Determinism Is Self Defeating

[little_monkey]

Determinism is a belief in a single causal chain.

A single causal chain??? What determined what you did upon waking up this morning - showered, peed, ate breakfast, or fondled the little lady, -- depended on a gazillion number of factors before you made that single choice.

Here you are providing a cause for the magic rabbit, and if the universe functions according to laws, then everything is determined. That basically defeats your own argument.

It shows that determinism isn't falsifiable.

Magic would falsify determinism, I said that before. But we don't observe magic. But we do observe that the universe can be understood with scientific laws.

Any apparent disproval, evident in a failure to predict, can ALWAYS be met with a claim of lack of sufficient information.

Unless that is false, you can't use that to defeat the argument. It is a fact that we rarely know everyhing about a system.

But this introduces both question begging and a paradox-- because if the is non-deterministic, then your appeal to hypothetical accurate information is an appeal to the non-existent.

Regardless of the lack of knowledge, if something were magical, that would reveal itself quite easily, and determinism would then be defeated.

Given the statement: "It's not possible (ever) to collect the kind of information you're talking about," there's also a potential argument from ignorance: "Since we can't collect accurate state data, you cannot show that this system is not deterministic." Then we get to play the BOP hot-potato game.

But no one is saying that you must prove determinism, no more than one is required tp prove the existence of quarks. But assuming their existence, QCD unfolds. Similarly assuming determinism, then science unfolds.

That also defeats your argument. You're saying, I can't predict because I don't know, which means, if I knew, I would be able to predict.

Good job.

I knew the state of a system, and all the laws govern its progression through time were deterministic, I would be able to predict perfectly (assuming I had access to a perfect analog calculator).

That is the basis of science. Deny that, you deny science. OOPS, I've said that before, but it's worth a repeat.

But this implies that states are fully knowable, that the way in which they unfold is deterministic, and that such a calculator could exist, even in theory. For all these to be assumed true, even hypothetically, we've also already ASSUMED determinism, rather than showing it.

Bingo.