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25. marraskuuta 2009 |
                      
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Tapani Pulkkinen - Tikkurilan lukio 2.
In the quote Thomas Nagel presents a rather deterministic (though not necessarily his own) view on human freedom and decision-making. The claim is that even though what a person does depends on his choice, the choice is not at all free but instead a direct result from all the variables present, such as the previous events in one’s life, one’s knowledge, personal traits and the like. Thus, it turns out, everything can only occur in the way we witness it; there are no other possible outcomes from the conditions that result to the event. The formatting of the argument has a paradoxical feel to it. The claims that everything happens in a set way and that a person’s actions result from choice are not compatible, at least with the intuitive definition of choice as doing or not doing something given both options. If there’s only one possible way for everything to happen, firing a gun at someone is no more of a choice than stepping on a snail you didn’t see. Also stating a variety of reasons behind a person’s ”choice” is pointless: surely by the same logic the circumstances leading to the event in question are barely the effect of the same causality and a direct result of the situations prior to them. Repeating this reduction one comes to the conclusion that everything must be just the causal result from some kind of initial state. Thus the seemingly varied, countless factors affecting everything turn out to be essentially the same: seemingly different kinds of evolvants of whatever it is that initially was. The nature or even existence of such starting point is obviously quite a hefty assumption in itself, but it’s one that every related model has to make in some way and thus it’s not really a viable target for criticism against a single theory. Considering everything essentially the same leads to a monistic view on the world. Usually the view is materialistic, as the existence of matter is rather hard to discard. For determinism, materialistic monism is vital, as it’s rather problematic trying to prove why the world would follow causality if it was, for example, just a creation of our mind as idealists claim. Materialist determinism, however, is often backed up with plethoras of modern scientific findings. Neuropsychologists have, for example, repeatedly affected subjects’ decisions, emotions and the like by simply applying stimuli such as electricity or chemicals directly to their brains. Thus it’s been shown that one’s thoughts and actions, often perceived to be ’free’, are indeed at least partially affected by purely physical matters. Also, a branch of mathematics called chaos theory has shown that even fairly simple, causal systems or algorithms can rapidly evolve into something seemingly undecipherable and random. This is in line with the view presented in the quoted argument: the allegedly free decision or action may indeed be a direct result of the situations it occurred in, but the relation is too complex for us to understand. However, some phenomena in modern physics might imply that there can be no true determinism: in quantum mechanics, the actions of particles are not directly causal but instead random events that occur with certain probabilities. For example, it seems that particles aren’t really guaranteed to be in a certain place at a certain time. This means that in theory one could observe a pen ’warp’ into an other location on one’s desk, for example. This of course breaks causality and in turn determinism. If one can’t assume that the same cause leads to the same effect every time, it’s impossible to completely reliably predict the results of anything even with information of all the variables. The existence of chance is a key question in the free will vs. determinism debate, and naturally one can’t expect a definite conclusion on the matter. The quantum mechanics is a man-made model of the world, after all, and it might not correspond perfectly with reality. As it stands, though, it’s the most accurate one to date, and most physicists believe that quantum effects are necessary for explaining some phenomena. Another principle, also a part of quantum physics, called Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that no matter the quality of the measuring equipment, one can’t get completely accurate information about a particle’s state at a given time. It results in that even if the universe was deterministic, we couldn’t truly predict all the events or perhaps even realise the determinism due to the inherent imperfections in observation. Thus a deterministic world might in fact be indistinguishable from one with chance and free choice in it. Of course the same criticism stands: quantum physics is not necessarily the absolute truth about the world. Determinists also have one uncounterable argument: it just happens to seem so due to the way everything occurs from the initial causalities. Physics still is the model of explanation with most empirical, repeatable evidence, though. So, in conclusion, even though the existence of determinism can’t obviously be rigorously proved or disproved, the observations and theories so far seem to hint that it’s, if not impossible, at least impossible to verify. Thus the whole debate is fruitless, to say the least: it is possible that even with all the information possibly available one couldn’t reach a definite conclusion.
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Tätä sivustoa on viimeksi päivitetty 25. marraskuuta 2009
