Ep. 90: Why is there something rather than nothing?

[Dave B]

Mitch,

I'm not asking you about life. I'm asking you about free will. Is it possible to have free will without going through the process you call life?

[Moonwood the Hare]

Moonwood the Hare wrote:So let me work backwards through your responses and do the best I can. I quite agree that the natural/supernatural distinction is a modern one and for that reason we cannot definitely identify the gods of ancient polytheism as either natural or supernatural. However if we do insist on taking that distinction with us then to me it makes more sense to identify them as natural rather then supernatural.


You mean that it serves the purpose of those today who want to dismiss those beliefs as ridiculous. So of course modern day pagans would most certainly disagree with you on this and say no that it makes more sense to identify them as supernatural/spiritual.

No Mitch I meant what I said not something else. I have not dismissed modern day paganism as ridiculous. When I started this I pointed out to humanguy that the term supernatural is often ill defined and it may be that we are working with different definitions. We really should try to agree a definition. The following might be a good place to start:

not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws

Now it seems to me that the gods of polytheism do exist within nature, and although belief in them antedates the discovery of natural laws, the early discoverers of such laws did see the gods as in some measure subject to them.

Moonwood the Hare wrote: It should be clear at any rate that the worldview of Hebraic religion is utterly different to that of Greek or Norse religion and to try to conflate them around the concept God/gods is plain misleading. As for trying to find out what people millennia ago would have thought about modern science by asking modern pagans I think that is frankly silly.


Why? They are believers like those millenia ago, who simply have the information that those other lacked. What is ridiculous is letting someone like you who does not in any way shape or form believe what they believe, say what they would have thought.

I disagree. The fact that a person holds a particular belief does not give privileged insight into the history of that belief. To take an extreme example. If I want to know what the Arians back in the fourth century might have believed about the germ theory of disease it would make no sense at all to say that because the Jehovah,s Witnesses, who are Arians,
One of the major texts on the Ancient Pagan religions of my own country is Ronald Hutton's The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy, After exploring various pagan cultures over the centuries since the ice age puts together a chapter on modern paganism and concludes that, moving and impressive though this is, it has no connection with ancient paganism about which we know very little.

Mitch let me try to paraphrase your argument on agency - I think I can bring your points out more strongly by doing that:
Firstly I need to say I use the term agency rather than free will because free will has been used in many different senses, and it has a theological meaning which is quite distinct from its psychological or philosophical meaning. But by agency I mean the capacity to think and make choices which is pretty close to most definitions of free will.
1. If human thought is causally determined in all its processes human beings cannot be agents
2. Human thought is a physical process
3. Aside from quantum indeterminacy all physically processes are causally determined
4. Therefore unless quantum indeterminacy can influence human thought processes human beings cannot be agents
Would that sum it up. As I understand it you are saying quantum indeterminacy is a necessary but not a sufficient cause of agency.

[humanguy]

When I started this I pointed out to humanguy that the term supernatural is often ill defined and it may be that we are working with different definitions. We really should try to agree a definition. The following might be a good place to start:

not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws

Now it seems to me that the gods of polytheism do exist within nature, and although belief in them antedates the discovery of natural laws, the early discoverers of such laws did see the gods as in some measure subject to them.

Here's a pretty easy-to-comprehend definition of supernatural: "Of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil."

Anyway, when I use that word that's pretty much exactly what I mean.

I do not understand why you keep on about how the polytheist gods "do exist within nature." No, they don't. They were all made up! They don't exist, they never existed. Whatever context the people who believed in them put them in has nothing to do with whether or not they were real.

Even if the early discoverers of natural laws saw the gods as in some measure subject to those laws, what difference does it make?

[mitchellmckain]

I'm not asking you about life. I'm asking you about free will.

In my thinking life and free will are inseperable. Free will is pretty much the whole point of the process of life. And just as free will is a quantitative thing, so is the process of life. These are not absolute either/or qualities but something which your choices can increase or diminish.

Is it possible to have free will without going through the process you call life?

No I do not think so. Not for finite beings anyway.

Now it seems to me that the gods of polytheism do exist within nature, and although belief in them antedates the discovery of natural laws, the early discoverers of such laws did see the gods as in some measure subject to them.

Sorry but I am not interested in such meaningless semantics. The understanding of what constitutes natural law has changed, and we were talking about what those in the past would have thought if they knew what we knew today about the laws of nature. And I still say that the LAST person you want to ask that from are the people who do NOT share their beliefs, because that is just plain ABSURD! Its like atheists saying that the apostles would not have given Jesus the time of day if they had just known about the theory of evolution.

The fact that a person holds a particular belief does not give privileged insight into the history of that belief. To take an extreme example. If I want to know what the Arians back in the fourth century might have believed about the germ theory of disease it would make no sense at all to say that because the Jehovah,s Witnesses, who are Arians,

Total bullshit example again! What the JWs and the Arians of the fourth century have in common has nothing to do with the topic you are considering. That is NOT the case when trying to apply a modern distinction between natural and supernatural to the gods that pagans 2000 years ago believed in, because in that case the question does concern the beliefs which they DO share with modern pagans.

quantum indeterminacy is a necessary but not a sufficient cause of agency.

Well yes, I certainly think that is true.

[Dave B]

Mitch,

Free will is pretty much the whole point of the process of life.

Do bacteria have free will, then? The process of life seems to produce a lot more of them than other life forms, but I would find it hard to justify that they have much free will.

quantum indeterminacy is a necessary but not a sufficient cause of agency.

Well yes, I certainly think that is true.

Is quantum indeterminacy necessary because of something particular about quantum physics, or is it just necessary because it's the only thing in nature you're aware of that gets around deterministic behavior? If all that's needed for free will is to get around determinism, could a sufficiently sophisticated computer program that has access to random bits produced by a geiger counter have free will?

[mitchellmckain]

Free will is pretty much the whole point of the process of life.

Do bacteria have free will, then? The process of life seems to produce a lot more of them than other life forms, but I would find it hard to justify that they have much free will.

Yep. As I said, free will is not an either/or quality but something which is highly quantitative. A bacterium has very little free will compared to a mammal and no biological life form has much free will compared to that which the human mind is capable of.

Is quantum indeterminacy necessary because of something particular about quantum physics, or is it just necessary because it's the only thing in nature you're aware of that gets around deterministic behavior?

It is the only thing in science which points to a lack of closure in physical causality. Just as it is chaotic dynamics that shows the conditions under which this affects large scale phenomenon.

If all that's needed for free will is to get around determinism, could a sufficiently sophisticated computer program that has access to random bits produced by a geiger counter have free will?

You seem unable to grasp the concept of "necessary but not sufficient", let alone the meaning of "It is the process of life that generates agency" and everything else about the nature of life and computer programs that I am getting a little tired of repeating. For example: "But it is not a matter of designing a program to meet specifications and that is in fact the antithesis of life. Life is a self-organizing process."

You talk like a geiger counter is getting random information from a different source than quantum indeterminacy. LOL But I think the answer to your question is no, because in that case the quantum decoherence is seperated from the operation of the program which is no different from any computer program that uses information from a non-linear environment. The program is still just responding in a mathematically deterministic mechanical way to external environmental events. We know that quantum dechoherence is a non-local effect so a reductionist treatment isn't valid -- you cannot add it into a simulation of life like a seperate ingredient. It doesn't work that way.

[Dave B]

Mitch,

When I say "sufficiently sophisticated computer program" lets just assume that I'm talking about one which simulates a world in which the AI being is raised for 80 years in a process mimicking life. Since you've agreed that AI is possible, I thought we could assume that a quantum computer capable of AI exists. The sufficiently sophisticated deterministic program could simply be one that calculates the evolving state of each qubit, then uses the geiger counter readings to determine the result of reading each qubit. If a quantum computer can have free will, then this simulation of one should have free will as well.

I'm aware that the random information from a geiger counter comes from quantum indeterminacy. I picked that example in order to understand what it is about quantum indeterminacy that you think allows for free will. You seem to agree with me that simply adding indeterminacy via the results of quantum events doesn't allow for free will beyond what is capable in a purely deterministic world. You seem to be indicating that non-locality is the key. What is it about non-locality that makes free will viable?

[mitchellmckain]

When I say "sufficiently sophisticated computer program" lets just assume that I'm talking about one which simulates a world in which the AI being is raised for 80 years in a process mimicking life. Since you've agreed that AI is possible, I thought we could assume that a quantum computer capable of AI exists.

Yes but a computer program mimicing life is not what I mean by real AI. A real AI is one that operates in the same way as the human mind which is a living (i.e. self-organizing) system and not a product of design at all.

The sufficiently sophisticated deterministic program could simply be one that calculates the evolving state of each qubit, then uses the geiger counter readings to determine the result of reading each qubit. If a quantum computer can have free will, then this simulation of one should have free will as well.

Nope. Saying that a quantum computer might be capable of the process of life does not mean any such thing.

I'm aware that the random information from a geiger counter comes from quantum indeterminacy. I picked that example in order to understand what it is about quantum indeterminacy that you think allows for free will. You seem to agree with me that simply adding indeterminacy via the results of quantum events doesn't allow for free will beyond what is capable in a purely deterministic world. You seem to be indicating that non-locality is the key. What is it about non-locality that makes free will viable?

No I am not indicating that non-locality is the key to anything but why your assembage of components and design specification will not work. The key is the self-organizing process of life. THAT is what you cannot take out of it and still have free will.

[Dave B]

Yes but a computer program mimicing life is not what I mean by real AI. A real AI is one that operates in the same way as the human mind which is a living (i.e. self-organizing) system and not a product of design at all.

The A in AI is for artificial. You can't have AI that isn't the product of design. After you're done laughing out loud in all caps at me and throwing around meaningless technical sounding phrases like "non-linear", perhaps you could answer a simple yes or no question to clarify what you mean by artificial intelligence:

Is it possible to build a quantum computer that either has free will or in some way produces an AI that has free will?

[mitchellmckain]

The A in AI is for artificial. You can't have AI that isn't the product of design.

Well then by that definition, AI is nothing more that mimicry, and it really is a misnomer because such a tool has no more intellegence than a nail or a hammer.

you could answer a simple yes or no question to clarify what you mean by artificial intelligence:

By real artificial intellegence I mean something that really has intellegence and is capable of the things that our intellegence is capable of, which is more than simply following instructions -- for that is all the a computer ever does or can do.

Is it possible to build a quantum computer that either has free will or in some way produces an AI that has free will?

Free will is an aspect of the life process and that is a medium independent process and so yes I think you can create/design the conditions for this process to occur in an artificial brain. But I think that this will require quantum decoherence to play a role and thus this is not possible with current computer technology but may be possible with quantum computing.

[Moonwood the Hare]

When I started this I pointed out to humanguy that the term supernatural is often ill defined and it may be that we are working with different definitions. We really should try to agree a definition. The following might be a good place to start:

not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws

Now it seems to me that the gods of polytheism do exist within nature, and although belief in them antedates the discovery of natural laws, the early discoverers of such laws did see the gods as in some measure subject to them.

Here's a pretty easy-to-comprehend definition of supernatural: "Of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil."

Anyway, when I use that word that's pretty much exactly what I mean.

I do not understand why you keep on about how the polytheist gods "do exist within nature." No, they don't. They were all made up! They don't exist, they never existed. Whatever context the people who believed in them put them in has nothing to do with whether or not they were real.

Even if the early discoverers of natural laws saw the gods as in some measure subject to those laws, what difference does it make?

Hi humanguy - nice to have you back.
This comes down to the distinction between conceptualization and instantiation - terms I was reluctant to use because they sound fancier than the thing they mean. When I say the polytheist gods "do exist within nature" I mean that they were conceived of by those who believed in them as existing within nature. It's like me saying 'Sherlock Holmes never wore a deerstalker or smoked a meerschaum pipe' and meaning that he did not do that in Conan Doyle's stories. It would be innapropriate for you to reply 'Of course he didn't he was made up.'

The trouble with your definition of the supernatural is
1. The polytheist gods usually were imagined to be visible and observable. Thor was said to have red beard and disguised himself as a woman etc. etc.
2. There are many things that are not part of the visible or observable universe that you would not want to count as supernatural - earlier in this thread we were talking about infinite numbers, they are not part of the visible, observable universe, granted they exist are they then supernatural. Human minds are not visible or observable, and for this reason some psychologists have argued that they can never be the subject of a science (to be scientific psychologists they said would have to focus on behaviour) are minds then supernatural. Things like gravity or subatomic particles are not observable but are known from their effects, are they then supernatural
3. Including gods in your definition begs the question

As to why it makes a difference. You were asking why I believe in the Christian God and not the gods of polytheism. I am trying to suggest that they are different kinds of things. So different that reasons for believing in the Christian God will also be reasons for not believing in the gods of polytheism.

[humanguy]

As to why it makes a difference. You were asking why I believe in the Christian God and not the gods of polytheism. I am trying to suggest that they are different kinds of things.

In what ways are they different kinds of things?

So different that reasons for believing in the Christian God will also be reasons for not believing in the gods of polytheism.

Interesting. What are the reasons for believing in the Christian God that are also reasons for not believing in the gods of polytheism?

And I really would like for you to explain to me exactly what the difference is between the gods of polytheism and the Christian God specifically where their "believability factor" is concerned.

[mitchellmckain]

The trouble with your definition of the supernatural is
1. The polytheist gods usually were imagined to be visible and observable. Thor was said to have red beard and disguised himself as a woman etc. etc.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
So by your argument apparently your god isn't supernatural either?

I do not even like the term "supernatural" (which is not used in the Bible), so I use the word spiritual (which is used in the Bible). I don't like the implications that the spiritual is not natural or that it is without reason or explanation. In any case, just because something is visible does not mean that it is not spiritual. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is quite clear that the bodily resurrection of Christ refers not to a physical body but a spiritual body. And although a spiritual body is not bound by the laws of physics (can walk through walls or ascend to heaven), that does not mean that it is invisible or intangible. But what it does mean is that it is not physical, not of flesh and blood, but imperishable and immortal. That is what Paul says in 1 Cor 15.

2. There are many things that are not part of the visible or observable universe that you would not want to count as supernatural - earlier in this thread we were talking about infinite numbers, they are not part of the visible, observable universe, granted they exist are they then supernatural. Human minds are not visible or observable, and for this reason some psychologists have argued that they can never be the subject of a science (to be scientific psychologists they said would have to focus on behaviour) are minds then supernatural. Things like gravity or subatomic particles are not observable but are known from their effects, are they then supernatural

Mathematical concepts are abstractions -- a way of thinking and talking about the nature of some things. There is nothing supernatural about them. I have already said that I disagree with this view of the human mind, which I think is absurd and unscientific, but I guess there is no need to start that debate again. Gravity and subatomic particles ARE observable, the meaning of the word "observable" is not confined to the limitations of human eyesight and seeing objects only -- one can also observe actions, effects, connections and principles.

3. Including gods in your definition begs the question

It wasn't his definition, therefore I cannot see that it begs the question. What it does, is show that you use the word "supernatural" in a way that does not agree with how it is usually used.

I think the fact is that they did believe in beings which they could not see -- not in person. They only saw statues of them and told stories about them. Yes they believed that these gods could interact with human beings and they had a human shape. But that does not equate to being natural rather than supernatural. The difference from Christian belief does not seem really all that great to me.

As to why it makes a difference. You were asking why I believe in the Christian God and not the gods of polytheism. I am trying to suggest that they are different kinds of things. So different that reasons for believing in the Christian God will also be reasons for not believing in the gods of polytheism.

Hmmm...

I find both humanguy's question and Moonwood's answer to be rather peculiar.

Why should knowing one thing to be true mean that you need a reason not believe something which you do not know to be true? This seems to a rather peculiar argument, unless its objective is simply to get the theist to understand why an atheist does not believe in God for similar reasons. I did not have the impression that Moonwood had a problem with that.

I have been thinking how to express why I find Moonwood's answer peculiar, and I am left wondering whether it doesn't just go back to the peculiarity of the question which doesn't really make any sense in the first place.

Truth be told I have trouble with these existential questions in the first place, because of the way in which they assume answers to the question of what they are before saying whether they are. If they really were just people then I see no reason to say they did not exist but only doubt the literal truth of some of the stories about them. It seems that Moowood insists that they are natural beings but did all the things in the stories so that he can assert with confidence that no such natural beings exist or existed. To me, it seems like a rather a pointless thing to do really.

Looking at it objectively, it seems to me that the reasons why people believe in god or Gods are very comparable. They all seem to be giving abstract concepts and ideas a concrete form of some kind. I remember my reasons for first attaching meaning to the word God, in this equivalence I saw between a faith in God and a faith that life was worth living. I saw that the belief in a all powerful, all knowing personal God of love really gave substance and power to the faith that life was worth living. So as I became convinced that this was the most central and indispensable faith in life, a belief in such a God became a very reasonable thing for me indeed. Yet I see that this can be likened to the reasons for which the Greeks believed in their gods, because for them also it gave substance and concrete form to abstract ideas and values which they decided were very important.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Hi humanguy - this is mostly directed to you but taking in some of Mitch's points along the way.
Just to show I'm not way out on my own in this as you guys keep implying here's a quote from C. S. Lewis who was pretty knowledgeable on classical thought:

Those who believed in may gods very seldom, in fact, regarded their gods as creators of the universe and as self-existent. The gods of Greece were not really supernatural in the strict sense which I am giving to the word. They were products of the total system of things and included within it.

Earlier I gave the example of Democritus who believed atoms were self-existent and the gods were made of atoms. Mitch suggested that Democritus was not representative but in the ways that matter I think he is because when you go back to the myths you find the gods being made out of something else which already existed, usually some previously existing race of beings. That then is at the heart of the difference between Christianity and ancient paganism. Like most modern atheists the ancient pagans believe that this cosmos is all there is and that either it as a whole is self dependant or that all other things depend on some part or aspect of it. Theists believe that the cosmos depends on something metaphysically distinct from it which we call God. These are two fundamentally different and mutually exclusive ways of experiencing the world.


As far as believability goes I am not suggesting (as Mitch seems to hint that I think) that pagans believe what they believe on weak irrational grounds whereas Christians believe on good rational grounds. I do not believe either that people generally do come by their basic beliefs through a process of logical inference or that they should come to those beliefs in that way or that such beliefs could only be justified if they could be demonstrated in that way, that is through argument. Rather I think that people come to their beliefs through their experience of the world, and in that sense whether a person is a polytheist, a Christian or an atheist or whatever the basis for basic belief is the same (atheism can be defined as an absence of a particular kind of belief but the atheist is not I think a person without positive beliefs and these positive beliefs are derived from experience). So believability will not be the same for everyone, in this I agree with Mitch.

If someone asks me how they can know if there is a God I will say they can know by asking him to reveal himself to them and waiting to see if he does. But I recognize that if a person does not think God is even a remote possibility they will not make that request.

[Dave B]

Moonwood,

If someone asks me how they can know if there is a God I will say they can know by asking him to reveal himself to them and waiting to see if he does. But I recognize that if a person does not think God is even a remote possibility they will not make that request.

As a child, I was an earnest Jew. Not only had I not denied the remote possibility of the existence of a god, I actively believed in one. Yet it never showed itself to me despite all my heartfelt requests. So now I guess I know that there is no god. Yet many come to the opposite conclusion by this method. People who do find god in this manner can't even agree on which god it is that exists. How can you consider this a reliable method to find the truth?