I agree that logic alone doesn't say anything about free will or determinism. Logic is all about language and pure reasoning. We make some rules and see what follow from these rules. Logic is not about causality. If you come up with a logic (formal system), all the consequences of that logic are instantaneous and eternal, the formal system didn't 'cause' those logical consequences -- they have always been there, just not known. Logic is not about cause and effect through time, it's about timeless truths from assuming concepts.
In physics, not all things have a 'cause', 'virtual particles' pop up from existence and disappear without detection, and their energy has been measured. Physical entities are different from abstract entities. Abstract ones are timeless (an And function, numbers,...) and physical ones are bound by time. The universe behaves in a certain way but for all we know it could have been different. To find the truth about free will, we need to learn more about the rules of the reality we exist in -- what rules does our reality follow?
Chance_Programmer_54 t1_iucvbwk wrote
Reply to comment by gimboarretino in /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | October 24, 2022 by BernardJOrtcutt
I agree that logic alone doesn't say anything about free will or determinism. Logic is all about language and pure reasoning. We make some rules and see what follow from these rules. Logic is not about causality. If you come up with a logic (formal system), all the consequences of that logic are instantaneous and eternal, the formal system didn't 'cause' those logical consequences -- they have always been there, just not known. Logic is not about cause and effect through time, it's about timeless truths from assuming concepts.
In physics, not all things have a 'cause', 'virtual particles' pop up from existence and disappear without detection, and their energy has been measured. Physical entities are different from abstract entities. Abstract ones are timeless (an And function, numbers,...) and physical ones are bound by time. The universe behaves in a certain way but for all we know it could have been different. To find the truth about free will, we need to learn more about the rules of the reality we exist in -- what rules does our reality follow?