Determinism Is Self Defeating

[bennyboy]

No matter what you do or don't do, even if you are a rock, regardless of whether or not you have the "ability" to make decisions. That's why fate is non-deterministic. Rather than stating that for any specific set of circumstances t, t+1 is the only outcome..fate states that regardless of the specific circumstances of t, some event x will happen.

[. . .]Fatalism is the position that regardless of whether or not you have free will (in the model of fatalism you -could- be "freely making choices") it's all for naught - you're merely stuck flowing towards an inevitable outcome. It has nothing to do with whatever you think your brain does or choices are.

It has everything to do with free will. Because unless you are introducing ANOTHER mechanism for non-determinism, we are in fact talking about free will vs. determinism. If you think there is another mechanism, please feel free to introduce it.

because it means that everything that has ever happened, or ever will, is set in stone, rather than just certain crucial moments.

That's not fatalism -or- determinism.......-as stated. It is not determinism because determinism cannot ignore (and is defined by) -all- the "crucial moments". It is not fatalism as fatalism is not the position that something is set in stone - but that you are incapable of affecting whatever will occur. Depending on what you might point to as the origin of this setting in stone what you are discussing now is probably predetermination /predistination.

It's most definitely determinism. If determinism is true, then everything that will happen after now is already determined, i.e. set in stone. Fatalism is like the steerable cars at a Disneyland ride I remember. You can turn the steering wheel to go back and forth a little, but the car is still getting pulled around on a track. I suppose you could look at it as points on a graphed curve. The points represent the "intersections of fate" or whatever. If ONLY one curve can intersect all those points, then you have determinism: in which case, those points of fate are really just arbitrary selections of determined moments which you view as important.

As for "existence," I think you're wrong on that point. Nothing can really be created: there is just a stream from state to state. All the physical circumstances and "participants" have always existed, or determinism is necessarily false.

Lets run that through the meat grinder then.

-You and I must have always existed...or determinism is necessarily false-

I don't know bud.....doesn't seem like were on to anything with this one.

Physics isn't about you. You are a conceptual label for an uncountable number of particles vibrating in space according to the rules of the universe. Unless you are asserting that the assembly of particles into a human being adds something new to the universe that wasn't there before, then attaching a label onto a particular collection of particles doesn't really say anything about determinism. So no, just because some particles have taken on the name "bennyboy" doesn't (in the physical monist/determinist) model, mean anything new has been created; it was inevitable that the particles called "bennyboy" would be so assembled, and so called.