Re: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

Moorad -

It's an exaggeration to say "the chain of physical cause-and-effect is
indeed interrupted." The chain has to begin at some point of phase space
but from then on is not interrupted. & it doesn't care whether the initial
conditions are specified by a "conscious agent" or not. If you're going to
pursue that line of thought you'll end up with a Berkelian idealism in which
there is no particle & no motion unless there's a conscious agent observing
the system.

That would be more plausible with QM. With QM it's a stretch.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
To: "Keith Miller" <kbmill@ksu.edu>; "American Scientific Affiliation"
<asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 2:33 PM
Subject: RE: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

When we teach Newtonian mechanics, we usually say that a given force, via
Newton's second law, gives rise to acceleration on a particle of mass m and
the solution of Newton's equation is deterministic and depends on two
constants of the motion, usually initial position and velocity. The whole
description is purely physical, however it takes a conscious agent to set up
the initial conditions and that agent is not part of Newton's equation but
exercising his/her free will set up the particular initial conditions.
Consequently, the chain of physical cause-and-effect is indeed interrupted

Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of Keith Miller
Sent: Sat 8/26/2006 10:11 AM
To: American Scientific Affiliation
Subject: Re: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

David Opderbeck wrote:

So, I tend to think of the operation of natural laws as a chain of
causation. I know this analogy can't be pressed very far because of quantum
mechanics and the uncertainty principle, but it still seems sound to me at a
basic level, and it seems to be how natural scientists operate at a
practical level. When natural scientists examine a phenomenon, they try to
suss out the physical causes of the phenomenon. At a macro level, Science
seeks to do this through the entire chain of causation, all the way back to
fundamental physical laws (and perhaps, in the case of some cosmological
science, before that to the cause of the physical laws).

If a human choice is inserted into the chain of causation, it seems to me
that the resulting phenomenon no longer falls purely into the realm of the
natural sciences. Like you said, science (I'd clarify and say the natural
sciences) can't fully determine the causes of things like Nebuchadnezzar's
choice of which city to attack. So, if a conscious decision of an
autonomous agent is involved, at some point the chain of causation is
interrupted and the natural sciences are incapable of determining fully the
truth of what happened. (Footnote -- I think I'd distinguish this from
Michael's comment about his collie puppy -- natural science, as I understand
it, presumes some sort of determinism for non-human choices; otherwise, the
concept of natural selection would make no sense at all.)

I think that your error here is your statement : "So, if a conscious
decision of an autonomous agent is involved, at some point the chain of
causation is interrupted..." I would argue that there is no necessary
reason that the chain of physical cause-and-effect need to be interrupted by
the action of human choice. At the physical level, I see no reason for a
break in the continuity of neural activity, biochemical activity, etc. AT
THAT LEVEL there still could be a complete account. However, that account
would not explain everything of interest to us. There are issues of the
meaning and reason for that choice that transcend the mere physical
description.

I think that this distinction is critical. I do not see any a prior reason
why the continuity of physical cause-and-effect need every be broken by the
exercise of either God's purposive will or ours. A complete
cause-and-effect description would therefore be theoretically possible --
even if practically unrealizable. But, again that physical level
description does not address many questions that are of interest to us. If
fact some of our most important questions.

This is the view of Donald McKay, the British neuroscientist, as I
understand his writing. He argues against "nothing buttery" in which the
possibility of a complete physical description/explanation means that all of
physical reality can be reduced to such a description. I am trying here to
make that same point -- a complete physical description in no way
eliminates the validity of other complementary descriptions, and the action
of supernatural agents or free choice does not require gaps in the physical
description.

Keith

Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/

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Received on Sat Aug 26 16:22:06 2006