[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
For instance, if this ‘randomness’ as you call is intrinsic, it’s still not uncaused. It’s following a rule. It’s subject to something else for its behavior. [/quote]
Again, I don’t want to continue down the QM road. The quoted portion demonstrates why. It is:
A] A mere assertion with no evidence or argument attached. As a matter of fact, its first and third sentences make exactly the same argument-by-assertion, in slightly different terms (a caused event is one subject to an exterior condition and vice versa; saying the same thing twice does not bring it closer to the truth), without offering a lick of support. Its second sentence is ambiguous–I know what you’re trying to say, but you should be aware that there is a sprawling philosophical debate regarding the nature and reality of a physical “law.” As with the larger questions about proofs of God and uncaused events, you should not feel remotely near qualified enough to jump in and say definitively that you know who’s right and who’s wrong. (Neither, of course, should I. And I don’t.)
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That’s not what I am doing. I don’t know who’s right or wrong in the debate on photon behaviour, nor do I care. All I am saying the behavior happens for a reason, not for no reason. If it’s behavior is intrinsic, then it’s subject to that which makes it so, and that is a causal event. If the behavior is the result of the laws that bind it to make it behave the way it does, then that is causal. Whether the reason a photon chooses one slit or another is caused by an external force or an internal property does not much matter, in either event they are both caused.
A single intrinsically random event no matter how small or how wedged between caused events utterly nullifies the notions of contingency and causality that you proffered as universal maxims at the outset of this debate. So, too, If on the final balance sheet of causes and their effects there is but one SINGLE instance of something not exactly prefigured in the prior conditions of its happening.
Meditate on that word: exactly. Exactly prefigured. Not, “Well it was either going to be A or B.” Not anything like that. Exact prefiguration always and without the smallest or shortest exception, for every event in the past and every in the future and every conceivable. That is what your maxim demands.
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That was your maxim, not mine.
[quote]
Now, unfortunately, I have shown definitively that intrinsically random events are in fact averred, and thus that your assumption is in fact an assumption. I will be happy to continue debating about the circles, but this particular line of inquiry is settled, and, as I said earlier, it’s too easy to misunderstand and fudge. I will definitely like to make time for the continuation of the larger debate though.[/quote]
I don’t think you have shown that at all and you haven’t been very specific either about what precisely you are talking about, so it’s hard to get definitive with ambiguous information.
Hidden Variable Theory and it’s refutation deal with locality, not lack of cause. There is a cause, it’s just not necessarily near the particle as demonstrated by the EPR experiment. The EPR experiment shows that if a particle is split, or if you are dealing with 2 particles of the same system and one, we’ll call it particle A is shot one direction at the speed of light with a positive charge and the other (particle B) shot in the opposite direction with a negative charge, at the speed of light and particle A passes through a magnetic field that changes its polarity negative, particle B will simultaneously change it’s polarity to positive.
This is not random, nor does it lack cause. The cause of particle B changing it’s polarity is that particle A changed it’s polarity. The reason is that both particles are part of the same system. The problem isn’t that particle B changing it’s polarity is random, it’s that information traveled at a self imposed limitation in the speed of light.
All that intrinsic randomness indicates in quantum mechanics is that causal relations (in a philosophical sense) are not necessarily local, or that the apparent random quantum states are a function of the system and not a linearly, local cause.
That’s why I said long ago, scientific definitions and philosophical definitions are different. What is considered ‘random’ in science is does not mean the same thing philosophy. Philosophically, there is a cause, because at an elementary level, we don’t care about the nature of the event. We don’t care if it’s simultaneous, inverted, local or non-local. Science, specifically physics and more specifically, quantum mechanics cares about limitations in space-time. If an effect happens before a cause in physics, it poses problems. If you take time and space out of the equation, you still have a cause and an effect. You still have an action and reaction.
Random quantum states is describing a problem in space-time, not something that has no reason for being. Those are different things. Something that has no reason for being is philosophical randomness. A particle, or state of the particles showing up in seemingly random places in space time are not uncaused from a philosophical perspective. If that property is intrinsic to is, that is still a cause. Even if it is not predictable from a space-time perspective, there is still a reason. So if it’s ‘intrinsically random’, all that means is that it’s place and state in space-time is not predictable. It’s still a particle, it has a position and a charge and it exists for a reason, not for no reason. Even if it behaves unpredictably using the tools we have to measure it, it exists and it exists for a reason. Unmeasurable or unpredictable in one aspect is not random under the philosophical understanding of the term randomness.