Determinism Is Self Defeating

[bennyboy]

"Adequate": a-unicornism is simply the position that we can't find any unicorns on the ground. We've looked, they aren't there, few would argue. To show "True" a-unicornism you would have to show that all variables for the location of the unicorn are devoid of unicorns.

Don't start withsaying that determinism is simply "the lack of a belief that anything affect outcomes other than known/knowable physical laws." It's a positive assertion about the nature of causality, and it hasn't been proven.

Now, beyond the mechanics of how we might craft our position there are some other problems. For example. If so much as adequate determinism holds (the rock falls) then non-deterministic this and that's are not having the kind of effect that you would hope for in your example of what one non-deterministic thing can do to affect a deterministic system. For example...lets say one of those variables you invoked about the rock actually was non-deterministic.....the rock is still behaving in a deterministic way when it falls. Both adequates (yours and mine) can be true simultaneously. The discussion then becomes one of how much power or weight we might assign to any non-deterministic thing in affecting deterministic behaviors (which is where we begin to flirt with fatalism - and also the point at which predeterminism becomes irreconcilable). All of this, mind you, is under the assumption that there actually is some non-deterministic thing flitting about alongside deterministic things. Neither position is the default for any given object or behavior so saying -you can't show that it's "x" doesn't make a case for "y" - of course. We'd have to line up some "adeqautely" deterministic things alongside some "adequately" non-deterministic things and see how it all pans out (as I don't imagine either of us are stumping for a "true" position of -anything- under such metrics.....

The two kinds of determinism are NOT like. "Adequate" determinism is statistical. "Real" determinism is absolute. Everyone knows that things sometimes work out how you expect.

The scientific process you are talking about isn't acceptable to me. We are not talking about "adequate" anything, because "adequate" determinism is an oxymoron: "The universe can only go exactly 1 way, and no other; and I'll prove this to you by predicting the approximate location of a gazillion, completely uncounted and unmonitored, that I assure you exist in this rock." That exactly doesn't prove that the universe couldn't have turned out other than it does.

re: things flitting about affecting things
You are attempting to paint the picture in religious or magical terms: because flitting sounds like something angels or fairies would do. I have two candidates in mind: 1) randomness; 2) mind

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You need to take a historical perspective. Take 500 years ago, and look at how many unanswered questions that have been answered so far. There's every reason that we should be optimistic, and that whatever hasn't been answered could be in the next 500 years.

I agree. If there IS any variability in the universe, scientists will categorize it, enumerate it, and look for ways to benefit from it. Even if God was proven/provable, that wouldn't mean anything. The only thing that can stop science is that causation get completely broken, and nothing can be predivcted any more.

If you want magic, look to magnets instead.

They have been thoroughly explained by QED.

The truth is I didn't know that, but thank goodness I was being ironical anyway.

Why the pessimism? Why do you think we will never have a theory to explain that? Just 100 years ago we did not understand why two atoms could combine to form a molecule. Today we do. Just 100 years ago, cosmology didn't exist. Today, it does -- and it's yanking the theists in a very bad way. Why do you insist that we should know everything, today?

I have a specific reason in this case. Science is a process of objective study, and the mind exists only as a subjective entity. I do not accept the equation of mind with brain function, because subjective existence and objective existence are not of like type.

You are looking at a "why" question - "Why do we exist?" is not a question that science will ever answer. Science can only shed some light by telling us "how" the universe works. But it is up to each and every one of us to find an answer as to why we exist, what do we want from life, how to make our lives meaningful. You wouldn't want to make those decisions based on superstitions, falsehoods or wild fairy tales as found in most religions .

Some "why" questions, at least as I see them, serve as a standing challenge to particular theories. Why the mind exists matters, because the current scientific position is that the universe can be understood purely in objective terms. To say that some objective processes are subjective is to say that dark is sometimes light.