Determinism Is Self Defeating

[bennyboy]

A single causal chain??? What determined what you did upon waking up this morning - showered, peed, ate breakfast, or fondled the little lady, -- depended on a gazillion number of factors before you made that single choice.

Yes, but a single state for any given time, t, stretching back forever (or at least until the creation of the Universe).

Magic would falsify determinism, I said that before. But we don't observe magic. But we do observe that the universe can be understood with scientific laws.

Magic, if provably magic and not a new technology or product of an as-yet discovered law, would falsify determinism. So let's say I produce a rabbit out of a hat. Are you going to run out the door screaming "Science is proven false. Determinism is wrong!" or are you just going to say "Hmmmm. . . we do not yet understand all the causal factors leading to this event. (Because of lack of information)

I can't imagine ANY observable event in which this wouldn't be the approach.

Any apparent disproval, evident in a failure to predict, can ALWAYS be met with a claim of lack of sufficient information.

Unless that is false, you can't use that to defeat the argument. It is a fact that we rarely know everyhing about a system.

Exactly. You are at peace with that, as a scientist. I'm not at peace with that, as someone looking at it from an absolute philosophical perspective.

But this introduces both question begging and a paradox-- because if the is non-deterministic, then your appeal to hypothetical accurate information is an appeal to the non-existent.

Regardless of the lack of knowledge, if something were magical, that would reveal itself quite easily, and determinism would then be defeated.

Mind.

Can't see it. Can't touch or feel it. Can't manipulate on it in any way. Still claimed as part of physical determinism.

Given the statement: "It's not possible (ever) to collect the kind of information you're talking about," there's also a potential argument from ignorance: "Since we can't collect accurate state data, you cannot show that this system is not deterministic." Then we get to play the BOP hot-potato game.

But no one is saying that you must prove determinism, no more than one is required tp prove the existence of quarks. But assuming their existence, QCD unfolds. Similarly assuming determinism, then science unfolds.

This, I accept. The point of science (at least to me) seems to be taking systems which aren't currently predictable, and learning how to predict them. In a sense, I'd accept this as a kind of statistical determinism. Don't think that I don't love science, and most especially the amazing things people have learned doing it.

However, all the specifics of the system are unknowable: for example, the spin on very particle. And in some cases, the causal chain confounds us in making useful and important predictions (for example about weather), and there's good reason to believe that will never change due to the butterfly effect (I prefer to call it "precision creep" or something).

That also defeats your argument. You're saying, I can't predict because I don't know, which means, if I knew, I would be able to predict.

Good job.

I knew the state of a system, and all the laws govern its progression through time were deterministic, I would be able to predict perfectly (assuming I had access to a perfect analog calculator).

That is the basis of science. Deny that, you deny science. OOPS, I've said that before, but it's worth a repeat.

But this implies that states are fully knowable, that the way in which they unfold is deterministic, and that such a calculator could exist, even in theory. For all these to be assumed true, even hypothetically, we've also already ASSUMED determinism, rather than showing it.

Bingo.

Okay. If you want to say, "Assuming determinism is what allows us to provide real-life results, and generates an understanding of the unvierse that no other philosophical position would allow," then I'm 100% behind you, and science, and the use of that assumption.

However, sometimes we forget that assumptions are assumptions, and because we're so used to them, we start treating them as brute facts. This leads to things like, "We know the universe is deterministic, so the mind must be only an expression of deterministic processes. Therefore, free will is at best an illusion." Since this is at odds with my own observations and experiences, I cannot allow that line to go unchecked without challenge: it must be proven, not believed on principle.

Let me say this-- if science can really show WHY mind exists in a supposedly objective universe, and can really show a good basis for how some physical processes arrive at actual sensation, then my view on determinism could potentially change, since the existence of mind is my main obstacle to determinism. So far, some evidence has been provided-- but it is still very crude, and because of the way the brain processes, I'm really not sure that it's possible to go much farther. It's an exciting age, this is, because we can at least give it a pretty good try.