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Comment by maudineormsby | Hacker News Reader

I know most people here find these experiments absurd, but folks like Daniel Dennett (in Elbow Room, which I think he later retracts for a Compatibilist view) and Richard Dawkins have widely construed the result as "proof" of a deterministic universe.

Indeed, a deterministic universe (or at least one that precludes libertarian freedom) is a necessary component for eliminative materialists. This is heady stuff. Hopefully more work is done to design an experiment that isn't so subjectively interpreted and lacks the self-reported element of the Libet test.

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I think attempts to answer philosophical questions with science are mostly pathological. Most of the time they get 99% of the way to their conclusion due to initial assumptions that are much a matter of faith and then make some thin scientific assertion on top of those monumental assumptions.

A deterministic universe is an okay working assumption for conducting most scientific experiments most of the time, but there's a big jump from that to using it as a fundamental basis for answering the big questions in a "scientific" manner. One might even calling it pseudo-philosophy since it attempts to paper over the hard philosophical issues by using some trite application of scientific reasoning applied to wholly unjustifiable foundations.

Science may eventually come to bear on certain philosophical issues, but it won't be by "scientists" who are simply uncomfortable with certain ideas and thus chase certain conclusions, it will be due to new discoveries that change our understanding in unforeseen ways.

> due to initial assumptions that are much a matter of faith

Isn't it always the case that science is built on a matter of faith though? I have faith that I'm not in a matrix-like reality, and there's no real way to know if I was in one, so I just set it aside, and instead work within the model of reality I see.

And if you do assume that the this reality does hold consistently (you don't really have much choice to decide otherwise), surely you can learn and know about how stuff works within that reality. Or am I missing something?

What about a "matrix-like reality" would preclude science?

(It's actually a deep question, if you take the time to really grapple with it.)

Oh no I understand that we could now be in a matrix-like reality, which is what I meant by "setting the question aside", and I'm arguing that there's nothing wrong with trying to use science to find out stuff under a whole load of assumptions, because that is essentially what we are doing all the time, whether or not we are talking about something philosophical like free-will.

But when you think about it, under this reality, how could free will possibly exist? Everything I do is a direct consequence of the past, modulo some possible quantum randomness if you believe in that, but even the randomness wouldn't give me a free will.

We don't seem to have even a deterministic universe, thanks to quantum indeterminacy. Yet quantum indeterminacy doesn't seem to be enough to rescue freedom.

The real philosophy doesn't get done until you dive into how ill-defined the concept of free will is. That way lies compatibilism.

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