Determinism Is Self Defeating

[The Grand Nudger]

Cause and effect is not determinism, unless each set of causes can only lead to one possible outcome. Take this to the extreme, and it HAD to be that I would be sitting here, typing this text. In all the possible unfoldings of the universe, determinism has it that from the Big Bang, it was destiny that I would be doing this.

Yeah, actually, cause and effect is -precisely- what determinism is........

Destiny would be non-deterministic, as was fate, as in the case of destiny some future state is set regardless of all the intermediate states.

In a deterministic system some other "unfolding" of the universe -may- have you doing the same thing...but we couldn't be sure of that, because all of those "unfoldings" are the past and present states that determine future states. It would be awesome convergence and "luck" if two different sets of circumstances yielded the exact same result. Not impossible, mind you, but I;d be very surprised if the universe unfolded differently and still "arrived here" to take a few words from below.

You have to be pretty confident to assert that out of all the infinite interactions between matter and energy, both known and as yet unknown, that it all arrives, out of pure necessity, at this moment in time.

Was there somewhere else to arrive?

I think sentience is a good indicator that this is not the case. The idea that sentience, the thing which most defines what it means to be alive, is a byproduct of a deterministic mechanism, seems unlikely. Why would a machine need to be actually aware for it to process sensory input and output a behavior? Why is there a subjective existence at all?

Self awareness seems to have given us an edge, hasn't it? As you say, however, sentience is clearly not necessary - plenty of things do well enough without it. I have to ask though...wheres the opposition to determinism in any of this? I'm not sure why this seems "unlikely" to you.

My point is that in the face of philosophical speculation, science will take an unconvincing and obviously incomplete answer, and will wave away challengers with the BOP-wand. But that's just a cheap tactic. Unless you can show that at any given time, t, the universe could not have proceeded otherwise, determinism must remain an assumption, rather than a scientifically testable hypothesis.

If that's your point, then I have some bad news. Establishing deterministic behavior does not require such complete knowledge or even an accurate prediction, we only need to show that a prediction -is possible-. What you're doing is wrapping non deterministic things like fate and destiny into the mix and essentially, arguing against those two things via ignorance by consequence.

Here I want to remind you again, that I keep offering empirically testable examples of deterministic behavior....and all I claimed was that determinism is difficult to escape because it was the position in evidence. Meanwhile, you're focusing on some intangible that you seem to think is unlikely....are we actually having a disagreement, or are we simply talking -to- each other about different things?