determinism versus indeterminism

[Purple Rabbit]

Yes. What I mean is that we still have free will. A lot of believers seem to think that determinism can't be true because if it was we wouldn't/couldn't have free will. But this is of course nonsense. We'd always have the free will we always had.

But it may turn out that that kind of free will is nothing more than an anecdote we tell ourselves a posteriori! Afterwards we say that hadn't we acted so and so, event X would not have occurred. It is interesting in this regard that Dennett in his work on cognitivism shows adherence to this idea, that the body is acting before the mind has reached the 'decision' to act that way. Waht is left is not the freedom of choice but an emulated concept of free will a posteriori.

To say the future is determined is not to say that you have no free will. If you knew the future and it was inevitible. That doesn't really make sense does it?

I'd say it does! If by free will you mean the freedom to influence in any way a priori a specific outcome it does, because an a posteriori 'explanation' in terms of cause and effect is not the same. In other words, you will have the illusion of free will instead of a priori free will.

If you knew that someone was going to attack you from behind does that mean you couldn't look behind you?? I don't see how it could. You don't lose your free will. You would have the same free will you always had. If the future is predetermined that does not mean there is no evitability. You still have free will.

This example won't suffice. If you hear that someone behind you(read: the neurons from your ear signal this) and suspect an attack (read: the neurons from your memory signal this), your neurons will fire automatically to signal danger and everything that happens after is fully determined by the the sum total of all previous events. There is no decision process taking place. All is just happening in a flow of cause and effect.

[Edwardo Piet]

But it may turn out that that kind of free will is nothing more than an anecdote we tell ourselves a posteriori! Afterwards we say that hadn't we acted so and so, event X would not have occurred. It is interesting in this regard that Dennett in his work on cognitivism shows adherence to this idea, that the body is acting before the mind has reached the 'decision' to act that way. Waht is left is not the freedom of choice but an emulated concept of free will a posteriori.

But there is still evitability right?

I'd say it does! If by free will you mean the freedom to influence in any way a priori a specific outcome it does, because an a posteriori 'explanation' in terms of cause and effect is not the same. In other words, you will have the illusion of free will instead of a priori free will.

Yeah well if I think about it if you KNEW that a particular future was definitely going to happen you couldn't really stop it. But if you don't know it then whether you believe the universe is deterministic or indetermistic a future is inevitable. Whatever that future is. But there is still evitability in the sense that you are not paralyzed if you think the future is determined. You can still make the same decisions as usual. You still have the same 'free will' that you generally think as free will.

This example won't suffice. If you hear that someone behind you(read: the neurons from your ear signal this) and suspect an attack (read: the neurons from your memory signal this), your neurons will fire automatically to signal danger and everything that happens after is fully determined by the the sum total of all previous events. There is no decision process taking place. All is just happening in a flow of cause and effect.

Yeah in a deterministic universe I see how thats true actually. But it doesn't take away evitability in the sense you don't lose freedom. You don't lose any free will from knowing the future absolutely - in a deterministic universe. Right?
Sorry, I haven't talked about free will much before. I find it fascinating. I have watched videos of Dan Dennett on free will and consciousness. But I haven't got any of his books yet. I intend to at least get 'Freedom Evolves', 'Consciousness Explained' and 'Breaking the spell'.
I like discussing with you. You make very good points. So far at least Well addressed too.
PS: In case you or anyone else doesn't know. Inevitable means unavoidable and evitable means avoidable. So if there is no evitability we would basically be paralyzed because we couldn't avoid anything at all. So there is of course, still freedom and free will; as in evitability - in a deterministic universe.

[Purple Rabbit]

But it may turn out that that kind of free will is nothing more than an anecdote we tell ourselves a posteriori! Afterwards we say that hadn't we acted so and so, event X would not have occurred. It is interesting in this regard that Dennett in his work on cognitivism shows adherence to this idea, that the body is acting before the mind has reached the 'decision' to act that way. Waht is left is not the freedom of choice but an emulated concept of free will a posteriori.

But there is still evitability right?

There is anecdotal evitability, we are able to construct a cause and effect tale for ourselves and save it on our 'hard disk' for later use.

I'd say it does! If by free will you mean the freedom to influence in any way a priori a specific outcome it does, because an a posteriori 'explanation' in terms of cause and effect is not the same. In other words, you will have the illusion of free will instead of a priori free will.

Yeah well if I think about it if you KNEW that a particular future was definitely going to happen you couldn't really stop it. But if you don't know it then whether you believe the universe is deterministic or indetermistic a future is inevitable. Whatever that future is.

That sounds like inevitablity to me.

But there is still evitability in the sense that you are not paralyzed if you think the future is determined. You can still make the same decisions as usual. You still have the same 'free will' that you generally think as free will.

And this sounds like evitability to me. So in the former quote you on the one hand conclude that our specific future is inevitable, and in the above you suggest that there is still somehow evitability. In order to do so imo you have to smuggle in a posteriori free will (free will reasoning afterwards).

Yeah in a deterministic universe I see how thats true actually. But it doesn't take away evitability in the sense you don't lose freedom. You don't lose any free will from knowing the future absolutely - in a deterministic universe. Right?

The essential issue isn't about deterministic vs indeterministic, I agree. But it certainly feels as a loss that free will does not exist in the sense that we can influence outcomes directly by intervening in cause and effect cycli with decision processess.

PS: In case you or anyone else doesn't know. Inevitable means unavoidable and evitable means avoidable. So if there is no evitability we would basically be paralyzed because we couldn't avoid anything at all. So there is of course, still freedom and free will; as in evitability - in a deterministic universe.

The cause-and-effect-anecdotes with which we analyse our actions (afterwards!) are saved as experiences and can be retrieved later in assessing a similar situation. Imo there's only evitability in the sense that our prior experiences are input for our actions. There is however imo no independent human decision process that intervenes in the cause and effect flow that is governed by laws of nature, be it deterministic or undeterministic.

PS: I too like this discussion and value your opinion.

[Edwardo Piet]

There is anecdotal evitability, we are able to construct a cause and effect tale for ourselves and save it on our 'hard disk' for later use.

Yes I agree there is anecdotal evitability. I am just not convinced that thats the only evitability. There may be others. It seems you have thought it through more than me. I certainly want to get 'Freedom Evolves.'

That sounds like inevitablity to me.

Indeed. I was just trying to elaborate it a bit to help at least myself understand it And see if I have understood you correctly.

And this sounds like evitability to me. So in the former quote you on the one hand conclude that our specific future is inevitable, and in the above you suggest that there is still somehow evitability. In order to do so imo you have to smuggle in a posteriori free will (free will reasoning afterwards).

Yeah I agree. I'm just not sure if thats the only evitability because I'm not a determinist particularly. I'm not sure really. I haven't thought about indeterminism much I guess. There's not really much evidence THERE for me to disprove that I know of But there could be seperate futures I guess if you get into the crazy world of random (or seemingly random) quantum mechanics for example. And perhaps random genetic mutation.

The essential issue isn't about deterministic vs indeterministic, I agree. But it certainly feels as a loss that free will does not exist in the sense that we can influence outcomes directly by intervening in cause and effect cycli with decision processess.

What I don't get is that if you knew the future and this made you feel a loss and lose your free will. Then does that mean it was inevitable that you would lose your free will through understanding that the future is determined?
I don't see how it would. If I saw in the future that a steam roller was going to run over me at an extremely slow rate from behind me.
How could I possibly not find the evitability to turn round, spot it and move out the way (in the plenty of time that allowed me to do it)? Considering the fact I would know exactly when it was coming and that I had plenty of time to get out of the way and that it was behind me. If that caused me to freeze because it was determined that I would. I don't get that. Surely I would - after recognizing WHAT was going to happen - know it was behind me and just MOVE. This is confusing to me. Am I making any sense here? Lol

The cause-and-effect-anecdotes with which we analyse our actions (afterwards!) are saved as experiences and can be retrieved later in assessing a similar situation. Imo there's only evitability in the sense that our prior experiences are input for our actions. There is however imo no independent human decision process that intervenes in the cause and effect flow that is governed by laws of nature, be it deterministic or undeterministic.

I agree with that but I'm not sure I'm a determinist yet. I just think that whether determinist or indeterminist. There is still evitability.

PS: I too like this discussion and value your opinion.

Good Its mutual then.

[josef rosenkranz]

(In response to the original post)

Hmmm. To be honest it looks like you are redefining the words in order to make them support your argument. Determinism isn't simply an event that has a definite number of causes, and indeterminism isn't simply an event with an indefinite number of causes. Determinism and indeterminism can only apply on the basis that everything in reality is known, and therefore you could see cause and effect completely.

In fact this is why indeterminism and determinism are not branches of science but that of philosophy. Science has commented on indeterminism by saying that the principle of uncertainty (if true) means that aspects of nature are truly random and spontaneous, but this in no way confirms either.

There is a further paradox which sets indeterminism and determinism into philosophy; the fact that an indeterministic and deterministic universe would look exactly the same to an internal observer (i.e. us). There is literally no way we can "re-run" time to see which is true.

I think that modern science and philosophy are so tightly linked that you can barely separate them as different branches.
Anyway you can not separate physical events from causality because each event hapens within space-time coordinates being always a link
in a chain of previous timely and posterior timely events.
The current event is always the effect of a multitude of previous events and the cause of a multitude of posterior events.
There can not be a physical event born out of nothing and it can not disappear in nothing.(Except the God allmighty who does not exist).
The cause as well as the effect can be whether deterministic or indeterministic or dual in some interlinked combination.
Now,physical laws which express the cause /effect relation between events are never absolute but always limited within the frame of certain
conventional margins.
I'm technical minded so let's take as an example a simple law known from high school,namely the law of Ohm, which is expressed as
U/R=I ,where U is the electrical voltage measured in Volts,R is the resistance measured in Ohms and I is the current measured in Amperes.
Take a resistor of 10 ohms, plug it in your power outlet of 220 volts and inserting an Ammeter in this circuit you'll measure exactly 22 amps.
You can repeat the experiment a lot of times and you'll always obtain the same result.
Does that mean that we have here a deterministic relation?
Obviously -yes, but only to be satisfactory for a technician and not for a scientist.
The scientst will measure all three parametres with increasingly accurate apparatuses and he will find that the results are always slightly different.
The cause of it can be that the voltage fluctuates prmanently for an indefinite number of reasons and so does the resistence as a result of influence of the ambient temperature or humidity or changes in the strucure of it's material during the repeated experiment.
The scientist will therefore rewrite the simple law of Ohm to a more complex one related to a certain number of external conditions.
Now repeating the experiment for a big number of times he will obtain a statistical result which has at it's core the determinisic values derived from Ohms basic law and at it's margins, the more experiments he has performed the more indeterministic values.
If the scientist will try to measure the three paremetres down to the level of subatomical particles he will be trapped in the uncertainity principle.
This was a simple experiment but more of such experiments can be imagined in every domain of science especially in byology where al laws ,even the most basical ones are of a statisical structure.
I think that I have made myself a little bit clearer when speaking about the duality of determinism and indeterminism.
I see the importance of recognition of this aspect as a law of nature for the benefit of atheism for reasons I have already expressed in previos threads.

[Purple Rabbit]

I think that modern science and philosophy are so tightly linked that you can barely separate them as different branches.
Anyway you can not separate physical events from causality because each event hapens within space-time coordinates being always a link
in a chain of previous timely and posterior timely events.
The current event is always the effect of a multitude of previous events and the cause of a multitude of posterior events.
There can not be a physical event born out of nothing and it can not disappear in nothing.(Except the God allmighty who does not exist).

The current scientific view is that the Casimir effect is an example of an uncaused event.

Does that mean that we have here a deterministic relation?
Obviously -yes, but only to be satisfactory for a technician and not for a scientist.
The scientst will measure all three parametres with increasingly accurate apparatuses and he will find that the results are always slightly different.
The cause of it can be that the voltage fluctuates prmanently for an indefinite number of reasons and so does the resistence as a result of influence of the ambient temperature or humidity or changes in the strucure of it's material during the repeated experiment.
The scientist will therefore rewrite the simple law of Ohm to a more complex one related to a certain number of external conditions.
Now repeating the experiment for a big number of times he will obtain a statistical result which has at it's core the determinisic values derived from Ohms basic law and at it's margins, the more experiments he has performed the more indeterministic values.
If the scientist will try to measure the three paremetres down to the level of subatomical particles he will be trapped in the uncertainity principle.
This was a simple experiment but more of such experiments can be imagined in every domain of science especially in byology where al laws ,even the most basical ones are of a statisical structure.
I think that I have made myself a little bit clearer when speaking about the duality of determinism and indeterminism.
I see the importance of recognition of this aspect as a law of nature for the benefit of atheism for reasons I have already expressed in previos threads.

The philosopher takes it yet a step further and stumbles on the Problem Of Induction so rightly identified by David Hume as a critical issue in our thinking. The philosopher would say that the results of previous experiments in no way logically guarantee the outcome of the next experiment. It is not an absolute but a probable. Hume couldn't fix this shortcoming and nobody has ever found a way out of it. That the sun has risen every day for millions of years is not an absolute guarantee that it will rise tomorrow. Essentially there are two methods of reasoning deduction and induction. Only strict deductive logic can yield absolute results and only in the sense that given that the assumptions are true and the deduction is sound, the conclusion is absolute. Empirical science heavily leans on inductive methods, as does your Ohm Law, and therefore can't give absolute results.

[josef rosenkranz]

I think that modern science and philosophy are so tightly linked that you can barely separate them as different branches.
Anyway you can not separate physical events from causality because each event hapens within space-time coordinates being always a link
in a chain of previous timely and posterior timely events.
The current event is always the effect of a multitude of previous events and the cause of a multitude of posterior events.
There can not be a physical event born out of nothing and it can not disappear in nothing.(Except the God allmighty who does not exist).

The current scientific view is that the Casimir effect is an example of an uncaused event.

Does that mean that we have here a deterministic relation?
Obviously -yes, but only to be satisfactory for a technician and not for a scientist.
The scientst will measure all three parametres with increasingly accurate apparatuses and he will find that the results are always slightly different.
The cause of it can be that the voltage fluctuates prmanently for an indefinite number of reasons and so does the resistence as a result of influence of the ambient temperature or humidity or changes in the strucure of it's material during the repeated experiment.
The scientist will therefore rewrite the simple law of Ohm to a more complex one related to a certain number of external conditions.
Now repeating the experiment for a big number of times he will obtain a statistical result which has at it's core the determinisic values derived from Ohms basic law and at it's margins, the more experiments he has performed the more indeterministic values.
If the scientist will try to measure the three paremetres down to the level of subatomical particles he will be trapped in the uncertainity principle.
This was a simple experiment but more of such experiments can be imagined in every domain of science especially in byology where al laws ,even the most basical ones are of a statisical structure.
I think that I have made myself a little bit clearer when speaking about the duality of determinism and indeterminism.
I see the importance of recognition of this aspect as a law of nature for the benefit of atheism for reasons I have already expressed in previos threads.

The philosopher takes it yet a step further and stumbles on the Problem Of Induction so rightly identified by David Hume as a critical issue in our thinking. The philosopher would say that the results of previous experiments in no way logically guarantee the outcome of the next experiment. It is not an absolute but a probable. Hume couldn't fix this shortcoming and nobody has ever found a way out of it. That the sun has risen every day for millions of years is not an absolute guarantee that it will rise tomorrow. Essentially there are two methods of reasoning deduction and induction. Only strict deductive logic can yield absolute results and only in the sense that given that the assumptions are true and the deduction is sound, the conclusion is absolute. Empirical science heavily leans on inductive methods, as does your Ohm Law, and therefore can't give absolute results.

The problems we are dicussing here have many angles to be looked at
one of them being deduction and induction.
I think that when repeating an experiment based on a scientific law and one obtains the same results within a frame of conventional limits, one can call the law as deterministic and the results as deductive.
If one searches beyond these frames and/or beyond a certain number of repetitions the results might begin to deviate from the previous values
which blur the deduction and are following more and more indeterministic.
Of course ,as you say,that if the sun rises every day for millions of years there is no guarrantee that it will rise tomorrow but this is just what I said meaning that beyond a certain number of repetitions the law of the Earth cycling around the Sun will lose its deterministic characteristic.
Does that conclusion change from a scientific point of view the law of the Earth cycling around the Sun? -Of course not.
My conclusion is that most of scientific laws are statistical laws characterized by both deterministic and indeterministic results ,depending on the accuracy of measurement and the number of effectuated experiments which are supposed to proof the rightness of the law.

I have not heard about the uncaused Casimir effect but I consider that our knowledge of the Universe is still limited so that effects not explained to day might find a cause to morrow.For instance we know next to nothing about the dark matter,about antimatter and about other may be crucial issues.There are more than sure issues which we don't know that we don't know.

[Purple Rabbit]

The problems we are dicussing here have many angles to be looked at
one of them being deduction and induction.
I think that when repeating an experiment based on a scientific law and one obtains the same results within a frame of conventional limits, one can call the law as deterministic and the results as deductive.
If one searches beyond these frames and/or beyond a certain number of repetitions the results might begin to deviate from the previous values
which blur the deduction and are following more and more indeterministic.
Of course ,as you say,that if the sun rises every day for millions of years there is no guarrantee that it will rise tomorrow but this is just what I said meaning that beyond a certain number of repetitions the law of the Earth cycling around the Sun will lose its deterministic characteristic.

The problem of induction is much more fundamental than you assume here. You cannot deduce in any absolute way (like in deductive mathematics) conclude from past events behaviour for future events. The latter does not follow sufficient and necessarily from the former. The law is not deductive. This problem is at a much more basic level than that the sun stops rising everyday as a result of a special situation stopping the earth rotation. It means the rule is not a result from deductive logic. You can call it inductive reasoning but you cannot at any time call it deductive reasoning. The law of nature, all laws of nature, are inductive laws, they unsubstantiated assume that behaviour from the past can be extrapolated into the future.

Does that conclusion change from a scientific point of view the law of the Earth cycling around the Sun? -Of course not.

Yes it does. It follows that no law of nature can said to be absolute in a logical sense.

My conclusion is that most of scientific laws are statistical laws characterized by both deterministic and indeterministic results ,depending on the accuracy of measurement and the number of effectuated experiments which are supposed to proof the rightness of the law.

There are fundamental limits to the accuracy which with we can measure things. These fundamental limits are central in quantum mechanics. Infinite accuracy does not exist.

I have not heard about the uncaused Casimir effect but I consider that our knowledge of the Universe is still limited so that effects not explained to day might find a cause to morrow. For instance we know next to nothing about the dark matter,about antimatter and about other may be crucial issues.There are more than sure issues which we don't know that we don't know.

Again this effect according to the current scientific view is not due to lack of knowledge but fundamental to nature. Of course you can always assume that a random event has some unknown underlying determined cause, but all indications are that this is not the case with the Casimir effect. It is important to note however that no fundamental laws of nature, like that of energy conservation, are violated by it. That's because in the Casimir effect a short lived particle anti-particle pair is formed.

[josef rosenkranz]

purple rabbit wrote
(quote)
The problem of induction is much more fundamental than you assume here. You cannot deduce in any absolute way (like in deductive mathematics) conclude from past events behaviour for future events. The latter does not follow sufficient and necessarily from the former. The law is not deductive. This problem is at a much more basic level than that the sun stops rising everyday as a result of a special situation stopping the earth rotation. It means the rule is not a result from deductive logic. You can call it inductive reasoning but you cannot at any time call it deductive reasoning. The law of nature, all laws of nature, are inductive laws, they unsubstantiated assume that behaviour from the past can be extrapolated into the future.(unquote)

You seem to have not understood me.
I did not speak of any absolute law.I affirm that any physical law ,whether inductive or deductive as you say, is valid in deterministic terms only within conventional limits .
Take for instance Newtons law of physics ,they are valid only within limited speeds of the system where they act.
May be that except the speed of light which is considered as absolute,
the laws stated by Einstein and later by great physicists as Hawkings,Penrose,Friedman and others. are laws which have experimental confirmation and are valid also only within conventional limits although they deal with cosmological problems.
From a philosophical point of view they might be inductive or deductive
but that does not disminish their value as laws, accessible to the consciousness of human minds, which are explaining how the Universe ticks.
True tha modern mathematics handles with the problem of induction and deduction but I am not sure if the mathemathical formulas of physical laws by Einstein and others take into acount this aspect.

As for the Casimir effect if it is a result of an encounter between matter ant antimatter particles than ,may be simplistic thinking,here you are with a cause.

[Purple Rabbit]

As for the Casimir effect if it is a result of an encounter between matter ant antimatter particles than ,may be simplistic thinking,here you are with a cause.

It is not due to an encounter of matter and anti-matter. The matter and anti-matter particles are a result of random creation 'out of the blue'. In other words the phenomenon is uncaused.

---

purple rabbit wrote
(quote)
The problem of induction is much more fundamental than you assume here. You cannot deduce in any absolute way (like in deductive mathematics) conclude from past events behaviour for future events. The latter does not follow sufficient and necessarily from the former. The law is not deductive. This problem is at a much more basic level than that the sun stops rising everyday as a result of a special situation stopping the earth rotation. It means the rule is not a result from deductive logic. You can call it inductive reasoning but you cannot at any time call it deductive reasoning. The law of nature, all laws of nature, are inductive laws, they unsubstantiated assume that behaviour from the past can be extrapolated into the future.(unquote)

You seem to have not understood me.
I did not speak of any absolute law.I affirm that any physical law ,whether inductive or deductive as you say, is valid in deterministic terms only within conventional limits .
Take for instance Newtons law of physics ,they are valid only within limited speeds of the system where they act.
May be that except the speed of light which is considered as absolute,
the laws stated by Einstein and later by great physicists as Hawkings,Penrose,Friedman and others. are laws which have experimental confirmation and are valid also only within conventional limits although they deal with cosmological problems.
From a philosophical point of view they might be inductive or deductive
but that does not disminish their value as laws, accessible to the consciousness of human minds, which are explaining how the Universe ticks.
True tha modern mathematics handles with the problem of induction and deduction but I am not sure if the mathemathical formulas of physical laws by Einstein and others take into acount this aspect.

All laws you speak of in the above are purely inductive laws. Even the law of constant speed of light is inductive. Noone can gaurantee you 100% that the speed of light tomorrow stil will be constant because there is no known deductive method to obtain that result. Still all those laws have strong empirical evidence. The question is, there is no purely logical reason known why these laws hould hold at all. All these laws rest on observations in the past. We only ASSUME they keep validity in the future. And this so far has been a very fruitful assumption indeed. I am not arguing that we should drop the assumption, I'm only observing that it is an assumption and that it means that determinism has this logicaly unvalidated assumption at it's root.