I read a statement in a book a number of years ago (wish I could find it so I could properly attribute it, but I think that the writer was a Christian physicist) – If you want to learn the language of God, study physics.I think the best physicists are also philosophers. That’s why they think they are theologians.
Exactly. So what do we have? The question must remain either a philosophical one, or a theological one.Uncertainty does not lead to free will. It allows it.
So just because we are uncertain does not mean it must be random.What irritates me the most about these conversations is the misuse of the word “random”.
According to the ensemble interpretation, the quantum mechanics model is accurate for large samples.for very small sample sizes (like, say, a single quark or a couple of photons), the uncertainty principle is a very big deal.
In the ensemble interpretation, the Uncertainty Principle is that if σx is the standard deviation of the location of the particle and σp is the standard deviation of its momentum thenlooking at a single particle has a high degree of uncertainty,
The way I look at it, it’s not the observer, it’s the equipment. The lab technology pulls the event, be it an electron, photon, or Bucky ball out of the totality of the system of which it is a part, where this is reflected in its having a wave-like nature, and into particle form. This would happen whether or not a person was observing. Such events happen all the time and are what make the world what it is. That said, we are causal agents, who create the equipment.Indeed, the observer can change the outcome.
If you stand at the edge of a pond, it is you the observer who determines if the photon bounces off the surface or the bottom. No equipment is present.The way I look at it, it’s not the observer, it’s the equipment. The lab technology pulls the event, be it an electron, photon, or Bucky ball out of the totality of the system of which it is a part, where this is reflected in its having a wave-like nature, and into particle form. This would happen whether or not a person was observing. Such events happen all the time and are what make the world what it is. That said, we are causal agents, who create the equipment.
I’m not sure what you are saying here. The equipment can be reduced to a collection of quantum events. At the same time, the equipment is a higher order than those quantum events and it’s structure determines how they will behave. A beam of electromagnetic energy becomes a group of particles just by the events involved in the detection of which slit they are passing. Obviously, this stuff occurs in nature outside of our experiments, which organize matter for specific results that will reveal its nature.it’s just as arbitrary to posit that it’s the equipment rather than the observer that causes the collapse, because neither of them directly interacts with whatever you’re observing.
At issue is the definition of cause. Events which are relationships between things that are relationships in themselves, are organized in a temporal sequence. We place ourselves within these sequences, let’s say a satellite around the globe and might say that the spacetime curvature caused by the mass of the earth, the gravitational force it exerts, is what determines or causes the object’s trajectory. There is a series of events where the cause might be said to be the fundamental properties or laws that govern the universe.What is it about one side or the other that designates that side as the cause?
The way I would answer is that free will is an aspect of the human spirit, which is an overriding organizing principle or soul that makes us what we are in reality. At the level of the very smallest of things, we have such events as quarks flying around at the speed of light in a contained system that constitutes a nucleon, where there kinetic and potential energies are mass, and these relating to other similar events go on to form atoms, which are in turn, combining into large complex molecules, are brought together as cells. These in us, are formed into tissues as parts of the organ systems, which form our bodies, perceiving, feeling, thinking and acting within the universe of which we are a part. If we think of matter as information in action, all that information is subsumed under the structural form of the human spirit. We carry on as persons - a unity of mind, body and spirit. We utilize all these given constituent parts within the universal context, to become who we will in eternity; there’s no going back to what we’ve done although we can make amends, repent and ultimately be redeemed innand through Jesus Christ.To what degree do I have free will?
i don’t see how the actions of your free will can be determined by Newtonian Laws of physics.Your choice is either determined by the laws of physics or it is not.