Free will is impossible in a deterministic universe

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You should scratch the part with the copies.

The only difference is that I am not really making these decisions, but that the things I am doing are already stored in the cosmos. It does make no difference for what we do, only that humans are machines to store a huge amount of intelligent decisions and behavior.

Why? Are you saying a copy would act differently to how the original would if placed in the exact same scenario?

Another way I like to convey the statement is to look at time as a VHS tape. Say you could travel back in time into your old body - rewind the tape - but lose all the memories of what happened after that time you return to, then you would make exactly the same choices - the same way the tape doesn't change after you've rewind it and replay it again.

It's obvious from the above that I don't believe in the multiverse.

In a deterministic universe there is no place for copies anyway. Actually I don't even know what you mean with copy. Are you going to copy me without the rest of the cosmos, or copy the whole cosmos?

If there were two "identical" humans they would always behave differently because they interact with the rest of the cosmos in a different way. That's because two different things cannot be be identical.

It's a thought experiment. One needs not copy the whole of the cosmos. Put the clones inside two different places, but with indistinguishable stimuli to the human brain, and I posit that they will act the same.

A rather pointless idea.

The clones are also interacting with the physical world, and even if you just copy the brains, the atoms would still interact with the rest of the cosmos.

They will not act the same.

Are you talking about the non-locality attributed to quantum mechanics? I don't see how QM is relevant to the topic at hand.

No he is talking about the fact that the matter in your body interacts with the surrounding world. If you make a clone and put it somewhere else it will interact with the surrounding world in a different way according to the laws of physics because the surrounding world will not be identical for the two copies.

Look, there's no need to get into quantum physics. You simply can't create two identical entities in two different locations and expect them to interact identically with the rest of the cosmos.

Yes, and how obvious this is.

Here is an example that makes this obvious: Take two identical stones. Place one on the ground and one up in the air. Will they behave exactly the same?

Clever.

But now he could possibly say that you must place them both on the ground, under absolutely identical conditions.

But that's simply not possible.

The only possible exception is to imagine that the whole surrounding cosmos is in a state of complete homogenity. Well .. and even that is a contradiction in itself.

That's a good question. And now read my article.

When you get down to it, the will part doesn't make any sense either. I think Schopenhauer did a good job of highlighting this: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills".

I'm with Burning Bridges that our minds, or conciousness, or whatever you want to call it, is subject to the same laws of physics that every other natural process is. But the point here is that even if you assume some kind of soul, it still doesn't solve the problem of not having free will. I mean, if you have a soul, and that's the source of your will and your choices, then the problem only gets pushed back, because you didn't chose your soul. You still can't chose what you will.

I think the theory is that the soul is an innate source of causation due to it's divine nature.

Well, yeah, but that's what you get when you pour the baby out with the bathwater.

If you're made of matter and physical processes, then this matter and those processes are the only "you" that exists, so claiming that the decisions, whether deterministic or otherwise, were not made by you because they were the consequence or one of possible randomly distributed consequences of underlying physics just doesn't make sense.

It only gets interesting when you consider situation where you have, for example, electrodes implanted in your brain in such way that an another can steer you by manipulating your will. You will be doing stuff out of your own volition, but your volition will be manipulated by another conscious agent rather than being a simple consequence of mindless physics - will the deeds still be your own in addition to being someone else's?

Such musings are naturally not very constructive, because they are purely philosophical and revolve entirely around ideas existing only within the realm of language, but they are still pretty interesting, no?

What an intriguing way to misspell "bullshit".

There's nothing wrong with the thought experiment. I explicitly stated same stimuli. I realise that the moon for instance can influence moods and stuff like that. It would actually be an interesting practical experiment to see exactly how these forces influences opinions in identical situations.

So let's look at a practical example. Consider a simulation, a machine based AI. Let us assume it's in a regulated temperature and inside electromagnetic shielding. It is easy to draw the conclusion that the moon and so forth would not affect it any conceivable way. Here you have two machines with cognitive ability, both awoken at the same time. Is it not reasonable to assume that they'd do the same thing? And if not, why not?

Does ice choose to melt in the sun? Is a tornado morally responsible for for it's own actions?

I don't know but such questions always lead me to the laws of randomness.

The whole cosmos seems to be built on top of a constant source of random influence (that's where quantum physics comes in), and the effects are expressing themselves both in the micro and the macro cosmos. A quantum particle will be here or there, with an exactly regular probablilty, and the exact same principle displays itself in a roulette ball also falling here or there, with the same mathematical regularity. Even the arrangement of stars and galaxies are the result of exactly these random processes. And only religious persons will deny that thought is just as well bonded to the world of randomness.

So if I start thinking of such problems as free will, time, etc, I always muse about what actually goes on at the bottom, in this world of randomness. Isn't it peculiar that it is so absolute regular? Perhaps the key is that randomness isn't the kind of "random" that we think, but actually deterministic, once you have the big picture? Perhaps like prime numbers, which appear to be absolutely random, but also definite, once you know how to find them? Does that make any sense?

Alas, I'm neither a physicist nor a mathematician, so I can't say I figure it out.

but forgot that they cannot exist.

You seem to fall in the trap believing 0.9999999999999999.. is the same as 1.

Which is really interesting because it can be experienced first hand, without any complicated scientific method.

I'm a physicist, of course I do.

Yes. Check out chaos theory. Chaos theory is regularly used as a random number generator, yet it is ultimately completely deterministic.

But then we're not talking about the same thing. If you change the conditions in a deterministic world just a little bit, nothing will be the same.

Exactly. Chaos theory.

I was just making the assumption that the starting conditions are the same. In something like chaos theory that doesn't work, obviously, but many systems tend to result in a normal distribution (gaussian), where the limit is just the delta function. It's the reason the physical world doesn't behave in a quantum way.

You could explain this a bit more. As I said, I can only speak from philosophical intuition.

And what I was trying to say is that randomness is the only driving force in the cosmos.

Different starting positions result in wholly different results - they're still deterministic - but mimics randomness I.e. same starting condition results in the same values.

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map

You were correct to assume at the start that it's not /real/ randomness, but rather chaos as seen in chaos theory. The only real random we have is on a quantum level.