RE: Determinism Is Self Defeating
July 19, 2013 at 7:55 am
(This post was last modified: July 19, 2013 at 8:00 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(July 18, 2013 at 10:18 pm)bennyboy Wrote: That's a pretty crude, statistical kind of determinism. The real question is would every little ripple and droplet, even in a massive flood event, have to turn out exactly as it does? Or is there wiggle room on local levels that seem deterministic on larger levels because of the massive statistical certainty of large populations?What you seem to be attempting, is to complicate an event beyond our ability and then insinuate that once some event is sufficiently complicated that the principles and behaviors that the participants in the event exhibit shift or change into something we have no knowledge of or only probabilities for. No dice. As far as "wiggle room" goes there's a massive amount of wiggle room for any given thing even within the deterministic model when invoking any particular outcome- and depending on the actor or participants in that outcome. So whether or not there's wiggle room won;t tell us much about whether or not we have a deterministic or non-deterministic (or mix of both) universe.
Quote:To humanize it, it's statistically definite that there will be about X road-rage killings this year. But that certainly doesn't mean (at least to me) that any particular killer was destined to do it.I don't buy into destiny myself..remember? I'm a determinist not a fatalist. They are vastly different. The position of hard determinism is such that at some point - perhaps long before but perhaps right before the very moment - there was only one way the situation -could- pan out due to the circumstances of the event. That beyond that moment when all requirements where met all roads led to a road rage killing. The point of no return, if you will. Perhaps that moment was only met after the car was doing 50, aimed at the pedestrian, the pedestrian was right in the middle of the path - not fast enough to get out of the way - and beyond the point that the car could slow down quickly enough.
What happens next Benny? Is there any scenario in which the pedestrian does not get hit? Can this go any other way?
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