But this is where things get really shaky for materialism. If something cannot be explained in X, this means there is something outside X that determines it.
Materialists must hope that in spite of Bell’s inequalities, there is some kind of non-random mechanism that would explain quantum events, regardless of whether it is possible for us to deduce it.
Alicorn asked above:
I’m not sure even in principle how you could prove that something is random.
In principle, you can’t. And one of the foundational (but non-obvious) assumptions of materialism is that nothing is truly random. The non-refutibility of materialism depends upon never being able to demonstrate that something is actually random.
Later edit: I realize that this comment is somewhat of a non-sequitur in the context of this thread. (oops) I’ll explain that these kinds of questions have been my motivation for thinking about Newcomb in the first place. Sometimes I’m worried about whether materialism is self-consistent, sometimes I’m worried about whether dualism is a coherent idea within the context of materialism, and these questions are often conflated in my mind as a single project.
And one of the foundational (but non-obvious) assumptions of materialism is that nothing is truly random.
In that case I am not a materialist. I don’t believe in any entities that materialists don’t believe in, but I do believe that you have to resort to Many Worlds in order to be right and believe in determinism. Questions that amount to asking “which Everett branch are we in” can have nondeterministic answers.
No worries—you can still be a materialist. Many worlds is the materialist solution to the problem of random collapse. (But I think that’s what you just wrote—sorry if I misunderstood something.)
Suppose that a particle has a perfectly undetermined choice to go left or go right. If the particle goes left, a materialist must hold in principle that there is a mechanism that determined the direction, but then they can’t say the direction was undetermined.
Many worlds says that both directions were chosen, and you happen to find yourself in the one where the particle went left. So there is no problem with something outside the system swooping down and making an arbitrary decision.
But this is where things get really shaky for materialism. If something cannot be explained in X, this means there is something outside X that determines it.
Materialists must hope that in spite of Bell’s inequalities, there is some kind of non-random mechanism that would explain quantum events, regardless of whether it is possible for us to deduce it.
Alicorn asked above:
In principle, you can’t. And one of the foundational (but non-obvious) assumptions of materialism is that nothing is truly random. The non-refutibility of materialism depends upon never being able to demonstrate that something is actually random.
Later edit: I realize that this comment is somewhat of a non-sequitur in the context of this thread. (oops) I’ll explain that these kinds of questions have been my motivation for thinking about Newcomb in the first place. Sometimes I’m worried about whether materialism is self-consistent, sometimes I’m worried about whether dualism is a coherent idea within the context of materialism, and these questions are often conflated in my mind as a single project.
In that case I am not a materialist. I don’t believe in any entities that materialists don’t believe in, but I do believe that you have to resort to Many Worlds in order to be right and believe in determinism. Questions that amount to asking “which Everett branch are we in” can have nondeterministic answers.
No worries—you can still be a materialist. Many worlds is the materialist solution to the problem of random collapse. (But I think that’s what you just wrote—sorry if I misunderstood something.)
Suppose that a particle has a perfectly undetermined choice to go left or go right. If the particle goes left, a materialist must hold in principle that there is a mechanism that determined the direction, but then they can’t say the direction was undetermined.
Many worlds says that both directions were chosen, and you happen to find yourself in the one where the particle went left. So there is no problem with something outside the system swooping down and making an arbitrary decision.
Those sorts of question can arise in non-QM contexts too.