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Is Michio Kaku correct in saying that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle shows us that we have some kind of free will?
[MENTION=21883]sunyata[/MENTION] Can it be abstracted?
There is forever the possibility of being wrong, fundamentally.
I'd say the opposite of free will - when I choose to eat a banana I am only coaxing myself toward the banana.
It shows that the universe is inherently irrational and can only be known by experience.
You know, a few years ago I agreed with Michio Kaku. But now, I'm closer to determinism. Kaku says that the killer is not guilty if everything is predestined, referring to Newton's laws of motion, and Einstein determinism, but I think that the killer is guilty, because he is destined to be guilty, in order to learn a lesson.
If you accept indeterminism you are rejecting moral laws, if you accept some predestination you are accepting some inherent moral order.
Maybe I'm not right, but I believe in Karma.
Do people start at "neutral / blank slate" and Karma go from there?
If so, does this mean you have free will before you make any decisions, but once you make a decision, suddenly your path is getting charted for you via the karma principle?
Do you mean Tabula rasa? I don't know for sure. But, I think we are all consequences of our previous actions and behaviors. What's your current reality is a consequence of your previous actions, behaviors, thoughts, etc. You know, we, humans are creatures of habits. We are conditioned to do this or that. If you consider that human existence is all preconditioned, you realize that our first goal is to transcend that conditions and try to shape our own, authentic reality, if you want. That's the purpose of brain plasticity and neural networking; you can mold your brain as a clay if you want, but to do that, we must be consciouss about spiritual reality and some kind of moral order.
For instance, smoking is a simple example. Your emotional baggage has conditioned you to start smoking; if you release your attachments to a certain set of inner complexes which inclined you to start smoke, or if you transcend that inclination you can mold your brain and quit smoking. If you consider that smoking addiction is some kind of oral fixations, you can sustain that fixation by replacing smoking with bubble gums or peanuts, or you can neutralize fixation altogether.
I think we all have some karma baggage. I think we are here in order to clear up that baggage. I can't say we are responsible for something behind our reproach, all I can say that we may be separated from original branch, from our authentic selves.
I guess, one must become aware of free will in order to be fully responsible for one's actions. One is going through many temptations through trials and errors until he/she reached an autonomous state of being.
While, yes, all of that is true, you're not addressing where karma comes from when a life is first created, whether in this lifetime or the ones previous -- which is at the heart of my question.
There is a beginning to each continuous life, and at the beginning there is no "karma" because nothing has yet been done or chosen. There is nothing yet to react to / trigger a reaction. So in that state, a person is in a state of neutrality / balance, and thus theoretically has choice? Their action in that neutral space, in your thoughts, will define what happens to them for the rest of their existence.
I'm confused, I thought you said free will wasn't really part of this and you were more deterministic. Or did you mean that determinism is more prominent, but at various points there can be valid free choice?
Also, if we're in the "machine" so to speak of determinism, even our "choices" are defined by our past choices and our environment, so at best I guess we can respond to our limited choice in the moment and hopefully ascend towards enlightenment, yet even our choices are a response to what our past choices were, so it's still rather deterministic. So how can we ever be truly autonomous?
How are we defining autonomy? I don't really think "perfect autonomy" is possible, based on this conversation and prior thoughts I've had about this. Is there some kind of "autonomy for practical purposes" that is more useful to discuss?
Perhaps, and this is just a thought, if mass and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and if we are composed of mass and energy, then we have always been in one form or another.
Is Michio Kaku correct in saying that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle shows us that we have some kind of free will?
His presentation of the arguments on either side is asinine. Physicists should stick with science, and not venture into absurd philosophical topics about what science "means" ... or at least not do so in a way that tries to say that "science says <insert non-scientific opinion here>". It's a shame how few scientists, especially those who are known as popularizers of science, cannot seem to understand that these statements aren't merely unscientific, but intellectually lazy and even dishonest.
Perhaps, and this is just a thought, if mass and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and if we are composed of mass and energy, then we have always been in one form or another.