but neural activity is based on responses to external stimuli

If you knew all the external stimuli too.

but that external stimuli is not deterministic, therefore the system is not deterministic.

Actually, to be considered "alive" you must have a response to external stimuli.

If you are not alive, then the notion of this thread becomes farce.

Therefore, the system is very deterministic and is very pertinent to this conversation.

how would you account for a reaction to something new based solely on past experiences?



Well...That was a logical leap

This post was edited by Derkaderk on Dec 15 2012 12:50pm

Our past experiences teach us how to react.

A system is either deterministic, or it is not. The real world is not.
It's like being "kind of" pregnant. No such thing.

Now often we might assume a system is deterministic, but not have the ability to make predictions as the collection of the data to make those predictions is difficult or impossible. Imagine a classical dice: In classical physics it should be possible to predict that outcome of any dice throw, if you knew exact forces on the dice, but in practice this information is too difficult to obtain.

The real world is not classical however. Not only is the data unavailable before an event to make exact predictions, the data does not even exist before the event, so it can never be obtained. This is why it can not be deterministic.

This post was edited by Azrad on Dec 15 2012 07:56pm

That's a formula, not a deciding factor in a defined term.

Free will is an illusion from the mind.
Physical life is balanced in a way or an other, and you are controled by your environment. The choices you make are a consequence to what your environment brings you.
Your mind does not control what happens to you... You could get a heart attack tomorrow, or be killed by a serial killer, or hit by a car... no matter what you think. Shit happens, not only to others.
That said, you are more than your physical self (including your mind)... you are the immortal spirit "listening" to your mind, and recieving life through your 5 life senses.
If you want to learn more, read The Present here http://www.truthcontest.com/

that is exactly the point. The future states of a deterministic systems can be predicted with a 'formula' if you know enough data about the system in its current state, and you have evolution laws for the system. That is what it means for a system to be deterministic.

Even without the evolution laws, you can still tell if a system is not deterministic by the following:
If you start a deterministic system in state A, and let it evolve for n seconds, and you find it in state B; then it must always do this if you restart it in state A. If it does not... it is not a deterministic system.

In classical mechanics (where everything was assumed to be deterministic) the problem was to measure state A to infinite precision so you could be sure to restart it exactly in state A. If you couldn't do this, then you couldn't be sure you restarted it in the same state later, so when you reached a different outcome, you couldn't be sure if you had actually correctly started in state A (failure to reach state B would be dismissed by assuming you didn't get state A exactly right).

Now we know that even if you magically had state A perfectly measured, some systems will not evolve to B every time. These systems are not deterministic. And since the world contains at least some of these non-deterministic systems, the world as a whole can never be deterministic. Which means the input into a human being senses is not deterministic, meaning the behavior of a human being can not be deterministic (even if internally the human being was deterministic, which i doubt, but its a moot point).

Now making a statement about freewill based on this is not easy, but it seems like it at least leaves room for freewill.

But forget about determinism, that pig don't fly.