Determinism

[Purple Rabbit]

Hey, it's allright if you don't agree. But please, please, respond to the arguments if you wanna have some real exchange of thought. The EMW model shows that determinism can go together with multiple futures. I haven't invented that, Everett did.

The Wikipedia definition does not make a statement about one possible future, you read that into it because you simply assert that it is implied.

To refute that assertion it suffices to give just one counter example of a fully deterministic description of nature that has multiple futures. EMW is that example, no matter how hypothetical it may be and no matter how counterintuitive it may seem to you. If you are that evidence guy, then follow the evidence. It is right there in front of you. Maybe this will help. And I do sympathize with the emotion that it's counterintuitive, but at this level of physics, especially when quantum mechanics is involved, intuition is a bad guide.

WingedFoe seems to get it though: "Everything is determined by past events." is a far better short for causal determinism than "one posible future". The latter predicts the future from the now, the former reasons how the now was formed from the past. There is a difference, and in this case it's very relevant.

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I think that its worth noting that in science determinism is mainly being contrasted with indeterminacy. Whereas in philosophy, determinism is mainly being contrasted with libertarian free will. Now as far as libertarian free will goes, it doesn't matter if the underlying microphysics is deterministic or stochastic. For philosophical libertarianism to work, free will has to be somehow 'self-causing' (or perhaps not caused or determined at all).

True, these are issues on another level.

Re. genetic determinism: I'm very well acqainted with what Dawkins and Dennett say about the matter. You're correct in saying that they don't view human behaviour as being genetically determined. However, they do come very close to viewing the physical phenotype as being genetically determined. Genotypes are seen as being programs, and the genetic program or algorithm is largely responsible for determining ontogeny. Human behaviour is co-determined by genes and memes.

You confuse me with your use of "phenotype" because you seem to suggest that behaviour is not part of the phenotype. If that's indeed what you suggest, my wording would be "genotype".

Wikipedia: "A phenotype is any observable characteristic or trait of an organism: such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, behavior, and products of behavior (such as a bird's nest)."

In The Extended Phenotype Dawkins suggested that phenotype could be extended with behaviour. But IMO he did not suggest with that, that behaviour is fully determined by genetic markup alone.