either way it means its random or predictable, not free. The only way free will could exist is if there was some sort of spirit beyond matter.
Im also actually still open to that idea that there is something beyond the veil, but resigned to the fact that it would be unknowable.
I doubt it, but noone can know for certain.
This is why it's hard to talk about any scientific facts, even when surrounding a philosophical argument. Yes, maybe we could find a way eventually, but we need that evidence first, and as of right now, there's evidence to show that we actually can't have perfect knowledge.
But yeah, "anything could change" is like, always there, so, sure.
i’m likely dramatically oversimplifying something i don’t fully understand, but bell’s theorem tells us there’s not any model behind the scenes of quantum mechanics
More like we don't have a paradigm to explain the model of quantum mechanics yet.
Bell's theorem imposes that a hidden variable theory that makes the spontaneity of quantum measurement unspontaneous is only possible if it is nonlocal.
Nonlocality means two things can be correlated and their corresponding nature be known simultaneously at once due to this correlation. Once you know one, you know the other, without any relaying of information between them.
You absolutely can predict things in quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is not just "everything is unknowable, throw up your hands and go home". Quantum mechanics does deal with probabilities though.
If I'm playing roulette, and I bet on 36, I can predict that I will lose, but not with absolute certainty. I can also predict that if I bet on 36 ten thousand times in a row, I will win 270 times. It's possible that I win 0 times, and it's possible that I win 10,000 times, but it's much more likely that I win about 270 times.
"Completely unpredictable" is not the same as "not knowable with absolute certainty." There's a big range in between those two absolutes where human beings thrive, doing science and making decisions based on things that can never be known with absolute certainty.
Yeah, as I just responded to someone else, this is the weird intersection between science and philosophy. If I had perfect knowledge about the universe, but I can't predict this quantum interaction, then do I have enough knowledge to predict your actions? How much room do I have before this interaction becomes "well, i can predict with statistical chance, and that is good enough".
BTW, I wasn't throwing up my hands with "we can't predict quantum, so it's all moot'. Like, yeah, I now there's statistics around it, I know more than I let on in that comment, I wasn't here to lecture about quantum mechanics, and as I stated, the ones that do state that this is not fully known science.
Like, literally we don't know if we have free will. That's why this is a philosophical argument. This is just one piece.