[P2P-F] Do you believe in free will??

Fri Dec 30 11:56:14 CET 2011

I remember reading a whole article in the xmas issue of new statesman while
I was in europe this month, 3-4 pages of critique against free will, from
richard dawkins or similar scientist (it could have been dennett)  but then
mysteriously concluding that though we don't have free will, we have
'choice' ... in other words, ending up in the same place

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 4:36 PM, robert searle <dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> My old kheper article might be of amusement though a more advanced one is
> in the pipeline, and this "new" presentation which is also more complex
> will be known as the Eleutherian Theory.
>
> http://www.kheper.net/essays/A_Certain_Ethical_Problem_in_Esotericism.html
>
>
>
>  *From:* Peter Mazsa <peter.mazsa at theunitedpersons.org>
> *To:* dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk; psidoc at gmail.com
> *Cc:* P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
> *Sent:* Thursday, 29 December 2011, 22:19
> *Subject:* Re: [P2P-F] Do you believe in free will??
>
> > On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 5:34 AM, robert searle <dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> The materialist Christopher Hitchins who died very recently was asked
> the
> >> following question (ref source Richard Dawkins/Radio Four).
> >>
> >> Do you believe in free will?
> >>
> >> Yes, I have no choice!
> >>
> >> The following is a somewhat long bio on  CH
> >>
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens
>
> On 29 December 2011 19:58, Paul Hughes <psidoc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have argued that the answer is ultimately yes:
> >
> > http://www.realitysandwich.com/super_free_will
>
> FYI: The Strong Free Will Theorem
>
> "[...] our theorem asserts that if experimenters have a certain
> freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom. Indeed,
> it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom is the ultimate
> explanation of our own.
> [...] It may well be true that classically stochastic processes such
> as tossing a (true) coin do not help in explaining free will, but
> [...] adding randomness also does not explain the quantum mechanical
> eﬀects described in our theorem. It is precisely the “semi-free”
> nature of twinned particles, and more generally of entanglement, that
> shows that something very diﬀerent from classical stochasticism is at
> play here.
> Although the FWT [Free Will Theorem] suggests to us that determinism
> is not a viable option, it nevertheless enables us to agree with
> Einstein that “God does not play dice with the Universe.” In the
> present state of knowledge, it is certainly beyond our capabilities to
> understand the connection between the free decisions of particles and
> humans, but the free will of neither of these is accounted for by mere
> randomness.
> [...] determinism may formally be shown to be consistent, there is no
> longer any evidence that supports it, in view of the fact that
> classical physics has been superseded by quantum mechanics, a
> non-deterministic theory. The import of the free will theorem is that
> it is not only current quantum theory, but the world itself that is
> non-deterministic, so that no future theory can return us to a
> clockwork universe."
>
> http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf
>
> Cf.
> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Math_Trek__Do_subatomic_particles_have_free_will
> P.
>
>
>
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