RE: An Argument Against Determinism
March 10, 2026 at 10:36 pm
(This post was last modified: March 10, 2026 at 10:38 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
If determinism were true then prior events and natural laws produced my belief that I have free will. - alot of the premises could be (and should be...bam) replaced for that. I take it from the semantic choices that the arguer is primarily aiming at some version of determinism one hair shy of (or possibly crossing over into) fatalism?
Couldn't there be deterministic reasons for believing false things? Couldn't there be a deterministic mismatch between our responsibilities or our expectations and our abilities or outcomes? If the understanding of the term "should" being used in premise 1 is normative, as in we have a responsibility to believe only true things - we'll need some additional premises about the possibility of normative failure and I can't personally think of a set which would not admit that possibility. An incompetent agent. If it's some sort of opinion about cognitive function and biological fitness and what we would expect from a creature like us with a mind like ours that would need to be expanded....but maybe we're either primed by those events and laws to believe at least some false things or we're mechanically defective in some hilarious and instructive way - even so.
Couldn't there be deterministic reasons for believing false things? Couldn't there be a deterministic mismatch between our responsibilities or our expectations and our abilities or outcomes? If the understanding of the term "should" being used in premise 1 is normative, as in we have a responsibility to believe only true things - we'll need some additional premises about the possibility of normative failure and I can't personally think of a set which would not admit that possibility. An incompetent agent. If it's some sort of opinion about cognitive function and biological fitness and what we would expect from a creature like us with a mind like ours that would need to be expanded....but maybe we're either primed by those events and laws to believe at least some false things or we're mechanically defective in some hilarious and instructive way - even so.
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