sethoflagos

Yes. However, I find the word 'chaos' more misleading than helpful. Lorentz (or deterministic) chaos has the particular sense of ...which may appeal to mathematicians but not to me. I much prefer to think in terms of systems that spontaneously trend towards high diversity. This correlates in simple proportion to both maximal entropy and quantum entanglement. As an engineer, this helps give an inituitive feel for how, for example, the system's thermodynamic and chemical equilibria are likely to evolve.

Bien sur. Voila: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Équations_de_Navier-Stokes https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexité

'Rover' was a wolf in sheep's clothing and quite lethal. The main theme of the series is the conflict between individualist vs collectivist principles which quite coincidently has been explicitly referenced earlier today by @Phi for All. Also coincidently, I've just been musing on the difference in moral responsibility for their actions between say, a Macbeth and an actor playing Macbeth obliged to perform his part to the letter.

Only the radionucleides. In principle, hydrocarbon reserves can be restored from water and carbon dioxide via photosynthesis which is how they were created in the first place. Strategic metals can be recovered from wherever their used form was disposed of. Don't confuse 'financially viable exploitable deposits' with total disappearance. It's a myth perpetuated by those who demand maximum profit from minimum investment.

Not in the general case. Navier-Stokes for example are parabolic I think a key point to understand is that while Newton's Laws of Motion and Newton's Law of Viscosity (and the underlying quantum laws that give rise to them) are both linear in themselves, when they are employed in combination (as in Navier-Stokes), the nett result is non-linear. In general, the more interactions you add (linear or otherwise) to the analysis, the more non-linear the end product. This is can be understood as the basis of complexity in the macroscopic world.

We already have them! They are explicitly represented in the systems of partial differential equations that describe most macroscopic physical processes eg Navier-Stokes equations, macroscopic form of Maxwell's equations, Heat equation, Fokker-Planck eqn etc. etc.

Like deciding not to simply ignore the advance wave in the wave equation? No probs so long as there's no informative content?

Is it my imagination or has Fatalism suddenly gone on the rampage on this site? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbL9Vsobx8I

I could order you to have a medical examination...

Google says that charge and current have been described as 'epiphenomena' of events in the 'more fundamental' underlying electromagnetic field. I could imagine someone describing them as 'weakly emergent' also, but there are problems with both usages, However, if those field events were of appropriate frequency to effect a mental response of 'red', then in philosophy of mind the colour would be epiphenomenal to the field. In this sense, the causal relationship differs significantly from those implied in Maxwell's equations. Distinguishing physical events from mental events in this way have indeed lead some to a new form of dualism so I guess this is the extreme interpretation understandably condemned by @Eise.- "any perceived impact of free will on the physical world is illusory". 'Epiphenomenon' again means something entirely different in medicine (symptoms that just happen to correlate) And all three differ from the original sense employed in metaphysics. Bad word! A better framing of the question may be to determine initially whether 'volition' as a concept is abstract or concrete.

Yes, it did rather, and thank you. It was a bit bloggy, I know, but these days I find it difficult to get a complex train of thought in order without actually writing it out longhand. Otherwise I get halfway through and forget both the point I'm responding to and the response I intended to make. Apologies to those who find that sort of thing too me-me-me.

At every instant, the sun is rising in a variety of locations around the solar system. Would anything short of a vacuum decay catastrophe halt this phenomenon?

Given that my wife and I are often residing in different countries, I must declare this a moot point.

I try to steer a course through life in such a way that I never get boxed into an undesirable situation from where there is no escape. One key principle that has helped me in this over the years is to resist any urge to commit myself to a dogmatic position unless it has the firmest of foundations. I might drift through most days with the spirit of Sartre in my blood yet spend other darker days going full on Freddie Ayer. There is value to be found in both so why commit to one tribalist belief and so deny myself the benefits and personal connections I can only find with the other camp? This is not the way to maximise my options for overcoming any future challenges to my comfort and well-being. So no. I will not choose between one obscure definition of free will and another. Neither will I even commit to the existence of any abstraction of free will since the concept is so nebulous it seems to have lost any shred of meaning that I could pin a flag on. That is not to say that I am reluctant to take decisive action when necessary, but nine times out of ten I shall wait until I believe it IS necessary (much to my wife's irritation!) and then act in the surety that I have done so in the light of all relevant considerations and to the best of my judgement. I trust that clarifies precisely where I stand on this issue (and many other diversity limiting false dichotomies as it happens). In the words of the Prisoner - "I am not a number!" So yes, I do find the Compatibilist position inconsistent. But only on certain days. Others not so much.

La plus sa change, la plus c'est la meme chose. If you believe that these four statements are mutually consistent and affirm compatibility, then that's fine. We can leave it at that. It's an interesting position but not one I would care to take on board. Thanks anyway.

Genetic mutations and related changes are sporadic events. Therefore evolution cannot be a continuous process and we may have to wait some time before we suddenly observe a small step change in a population. This waiting time can be quite short for microorganisms that reproduce very quickly. In recent years we've observed evolutionary process produce new strains of COVID every few months. Evolution in larger creatures can take much longer to accrue sufficient change for an observable effect. In the last 10,000 years or so we've seen the evolution of blue eyes in some eurasian populations of humans; lactose tolerance in pastoral populations reliant on dairy produce; the appearance of the sickle cell gene in populations subject to infection with malaria. Such timescales are far beyond the lifetime of any single human; beyond the lifetime even of a civilisation; so why should we expect to see anything happening before our very eyes? However, if we can see some small change occur on the scale of 1,000 years, think how much change we could see in 1 million years! Our ancestors of 1 million years ago didn't actually look that different to how we look now. But we would see that they were different enough to consider whether or not we were all of the same species. If we could go back in time 100 million years, we'd probably see no more evolution happening in our daily lives than we do now. But the animals around us, including our ancestors, would have looked very different. And there is no need for any 'guiding hand' here. A bit of low level background radiation, and some small degree of unreliability in certain complex chemical reactions are quite sufficient to explain the all the natural diversity we see. And time is, along with the space occupied by the planet's surface simply the passive stage on which this activity plays out.

Nearly. It is not known with absolute certainty that the last common ancestor of all living tetrapods was itself a tetrapod. But either way, it would have been almost indistinguishable from some closely related lobefin fish living at the same time around 380+/-10 million years ago (mid- to late Devonian). So it had lobefins rather than legs and it not known with absolute certainty that it had a neck.

Concur without exception. Concur without exception. Exception: Hard determinism precludes free will. Self-contradiction: Compare with your statement "we do not live in an absolutely determined universe" in the first quoted section. This is the basis of your definition of 'sufficient determinism' and hence your most vital justification for the exisence of free will. The applicable degree of determinism is a vital element in understanding your use of the term. You certainly clarify that degree in your framing of 'free will'. However you appear not to in critical cases when framing 'determinism'. You seem to implicitly demand 'wiggle room' to frame free will, only to deny its existence when framing the degree of determinism require to justify a 'gospel' Compatibilist position. Cake = Have + Eat again on the face of it. The example I prepared requires no special understanding of the rules of the game beyond what a child may comprehend after a few hours exposure. In my book, that counts as an entirely sufficient book review ☺️

... but not sufficient determinism to remove the alternative actions necessary for free will to be any more than an abstract concept? This is not a compatibilist position as I understand it. I agree that without sufficient determinism, causal connection between actions and effects diminishes and with it any significance of will, free or otherwise. A wholly undetermined world (eg Khaos) is not of this universe. I also agree with you insofar as the Frankfurt Objection example does seem contrived. That is why I deliberately modified it to a close to real life scenario that occurs continually, every day in online chess communities. Perhaps it too is unworthy of your consideration, but for the moment, I don't see why that should be. Say what you will about Frankfurt; at least his position has clarity. A quality much lacking elsewhere.

Obbligato ("indispensible") springs to mind, as opposed to ad libitum (as you will). But Obbligato can also mean an alternate variation which moreorless reverses the meaning. The sense of 'thou shalt not deviate' has a whole host of forms. Just those for tempo include Source: https://www.spindrift.com/Thesaurus/thestrict.php But this is straying increasingly off topic. Apologies in advance. Pretty much my position. Consequently I find myself atheist to any form of absolute determinism and no more than agnostic regarding any form of absolute free will. Arguably every situation is bit of both with a healthy dose of absurdity thrown in for good measure. Post script: Arguably Alice could be 100% free 100% of the time. I see no absolute constraint here.

Alice did a bad thing => Alice had no choice, but it is what she was inclined to do even if alternate courses of action were available to her ("compatibilist" ?) I did a bad thing => I had several choices but simply miscalculated due to some freak quantum event. Possibly. ("A plague on both your houses") Only you can define your own terminology. And that doesn't even begin to address transferability across different languages. Is the 'true' German translation of 'force' die Macht or die Kraft for example. In some contexts they may be interchangeable, in others not. The 1st movement of Hindemith's trumpet concerto is marked to be played 'Mit Kraft'. There have been many arguments on English speaking trumpet forums over the years as to what this actually means. For 'reasons' I interpret it as 'like a machine' based on context rather than linguistics. Others differ. I don't dispute their interpretation but won't accept them declaring mine invalid without a bit of a scrap. Concensus meanings are only valid if arrived at by concensus. Clarity can be very elusive.

See etymology To be fair, the word only began to lose its more absolute sense in the 19th century. Its use in philosophical and law literature predates that by some margin, so it isn't the philosophers who altered the meaning, it's us. Compare with our use of 'calculus'. Not much to do with pebble counting in the regular use found on this site.

Got to distinguish between possible differences in everyday use and the meaning of 'coercion' in philosophical literature. The latter seems to me to be more absolute. Less absolute contexts would be seen more as 'influence' or some such.

Just to be clear, is this latter statement founded on Frankfurt's objection to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) or some further thinking? As an avid if mediocre chess player, the following version engages me: Alice and Bob are two opposing, reasonably competent chess players. Each is supplied with one of two chess computers (Holly and Hal?) allocated by a single quantum coin flip to refer to if they wish. Each unit outputs what it computes as the strongest next three move sequence but the depth of analysis is limited, sufficient to give advantage in short range tactical play but no better than either player in long term strategy. Critically, the depth horizons are different, though the players are unaware of who's is best at the start of play. Neither can see the other's computer output. The game progresses until Alice has high hopes of winning if Bob makes a certain attractive but blundering move at his next turn. However, she notices that her computer evaluation has suddenly nose-dived. Even with her best move, Bob has a different move available that will reward him with a winning position. However, she's noticed that Bob is in the habit of inadvertently staring at the piece he intends to move next. a)If Bob is looking at the piece she wants him to move should Alice: a1) proceed with Holly's recommended move and hope Hal is too weak to alert Bob to her weakness? a2) play a different move that further encourages the desired response albeit compromising her winning opportunity? b) If Bob is looking at the other piece should should she: b1) still proceed with Holly's recommended move hoping she is the one that's miscalculated? b2) find a 'confounding complication' that diverts the attention of Bob (and Hal) back to the desired option? This scenario includes Frankfurt's assertion that Alice's attempted coercion in b2) does not absolve Bob of moral responsibility for the poor move he intended to make in case a) anyway. However, the quantum selected Holly provides Bob with a fundamentally indeterministic option (Holly's computation is purely deterministic but her selection is non-causal to my eyes at least) and this removes one horn of the 'two-horned dilemma' raised by Fischer et al.: the link between Bob's inclination and action is not wholly deterministic therefore Frankfurt cannot be begging the question here. But if the link between Bob's inclination (the decision he would take in the absence of Hal) and the action he finally takes is indeterminate, doesn't that put the nail in the coffin for causal determinism? Alice's actions share this indeterminant element but excepting a1) have her selecting moves she may strongly suspect of being sub-optimal. Interesting from a chessy point of view at least.