Quote:
Originally posted by allright
why would you assume that intent is not part of the physical world? there have been 2 very well known experiments that have shown:
measuring light - a beam or a wave
and
the cat and the radiation
experimenters asked subjects to measure light - would they measure it as a light beam (a collection of particles) or a light wave - the determining factor was the subjects understanding of light - if they thought it was a beam, that is how it showed to be measured, if they thought of light as a wave then that is how the light showed to be measured.
almost everyone knows of the cat experiment - called Schrödinger's cat - in this experiment a cat is put inside a sealed box, there is an automatic hammer that is set to break open a glass container filled with a deadly poison - the hammer will react when enough radiation is released inside the box to set a gieger counter to a predetermined level that will be at the exact amount that could kill the cat or not kill the cat - the experiment was repeated with the experimenter asking the subjects to say wether they thought the cat was alive or dead - the cat lived or died based on the beliefs of the test subjects.
as they say curiosity almost killed Schrödinger's cat.
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These are not REAL experiments you are talking about, but "thought experiments" at best.
What intention changes in the case of light is how you proceed. It does not really magically change light into either a wave or a particle phenomenon. In fact, given the fact that light can be viewed as a wave or a particle, physicists frequently refer to photons as "wavicles."
Even so, how this could be extrapolated to rescue free will remains a mystery to me.
As for Schroedinger's Cat, it's a famous paradox. Paradoxes don't prove anything much, and certainly not that human beings have free will.