Rape, the Swedish Academy and the Literature Nobel

October 1, 2018

The task of selecting the Literature Nobel has to be taken away from the Swedish Academy if the prize is not to be forever tainted by the spectre of rape.

Unless all the members of the current Swedish Academy resign and the Academy is reconstituted, the Nobel Foundation will have to take the task of selecting the Literature Prize away from the Academy and give it to some other institution. If not, every future Literature laureate will be forever coupled to an institution which, at best,  turned a blind eye to rape and sexual predation or, at worst, enabled rape and sexual predation. Even changing out all the members may not be enough to take the stain away.

Today Jean-Claude Arnold – referred to in the Swedish media as the “kulturprofilen” (the culture profile) – was sentenced to 2 years in prison for rape. Eighteen women accused him of sexual predation but only one of the cases came to a prosecution. He was married to a member of the Academy. The pair together ran a “club” which received large grants from the Academy.

Jean-Claude Arnault

BBC

A French photographer at the heart of a rape scandal that saw this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature postponed has been handed a two-year prison sentence. On Monday a Swedish court found Jean-Claude Arnault, 72, guilty of raping a woman in an apartment in Stockholm in 2011.

Arnault, who is well known in Sweden, is married to a former member of the centuries-old Swedish Academy.

The crisis forced the academy to cancel this year’s literature award in May. 

In late 2017, some 18 women came forward in a Swedish newspaper to accuse Arnault of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the #MeToo movement, prompting an investigation by state prosecutors. He later denied all the alleged incidents, many of which were said to have happened at properties owned by the Academy or at his literary club. All but one of the cases ended up being dropped.

In April this year, the Swedish cultural organisation handed over an internal report it had conducted through lawyers to judicial authorities. The same month, it voted against removing Arnault’s wife, the poet and writer Katarina Frostenson, from its 18-person committee. This, along with accusations of conflict of interest and the leaking of Nobel winners’ names, is said to have divided the Academy and sparked a wave of resignations – including by Ms Frostenson and the Academy’s head, Prof Sara Danius. Technically, members of the Swedish Academy cannot resign from their positions, which are assumed for life. But they can stop taking part in its activities.

The members of the Academy have been fighting (like a bunch of horny cats comes to mind) in the media for the last year and a more unedifying spectacle is hard to describe. The unadulterated arrogance and narcissism of the members has been breathtaking.

 

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The limits of science

September 25, 2018
  1. Reality is limited to what is detectable by human senses (and the instruments which extend our senses). What cannot be detected is assumed – but cannot be proven – not to exist. Science is limited to what is known to exist and what is unknown but assumed to be knowable. Science has no means to address what is unknown to be knowable.
  2. Time and causality. Science and its methods rely on causality which in turn relies on the existence of and the passage of time. But what time is and what actually passes, is unknown (being unknowable). Science cannot reach where causality does not exist.
  3. Boundary conditions. There is no branch of science (or philosophy) which does not rely on fundamental assumptions which are taken to be self-evident truths. But these assumptions cannot be proved and they cannot explain their own existence. Science and the methods of science cannot address anything outside their self-established boundary limits.
  4. Even the most fundamental and simple mathematics cannot prove its own axioms (Gödels Incompleteness Theorems). Science cannot address areas outside of the assumptions of mathematics.
  5. Value judgements are invisible to science. The appreciation of any art or music or even literature are not subject to logic or causality or any science. Even the beauty seen by some in mathematics or cosmology or biology is not amenable to scientific analysis. Moral or ethical judgements are beyond the capabilities of science.
  6. The existence of life is self-evident and inexplicable. It is a boundary condition where science has no explanation for why the boundary exists. To call the beginning of life a “random event” is a statement steeped in just as much ignorance as attributing it to a Creator.
  7. The boundaries of consciousness are neither known or understood. The perceptions of a consciousness of the surrounding universe define the universe. The perceptions form an impenetrable barrier beyond which science and the methods of science cannot reach.
  8. Fitch’s Knowability Paradox is sufficient to show the reality of the existence of the unknowable. Neither science nor philosophy or language or mathematics has the wherewithal to say anything about the unknowable. They have no light to shine in this area. An X-ray image cannot be seen in normal light.

Science is utterly dependent upon causality.

So is Determinism, where Determinism is the philosophical theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. Determinism can never look beyond or resolve the First Cause problem. Of course determinism falls immediately at the hurdle of infinite knowledge being knowable but proponents would counter that “unknown” does not invalidate causality. The First Cause is then merely shunted into the unknown – but knowable. Determinism would claim, by causality and the laws of the universe, that all that was unknown could potentially be known. Equally every event of the past could be traced back through causal relations and be knowable. In fact, determinism which shuns the need for religions and gods, actually claims the existence of Omniscience. More than that, determinism requires that omniscience be possible. Determinism is absurd. “There is no God but Omniscience must be possible”. Reductio ad absurdum.

Causality, determinism and science are all prisoners of, and restricted to, the knowable.

 

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Knowledge is not finite and some of it is unknowable

September 23, 2018

Knowledge is not finite

Knowledge and truth are intertwined. Take knowledge to be made up of truths and of the relationships between truths which are themselves truths. Of course all truths making up human knowledge are only perceived truths. Human knowledge can then only be made up of partial, as-perceived truths (whether or not absolute truths exist) and then can only be a sub-set of all knowledge. Human knowledge consists of justified true beliefs (JTBs).

In the tripartite analysis of knowledge, a justified true belief exists when

  1. a proposition p is true,
  2. an entity S believes p
  3. S is justified in believing p

Addressing now all of knowledge, is it finite or without limits? Is there a limit to all the truths that are, that were and that will be? All of knowledge must encompass all of space, all of time and all of anything beyond space and time. Some things are then self-evident.

  1. In an infinite universe, knowledge is infinite.
  2. If time had no beginning or has no end then knowledge is infinite.
  3. If the number of universes is infinite, knowledge is infinite.

For knowledge to be finite, we would need a finite universe which had no uncertainties at any level and even at the quantum level. The universe could not be open-ended in time. Even if time is an emergent property of something else, that something else could not be open-ended. There could be no duality between particles and waves. Observations would need to be independent of the observer. Moreover, we would also need to know – as a truth – that there were no further truths beyond the finite universe. Even if causality is merely emergent, a perception and unreal, knowledge would still be infinite. Relativity or quantum mechanics or even loop quantum gravity, all require that knowledge be unbounded.

Furthermore, a universe with only a finite number of fundamental particles could still generate an infinite number of truths.

A large but finite number of nodes (junctions) can generate an infinite number of nodes and an infinite network if

  • each node is connected to every other and
  • where a new node is created whenever a connection crosses another connection

In an infinite space, it would not be necessary for connections to cross – but that would then be an infinite universe.

Even with only a finite number of fundamental particles (or waves), the sum of all knowledge would need not only that every particle be known but also that every interaction between particles be known, and also every interaction between the interactions, and so on ad infinitum. (It is somewhat analagous to the human brain where memory is stored not only at every neuron but also in every pathway between neurons, and then in the pathways generated between pathways and so on). Even a finite universe can (and probably does) give an infinite number of truths.

That all of knowledge is finite seems extremely far-fetched if not absurd.

A brain is a repository of knowledge. Clearly human knowledge is just a tiny sub-set of all knowledge and human knowledge is – most likely – finite. The knowledge of humanity will then be the sum of the knowledge of all the humans around at any given time. But the knowledge of humanity will never encompass even the knowledge of all living things with brains, let alone of all things. It may be that a single human brain could itself generate an infinite network, but all our empirical evidence suggests that the human brain is not – and can never be – infinite in its capacity or its capability.

Of course, the human brain may evolve in time into something wondrous. But it will still not reach omniscience.

Not all of knowledge is knowable.

I am persuaded by Fitch’s Paradox that the unknowable exists and is real.

The paradox of knowability is a logical result suggesting that, necessarily, if all truths are knowable in principle then all truths are in fact known. The contrapositive of the result says, necessarily, if in fact there is an unknown truth, then there is a truth that couldn’t possibly be known. More specifically, if p is a truth that is never known then it is unknowable that p is a truth that is never known. The proof has been used to argue against versions of anti-realism committed to the thesis that all truths are knowable. For clearly there are unknown truths; individually and collectively we are non-omniscient. So, by the main result, it is false that all truths are knowable. 

In my world view knowledge comes in three parts.

  1. what is known,
  2. what is unknown but knowable, and
  3. what is unknowable

The unknowable exists and is real.

Most of the past is unknowable. Past events where the repercussions of that event into the present have dwindled into the “noise” from the past are no longer detectable – by any means – as events. Such events can never be traced back as having taken place. The time it takes for the consequences of an event to dwindle into the noise of undetectable nothingness can vary from the immediate past to billions of years. Once below the threshold of detection, that event joins the unknowable. Causality and all the laws of the universe are of no use when the consequences in the present cannot be distinguished and detected. When the data is undetectable, causality is either undefined or inapplicable. For example I cannot remember some events even from this morning. When did I have my second cup of coffee? (I can remember the first). That event – the second cup – has no detectable consequences remaining in my memory or anywhere in the universe. Even omniscience – if it could exist – will not be able to dig up the knowledge of when I had my second cup of coffee. It did happen but exactly when it happened will remain for ever unknown and is now unknowable. While the existence of Genghis Khan is part of knowledge, pretty much all of the events in his life are now unknowable. Certainly his genes have been passed down through the ages but the causal path to backtrack to the “procreational” events he was involved in are now utterly undetectable and unknowable. It is said that some 110 billion humans have lived since the dawn of Anatomically Modern Humans. Most of the events of their lives are unknowable.

Most of the past is now unknowable. Some few isolated major events still can provide evidence of consequences which can be detected in the present.

There is no branch of science or philosophy or language (including mathematics) which does not begin with assumptions taken to be truths but which are not provable. These in fact are boundary conditions of human knowledge. Beyond these boundaries we enter the realm of the unknowable. Science and the methods of science do not have the means to illuminate the unknowable.

Knowledge is infinite, human knowledge is finite and the unknowable exists.

Related:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/01/17/physicists-must-accept-that-some-things-are-unknowable/#6d2c5834ae1a

https://ktwop.com/2018/08/21/when-the-waves-of-determinism-break-against-the-rocks-of-the-unknowable/

https://ktwop.com/2017/10/17/the-liar-paradox-can-be-resolved-by-the-unknowable/

 

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Whether “denial of belief” or “lack of belief”, atheism is a non-ism

September 15, 2018

The conventional use of “atheism” is to describe a denial or a rejection of any belief in religions and gods and deities. To try and avoid the negative connotation of merely rejecting and denying the beliefs of others, some have redefined “atheism” to be the “lack of belief” in religions and gods and deities. As the American Atheists state

Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

This replacement of “denial of belief” by “lack of belief” is  merely a cosmetic change. A lack of belief cannot define what there is a lack of belief about. To have a lack of belief in something specific requires that “something” to be defined. That “something” is always gods as variously defined by the beliefs of others. To have a lack of belief in the beliefs of others is no different then to a rejection or denial of those beliefs.

Atheism is entirely reactive. It is concerned with rejecting, denying and ridiculing the belief systems of others. It offers nothing itself in answer to the fundamental questions which led to the rise of religion and their gods in the first place. It is not difficult to attack and ridicule beliefs which – by definition – cannot be proved.  Many prominent atheists in recent times have been philosophers who have criticised religions (and their gods). These include such luminaries as Bertrand Russell and more recently, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. They follow a line of thinkers who go all the way back to when religions were invented. For example, atheist schools existed to counter the Vedic religions as far back as  2,500 – 3,000 years ago. But what is striking is that “atheists” could not exist until religions existed and they had something to attack. (And note that even chimpanzees “believe” in a Sun-god). To criticise religions and their gods is not wrong and I have no time for organised religions and their gods. But that criticism is of no substance unless followed up by addressing the questions which led to the very adoption of the beliefs being torn down.

Atheism is not in itself an “ism”. It is not a belief system or a philosophy or even a practice in itself. It has nothing to defend. It avoids attack because it has no beliefs to offer as answers to the fundamental questions of the beginning of time, the universe and everything. As an “ism” it is empty of substance. (I ignore the “agnostic” which is little more than a politically correct way of avoiding being labelled an “atheist”).

Richard Dawkins prefers distinguishing theist, agnostic and atheist positions along a spectrum of theistic probability—the likelihood that each assigns to the proposition “God exists”

It is only when you get to “determinism” – which incidentally includes a rejection of religions and gods – before the “ism” begins to gain some substance. “Determinism is the philosophical theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes”. (But determinism and the limits of science is another story to be discussed elsewhere). To be an atheist provides no substance. You must be something else first.

The proposition that “God Exists” is logically meaningless until “God” is defined. This is the wrong proposition to be addressing. Most religions do not logically come to the conclusion that “God Exists”. They start with that as an assumption which – as with all such assumptions – is taken as self-evident but which cannot be proved. To ridicule this assumption is not difficult. Religions avoid the more fundamental questions by invoking their gods. But this is a method used also by physics and cosmology. The universe is assumed to be homogeneous. The four laws of nature operating in this homogeneous universe are invoked by physicists to avoid the question of why the laws exist in the first place. The Big Bang and Dark Matter and Dark Energy are invoked by cosmologists to avoid the question of why time exists and what time is and what the universe is.

The proposition which must be addressed first is “the unknowable exists”.

 

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Swedish voting procedure – An illusion of secrecy

September 11, 2018

Sweden has a population of just under 10 million and 7.49 million were registered to vote in the general election last Sunday. There were 6005 polling stations so each polling station would deal, on average, with less than 1300 voters. As a comparison, an Indian General Election has 814 million voters and 930,000 polling stations giving an average of less than 900 voters per polling station.

On average a Swedish polling station has 50% more voters than an average Indian polling station. Yet the Swedish voting procedure is almost entirely manual with very little use of electronic devices. Surprisingly, it is also prone to human error in the recording of who has voted.

The voting process has five key steps.

  1. Select a ballot paper from the party of your choice (NOT IN SECRET)
  2. Mark your preference for a particular person on the party list. (IN SECRET).
  3. Put your ballot paper in an envelope. (IN SECRET).
  4. Identify yourself to polling official who crosses you off the electoral list and
  5. places your envelope in the ballot box (NOT IN SECRET).

The voters choice of party is made in Step 1 but there is no pretense of secrecy around this step. The secrecy surrounding Step 3 adds no value. In Step 4 there is no cross check that the name being crossed of the electoral roll is actually the person who has voted.

Considering the voting process as a whole, it is remarkably old-fashioned but steps 1 and 4 are not fit for purpose for even an old-fashioned process.

 

This year the Swedish election has had international observers. I would be surprised if they did not comment on Steps 1 and 4.

 

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Sweden election 2018: Too many parties spoil the governance

September 9, 2018

We are about to go and vote.

Red/green or Blue or Blue/Brown.

But the simple reality is that Sweden is actually a politically fractured country with 8 significant parties (9 including the Feminist Initiative) who could cross the 4% barrier and get into parliament. There is zero possibility of getting a majority government. Back room deals and the undue influence of minority parties is a foregone conclusion. We have had the undue influence of the Green party in the last Red/Green government. Instead of 2 major parties we will now have 3. The Sweden Democrats is the Joker in the pack.

Whatever transpires we have a politically messy period ahead of us.

There are just too many parties.

 

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Election time in Sweden and stupidity is in the air

August 26, 2018

The Swedish general election takes place in about 2 weeks and it is almost impossible to avoid stupid pronouncements by politicians of all colours and all parties.

There is not a single media outlet which does not have its own agenda. Some openly support a particular party. Others are more sophisticated and oppose particular parties. The most intelligent keep their preferences hidden but support or attack particular policies which, on balance and by a strange coincidence, just happen to be those of a particular party. But there is not a single one which does not have its own agenda. But the worst thing is the oozing, sickly sweet stench of political correctness.

Stupidity is in the air.

 

 

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And then came counting

August 25, 2018

Origins of human cognitive development go back a lot longer than was once thought. Our first bipedal ancestors who came down from the trees more than 5 million years ago, had  already some concept of “more” and “less” and  perhaps even of rudimentary numbers upto 3 (as rhesus monkeys have today). Genetic analysis of ancient bones is showing that the origin and development of modern humans needs to be taking the Neanderthals and the Denisovans into account and perhaps has to go back at least to the time of a common ancestor from over 1 million years ago. Just considering the last 200,000 years is no longer enough.

I have no doubt that the mastery of fire, the eating of cooked meat, the growth of the brain and, above all, the increased need for cooperation were interconnected and drove human cognitive development. Whether developments happened in one place and spread or happened at many places, perhaps at many times, will always be a matter of speculation. But it is not so difficult to come up with a not implausible time-line of the key developments which gave us first counting and then tallying and arithmetic and geometry and now complex number theory. The oldest evidence we have of counting are tally-sticks from over 50,000 years ago. But counting surely started long before that.

Related:

What led humans to counting and when?

The origins of base 60

 

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Going raging into the night

August 23, 2018

My introduction to Dylan Thomas was as a teenager. I heard Richard Burton reading “Do not go gentle into that good night” on radio (though as with all things Burton, “declaiming” would be better than “reading”) in the 1960s. Then I watched Under Milk Wood in the West End and I fell in love with the sound of Dylan Thomas. I read all I could find of his and I read them aloud to myself (irritating my room-mates at my students hostel no end). But it was very much later that I penetrated beyond the mesmerising, chant-like quality of the sound and began to understand the words.

But I observe that my understanding of (or more correctly the meaning I ascribe to) his writings are changing with time. At one time I saw “Do not go gentle ..” as an exhortation and a plea to an old and dying man (his father) to not give up; to keep fighting; to not go quietly. The poetic form used is a villanelle which is a nineteen-line form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The two repeating refrains are both hypnotic and melodic.

But understandings shift and now, that I have passed 70, I read it much more personally. I take this poem as being addressed to me.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Of course Dylan Thomas has to be read aloud and of course he chooses words for the sound as much as for the meaning. What gives me most satisfaction now is that I am still conscious. It is not a rage against dying but it is a rage against the dying of the light. “Old age should burn and rave at close of day”.

Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night”

 

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When the waves of determinism break against the rocks of the unknowable

August 21, 2018

It is physics versus philosophy.

Causal determinism states that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature.

Determinism, unlike fatalism, does not require that future events be destined to occur no matter what the past and current events are. It only states that every future event that does occur, is an inevitable consequence of what has gone before and of the natural laws. However inevitability does not mean – and does not need to mean – predictability by the human mind. It should be noted though that the existence of a specific causality does not by itself imply a general determinism extending across all space and all time. A general and absolute determinism is also not a necessary condition for applying the scientific method though it could easily be taken to be so. The scientific method does require determinism but only to the extent that causality applies within the observable range of empirical observations. But it is also therefore unavoidable that the scientific method can only discover causal connections. The scientific method, in itself, rejects the existence of, and is therefore incapable of detecting, non-causal connections.

Most physicists would claim that determinism prevails. (Some of them may concede compatibilism but that is just a subterfuge to allow determinism to coexist with free will). Determinism claims that causality is supreme; that the laws of nature (whether or not they are known to the mind of man) prevail in the universe such that whatever is occurring is caused by, and is a consequence of, what came before. And whatever will happen in the future is caused by what has occurred before and what is occurring now. Absolute determinism allows of no free will. It can not. Clearly determinism allows of no gods or magic either. For determinism to apply it does not require that all knowledge is known or that the natural laws have all been discovered. It does however require that everything is knowable. If the unknowable exists then not everything can be determined. It also requires that all natural laws be self-explanatory in themselves. For the physicist, even the uncertainty at the quantum level does not invalidate determinism because this uncertainty, they say, is not random but is probabilistic. Even the weirdness brought about by quantum loop gravity theories do not, it is thought, invalidate the concept of determinism. Here the laws of nature and time and space themselves are emergent. They emerge from deeper, underlying “laws” and emerge as what we perceive as space and time and the 4 laws of nature. Where those underlying “laws” or rules or random excitations come from, or why, are, however, undefined and – more importantly – undefinable.

The concept that the universe is a zero-sum game, when taking the universe as a whole, does not take us any further. The concept postulates that the universe – taken globally – is a big nothing. Zero energy and zero charge globally but with locally “lumpy” conditions to set off the Big Bang. Some positive energies and some energy consumption such that the total is zero.  I find this unsatisfactory in that the concepts of the universe being homogeneous and isotropic are then a function of scale (space) and of time. Allowing for local lumpiness to exist but which averages to a globally smooth zero, seems far too contrived and convenient.

The problem caused by the acceptance of determinism, and of the consequent denial of the possibility of free will, is that all events are then inevitable and a natural consequence of what happened before. Choice becomes illusory. Behaviour is pre-ordained. In fact all thought and even consciousness itself must be an inevitable consequence of what went before. There can no longer be any moral responsibility attached to any behaviour or any actions (whether by humans or inanimate matter). It is argued that morality is irrelevant for physics. They are different domains. There is no equation for morality because it is not a law of nature. It is merely an emergent thing. Morality, for the physicist, just like consciousness and thought and behaviour, merely emerge from the laws of nature. This is not incorrect in itself, I think, but they are different domains because the laws of nature – as we know them – are incomplete in that they can neither explain themselves or morality.

For the physicist the natural laws apply everywhere and everywhen. Except, they admit, at or before (if there was a before) the Big Bang Singularity. They apply across the universe except that the universe cannot be defined. It is disingenuous to merely claim that the universe expands into nothingness and both creates and defines itself. The natural laws are said to apply across all of time except that time (not to be confused with the passage of time) is not defined. The nature of time is unknown and probably unknowable. What is it that passes? Quantum loop gravity enthusiasts would claim that time is merely a perception and that causality is an illusion. All events throughout space and time, they would say, occur/have occurred simultaneously. We merely connect certain events in our perceptions such that time and causality emerge. But this is no different than invoking magic. It seems to me that the gaping hole in the determinism charter is that there is no reason (known) for the natural laws to exist. Above all, the natural laws cannot explain themselves. I would claim that this lies in the unknowable. Determinism would have us accept that all biological and neural (and therefore cognitive) processes are merely events that are caused by antecedent events and natural law. Except that while natural laws are observed and experienced empirically, they cannot (and probably never will be able to) explain themselves.

And this is where determinism crashes. The four natural laws (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force) that we treat as being fundamental are not self-explanatory. They just are. They do not within themselves explain why they must exist. Maybe there is a Theory of Everything capable of explaining itself and everything in the world. Or maybe there isn’t. The natural laws cannot explain why there are 4 fundamental laws and not 5 or 6, or why there are just 12 (or 57) fundamental particles, or why there is a particle/wave duality or why undetectable dark energy or dark matter exist (except as fudge factors).The natural laws, as we know them today, cannot explain why life began (or why life had to begin to satisfy determinism), cannot explain what consciousness is and cannot explain why thoughts and behaviour must be inevitable consequences of antecedent events.  As a practical matter we have no inkling as to which antecedent events cause which cognitive events and following which laws. It is very likely that this is theoretically impossible as well. Some of these explanations may well lie in the realm of the unknowable. I draw the analogy with Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems:

The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of the natural numbers. For any such formal system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system.

The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.

We cannot from within and as part of the universe demonstrate why the axioms used by physics must be. Empiricism gives us what we perceive to be the laws of nature. Empiricism also gives us our perceptions of consciousness and thought and free will. And these contradict one another. The resolution of the contradictions lives in the unknowable.

Empiricism can only go so far. It cannot reach the parts that empiricism cannot reach. Determinism cannot extend to places where the natural laws cannot or do not reach. If the unknowable exists then determinism cannot reach there. For the natural laws may not (or can not) apply there. It is not about whether we know all there is to be known about natural law. Determinism requires that some consistent and self-explanatory natural laws apply everywhere and at all times.

Absolute Determinism requires that Natural Laws be complete. That requires that natural laws be able to:

  1. explain their own existence, and
  2. explain all events (material and immaterial), and
  3. apply within and beyond our perception of the universe, and
  4. apply within and beyond our perception of time,

And the existence of such a set of Natural Laws is unknowable.

 

Related:

https://ktwop.com/2017/07/22/known-unknown-and-unknowable/

https://ktwop.com/2017/09/22/the-unknowable-is-neither-true-nor-false/

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/plain-talk-about-free-will-from-a-physicist-stop-claiming-you-have-it/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

http://physicsandthemind.blogspot.com/2013/10/in-defense-of-libertarian-free-will.html

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/01/free-will-is-dead-lets-bury-it.html?spref=tw

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/06/the_big_nothing.html

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/

 

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