Philosophy / Science / Religion

[Ghoulish Delight]

[eta: in response to iSm's post about "affected by" vs. "determined by"]

What is it determined by? And more to the point, what necessitates that there be something else that it must be determined by? What about the physical universe is insufficient for producing thought, when we can demonstrate such a direct link between brain chemistry and thought?

I say determined by and I mean determined by. The thought that you have that affects the thought the thought that you're about to have was affected by the thought previous to that, which was affected by the thought of your neighbor which led them to put a red curtain in the window viewable from your front door instead of blue, which was affected by the thought his cat had before knocking the crate and barrel catalog off the table so that it landed open to the page showing a room with red curtains, which was affected by the gust of wind 10 seconds earlier, etc. etc. etc. until everything is affected by every single atom, every single proton, every single quark, every single bit of everything that has ever existed and ever will exist. Yes, determined by. On such a unfathomable vast scale that we have no choice but to abstract that determination down to where it LOOKS like "affected by" rather than "determined by", but make no mistake, at some point it all comes back to the same thing - recreate the absolute identical state of the universe at any point down to the finest sub-atomic Heisenbergian detail and hit play, and you will get the same result.

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

[eta: in response to iSm's post about "affected by" vs. "determined by"]...make no mistake, at some point it all comes back to the same thing - recreate the absolute identical state of the universe at any point down to the finest sub-atomic Heisenbergian detail and hit play, and you will get the same result.

I simply don't agree. And I'm pretty sure there's no science to back up that particular assertion of yours. But of course, that would solve the question right there. Because I contend (and likewise cannot prove) that if you created an identical universe down to the finest sub-atomic mush and hit play, you would get different results.

Just out of curiosity - what do you (or anyone wishing to reply) make of the fact that something is either a particle or a wave depending on whether it is observed by someone with consciousness?

[Alex]

Just out of curiosity - what do you (or anyone wishing to reply) make of the fact that something is either a particle or a wave depending on whether it is observed by someone with consciousness?

If true, I'd think it nifty, but you're incorrect (at least according to the leading physicists who understand this stuff much better than me and are nice enough to try and explain the math in laymen's terms) about consciousness being the mechanism for waveform collapse. Mathematically it is not. However, for I'd think pretty obvious reasons, we can never know the outcome of that collapse without a consciousness being involved but that doesn't mean it created the created the collapse.

And if you want to go way down the quantum consciousness route you'll run into another refutation of free will in the form of the fact that while the exact result of a specific wavefunction collapse can not be predetermined it can be defined exactly probablistically. And then when you take that idea into the various described metaverses or multiverse you kill free will completely for if all possible outcomes actually exist then no choice can ever be made.