Forums → WEPR → Is Determinism Underrated?

...possibly because I wasn't around to contradict everything.

Hahahahahahahaha. Please, no more. If I keep laughing this hard I'm going to have to change into a new pair of pants.

As a determinist, I regard everything to be the necessary result of measureable and exact physical processes. This makes sense to me, but apparently not to many people. Can anyone explain why?

First, since when are you a determinist? Back in the death penalty thread we spent two pages with me arguing that actions have effects that impact the actor and you stating that that is only true in a very basic and fundamental manner in the realm of physics. Second, what's the point of this thread? You linked to a thread that died in 2010 and was mostly argued by a mod whose activity has been nearly non-existent for at least a year then you clarified a bunch of terms, and all that leads up to is a two sentence question that seemingly would be best asked directly on that mod's page. While the general topic has potential for debate that potential has already been looked at and abandoned by people who genuinely discuss topics. Meanwhile your question has a relatively short and simple answer that's already been touched on in the other thread. It seems like this thread has nowhere to go once that answer is posted. So once again, what is the purpose of making a thread with such a limited chance for discussion and debate?

Last, and in this case most certainly least, is the answer to your question. As was mentioned repeatedly in the other thread, determinism demands an infinite succession of events. Since each effect needs a preceding cause then the beginning of all effects, and thus the beginning of all causes, must itself have a cause. As we've already discussed in another thread, infinity exists solely as an abstract concept and not something that can truly be understood by the human mind. There's also the problem that scientists have looked for evidence of previous universes, former big bangs that created universes which then collapsed to begin the next cycle, and have failed to find any such evidence. This removes the possibility that our universe is just one in a series of infinitely occurring cycles. There's also the problem of human consciousness and aberrant behavior. Conscious thought still cannot be explained despite the fact that our composition is the same fundamental materials as everything else in our world and universe. Furthermore, not all human behavior is predictable or determined by personality and previous experience. The fact that these things exist points away from determinism unless you're willing to accept an "unmoved mover".

Back in the death penalty thread we spent two pages with me arguing that actions have effects that impact the actor and you stating that that is only true in a very basic and fundamental manner in the realm of physics.

As we've already discussed in another thread, infinity exists solely as an abstract concept and not something that can truly be understood by the human mind.

There's also the problem that scientists have looked for evidence of previous universes, former big bangs that created universes which then collapsed to begin the next cycle, and have failed to find any such evidence. This removes the possibility that our universe is just one in a series of infinitely occurring cycles.

Conscious thought still cannot be explained despite the fact that our composition is the same fundamental materials as everything else in our world and universe.

Furthermore, not all human behavior is predictable or determined by personality and previous experience. The fact that these things exist points away from determinism unless you're willing to accept an "unmoved mover".

Sure. You contradict yourself immediately. Everything cannot be a result of something else. For that to happen, the universe would have to exist forever with no beginning and no real end (although I suppose it could have an end result), and you certainly can't scientifically argue that the universe has been around forever, because science is based on observation and conclusion (in its simplest form. I am aware that repeated testing, hypothesis and theory are all involved).

What physical process was the cause of the indefinite number of results?

Oh, well, excuse the community for not being intelligent. Goodness knows we can't debate amongst ourselves without everything being wrong, which it apparently is, because if it were not you would not need to contradict it.

Back in the death penalty thread we spent two pages with me arguing that actions have effects that impact the actor and you stating that that is only true in a very basic and fundamental manner in the realm of physics.

Furthermore, not all human behavior is predictable or determined by personality and previous experience. The fact that these things exist points away from determinism unless you're willing to accept an "unmoved mover".

1 It doesn't have to be predictable. Determinism doesn't require anything to be predictable.

Ignoring all the above posts because reading a couple of sentences made it quite clear this would turn into a ludicrous fight, here's what I think.

Since there is not actually such a thing as truly random chance, everything that has happened was inevitable, and there is one inevitable future. Of course, we cannot predict what it is due to the ludicrous amount of raw data required to be calculated. Imagine a snooker shot. If one were to perform exactly the same shot twice, one would expect the balls to perform the exact same way twice.

As an atheist, determinism does not effect me. Sure, my life has been dictated by the behaviour of some subatomic particles several billion years ago, but I don't know what's coming in my future, and as long as the endorphins keep flowing, who cares?

If determinism is not scientific or logical, what makes it any less supernatural than religion?

Fish said it was irrelevant to the topic, I was actually the one to say that action and reaction was a principle of physics that you could not simply apply 'as is' on more complex situations...

These are Fish's responses.

Nature does not mandate fairness or equal repercussion. Minus the rhetorical fluff, the third law states only that the total force of interaction between two or more objects has equal magnitude in all directions.

Correct. It's the fact that it's irrational, unnecessary, and completely impossible that means it isn't there.

It was only after that second quote that he took the stance of it being irrelevant to the discussion.

Of course there are certainly other factors next to personality and previous experiences that play a role, but I don't see what part of human behaviour makes you say that it cannot be deterministic in the end.

The question of the thread is, why isn't determinism more prevalent. The existence of unexplainable aberrant behavior is sufficient evidence that not everything can be determined by knowing the cause because sometimes there are things that have no cause.

Theoretically, it does; since everything follows physical laws without randomness, you would 'simply' need all the data on every little particule in the universe to calculate anything.

At which point we'd officially be discussing bad science fiction.

Um. No, actually, I didn't say anything like that. I have no idea which part of that discussion you are even referring to.

So you have no idea what part of the conversation I'm talking about, but you can say with absolute certainty you never said anything like that. Wow, I guess I should just stop trying to argue with you. Obviously you're way to smart for me to ever catch an inconsistency in your posts.

and if I recall correctly, I explained how the concept of infinity can be easily understood in that same thread.

And as I recall, someone else beat me to the punch of pointing out why you were completely and utterly wrong on that matter. So not only did you fail to prove infinity can be easily understood, you did so in such a spectacular manner that it had to be pointed out by the first person to post in the thread after you.

This is not a problem.
1 Absence of evidence ≠ Evidence of absence.
2 An endless chain of Big Bangs is not necessary, and if you accept any expanding universe model, you can still place the one Big Bang at the "beginning" of your timeline. It will just be an infinite span of infinitely compressed space-time rather than a finite event.

There would still have to be a cause for the big bang. Determinism requires that every event has a cause, the way you're describing it the universe existed for an infinite amount of time and then suddenly decided it wanted 14 trillion lightyears worth of leg room for all the little bits of matter running around inside of it. This is exactly the type of thing that was discussed in the old thread. If everything was caused by something else then you need an infinite series of regression or an unmoved mover. You seem to be advocating the Big Bang as that unmoved mover without any explanation as to how or why it could be and as a result your entire idea of determinism is rendered pointless. If the Big Bang could happen on its own without any reason then there's nothing stopping other events from occurring completely at random.

This is not an argument for indeterminism. This is an argument for improving the field of neuroscience.

Improving it how? Any neuroscientist can point to various parts of the brain and say exactly what they do and how they interact. It's not like there's some big mysterious dark spot of the brain that no one knows anything about. Our brain has the same components as the brains of other animals but they lack consciousness. What exactly can the field of neuroscience do to explain such a bizarre and baseless phenomena?

2 How would an unmoved mover reconcile those?

HahiHa already covered #1 so I'll skip to this one. An unmoved mover eliminates the need for an infinite regression by not being moved. The whole purpose of a UM is that it exists without a cause and can thus act as an initial cause. It also explains things that seemingly have no cause by existing as an added but unquantified factor.

This thread has nothing to do with proving determinism

So once again I have to ask, what's the point of this thread? You're not looking to prove a point or make a solid stance here. You're not trying to convince anyone of anything. If this is solely here so you can make a pathetic attempt at playing devil's advocate I'm just going to ask @Moegreche to lock it as a duplicate.

and yes, I am saying that the universe exists forever with no real beginning and no real end.

Infinite existence is not something that can be proven or supported by any evidence. If you need a reason for determinism to not make sense, you have it right there.

It didn't receive much attention and I would have liked to participate in the discussion. Hypothetically, such participation would have offered more to discuss, and as I would be arguing points contrary to MRWalker's

And yet you haven't countered those points. You could have done that in your first post to try starting a debate or you could have done it any of the times I've pointed out that these things have already been discussed in the other thread. You're not doing anything to actually further the conversation or push the debate into an area that it hasn't already been. At this rate this thread will only barely reach two pages before it dies or gets locked and part of the reason it'd reach 2 pages is because of Matt's double post.

The question of the thread is, why isn't determinism more prevalent. The existence of unexplainable aberrant behavior is sufficient evidence that not everything can be determined by knowing the cause because sometimes there are things that have no cause.

No, it is not sufficient evidence. It means we have not identified all causes of a behaviour. It does not mean there are no causes.

You're assuming that a cause can be found without any evidence supporting that assumption. There is no evidence that such a cause exists nor is there any way to search for such evidence, therefore the lack of a cause is sufficient evidence to contradict determinism. If, in some distant future, a cause is indeed found to exist then the subject of determinism can be revisited. Until then we have no choice but to go on the evidence that is currently available, otherwise you're argument amounts to nothing more than "determinism is real because I believe it's real". That would directly contradict your claim that

... it is a reasonable assumption based on our knowledge of physics.

If you cannot determine the cause of aberrant behavior and you cannot prove that a cause exists then you cannot claim determinism to be a reasonable assumption. At best it exists solely on the quantum level and loses meaning on a macro scale just like numerous other phenomena.

The temporary lack of evidence for a cause will never be sufficient evidence to contradict determinism, because whether there is a cause or not is independent of our knowledge on the matter. And while none of us has direct evidence supporting our opinion, we have both valid reasons to hold those opinions respectively. However, I would claim that determinism is fundamentally the more logical viewpoint, after all random events are not logical. From the viewpoint of physics, determinism is very reasonable.
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And remember, Fish said this thread is not about proving determinism.

Theoretically, it does; since everything follows physical laws without randomness, you would 'simply' need all the data on every little particule in the universe to calculate anything.

You are basing your argument on "Just because we don't have evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist" and "the universe exists forever and I'm not going to prove it."

Nature does not mandate fairness or equal repercussion. Minus the rhetorical fluff, the third law states only that the total force of interaction between two or more objects has equal magnitude in all directions.

Which is entirely correct. Newton's third law has nothing to do with fairness or karma. That's why I said it was irrelevant.

The question of the thread is, why isn't determinism more prevalent.

The existence of unexplainable aberrant behavior is sufficient evidence that not everything can be determined by knowing the cause because sometimes there are things that have no cause.

At which point we'd officially be discussing bad science fiction.

So you have no idea what part of the conversation I'm talking about, but you can say with absolute certainty you never said anything like that.

And as I recall, someone else beat me to the punch of pointing out why you were completely and utterly wrong on that matter.

The first response (by Doombreed), which suggests that he considers the representation of such a concept to be distinct from the concept itself:

That doesn't sound like understanding it as a concept. Merely understanding how it can be represented.

The second response (by you), which conflates understanding with visualization:

Great, now imagine a space with no boundaries. Imagine a line of numbers that never ends. Not a line of numbers that seems to stretch off into infinity but an actual infinite line of numbers. You can't, can you?

But, to put things in perspective, I challenge you to demonstrate how absolute finiteness can be understood by the human mind. If your reasoning is sound, you should be able to explain this in a way that does not involve any boundless dimensions or infinitesimals.

There would still have to be a cause for the big bang.

Improving it how? Any neuroscientist can point to various parts of the brain and say exactly what they do and how they interact. It's not like there's some big mysterious dark spot of the brain that no one knows anything about.

Our brain has the same components as the brains of other animals but they lack consciousness. What exactly can the field of neuroscience do to explain such a bizarre and baseless phenomena?

The whole purpose of a UM is that it exists without a cause and can thus act as an initial cause. It also explains things that seemingly have no cause by existing as an added but unquantified factor.

So once again I have to ask, what's the point of this thread? You're not looking to prove a point or make a solid stance here. You're not trying to convince anyone of anything.

Infinite existence is not something that can be proven or supported by any evidence. If you need a reason for determinism to not make sense, you have it right there.

You're assuming that a cause can be found without any evidence supporting that assumption. There is no evidence that such a cause exists nor is there any way to search for such evidence, therefore the lack of a cause is sufficient evidence to contradict determinism.

To predict is to make an inference, usually by applying some generalization. At least, that's how I interpreted its use here.

"Chaos theory is sometimes pointed out as a contradiction to Laplace's demon: it describes how a deterministic system can nonetheless exhibit behavior that is impossible to predict: as in the butterfly effect, minor variations between the starting conditions of two systems can result in major differences. While this explains unpredictability in practical cases, applying it to Laplace's case is questionable: under the strict demon hypothesis all details are known—to infinite precision—and therefore variations in starting conditions are non-existent."

HahiHa: From the viewpoint of physics, determinism is very reasonable.

THE POINT OF THIS THREAD:
I want to know what other people think of determinism/causality/randomness/etc. and why they think whatever they think, because I'm not sure I understand their views. I am not trying to prove determinism. I am not suggesting that we should all become determinists.

LOOK AT THAT, I ONLY HAD TO ASK THREE ******* TIMES FOR YOU TO ANSWER MY QUESTION! But if that's the point of this thread, that still begs the question of why link the previous thread and claim that it only died because you weren't around to argue the subject? If you're solely looking for peoples' opinions on the matter why are you spending so much time telling us we're wrong only to flip flop in the next section of your post and say you're not trying to argue again? Now I'm certain this thread is meant to be nothing more than a waste of time for the rest of us while you continue to dismiss and ignore arguments just like you do in every other thread.

But if that's the point of this thread, that still begs the question of why link the previous thread and claim that it only died because you weren't around to argue the subject?

If you're solely looking for peoples' opinions on the matter why are you spending so much time telling us we're wrong only to flip flop in the next section of your post and say you're not trying to argue again?

If you think this discussion is pointless, you're free to ignore it. You have that capacity with or without free will. Criticising me will not achieve anything.

Also from Fish's link, I realize now the claim above is more debatable than I thought, considering that apparently some interpretations of quantum mechanics stipulate indeterminacy. That very paragraph goes on saying the interpretation is "still very much open for debate", though.

So maybe we should step back here and refocus. It does seem things are getting a bit heated and have, at times, shifted focus to whether determinism is true. Now, the point of the thread is to see what people think about determinism. Of course, if i reject it because I think it's false, then those two points are going to overlap.

What it sounds to me like is that people are rejecting determinism because of two features. The indeterminacy of our internal states and phenomena like quantum indeterminacy. These are at least prima facie reasons to reject determinism. There is also the age-old problem of the compatibility between free will and and determinism. This latter point, however, would be a terrible reason to reject determinism. If we reject a theory because it has consequences we don't like, that's a bad reason to reject a theory.

But really, I think the main reason determinism might be underrated is because the position itself is difficult to pin down. If you take a course on metaphysics, you might hear the term causal determinism and it would be defined as something like 'every event E is necessitated by its cause C'.

Under this reading of determinism, a finite universe isn't a problem. Note that it just says C must cause E - not that C must be distinct from E. So, if we allow for self-causation, then we don't run into regress problems.

But this is one of the many reasons why philosophers who write on this stuff have stopped using the term 'causal determinism' and just switch to plain ol' determinism. In short, philosophers of science have a hard enough time grappling with the notion of causation - why throw another difficult concept like determinism into the ring?

If we try to drop the notion of causation out of the picture, we end up with something like this:
Causal determinism: The world is governed by (or is under the sway of) determinism if and only if, given a specified way things are at a time t, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law.

That definition is taken from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but we should be careful about calling that the standard definition of determinism. So much hangs on getting an acceptable definition of the notion, that I'm not sure there is a standard approach. In other words, giving a right account of the notion may be precisely what's at issue here.

At any rate, you can read about some problems with the notion of determinism here. The trick is going to be giving a definition that is non-trivial but that also doesn't try to define an already-tricky concept in terms that are even more opaque (like defining determinism in terms of causation).

So that's basically where I stand and why. I don't reject determinism because the notion isn't a clear one. That's also why I don't accept it as a theory of the way the world is. To be clear - we can point to tons of events that are brought about by the way things are at a certain time. But whether the world is arranged in this way is another matter entirely and one that is conceptually difficult to wrestle with.