[Vex]

[ QUOTE ]
Determinism is completely irrelevant to whether we have free-will or not.

...

Notice that true metaphysical randomness, of the kind posited by quantum mechanics, is as irrelevant to the free-will problem as determinism.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not exactly true. If the universe is deterministic, we do not have free will -- our output is the predictable results of all our inputs, whether or not we could ever know all the inputs and all the rules that use them to produce output.

But, a nondeterministic universe does not preclude free will.

[ QUOTE ]

1) For any given event, that event is either determined by prior causes, or it randomly occurs.


[/ QUOTE ]

This isn't Boolean logic. The universe is at least fairly deterministic; we're all pretty certain the sun is gonna rise tomorrow morning. But, there appears to be room for randomness in the universe -- just ask any quantum mechanics nerd. Physical phenomena aren't all either completely random or completely not-random, they're a combination of the two. Water is composed of zillions of molecules bouncing around in Brownian motion, each molecule a standing quantum wave -- but the properties and behavior of a macroscopic drop of water are precice and well-understood.

[ QUOTE ]

3) If my actions are determined by prior causes, then they are not free actions.

4) If my actions are random, then they are not free actions.


[/ QUOTE ]

The universe might be deterministic, making the whole debate pointless. On the oter hand, if the universe were completely random, we wouldn't be here at all. Assuming the debate is valid, then your actions are a combination of determinism and randomness.

[ QUOTE ]

5) Therefore, my actions are not free actions.


[/ QUOTE ]

That statement does not follow, because your actions aren't purely deterministic and aren't purely random. Your statements 3 and 4 above are correct for purely deterministic things and purely random thngs respectively, but it does not follow that those statements would necessarily be true for things that are partially deterministic and partly random.

It's like assuming that the sine function always returns zero because it returns zero at 0 degrees and at 180 degrees.

[ QUOTE ]

I will try to get back to this thread if anyone replies and please let me know if anyone wants some material to read on this problem.

[/ QUOTE ]

My take on it is, we have to answer the question of whether or not the universe is deterministic first. Only when that possibility is eliminated, and we are sure that our reality emerges in the margins between predictability and chaos, can we even ask the question if free will can arise.

I think quantum mechanics masks something deterministic in its inscrutable depths. Violation of Bell's Inequality may (or may not) disprove hidden variables (the idea that a quantum system can be completely be defined by discreet values that are unmeasurable but nevertheless completely determine its behavior).

But, if it does disprove hidden variables, then that means causality is being violated. Violation of causality implies a deterministic universe, because that means that the effect is knowable before the cause even happens!

Of course, maybe the truth is stranger still. Why can we know the past with certainty but not know the future equally well? They're clearly not symmetric, and we certainly experience some strange thing we call "now" that rides on the cusp between the past that is set in stone and the future that is a fuzzy cloud of possibilities.