Product Description

Are choice and free will possible in a world governed by deterministic fundamental equations? What sense would determinism make if many events and processes in the world seem to be governed by chance? These and many other questions emphasize the fact that chance and choice are two leading actors on stage whenever issues of determinism are under discussion. This volume collects essays by accomplished scientists and philosophers on the concept of determinism. The contributions cover viewpoints from mathematics, physics, cognitive science and social science, as well as philosophy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2487620 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 528 pages

Review
'A cornicopia of ideas ... many useful arguments and distinctions drawn.' Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics

About the Author
Harald Atmanspacher received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Munich in 1986, followed by a Reimar Lust fellowship until 1988. Then he was a research scientist in the theory division at the Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik in Garching. He has been head of the Theory and Data Analysis Department at the Institut fur Grenzgebiete der Psychologie since April 1998. Dr. Atmanspacher's research visits include the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA) and the study center of the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio (Italy). He is an associate member of the Solvay Institutes in Brussels and at the Max Planck Centre for interdisciplinary plasma science at Garching. Dr. Atmanspacher's current fields of work and interest are nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, mind-matter problems and selected topics in the history and philosophy of science. Publications include On Quanta, Mind, and Matter (Kluwer, 1999, co-ed.), Time, Temporality, Now (Springer, 1997, co-ed.), Der Pauli-Jung-Dialog und seine Bedeutung fur die moderne Wissenschaft (Springer, 1995, co-ed.), Inside Versus Outside (Springer, 1994, co-ed.), Die Vernunft der Metis (Metzler, 1993) and Information Dynamics (Plenum, 1991, co-ed.) From 1983 to 1985 Robert Bishop was a research assistant with the Center for Theoretical Physics at The University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Dr. John A. Wheeler. Subsequently he worked as a research scientist for the Science Applications International Corporation from 1985 to 1989, then for Austin Research Associates from 1989 to 1991. Dr. Bishop was a NASA Graduate Fellow from 1990 to 1992. While pursuing his Ph.D. in philosophy, he worked as a database and internet programmer for various companies. Since February of 2000 Dr. Bishop has been with the Theory and Data Analysis Department of IGPP as a research postdoc. His current areas of research are philosophy of science, conceptual foundations of physics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of social science.

Excerpted from Between Chance and Choice by Harald Atmanspacher, Robert Bishop. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The contributions by Bishop and Nickel form an introduction to the topics discussed in the volume, focusing on aspects of determinism as they arise in mathematics, physics, psychology, and philosophy. These essays discuss characteristics for determinism in these fields as well as bring out the clash between the deterministic perspective of the natural sciences and the phenomenological perspective of lived experience. It is suggested that this clash may be eased through broadening our notions of causation and by realizing that the scientific and every day views are particular perspectives, among many possible ones, from which we may analyze or understand our world.

The first principle subdivision of the volume mainly is devoted to the relation between determinism and chance. Atmanspacher in his contribution distinguishes between determinism and determinability using a distinction between ontic and epistemic states in physical descriptions. Lombardi, using this same distinction, addresses Putnam’s notion of internal realism in the context of physics, arguing that there is no single, pre-given ontology because the questions we ask, both theoretical and experimental, "cut into" reality in a way determining much of the chosen ontology. What is ontic and what is epistemic depends on the questions scientists ask.

Primas and Gustafson discuss results on embedding descriptions of stoch astic processes into larger deterministic descriptions. One important feature of these results, according to Gustafson, is that any innovation process, i.e. process losing information as it proceeds forward in time, cannot be time-reversed. Primas refers to embedding theorems as providing a "hidden" determinism in physics and discusses this determinism in relation to the free actions of scientists. Both authors agree that the meaning of the embedding results for the reality of determinism is unclear.

In a related contribution, Misra shows how it is possible to move from a deterministic evolution to an irreversible probabilistic process via a mathematical transformation between the two types of descriptions. This approach shows most clearly that the distinction between determinism and chance for a wide class of systems can be conceived as a matter of description rather than an ontological issue.

Christidis, Kronz and McLaughlin, Dieks, and Berkovitz address chance and determinism from historical and philosophical viewpoints. Christidis interprets some of the fragments of Heraclitus as early precursors of guiding ideas in work by Prigogine and his colleagues. Kronz and McLaughlin discuss Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology, where the universe starts out indeterministically and becomes increasingly deterministic by "habituation". Dieks raises questions regarding some implications of physical indeterminism for our ordinary language concepts such as novelty and openness of the future. Berkovitz’s contribution examines the roles of determinism and indeterminism as assumptions in causal models using examples from economics.

This first subdivision ends with two papers discussing different aspects of control. Mahler and colleagues show that in the context of quantum mechanics the irreversibility connected with the increase of entropy is associated with a set of robust macro-level (thermodynamic) properties enabling various types of large-scale prediction and control of systems even as prediction and control of the micro-level (statistical) properties are progressively lost. Greenberger and Svozil discuss the consistency requirements for the prediction and control of events and apply them to a quantum mechanical model for time travel.

The second subdivision addresses determinism and free will. Dowe’s contribution compares the folk notion of determinism with standard approaches to determinism based on science and discusses causation as a folk notion. Guignon sets out to dissolve the problem of reconciling free will with determinism by questioning the very framework within which the problem is formulated. He explores the realm of human action as a holistic, meaning-filled, embodied lifeworld, where we are always already engaging the world around us in practical ways.

Dorato defends a compatibilist view of free will, focusing on conceptual and pragmatic issues of the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Kane defends an incompatibilist view of free will, invoking a novel indeterministic strategy, and responds to Dorato’s discussion of his view in this volume. Martin and Sugarman, working within a broadly compatibilist framework, discuss a developmental account of agency. Richardson and Bishop, in the context of the social sciences, examine and call into question various assumptions shared by both compatibilist and incompatibilist accounts of free will.

Psychology takes center stage in the contributions by Gantt and Slife. Gantt discusses the problems of a reductive biologization in psychology and proposes phenomenological alternatives treating our lived experience as primary for understanding action, meaning, morality, etc. Slife questions the role that atomistic conceptions of time and information have played in psychological theories and proposes holistic alternatives that make better sense of how our view of the past, present and future shape our current actions and vice verse. In the final contribution in this subdivision, Abe and Kobayashi discuss Eastern views of determinism, and compare and reinterpret them from a scientific point of view.

Ringberg Castle is operated as a conference center of the Max Planck Society, whose hospitality is gratefully acknowledged. In particular we would like to thank Axel Hormann and the staff of the center for their help in matters large and small ensuring the success of this workshop. The Institut fur Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) at Freiburg supported both the workshop and this volume financially. Keith Sutherland (Imprint Academic) provided competent advice for the smooth and fast publication of the volume. Finally we would like to thank Gundel Jaeger (IGPP) for a terrific job on conference pre-arangements and in preparing the manuscripts.