Determinism Is Self Defeating

[bennyboy]

I think we've done this before: you are confusing what is reality and our knowledge of reality. The reason we use probability simply means we don't know all the relevant factors. Tossing a coin is the typical example: if we knew all the forces acting on a coin, we would be able to predict its outcome, instead we don't, and so we deal with this situation using the probability that it's going to be 50% heads, 50% tails. This is a reflection of our knowledge, not that reality is not deterministic. The alternative is to believe in magic, for lack of a better word. After 500 years of scientific investigation, there's not a shred of evidence that this universe functions on magic.

As with the Pi examples, there's the question of resolution: can you ever represent the reality of those forces in a non-lossy way for the purpose of your calculation? No. As soon as you represent your forces in (for example) the decimal system, you come up against that little scientific devil, degrees of precision. So not only do you need accurate information about those forces, you need infinite precision to guarantee correct results, especially for complex systems; and this is impossible except for whole-number values or simple ratios. So yes, it is possible that determinism is true; but no, you can't use science or math to prove it, because you can never fully represent complex systems accurately enough. As for magic, I think you are presenting a bit of a strawman there. Nature is nature, and is not magic, since magic is supernatural. Whether the universe is deterministic or not, there is no need to invoke magic.

For me, as you know, this comes back to the nature of mind-- is the universe purely material, with mind as a happenstance byproduct, or does mind "matter," pardon the pun? My main suspicion is still this-- that if the brain is purely a deterministic mechanism, there is no need for mind to exist. Ideas about the evolutionary advantage of a brain which is actually sentient, as opposed to a brain which just behaves as though its sentient, are pretty unconvincing unless mind itself provides a benefit that the brain does not.

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As others have pointed out Bennyboy, you seem to be making the mistake of confusing our epistemic situation regarding determinism with whether or not determinism is actually true. The reason scientists have a range with regard to their predictions is because there is technological limitations, coupled with inherent uncertainty when, say, measuring a system of quanta.

If you go back a few posts, you'll see that I'm specifically responding to the "weight of evidence" argument, where the ability to successfully predict the outcome of some systems serves as evidence for philosophical determinism in general. I don't accept this, because the negative: "systems which we cannot predict are evidence of non-determinism" is refused on grounds that we just don't have good enough data to do accurate predictions. In other words: Heads, I win; tails, it's a tie! It's a dirty trick, and I won't stand for it!

As for reality: well, who knows? We have ideas, and can either prove them or cannot. In this case, we cannot. We must take a philosophical position on the matter, and cannot take a mathematical or scientific one. My own position in philosophical issues is almost always one of staunch agnosticism: I don't know if the universe is deterministic, and I think "we don't know" is actually the only legitimate answer to the question. There are two kinds of people in philosophy: those who don't know, and those who are making things up.