Determinism Is Self Defeating

[bennyboy]

Determinism is a position that states that for any event, there are certain conditions that will lead only to that event. That certain conditions have only one outcome.

You seem to be talking about sufficient causes: the existence of state t guarantees that state t + 1 necessarily arises; specifically, there is no free will, and no hidden variables to interfere with the hypothetical predictability that we could have if all the other impediments to perfect prediction (like digit precision and calculation power) were removed. I have not defined it otherwise.

Predetermination is a position that states that some event will happen.....conditions are irrelevant. A predetermined event x happens -even if- circumstances should yield event y. 1+1= (pre)8.

That makes the two positions mutually exclusive.

This is a weird situation. I've never suggested any such position, but you introduced the word in response to one of my posts. Either I didn't explain my position well enough, or you didn't read it carefully enough, or both.

LOL, no...it's a friendly discussion about all of the ways in which these positions are not the same. I fear that the only reason you feel that they are "the same" ultimately boils down to their common threat to "free will" or "mind" or what-have-you. You've lumped them in as enemies to the cause. As I've stated, fatalism and predetermination -do- allow choices, they do allow non deterministic (or events based on probability, or even random) events.

This would all be relevant, except that you introduced the terms into the discussion. I would be more than happy to discard fatalism and predetermination, because the thread was doing fine without them. I believe that you only introduced them because you mistook my meaning when I said the words "set in stone." All I meant by that was that in causal determinism, for any given time, no matter how far in the future, there is only one possible state of the universe. If you think there is any openness in the future states that the universe will arrive at, you should probably explain its mechanism. If you think there is not any openness, then understand that's what I was referring to.