Free Will, for romansh (Identity)

by romansh ⌂ @, Tuesday, January 01, 2013, 17:43 (4104 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by unknown, Tuesday, January 01, 2013, 18:02

Your refutation of Stenger the other day got me searching Stenger's works. I have not read anything of his yet. -Anyway here is his take on free will
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/FreeWillSkeptic.pdf-Regarding your video, these things always get me asking what is the meaning of measurement or observation? Here is a quote from John Bell, a proponent of Bohmian mechanics
>> It would seem that the theory [quantum mechanics] is exclusively concerned about "results of measurement", and has nothing to say about anything else. What exactly qualifies some physical systems to play the role of "measurer"? Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer, for some better qualified system ... with a Ph.D.? If the theory is to apply to anything but highly idealized laboratory operations, are we not obliged to admit that more or less "measurement-like" processes are going on more or less all the time, more or less everywhere. Do we not have jumping then all the time? -
Here is another quote by Feynman asking the same question 
>>Does this mean that my observations become real only when I observe an observer observing something as it happens? This is a horrible viewpoint. Do you seriously entertain the thought that without observer there is no reality? Which observer? Any observer? Is a fly an observer? Is a star an observer? Was there no reality before 10^9 B.C. before life began? Or are you the observer? Then there is no reality to the world after you are dead? I know a number of otherwise respectable physicists who have bought life insurance. By what philosophy will the universe without man be understood?


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