Determinism Is Self Defeating

[bennyboy]

All I really want to say about determinism is that I do not accept equivocation between scientific determinism (where, for example, two massive objects will always be attracted by the force of gravity) and a general philosophical determinism, whereby the state of all physical objects at time t is assumed to be sufficient cause for t+1.

Could you elaborate on the difference between the two in the same way that I elaborated upon these three diff positions we've been bandying back and forth? Doesn't the example of t to t+ adequetely describe the event in the first example offered (two objects)? IOW, in the same way that I described a claim of predeterminism and how it would be incompatible with the other positions - can you describe a claim in which those two examples are at odds with each other?

Okay, in "adequate" determinism, you hold a rock up, drop it, and watch it fall to the Earth every time. In a course way, you can say that the position of the unsupported rock, with nothing solid under it, is sufficient cause for its position on the ground a second later. Few people would argue that given those circumstances, the rock could have done anything but fall to the ground.

But the rock is just a symbolic shorthand for very many particles, with all their spins, velocities, etc. To have global (I'd just say "true") determinism, you'd have to be able to show that given t, only ONE possible configuration of those particles could elapse: only one possible spin, or velocity, or position, or whatever of every smallest particle.

Obviously, the first is easy to prove, and the second impossible. You'd have to be able to prove that there's no intrinsic randomness on ANY level of physics, and that there is no hidden variable.

Why does it matter? Because if even one particle in the universe behaves in a non-deterministic way, then all the rest may be affected.

[Silver]

I am reminded of Jurassic Park where the mathematician showed that a single drop of water dropped onto the same spot of one's knuckled hand does not mean the water will always take the same course with the help of gravity.

[Red Celt]

I am reminded of Jurassic Park where the mathematician showed that a single drop of water dropped onto the same spot of one's knuckled hand does not mean the water will always take the same course with the help of gravity.

It isn't the same spot. At the molecular level, the spot is different, the water is different and the hand is different. To our ape brains, everything looks the same but it isn't.

Chaos Theory is about apparent chaos in non-chaotic (deterministic) settings. It is about immense complexity, which we're just not wired up to compute. The limitations are within us, not the observable universe.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why does it matter? Because if even one particle in the universe behaves in a non-deterministic way, then all the rest may be affected.

Sure, it's possible that things we are unable to measure - or things we are unaware of behave in a non-deterministic way. If there were such a thing then it could affect things that did. We could even imagine a scenario in which even though the rock "fell", all the "stuff" that makes up the rock and all of the other things that stuff might be doing are non-deterministic.

We don't have much in the way of reasons to assume this though - whereas that rock is still falling.

Your examples of "adequate" and "true" determinism are not contradictory to each other as the positions of fatalism, predeterminism, and determinism are. One is more elaborate than the other but both could be true simultaneously in the case of the rock. Lets apply this same measuring stick to non-determinism of whatever stripe anyway.

"Adequate" non-determinism is simply when we are unable to predict in theory or practice. There are many such things and few would argue against them. To show "true" non-determinism you would have to show that given t - there was no cause sufficient to force t+1 - for any of the smallest particles and behaviors. In other words - the rock couldn't even fall reliably. I don't think you'd like this requirement. Mostly because the rock falling, under your metrics - defeats a non-deterministic claim. I, personally, wouldn't use such metrics for either claim. Lets have fun with another one.

"Adequate": a-unicornism is simply the position that we can't find any unicorns on the ground. We've looked, they aren't there, few would argue. To show "True" a-unicornism you would have to show that all variables for the location of the unicorn are devoid of unicorns.

Now, beyond the mechanics of how we might craft our position there are some other problems. For example. If so much as adequate determinism holds (the rock falls) then non-deterministic this and that's are not having the kind of effect that you would hope for in your example of what one non-deterministic thing can do to affect a deterministic system. For example...lets say one of those variables you invoked about the rock actually was non-deterministic.....the rock is still behaving in a deterministic way when it falls. Both adequates (yours and mine) can be true simultaneously. The discussion then becomes one of how much power or weight we might assign to any non-deterministic thing in affecting deterministic behaviors (which is where we begin to flirt with fatalism - and also the point at which predeterminism becomes irreconcilable). All of this, mind you, is under the assumption that there actually is some non-deterministic thing flitting about alongside deterministic things. Neither position is the default for any given object or behavior so saying -you can't show that it's "x" doesn't make a case for "y" - of course. We'd have to line up some "adeqautely" deterministic things alongside some "adequately" non-deterministic things and see how it all pans out (as I don't imagine either of us are stumping for a "true" position of -anything- under such metrics.....

[little_monkey]

Unless you're gullible, the right way to approach any new phenomenon is by studying it through the scientific method. However, if it is real magic, that is, it defies all scientific explanation, then the next question would be why that single event is magical? and are there other events that are also magical? Now if we can explain the magical, then would it be real magic?

One of the positions I hear from science is "We don't know the answer. . . yet. Maybe someday we will." This means that there are two possible states for Mystery X: 1) explained (perhaps by a new scientific theory a la QM); 2) not yet explained. There is no option 3, ever: 3) Fuck me, that's magic, and there's no point trying to fit it into science, ever. So there will never be anything you'd call magical: there are only things explained, and not yet explained.

You need to take a historical perspective. Take 500 years ago, and look at how many unanswered questions that have been answered so far. There's every reason that we should be optimistic, and that whatever hasn't been answered could be in the next 500 years.

But anyway, I don't consider randomness, or free will separate from causation, or even God (if such a being could exist, and don't think I'm going there) "magic." They would just be new variables that need to be added to new equations.

Or perhaps new paradigms.

If you want magic, look to magnets instead.

They have been thoroughly explained by QED.

Mind as separate from the brain has been postulated a long time ago. The problem is that it doesn't add anything to what we know if we don't postulate as a separate entity.

The problem isn't explaining the physical mechanism that organizes thoughts and behaviors. It's explaining why matter, in any shape or form, develops the ability to experience sensation: not just to process light, but to experience colors.

It's an important question, and just saying "well, no brain means no experience" is not the same as explaining why brains experience. Throwing in evolution, the benefit to an organism, etc. is just playing a shell game-- at the end of the day, we do not normally think of objective mechanisms as having the potential to become sentient, and any system that cannot explain why this has happened is an incomplete one, and in a very important way.

Why the pessimism? Why do you think we will never have a theory to explain that? Just 100 years ago we did not understand why two atoms could combine to form a molecule. Today we do. Just 100 years ago, cosmology didn't exist. Today, it does -- and it's yanking the theists in a very bad way. Why do you insist that we should know everything, today?

We don't have a very good theory on free will. So there's lots of work to be done before we can say what free will is.

I disagree. Free will is the ability of a sentient agent to make decisions arbitrarily based on some aspect of its nature that is not part of a chain of causal determinism. The work that has to be done is to "find out" if this is a real thing-- quotes because the scientists working on the problem are already convinced that it isn't.

You're rushing to judgment.

What if we can produce a robot that would be sentient and would exercise free will? Would you then conceed that we have an understanding of those concepts and there is no other reality but this physical world?

How would you know it was sentient? You'd ask it-- in which case you're simply extending the existence assumption of non-solipsism to new objects. Or you'd make some other operational definition of sentience which was actually observable, like degrees of self-reference in data flow, or the ability to reword abstract concepts and have a human listener understand them.

As for free will-- I can see where this is going. Some scientist is going to say, "[technical sciency-sounding jargon], therefore we can define free will as the degree to which an organism can apply symbols learned from experience to new situations" (or any other BS that free will doesn't actually mean). Then any schmoe like me who wants free will to mean "free" + "will" will get mocked. I don't like this process, because solving problems by redefining them is not a very good solution. If you don't believe me, then tell me how many people are willing to accept that "mind" is exactly equivalent to "that process of brain function of which a person is aware." That's great if you want to get good use of your fMRI machine; it sucks if you are interested in why there is sentience rather than not.

Am I right or am I right?

You are looking at a "why" question - "Why do we exist?" is not a question that science will ever answer. Science can only shed some light by telling us "how" the universe works. But it is up to each and every one of us to find an answer as to why we exist, what do we want from life, how to make our lives meaningful. You wouldn't want to make those decisions based on superstitions, falsehoods or wild fairy tales as found in most religions .

[bennyboy]

"Adequate": a-unicornism is simply the position that we can't find any unicorns on the ground. We've looked, they aren't there, few would argue. To show "True" a-unicornism you would have to show that all variables for the location of the unicorn are devoid of unicorns.

Don't start withsaying that determinism is simply "the lack of a belief that anything affect outcomes other than known/knowable physical laws." It's a positive assertion about the nature of causality, and it hasn't been proven.

Now, beyond the mechanics of how we might craft our position there are some other problems. For example. If so much as adequate determinism holds (the rock falls) then non-deterministic this and that's are not having the kind of effect that you would hope for in your example of what one non-deterministic thing can do to affect a deterministic system. For example...lets say one of those variables you invoked about the rock actually was non-deterministic.....the rock is still behaving in a deterministic way when it falls. Both adequates (yours and mine) can be true simultaneously. The discussion then becomes one of how much power or weight we might assign to any non-deterministic thing in affecting deterministic behaviors (which is where we begin to flirt with fatalism - and also the point at which predeterminism becomes irreconcilable). All of this, mind you, is under the assumption that there actually is some non-deterministic thing flitting about alongside deterministic things. Neither position is the default for any given object or behavior so saying -you can't show that it's "x" doesn't make a case for "y" - of course. We'd have to line up some "adeqautely" deterministic things alongside some "adequately" non-deterministic things and see how it all pans out (as I don't imagine either of us are stumping for a "true" position of -anything- under such metrics.....

The two kinds of determinism are NOT like. "Adequate" determinism is statistical. "Real" determinism is absolute. Everyone knows that things sometimes work out how you expect.

The scientific process you are talking about isn't acceptable to me. We are not talking about "adequate" anything, because "adequate" determinism is an oxymoron: "The universe can only go exactly 1 way, and no other; and I'll prove this to you by predicting the approximate location of a gazillion, completely uncounted and unmonitored, that I assure you exist in this rock." That exactly doesn't prove that the universe couldn't have turned out other than it does.

re: things flitting about affecting things
You are attempting to paint the picture in religious or magical terms: because flitting sounds like something angels or fairies would do. I have two candidates in mind: 1) randomness; 2) mind

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You need to take a historical perspective. Take 500 years ago, and look at how many unanswered questions that have been answered so far. There's every reason that we should be optimistic, and that whatever hasn't been answered could be in the next 500 years.

I agree. If there IS any variability in the universe, scientists will categorize it, enumerate it, and look for ways to benefit from it. Even if God was proven/provable, that wouldn't mean anything. The only thing that can stop science is that causation get completely broken, and nothing can be predivcted any more.

If you want magic, look to magnets instead.

They have been thoroughly explained by QED.

The truth is I didn't know that, but thank goodness I was being ironical anyway.

Why the pessimism? Why do you think we will never have a theory to explain that? Just 100 years ago we did not understand why two atoms could combine to form a molecule. Today we do. Just 100 years ago, cosmology didn't exist. Today, it does -- and it's yanking the theists in a very bad way. Why do you insist that we should know everything, today?

I have a specific reason in this case. Science is a process of objective study, and the mind exists only as a subjective entity. I do not accept the equation of mind with brain function, because subjective existence and objective existence are not of like type.

You are looking at a "why" question - "Why do we exist?" is not a question that science will ever answer. Science can only shed some light by telling us "how" the universe works. But it is up to each and every one of us to find an answer as to why we exist, what do we want from life, how to make our lives meaningful. You wouldn't want to make those decisions based on superstitions, falsehoods or wild fairy tales as found in most religions .

Some "why" questions, at least as I see them, serve as a standing challenge to particular theories. Why the mind exists matters, because the current scientific position is that the universe can be understood purely in objective terms. To say that some objective processes are subjective is to say that dark is sometimes light.

[The Grand Nudger]

The two kinds of determinism are NOT like. "Adequate" determinism is statistical. "Real" determinism is absolute. Everyone knows that things sometimes work out how you expect.

Sure, but as has been noted several times you are now talking about our ability to work out statistics or "know" the truth of something in the absolute -...not...whether or not there is any difference in the behavior of the universe between those two propositions. What's not alike between the positions has nothing to do with the behavior of the universe as formulated - and everything to do with us.

re: things flitting about affecting things
You are attempting to paint the picture in religious or magical terms: because flitting sounds like something angels or fairies would do. I have two candidates in mind: 1) randomness; 2) mind

In my mind, moths flit about - wafty...beautiful really - but seemingly random. They clearly have no goals for their lives. In any case, care to explore the relationship between randomness and mind (our adequately non-deterministic things) and death and taxes (my adequately deterministic things)?

I jest, I jest. What sort of effect do randomness and mind have on rock?

(randomness btw, stands for itself...but why do you imagine mind to be non-deterministic?)

[bennyboy]

The two kinds of determinism are NOT like. "Adequate" determinism is statistical. "Real" determinism is absolute. Everyone knows that things sometimes work out how you expect.

Sure, but as has been noted several times you are now talking about our ability to work out statistics or "know" the truth of something in the absolute -...not...whether or not there is any difference in the behavior of the universe between those two propositions. What's not alike between the positions has nothing to do with the behavior of the universe as formulated - and everything to do with us.

re: things flitting about affecting things
You are attempting to paint the picture in religious or magical terms: because flitting sounds like something angels or fairies would do. I have two candidates in mind: 1) randomness; 2) mind

In my mind, moths flit about - wafty...beautiful really - but seemingly random. They clearly have no goals for their lives. In any case, care to explore the relationship between randomness and mind (our adequately non-deterministic things) and death and taxes (my adequately deterministic things)?

I jest, I jest. What sort of effect do randomness and mind have on rock?

(randomness btw, stands for itself...but why do you imagine mind to be non-deterministic?)

Let me clarify something here. I'm not arguing non-determinism; I'm a confirmed agnostic, and worse, an ambiguist.

Re the OP, I'm arguing that determinism is an assumption, not a provable position, and not one for which even sufficient evidence can be provided (due to calculation issues, and the fact that knowing 100% of the state of even a very small system is probably not even theoretically possible).

I'm not arguing that the mind is non-deterministic, though in a thread about that, I might lean that way. However, if any part of mind is outside of physical causality, then the universe is non-deterministic. If mind is, as many now believe, just the subjective experience of objective processes, then it has no effect on determinism. If it is something else, then it may represent an additional causal influence.

I don't know what mind is exactly, or what the rules of causality in the universe are, exactly, but the existence of mind leads me to suspect that there's a reason not everything is purely objective. Science has done a good job of exploring the mechanism involved, but has done a zero job of showing why that mechanism actually feels, rather than just acting as though it does.

[Angrboda]

Let me clarify something here. I'm not arguing non-determinism; I'm a confirmed agnostic, and worse, an ambiguist.

What is an 'ambiguist' by your definition?

[bennyboy]

Let me clarify something here. I'm not arguing non-determinism; I'm a confirmed agnostic, and worse, an ambiguist.

What is an 'ambiguist' by your definition?

I believe that many of the dualisms people are trying to reduce into monisms are intrinsically non-reducible, and that contary resolutions can both be correct. So light, for example, is a wave. It is also a particle. You can say this dualism is replaced by new math, but in function, you really have to say, "it behaves differently depending on how you're looking at it."