Hi Stephen P. King That free will is consistent with a deterministic universe is the compatibilist point of view. There is also the opposite, the non-compatibilist p.o.v. They're both logical, given their different assumptions or posings of the issue.
Roger , [email protected] 8/17/2012 Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function." ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-14, 15:07:28 Subject: Re: Earthquakes On 8/14/2012 10:45 AM, Roger wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Leibniz' best possible world is a conjecture based on L's two worlds of logic: 1) There is logic that is either always true or false, called the logic of reason or necessity. One could call this "theory" 2) The logic of contingency, also called the logic of "fact", experimental result, or praxis, which can be true or false -- depending on the perfection of the entity or the time of occurrence. "actuality" Most people who acccuse God of injustice or unfairness by a supposedly loving God confuse theory with actuality. Earthquakes do occur because the world has imperfections or cracks ior the cointinental plaes don't fit perfectly together. And any fact must be that way for a reason, the reason also may be contingent, etc. up the line. Dear Roger, The "best possible world" that we have is only the one that is mutually consistent for the collections of mutually interacting (and thus communicating) observers (which we are a member of). All other features and valuations are not any kind of optimum other than the result of our collective choices. This is how free will is compatible with a deterministic physical universe. Roger , [email protected] 8/14/2012 ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-12, 14:05:46 Subject: Re: pre-established harmony Hi Roger, I will interleave some remarks. On 8/11/2012 7:37 AM, Roger wrote: Hi Stephen P. King As I understand it, Leibniz's pre-established harmony is analogous to a musical score with God, or at least some super-intelligence, as composer/conductor. Allow me to use the analogy a bit more but carefully to not go too far. This "musical score", does it require work of some kind to be created itself? This prevents all physical particles from colliding, instead they all move harmoniously together*. The score was composed before the Big Bang-- my own explanation is like Mozart God or that intelligence could hear the whole (symphony) beforehand in his head. I argue that the Pre-Established Harmony (PEH) requires solving an NP-Complete computational problem that has an infinite number of variables. Additionally, it is not possible to maximize or optimize more than one variable in a multivariate system. Unless we are going to grant God the ability to contradict mathematical facts, which, I argue, is equivalent to granting violations of the basis rules of non-contradiction, then God would have to run an eternal computation prior to the creation of the Universe. This is absurd! How can the existence of something have a beginning if it requires an an infinite problem to be solved first? Here is the problem: Computations require resources to run, and if resources are not available then there is no way to claim access to the information that would be in the solution that the computation would generate. WE might try to get around this problem the way that Bruno does by stipulating that the "truth" of the solution gives it existence, but the fact that some mathematical statement or sigma_1 sentence is true (in the prior sense) does not allow it to be considered as accessible for use for other things. For example, we could make valid claims about the content of a meteor that no one has examined but we cannot have any certainty about those claims unless we actually crack open the rock and physically examine its contents. The state of the universe as "moving harmoniously together" was not exactly what the PEH was for Leibniz. It was the synchronization of the simple actions of the Monads. It was a coordination of the percepts that make up the monads such that, for example, my monadic percept of living in a world that you also live in is synchronized with your monadic view of living in a world that I also live in such that we can be said to have this email chat. Remember, Monads (as defined in the Monadology) have no windows and cannot be considered to either "exchange" substances nor are embedded in a common medium that can exchange excitations. The entire "common world of appearances" emerges from and could be said to supervene upon the synchronization of internal (1p subjective) Monadic actions. I argue that the only way that God could find a solution to the NP-Complete problem is to make the creation of the universe simulataneous with the computations so that the universe itself is the computer that is finding the solution. This idea is discussed by several people including David Deutsch, Lee Smolin, Roger Penrose and Stuart Kaufman in their books. This implies that God's creative act is not a singular event but an eternal process. I suppose that this accords with Leibniz's belief that God, whoc is good, constructed the best possible world where as a miniomum, that least physics is obeyed. Yes. Hence Voltaire's foolish criticism of Leibniz in Candide that how could the volcanic or earthquake disaster in Lisbon be part of the most perfect world ? Voltair was a poor fool that could not understand the simple idea that only one variable can be maximized. Perhaps he was not a fool and knew the facts but wanted to discredit Leibniz's superior ideas. Thus, because physics must be obeyed, sometimes crap happens. Indeed. One might even argue that the existence of evil in the world is a consequence of choice; that only in a world completely devoid of choice might it be possible for crap to never occur. But this can be shown to have a vanishingly small probability or even zero chance of actually occurring, as 1) the NP-Complete problem would have to first be solved and 2) there would have to be a very happy "accident" where no one ever happen to be doing the actions which would lead them to see evil - given that evil is a valuation that occurs in our minds and is not an actual extant state of the world. * As a related and possibly explanatory point, L's universe completely is nonlocal. Indeed! I argue that L's monadology almost exactly anticipated the concept of a quantum mechanical system, since a QM system by definition is a windowless monad that never exchanges substances with others and is "simple" by L's definition. All notions of interactions in QM are defined internal to single QM systems as the scattering states of its Hamiltonian. This latter idea was explored and written about by Prof. Hitoshi Kitada as found here: http://www.metasciences.ac/Articles/works.html Roger , [email protected] 8/11/2012 ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-11, 01:56:41 Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? Hi Roger, I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some remarks about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony? On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- -- Onward! Stephen "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." ~ Francis Bacon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- Onward! Stephen "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." ~ Francis Bacon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
