Determinism

[Nielsio]

Where do people get the idea from that if everything is determined, there is no reason to do anything? That there is no morality and no responsibility?

Determinism doesn't mean we know what is going to happen; in fact: causality says that we CANNOT know what will happen because of a ton of theoretical problems (let alone practical).

Example:
I go to the grocery store to get food. I assume causality in doing that. If I don't assume causality, then there's really no reason to do anything because my actions do not have any logical implications. So I could step in my car, start it, be on the other side of the moon, and turn into a monkey doing a hoolahoop dance. But if I accept causality, then me doing all the actions will have causal consequences and I can actually get the stuff to my house.
Thinking that it doesn't matter what I do, and that the groceries will or will not end up at my house no matter what is using an inverse of the idea that cannot be applied that way. Nobody knows whether they will end up there, and if I decide to be a nihilist and do nothing, there is one thing I know for sure: it's that they will not end up there.

Interested in some thoughts..

[hmkpoker]

What gets me is people who are atheists that don't believe in determinism. Boggles my mind.

[chezlaw]

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What gets me is people who are atheists that don't believe in determinism. Boggles my mind.

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Strange thing to be boggled about.

There doesn't seem to be any good reason to believe in determinism.

chez

[hmkpoker]

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What gets me is people who are atheists that don't believe in determinism. Boggles my mind.

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Strange thing to be boggled about.

There doesn't seem to be any good reason to believe in determinism.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you address the scientific, causal principles present in material phenomena?

If not determinism, what is it that you believe in?

(I don't mean for these questions to be obnoxious or rhetorical, it's something I genuinely can't wrap my mind around)

[chezlaw]

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What gets me is people who are atheists that don't believe in determinism. Boggles my mind.

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Strange thing to be boggled about.

There doesn't seem to be any good reason to believe in determinism.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you address the scientific, causal principles present in material phenomena?

If not determinism, what is it that you believe in?

(I don't mean for these questions to be obnoxious or rhetorical, it's something I genuinely can't wrap my mind around)

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Current science is pretty firmly based on an undeterminstic interpretation of quantum theory.

Although that doesn't prove the world isn't deterministic it does make believing it to be deterministic rather strange.

chez

[Nielsio]

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What gets me is people who are atheists that don't believe in determinism. Boggles my mind.

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Strange thing to be boggled about.

There doesn't seem to be any good reason to believe in determinism.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you address the scientific, causal principles present in material phenomena?

If not determinism, what is it that you believe in?

(I don't mean for these questions to be obnoxious or rhetorical, it's something I genuinely can't wrap my mind around)

[/ QUOTE ]
Current science is pretty firmly based on an undeterminstic interpretation of quantum theory.

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Quantum mechanics has the appearence of chance-based behaviour. But that doesn't mean it's uncaused. It just means that on the level we can study it now, it has that appearence; and that we simply don't know the underlying mechanisms. Clearly if you shoot two particles at each other and 70% of the times it behaves a certain and 30% of the time it behaves a different, there is a cause, even though it appears chance-based. Because if there is no cause, the distribution would be scattered even. And even then we need to assume pure causality and in our measuring tools in order to say anything about the measurements; which makes the entire exercise moot if we are 'looking' for 'uncausedness'.

You need to understand that you cannot prove randomness, chance-based or anything uncaused. And you also cannot prove it without assuming causation.

Reality is built up from matter, time and causation (or a different conversion of these things). Without one of them there is no reality.

[madnak]

I agree that determinism doesn't diminish the impact of human actions. Since every action affects the "causal stream," every action is important. So determinism has no effect on responsibility.

However, neither does it offer an excuse for punishment. People may be immoral under a deterministic context, but they're immoral due to circumstances beyond their control. Therefore, it's silly to suggest that they need to suffer due to their actions, however negative the intent or the consequences. Thus, situations like hell become highly irrational and almost impossible to justify. With a mystical "free will" it's possible for a person to "deserve" punishment even when there's no concrete reason for it. In that sense free will "matters" more.

Also I think some people find the idea that their actions are constrained, even at a theoretical level, to be distasteful. They're much more comfortable believing that their actions are somehow free. I can't say I blame them.

It's easy to see a deterministic universe as mechanical and heartless. I don't believe that perspective is valid, but it can be difficult to integrate the view of a universe with color and meaning with a universe in which every event is caused by circumstances ultimately beyond our control. While our immediate control can be great under a deterministic framework, at a more fundamental and reductionistic level we have none. I don't think there's any more need to look at our individual choices in such a reductionistic way than there is to look at our fellow human beings as reductionistic collections of particles, but the visceral impact seems significant in some people.

Chez, I think the implicit assumption is that probability "counts" as deterministic. Nielso's original comments seem aimed at those who believe in free will or some other metaphysical construct to determine action. I think for the purposes of this discussion, probabilistic determinists can be considered determinists. I agree probability doesn't give a reason to believe in determinism, but to me the idea of a free will causing effects at a quantum level isn't very harmonious. Personally there seems to be a higher degree of parsimony in the deterministic approaches. But my reasons are probably no more logical than anyone else's. I think agnosticism on the subject is the only "correct" view, and I also think that free will is a red herring for practical purposes. Never the less, it's an issue that has deep resonance so it's worth discussing.

[chezlaw]

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What gets me is people who are atheists that don't believe in determinism. Boggles my mind.

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Strange thing to be boggled about.

There doesn't seem to be any good reason to believe in determinism.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you address the scientific, causal principles present in material phenomena?

If not determinism, what is it that you believe in?

(I don't mean for these questions to be obnoxious or rhetorical, it's something I genuinely can't wrap my mind around)

[/ QUOTE ]
Current science is pretty firmly based on an undeterminstic interpretation of quantum theory.

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Quantum mechanics has the appearence of chance-based behaviour. But that doesn't mean it's uncaused. It just means that on the level we can study it now, it has that appearence; and that we simply don't know the underlying mechanisms. Clearly if you shoot two particles at each other and 70% of the times it behaves a certain and 30% of the time it behaves a different, there is a cause, even though it appears chance-based. Because if there is no cause, the distribution would be scattered even. And even then we need to assume pure causality and in our measuring tools in order to say anything about the measurements; which makes the entire exercise moot if we are 'looking' for 'uncausedness'.

You need to understand that you cannot prove randomness, chance-based or anything uncaused. And you also cannot prove it without assuming causation.

Reality is built up from matter, time and causation (or a different conversion of these things). Without one of them there is no reality.

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I think you misunderstood what I said.

QM is consistent with determinism but its also consistent with non-determinsim.

As currently it appears non-deterministic and is consistent with non-determinism it would be strange to believe that the world is deterministic.

chez

[chezlaw]

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Chez, I think the implicit assumption is that probability "counts" as deterministic.

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okay that would change everything.

I struggle to get my head round including random events as deterministic. I'm not at all sure that I want to /images/graemlins/smile.gif

chez

[jason1990]

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Quantum mechanics has the appearence of chance-based behaviour. But that doesn't mean it's uncaused. It just means that on the level we can study it now, it has that appearence; and that we simply don't know the underlying mechanisms.

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This sounds like the hidden variables theory that Einstein believed in. It's the idea that there exist deterministic mechanisms behind quantum phenomena, but we simply don't know them (maybe someday we will, or maybe they are impossible to know). It has been proven that the hidden variables theory is inconsistent with a local universe. In other words, there can only be hidden variables if distant events are capable of instantaneously affecting each other. Theoretically, it is Bell's Inequality which implies this inconsistency, and Bell's Inequality has been verified experimentally.

[Nielsio]

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Quantum mechanics has the appearence of chance-based behaviour. But that doesn't mean it's uncaused. It just means that on the level we can study it now, it has that appearence; and that we simply don't know the underlying mechanisms.

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This sounds like the hidden variables theory that Einstein believed in. It's the idea that there exist deterministic mechanisms behind quantum phenomena, but we simply don't know them (maybe someday we will, or maybe they are impossible to know). It has been proven that the hidden variables theory is inconsistent with a local universe. In other words, there can only be hidden variables if distant events are capable of instantaneously affecting each other. Theoretically, it is Bell's Inequality which implies this inconsistency, and Bell's Inequality has been verified experimentally.

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Are you claiming that we can do experiments and have *complete* control and knowledge of the situation AND that we are not affecting it?

If I throw this dice, it will have a chance-based outcome:
http://www.byov.com/Images/gencon2004/5sideddie2.jpg.
So do we stop there? No.

If you look at scientific understanding, starting when humans first came about, it has gradually increased. So at first we didn't understand something at all, but slowly things started to make sense. According to your idea, we could have claimed determinism was untrue at any stage of our discoveries.

I understand that at the smallest level, we might be even theoretically impossible to measure things, because of it's nature (energy/string-type behaviour that cannot be measured without changing it, or cannot be measured at all). But that STILL doesn't mean things aren't caused.

[Nielsio]

check out my response to jason

[hmkpoker]

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Chez, I think the implicit assumption is that probability "counts" as deterministic. Nielso's original comments seem aimed at those who believe in free will or some other metaphysical construct to determine action.

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Yeah, this is what I meant when I want talking about non-deterministic atheists.

QM is the only explanation for indeterminism that makes any sense, because it suggests that the continuity of time that classical determinism is predicated upon is bunk. I can't really argue with this since I'm not much of a physicist and haven't really sat down and pondered relativity, although I don't think that the disparitity in time on the intra-quantum level plays that much of an effect on inter-quanta interactions, which then greatly resemble classical determinism.

Either way, QM doesn't explain free will /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[chezlaw]

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Quantum mechanics has the appearence of chance-based behaviour. But that doesn't mean it's uncaused. It just means that on the level we can study it now, it has that appearence; and that we simply don't know the underlying mechanisms.

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This sounds like the hidden variables theory that Einstein believed in. It's the idea that there exist deterministic mechanisms behind quantum phenomena, but we simply don't know them (maybe someday we will, or maybe they are impossible to know). It has been proven that the hidden variables theory is inconsistent with a local universe. In other words, there can only be hidden variables if distant events are capable of instantaneously affecting each other. Theoretically, it is Bell's Inequality which implies this inconsistency, and Bell's Inequality has been verified experimentally.

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Doesn't have to be instantaneously. Just faster than some threshold currently thought to be c.

chez

[Piers]

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What gets me is people who are atheists that don't believe in determinism. Boggles my mind.

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I can understand your position. Still it does suggest a certain lack of imagination.

A lot of the time it appears to be confusion between deterministic and predictability.

Personally it seems intuitively obvious that the universe is deterministic but that the implicit underlying mechanics is logically beyond our ability to comprehend; So that at a human level it might as well be non deterministic.

Still I have seem people consider the daftdess things intuitively obvious.

[jason1990]

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Doesn't have to be instantaneously. Just faster than some threshold currently thought to be c.

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Hmm, I'm not so sure about this. I believe that if you arbitrarily set the threshold, the theory shows that the communication must be faster than that. Hence, it must be faster than any arbitrary threshold, i.e. there is no threshold. Therefore, it must be instantaneous.

For instance, if you have a model of the universe where the threshold is 2c, that is still a local model and inconsistent with hidden variables.

However, I suppose you could have a model where there is no instantaneous communication, but given any number x, you can find an instance of communication faster than x. This might be consistent with hidden variables, and maybe this is what you were referring to. Of course, it would have to be an infinite model. Again, I'm not so sure about this...

[jason1990]

There is a big difference between claiming that determinism is untrue because we can't explain some apparent randomness, and proving that determinism is untrue. I am saying that there is a "proof" that determinism is untrue.

The proof, as with all physics proofs, involves logic and experimental evidence. The experiments are rock solid and the evidence they provide is not ambiguous in any way. The logic is also rock solid. It is the premises of this argument that are up for debate. Namely, it uses the premise that the universe is local. If you deny this premise, then you can throw the proof out the window.

Analogously, for many years we had solid proofs of the validity of Newtonian mechanics, but we were wrong. We were wrong because our premises about the speed of light were wrong. Now we have a proof that determinism is untrue. If we are wrong, then it is because one of our premises is false. Physicists are not saying, "Well, determinism is untrue because we've done a lot of experiments, we can't explain this randomness, so we're giving up -- to hell with determinism." It's a completely different situation altogether.

[madnak]

Those assumption would have to be metaphysical to actually disprove determinism, because the causal mechanisms could be "hidden" metaphysical mechanisms rather than observable physical mechanisms. Metaphysical assumptions have absolutely no place in physics. The idea of determinism isn't even falsifiable.

[Nielsio]

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There is a big difference between claiming that determinism is untrue because we can't explain some apparent randomness, and proving that determinism is untrue. I am saying that there is a "proof" that determinism is untrue.

The proof, as with all physics proofs, involves logic and experimental evidence. The experiments are rock solid and the evidence they provide is not ambiguous in any way. The logic is also rock solid. It is the premises of this argument that are up for debate. Namely, it uses the premise that the universe is local. If you deny this premise, then you can throw the proof out the window.

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Ok, what kind of proof is it; because it seems to me that you will always run into the problem of not being able to control and/or know everything.

[jason1990]

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Those assumption would have to be metaphysical to actually disprove determinism, because the causal mechanisms could be "hidden" metaphysical mechanisms rather than observable physical mechanisms. Metaphysical assumptions have absolutely no place in physics. The idea of determinism isn't even falsifiable.

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What is disproved (under the assumption of locality) is the theory of hidden variables, which is pretty clearly implied by the concept of physical determinism, i.e. the concept that everything is (non-randomly) determined by (observable or non-observable) physical mechanisms. I'm not sure what a hidden metaphysical mechanism is (the hand of God?), but if it's not physical, then I think it would be obvious that physics has nothing to say about it.

In any event, under the assumption of locality, the theory of hidden variables is falsifiable, and therefore so is anything that implies it. If you have some notion of metaphysical determinism that does not imply this, then that is certainly not addressed by these experiments.

[jason1990]

You could start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox

[chezlaw]

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Doesn't have to be instantaneously. Just faster than some threshold currently thought to be c.


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Hmm, I'm not so sure about this. I believe that if you arbitrarily set the threshold, the theory shows that the communication must be faster than that. Hence, it must be faster than any arbitrary threshold, i.e. there is no threshold. Therefore, it must be instantaneous.

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Maybe, but that theory is well beyond anything so far verified by experiments.

chez

[Riddick]

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There doesn't seem to be any good reason to believe in determinism.


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[Riddick]

Every man who believes in determinism chose to believe in determinism. And so the very essence of believing in determinism is self contradictory.

[Lestat]

I've struggled a lot with this (and still am). But I still say that if there is randomness, there can be free will. Please explain how this contradicts with atheism.

[Andrew Karpinski]

I am a determinist because I do not think anything can be random. For the last ten years of my life I've struggled to imagine what could cause something to be random and have not come up with an answer.

I can't imagine what randomness and free have to do with eachother but then again I can't begin to understand how anyone could actually have free will.

Determinism really sucks but it seems like the only answer to me.

[madnak]

Choice and determinism aren't contradictory. Choice as it's normally defined is a causal mechanism; I choose one of a number of options for a reason.

[madnak]

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If you have some notion of metaphysical determinism that does not imply this, then that is certainly not addressed by these experiments.

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The formulation of a metaphysical determinism is a necessary response to the formulation of a metaphysical free will. When a free will supporter suggest that quantum randomness isn't "really" random but is the manifestation of free will, it's appropriate to mention that even if quantum randomness isn't "really" random, it could still be the result of causal factors rather than free will at the metaphysical level.

[jason1990]

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Doesn't have to be instantaneously. Just faster than some threshold currently thought to be c.


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Hmm, I'm not so sure about this. I believe that if you arbitrarily set the threshold, the theory shows that the communication must be faster than that. Hence, it must be faster than any arbitrary threshold, i.e. there is no threshold. Therefore, it must be instantaneous.

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Maybe, but that theory is well beyond anything so far verified by experiments.

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I think I'm confused with what you're trying to say. If we accept the equations of quantum mechanics as valid, and we postulate a hidden variable theory, then Bell's Inequality implies the particles are communicating faster than x, for all real numbers x. By definition, this means they are communicating instantaneously. This argument using Bell's Inequality (which is what I'm referring to above when I write "the theory") doesn't simply show that hidden variables imply communication faster than c. It shows that hidden variables imply communication faster than x, for all x, which is nothing less than instantaneous communication. The experimental verification would be anything that corroborates the particular equations of quantum mechanics that are used in Bell's Inequality, and these are exactly the experiments we've been talking about.

Hence, it seems that in this context and given these premises, the experimental evidence or lack thereof for communication faster than c versus instantaneous communication are exactly the same. Perhaps you could elaborate on the distinction you're trying to make.

[jason1990]

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The formulation of a metaphysical determinism is a necessary response to the formulation of a metaphysical free will. When a free will supporter suggest that quantum randomness isn't "really" random but is the manifestation of free will, it's appropriate to mention that even if quantum randomness isn't "really" random, it could still be the result of causal factors rather than free will at the metaphysical level.

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Wow. Let me see if I understand this. There are people who claim the following: Quantum experiments are physically indeterminate, in that there are no physical causes that determine their precise outcomes. However, quantum systems possess a kind of free-will, which is a sort of "metaphysical force" which determines their outcomes. And your reply is that there may be a "metaphysical force" but it needn't be free will. Is this right?

[chezlaw]

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Doesn't have to be instantaneously. Just faster than some threshold currently thought to be c.


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Hmm, I'm not so sure about this. I believe that if you arbitrarily set the threshold, the theory shows that the communication must be faster than that. Hence, it must be faster than any arbitrary threshold, i.e. there is no threshold. Therefore, it must be instantaneous.

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Maybe, but that theory is well beyond anything so far verified by experiments.

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I think I'm confused with what you're trying to say. If we accept the equations of quantum mechanics as valid, and we postulate a hidden variable theory, then Bell's Inequality implies the particles are communicating faster than x, for all real numbers x. By definition, this means they are communicating instantaneously. This argument using Bell's Inequality (which is what I'm referring to above when I write "the theory") doesn't simply show that hidden variables imply communication faster than c. It shows that hidden variables imply communication faster than x, for all x, which is nothing less than instantaneous communication. The experimental verification would be anything that corroborates the particular equations of quantum mechanics that are used in Bell's Inequality, and these are exactly the experiments we've been talking about.

Hence, it seems that in this context and given these premises, the experimental evidence or lack thereof for communication faster than c versus instantaneous communication are exactly the same. Perhaps you could elaborate on the distinction you're trying to make.

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The verification of bells inequalities is time sensitive and because of that all that can be done is to set lower limits on how fast information would need to travel.

Extapolating to instantaneous is interesting but way beyond any experimental evidence. It would be a bit like experimenting on the upper limit of how fast light travels, finding it always travels faster than the crude experiments can measure and concluding that it travels infinitely fast.

chez

[oneeye13]

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What gets me is people who are atheists that don't believe in determinism. Boggles my mind.

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what else confuses you? word jumbles? grocery stores? gravity?

[Riddick]

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Determinism really sucks but it seems like the only answer to me.

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If you are determined to believe in determinism, then why bother sifting through any other possible answers and making a logical choice? Why think about it at all???

[Riddick]

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Choice and determinism aren't contradictory. Choice as it's normally defined is a causal mechanism; I choose one of a number of options for a reason.

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Gotcha. So although my choices are all determined, I still freely choose them among a host of alternatives. Makes sense.

[jason1990]

I see your point and it is a good one. Of course, Bell's Inequality itself doesn't involve (elapsed) time, it is just a description of a relationship between consecutive experiments, with no reference at all to the elapsed time between them. But it is conceivable that these equations could break down on small time scales. In fact, another wrench in all this is that we are treating time conventionally, that is, not as an observable itself. If, in fact, time cannot be infinitely subdivided, but rather there is some positive minimum quantum of time, then we have yet another problem, especially if the universe is finite in the sense of there being some maximum distance between any two points. (What then would "instantaneous velocity" mean?) You said that extrapolating to instantaneous was interesting, but I think these other issues are much more interesting.

[hmkpoker]

How can you believe in praxeology but not determinism?

[hmkpoker]

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Determinism really sucks but it seems like the only answer to me.

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If you are determined to believe in determinism, then why bother sifting through any other possible answers and making a logical choice? Why think about it at all???

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Because perhaps the person wants to have a better understanding of the world.

Believing in determinism does not commit oneself to misery. We choose actions that we think will affect the best outcome for ourselves.

[hmkpoker]

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I've struggled a lot with this (and still am). But I still say that if there is randomness, there can be free will. Please explain how this contradicts with atheism.

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Theists believe in a soul, something that transcends physical law. Atheists do not. If we are to believe that it is the brain that is responsible for our actions, we must also accept that the "brain" is nothing more than a very large collection of neurons, each of which appear to function rather deterministically when viewed closely. If there is a free will of some kind, then there has to be some part of the brain that just ignores determinism; that doesn't behave lawfully and does what it's told. Yet each neuron can be understood. If all the parts function deterministically, and the actions of the body are the result of the interworking of those deterministic parts, how is the body/mind not deterministic?

[madnak]

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Gotcha. So although my choices are all determined, I still freely choose them among a host of alternatives. Makes sense.

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I never used the word "free." I can write a computer program that can weigh various options and select one - does that mean it has free will? Of course not.

[madnak]

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Wow. Let me see if I understand this. There are people who claim the following: Quantum experiments are physically indeterminate, in that there are no physical causes that determine their precise outcomes. However, quantum systems possess a kind of free-will, which is a sort of "metaphysical force" which determines their outcomes. And your reply is that there may be a "metaphysical force" but it needn't be free will. Is this right?

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Quantum experiments aren't necessarily physically indeterminate. I'd think maybe multiple universes or some such thing could explain them. But otherwise, yes. Even if there is a metaphysical force involved, there is no reason to believe that force is free will. And of course, if it's true randomness that doesn't imply free will either.

[Andrew Karpinski]

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Determinism really sucks but it seems like the only answer to me.

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If you are determined to believe in determinism, then why bother sifting through any other possible answers and making a logical choice? Why think about it at all???

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Because I don't have a choice.

[hmkpoker]

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Gotcha. So although my choices are all determined, I still freely choose them among a host of alternatives. Makes sense.

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I never used the word "free." I can write a computer program that can weigh various options and select one - does that mean it has free will? Of course not.

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If the computer program is not aware of why it is choosing its options, it would appear to it that it itself is choosing them.

[Riddick]

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How can you believe in praxeology but not determinism?

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Before I bother answering, are you serious?

[madnak]

Praxeology is the idea that human actions can be predicted based on certain assumptions because humans act in causal ways. Free will is the idea that human action isn't causal. They seem pretty contradictory to me.

[madnak]

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If the computer program is not aware of why it is choosing its options, it would appear to it that it itself is choosing them.

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But it wouldn't be. We're on the same side, here.

[Riddick]

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Praxeology is the idea that human actions can be predicted based on certain assumptions because humans act in causal ways. Free will is the idea that human action isn't causal. They seem pretty contradictory to me.


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First, it is a fundamental tenet of praxeology that you cannot predict human action, of that I am certain. If the future was certain, then there would be no point in acting.

Second, someone forgot to tell Murray Rothbard that prax. and free will were at ends. I'll let him elaborate, from the essay "The Mantle of Science" (bolded for the tl;dr types)

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The Problem of Free Will

Before proceeding further, we must pause to consider the validity of free will, for it is curious that the determinist dogma has so often been accepted as the uniquely scientific position. And while many philosophers have demonstrated the existence of free will, the concept has all too rarely been applied to the "social sciences."

In the first place, each human being knows universally from introspection that he chooses. The positivists and behaviorists may scoff at introspection all they wish, but it remains true that the introspective knowledge of a conscious man that he is conscious and acts is a fact of reality. What, indeed, do the determinists have to offer to set against introspective fact? Only a poor and misleading analogy from the physical sciences. It is true that all mindless matter is determined and purposeless. But it is highly inappropriate, and moreover question-begging, simply and uncritically to apply the model of physics to man.

Why, indeed, should we accept determinism in nature? The reason we say that things are determined is that every existing thing must have a specific existence. Having a specific existence, it must have certain definite, definable, delimitable attributes, that is, every thing must have a specific nature. Every being, then, can act or behave only in accordance with its nature, and any two beings can interact only in accord with their respective natures. Therefore, the actions of every being are caused by, determined by, its nature.

But while most things have no consciousness and therefore pursue no goals, it is an essential attribute of man's nature that he has consciousness, and therefore that his actions are self-determined by the choices his mind makes.

At very best, the application of determinism to man is just an agenda for the future. After several centuries of arrogant proclamations, no determinist has come up with anything like a theory determining all of men's actions. Surely the burden of proof must rest on the one advancing a theory, particularly when the theory contradicts man's primary impressions. Surely we can, at the very least, tell the determinists to keep quiet until they can offer their determinations—including, of course, their advance determinations of each of our reactions to their determining theory. But there is far more that can be said. For determinism, as applied to man, is a self-contradictory thesis, since the man who employs it relies implicitly on the existence of free will.

If we are determined in the ideas we accept, then X, the determinist, is determined to believe in determinism, while Y, the believer in free will, is also determined to believe in his own doctrine. Since man's mind is, according to determinism, not free to think and come to conclusions about reality, it is absurd for X to try to convince Y or anyone else of the truth of determinism. In short, the determinist must rely, for the spread of his ideas, on the nondetermined, free-will choices of others, on their free will to adopt or reject ideas. In the same way, the various brands of determinists—behaviorists, positivists, Marxists, and so on—implicitly claim special exemption for themselves from their own determined systems. But if a man cannot affirm a proposition without employing its negation, he is not only caught in an inextricable self-contradiction; he is conceding to the negation the status of an axiom.

A corollary self-contradiction: the determinists profess to be able, some day, to determine what man's choices and actions will be. But, on their own grounds, their own knowledge of this determining theory is itself determined. How then can they aspire to know all, if the extent of their own knowledge is itself determined, and therefore arbitrarily delimited? In fact, if our ideas are determined, then we have no way of freely revising our judgments and of learning truth—whether the truth of determinism or of anything else.

Thus, the determinist, to advocate his doctrine, must place himself and his theory outside the allegedly universally determined realm, that is, he must employ free will. This reliance of determinism on its negation is an instance of a wider truth: that it is self-contradictory to use reason in any attempt to deny the validity of reason as a means of attaining knowledge. Such self-contradiction is implicit in such currently fashionable sentiments as "reason shows us that reason is weak," or "the more we know, the more we know how little we know."

Some may object that man is not really free because he must obey natural laws. To say that man is not free because he is not able to do anything he may possibly desire, however, confuses freedom and power. It is clearly absurd to employ as a definition of "freedom" the power of an entity to perform an impossible action, to violate its nature.

Determinists often imply that a man's ideas are necessarily determined by the ideas of others, of "society." Yet A and B can hear the same idea propounded; A can adopt it as valid while B will not. Each man, therefore, has the free choice of adopting or not adopting an idea or value . It is true that many men may uncritically adopt the ideas of others; yet this process cannot regress infinitely. At some point in time, the idea originated, that is, the idea was not taken from others, but was arrived at by some mind independently and creatively. This is logically necessary for any given idea. "Society," therefore, cannot dictate ideas. If someone grows up in a world where people generally believe that "all redheads are demons," he is free, as he grows up, to rethink the problem and arrive at a different conclusion. If this were not true, ideas, once adopted, could never have been changed. We conclude, therefore, that true science decrees determinism for physical nature and free will for man, and for the same reason: that every thing must act in accordance with its specific nature. And since men are free to adopt ideas and to act upon them, it is never events or stimuli external to the mind that cause its ideas; rather the mind freely adopts ideas about external events. A savage, an infant, and a civilized man will each react in entirely different ways to the sight of the same stimulus—be it a fountain pen, an alarm clock, or a machine gun, for each mind has different ideas about the object's meaning and qualities. Let us therefore never again say that the Great Depression of the 1930s caused men to adopt socialism or interventionism (or that poverty causes people to adopt Communism). The depression existed, and men were moved to think about this striking event; but that they adopted socialism or its equivalent as the way out was not determined by the event; they might just as well have chosen laissez-faire or Buddhism or any other attempted solution. The deciding factor was the idea that people chose to adopt.

What led the people to adopt particular ideas? Here the historian may enumerate and weigh various factors, but he must always stop short at the ultimate freedom of the will. Thus, in any given matter, a person may freely decide either to think about a problem independently or to accept uncritically the ideas offered by others. Certainly, the bulk of the people, especially in abstract matters, choose to follow the ideas offered by the intellectuals. At the time of the Great Depression, there was a host of intellectuals offering the nostrum of statism or socialism as a cure for the depression, while very few suggested laissez-faire or absolute monarchy.

The realization that ideas, freely adopted, determine social institutions, and not vice versa, illuminates many critical areas of the study of man. Rousseau and his host of modern followers, who hold that man is good, but corrupted by his institutions, must finally wither under the query: And who but men created these institutions? The tendency of many modern intellectuals to worship the primitive (also the childlike—especially the child "progressively" educated—the "natural" life of the noble savage of the South Seas, and so on) has perhaps the same roots. We are also told repeatedly that differences between largely isolated tribes and ethnic groups are "culturally determined": tribe X being intelligent or peaceful because of its X-culture; tribe Y, dull or warlike because of Y-culture. If we fully realize that the men of each tribe created its own culture (unless we are to assume its creation by some mystic deus ex machina), we see that this popular "explanation" is no better than explaining the sleep-inducing properties of opium by its "dormitive power." Indeed, it is worse, because it adds the error of social determinism.

It will undoubtedly be charged that this discussion of free will and determinism is "one-sided" and that it leaves out the alleged fact that all of life is multicausal and interdependent. We must not forget, however, that the very goal of science is simpler explanations of wider phenomena. In this case, we are confronted with the fact that there can logically be only one ultimate sovereign over a man's actions: either his own free will or some cause outside that will. There is no other alternative, there is no middle ground, and therefore the fashionable eclecticism of modern scholarship must in this case yield to the hard realities of the Law of the Excluded Middle.

If free will has been vindicated, how can we prove the existence of consciousness itself? The answer is simple: to prove means to make evident something not yet evident. Yet some propositions may be already evident to the self, that is, self-evident. A self-evident axiom, as we have indicated, will be a proposition which cannot be contradicted without employing the axiom itself in the attempt. And the existence of consciousness is not only evident to all of us through direct introspection, but is also a fundamental axiom, for the very act of doubting consciousness must itself be performed by a consciousness. Thus, the behaviorist who spurns consciousness for "objective" laboratory data must rely on the consciousness of his laboratory associates to report the data to him.

The key to scientism is its denial of the existence of individual consciousness and will. This takes two main forms: applying mechanical analogies from the physical sciences to individual men, and applying organismic analogies to such fictional collective wholes as "society." The latter course attributes consciousness and will, not to individuals, but to some collective organic whole of which the individual is merely a determined cell. Both methods are aspects of the rejection of individual consciousness.

The False Mechanical Analogies of Scientism

The scientistic method in the study of man is almost wholly one of building on analogies from the physical sciences. Some of the common mechanistic analogies follow.

Man as Servomechanism: Just as Bertrand Russell, one of the leaders of scientism, reverses reality by attributing determinism to men, and free will to physical particles, so it has recently become the fashion to say that modern machines "think," while man is merely a complex form of machine, or "servomechanism." What is overlooked here is that machines, no matter how complex, are simply devices made by man to serve man's purposes and goals; their actions are preset by their creators, and the machines can never act in any other way or suddenly adopt new goals and act upon them. They cannot do so, finally, because the machines are not alive and are therefore certainly not conscious. If men are machines, on the other hand, then the determinists, in addition to meeting the above critique, must answer the question: Who created men and for what purpose?—a rather embarrassing question for materialists to answer.
...

The Mathematical Method: Not only measurement but the use of mathematics in general in the social sciences and philosophy today, is an illegitimate transfer from physics. In the first place, a mathematical equation implies the existence of quantities that can be equated, which in turn implies a unit of measurement for these quantities. Second, mathematical relations are functional; that is, variables are interdependent, and identifying the causal variable depends on which is held as given and which is changed. This methodology is appropriate in physics, where entities do not themselves provide the causes for their actions, but instead are determined by discoverable quantitative laws of their nature and the nature of the interacting entities. But in human action, the free-will choice of the human consciousness is the cause, and this cause generates certain effects. The mathematical concept of an interdetermining "function" is therefore inappropriate.
...
(because this essay is so good I'll leave this part in)

Indeed, the very concept of "variable" used so frequently in econometrics is illegitimate, for physics is able to arrive at laws only by discovering constants. The concept of "variable," only makes sense if there are some things that are not variable, but constant. Yet in human action, free will precludes any quantitative constants (including constant units of measurement). All attempts to discover such constants (such as the strict quantity theory of money or the Keynesian "consumption function") were inherently doomed to failure.

Finally such staples of mathematical economics as the calculus are completely inappropriate for human action because they assume infinitely small continuity; while such concepts may legitimately describe the completely determined path of a physical particle, they are seriously misleading in describing the willed action of a human being. Such willed action can occur only in discrete, non-infinitely-small steps, steps large enough to be perceivable by a human consciousness. Hence the continuity assumptions of calculus are inappropriate for the study of man.

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[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
First, it is a fundamental tenet of praxeology that you cannot predict human action, of that I am certain. If the future was certain, then there would be no point in acting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Who said anything about the future being certain?

[ QUOTE ]
Rothbard article

[/ QUOTE ]

Rothbard contradicts himself within the article, and particularly outside of it. I'll go through and respond to all your bolded points tomorrow, but I have to go somewhere in 20 minutes so I won't get around to it tonight.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
You could start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that wasn't really in lay man's terms, so I looked at this:
http://online.physics.uiuc.edu/courses/phys150/fall03/slides/lect23/sld016.htm

..and I don't find anything in their conclusions that negates causality. If you measure a particle here, and it changes the state of a particle somewhere else, then you've just observed a causal link, even though it might be weird and go against our current understanding of the speed of 'information'.

[jason1990]

I think you probably got the gist of it. Barring some technicalities, it basically says that if determinism is true, then there is no cosmic speed limit. Consequently, if there is a cosmic speed limit, then determinism is untrue. This is why the "proof" that determinism is untrue relies on the premise that we live in a local universe (i.e. that there is a cosmic speed limit).

[Riddick]

If you see an effect, and you learn the cause of that effect, how does it follow that it the cause-effect was all predetermined?

If I am the cause of someone else's gunshot wound to the head, and it was simply determined to be that way, then what am I guilty of?

[Riddick]

[ QUOTE ]
How do you address the scientific, causal principles present in material phenomena?


[/ QUOTE ]

How do you equate the scientific causal principles of material phenomena with immaterial human consciousness?

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
immaterial human consciousness?

[/ QUOTE ]

Eh?

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
If you see an effect, and you learn the cause of that effect, how does it follow that it the cause-effect was all predetermined?

If I am the cause of someone else's gunshot wound to the head, and it was simply determined to be that way, then what am I guilty of?

[/ QUOTE ]

Your choice is a reflection of YOU (your mind, your values, etc). If there is no causality in the mind, then your choice is NOT a reflection of you, and responsibility goes down, not up.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How can you believe in praxeology but not determinism?

[/ QUOTE ]

Before I bother answering, are you serious?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I am entirely serious.

The praxeology that we discuss regarding Austrian theory is predicated on the lawfulness of human behavior. People are always acting toward what they percieve to be a better state of affairs based on limited information. Given two choices, they inevitably choose the one that is (seemingly) best for them.

It would seem that if volition exists independently of causality, this could not be predicted, as the actor would be likely to act toward something that he sees as a worse state of affairs, and praxeology could not develop.

[GMontag]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Praxeology is the idea that human actions can be predicted based on certain assumptions because humans act in causal ways. Free will is the idea that human action isn't causal. They seem pretty contradictory to me.


[/ QUOTE ]

First, it is a fundamental tenet of praxeology that you cannot predict human action, of that I am certain. If the future was certain, then there would be no point in acting.

Second, someone forgot to tell Murray Rothbard that prax. and free will were at ends. I'll let him elaborate, from the essay "The Mantle of Science" (bolded for the tl;dr types)

*snip Rothbard essay too long to quote*



[/ QUOTE ]

If there is this "individual will" on what level is it acting?

The organ level? Is it moving limbs and mouths when the motor neurons would not otherwise move them?

The cellular level? Is it getting neurons to fire and extend axons when their inputs would not otherwise cause them to do so?

The biochemical level? Is it causing neuroreceptors to bind to neurotransmitters they would not normally bind to? Or perhaps spontaneously creating or removing neurochemicals?

The molecular level? Is it causing bonds to form that the laws of valence and QED wouldn't allow?

Or perhaps it is simply directly affecting quantum waveforms and probability distributions.

And how exactly is this "will" effecting changes at whatever level (or levels) it is doing so?

Or are you simply ignoring all we know of biology, chemistry, and physics, and how the brain actually works?

How can you, who I had (possibly mistakenly) taken to be an ultra-rationalist, possibly swallow this vague, supernatural, non-explanation for human action?

[madnak]

To start, since there are so many straw man arguments involved, it's important to define determinism so that we know what we're talking about.

I'll use wikipedia as my source because it's convenient and includes many further links.

Determinism 101

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism) In other words, the idea that everything has a cause. Related to the ideas of determinism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism) and free will (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will) are the ideas of compatibilism and incompatibilism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism). Compatibilism is the idea that free will and determinism aren't mutually exclusive. Incompatibilism is the idea that free will can't coexist with determinism. For the record, I'm personally a compatibilist and disciple of Hume (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume) on the subject. However, since the semantics of incompatibilism are typically accepted, I necessarily stand on the determinist side in debates among incompatibilists.

There are two ways for incompatibilistic free will to exist. Physics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics) is the study of forces, phenomena, and other "effects" that can be observed and measured and implied. Physics as a field uses reason and human observation to evaluate these effects, and this is a major restriction of the field. There are only two kinds of mechanisms possible under this framework - each phenomenon is either an effect with a corresponding cause, or it has no apparent cause and must be described in probabilistic terms (that include an element of apparent randomness). The idea of incompatibilist free will implies that physical actions of humans, which can be observed and measured, happen because of neither causes nor random events (at least not completely). That is, they happen as metaphysical or mystical phenomena. Some incompatibilists who believe in free will do believe in metaphysical determinism - that there really is a reason someone chooses an action, but that reason isn't based on physical brain mechanics but rather on metaphysical mechanics that can't be measured and observed and are therefore, for all intents and purposes, not causal. The hardest of indeterminists don't believe there's a reason for a person's specific choices, but don't believe these choices are random either. In general they suggest that the "source" of free will is totally beyond human comprehension.

Incompatibilist determinism implies that human action happens solely due to causes, not due to randomness or mysticism. Randomness is a critical issue of contention. I'm not sure if true randomness at the basic fits the idea of free will or not. I don't see any solid logical reason why it necessarily couldn't, and some randomness is fine in terms of free will. But based on intuitive measures, it seems that if an event is random it isn't "free" any more than if it is caused. In fact, it seems less free to me (as a compatibilist). However, the idea of randomness is also clearly in contradiction to the idea of determinism, as it implies some events have no causes. As a result, if true randomness exists, the determinist position is faulty. The indeterminist position isn't necessarily faulty, as randomness is compatible with metaphysical mechanics in theory. As a response, "probabilistic determinism" arose. I believe this is the most common form of contemporary determinism, and I assume it's the form that's relevant to this debate. Probabilistic determinism is the idea that the universe functions according to random and causal factors, but nothing that falls under neither category. Whether metaphysical causality and randomness qualify as determinism or indeterminism is open to debate, but the moral arguments from metaphysical determinism are typically the same as those from physical determinism.

It's important to touch on fatalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism), the idea that humans don't have the power to change themselves or to change the course of events, and that everything is predetermined. Perhaps because the term "predetermined" sounds like the term "determinism," many people want to call fatalism and determinism the same thing despite having no rational grounds for doing so. To quote wikipedia, "It is a popular misconception that determinism necessarily entails that all future events have already been predetermined and will necessarily happen (a position known as Fatalism); this is not obviously the case, and the subject is still debated among metaphysicians." The fact that fatalism and determinism are two very different things is important to note, because most of the straw man arguments presented against determinism are actually arguments against fatalism. Most determinists, in my experience, don't believe in fatalism.

Just as some people (like myself) believe in free will and determinism, some people don't believe in free will or determinism. They should be noted because while someone who believes in both free will and determinism must take a deterministic approach when forced to assume incompatibilism (because a definition of free will that can arise from deterministic mechanics is contradictory to the definition of free will that excludes deterministic mechanics and therefore such an idea of free will must be rejected by the compatibilist), someone who believes in neither may be either a compatibilist or an incompatibilist. In fact, compatibilism is of questionable relevance to such a position, which represents the entire "idea-space" that lies outside the realm of typical considerations of the subject. However, this idea is uncommon and I don't think it needs to be discussed further in terms of this debate.

Finally, the idea of an atheist incompatibilist indeterminist is strange because atheists are typically seen as being materialists. This isn't always true, but it seems odd to many people that an atheist would believe in metaphysical or mystical events.

Now that the basics of determinism have been explained, I can respond to the article by Mises. If I hadn't gone through all this, I'd have to have done so in my response which would have made this an even bulkier and more confusing post. Moving on...

My Response to the Article

[ QUOTE ]
First, it is a fundamental tenet of praxeology that you cannot predict human action, of that I am certain. If the future was certain, then there would be no point in acting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not specific human actions, but patterns of human action. Predicting human action is like predicting the weather. If people really acted without causal mechanisms praxeology couldn't exist. In fact, the entire proposed purpose of the subject is to identify the a priori causal mechanisms that determine human behavior.

[ QUOTE ]
Second, someone forgot to tell Murray Rothbard that prax. and free will were at ends. I'll let him elaborate, from the essay "The Mantle of Science" (bolded for the tl;dr types)

-----------------------------------------------------------

The Problem of Free Will

Before proceeding further, we must pause to consider the validity of free will, for it is curious that the determinist dogma has so often been accepted as the uniquely scientific position. And while many philosophers have demonstrated the existence of free will, the concept has all too rarely been applied to the "social sciences."

[/ QUOTE ]

No philosopher has demonstrated the existence of free will. In fact, today indeterminist philosophers are relegated to idle speculation about quantum mechanics.

[ QUOTE ]
In the first place, each human being knows universally from introspection that he chooses. The positivists and behaviorists may scoff at introspection all they wish, but it remains true that the introspective knowledge of a conscious man that he is conscious and acts is a fact of reality. What, indeed, do the determinists have to offer to set against introspective fact? Only a poor and misleading analogy from the physical sciences. It is true that all mindless matter is determined and purposeless. But it is highly inappropriate, and moreover question-begging, simply and uncritically to apply the model of physics to man.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is 100% false. Hell, I'm living proof. There is nothing in the quality of my introspective life that implies I have free will. Even if I'm the only exception, the critical premise that "each human being" knows introspectively that he has free will is false. Personally, I believe that no human being has such an awareness, that some people are simply ignorant and have a distorted view of what "free will" means (in the indeterministic sense) and that the sensation of selecting between options seems to imply it based on these misconceptions. But for me, every choice I make is clearly, intuitively, and viscerally causal. In fact, I can't even imagine taking a voluntary action without having a reason for doing so. If that were to happen, I would fear for my sanity.

[ QUOTE ]
Why, indeed, should we accept determinism in nature? The reason we say that things are determined is that every existing thing must have a specific existence. Having a specific existence, it must have certain definite, definable, delimitable attributes, that is, every thing must have a specific nature. Every being, then, can act or behave only in accordance with its nature, and any two beings can interact only in accord with their respective natures. Therefore, the actions of every being are caused by, determined by, its nature.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a total straw man. Nobody suggests this is why should accept determinism in nature. There are various reasons, but this is rarely one of them. I accept determinism in nature because we've identified the specific physical and chemical mechanics that determine every natural phenomenon. That's a slightly stronger case.

[ QUOTE ]
But while most things have no consciousness and therefore pursue no goals, it is an essential attribute of man's nature that he has consciousness, and therefore that his actions are self-determined by the choices his mind makes.

[/ QUOTE ]

This doesn't even have any bearing on determinism and free will. The fact that a man's actions are self-determined by the choices his mind makes has absolutely no relevant implications. Determinism doesn't and never has contradicted the idea of choice - only the idea that choice arises due to mechanisms that aren't causal.

[ QUOTE ]
At very best, the application of determinism to man is just an agenda for the future. After several centuries of arrogant proclamations, no determinist has come up with anything like a theory determining all of men's actions.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is also false. I'm not sure if it was when Mises wrote this, as neuroscience is in its infancy still, but recent experiments have identified that the neuron works according to specific chemical properties, and that the brain works through this chemical functioning of neurons (among other things). All human action occurs through chemical signals in the nervous system. Every single action a human being voluntarily takes has been shown through strict scientific verification to be the result of a causal chemical process that originates based on causal chemical processes in the brain and results in causal chemical processes in the relevant muscles and organs.

[ QUOTE ]
Surely the burden of proof must rest on the one advancing a theory, particularly when the theory contradicts man's primary impressions. Surely we can, at the very least, tell the determinists to keep quiet until they can offer their determinations—including, of course, their advance determinations of each of our reactions to their determining theory. But there is far more that can be said. For determinism, as applied to man, is a self-contradictory thesis, since the man who employs it relies implicitly on the existence of free will.

[/ QUOTE ]

The theory of free will is the theory that must be proved. The idea that everything has a cause really is a component of human conception. Challenging this idea, suggesting that some actions don't have causes, and then furthermore suggesting that these actions represent a kind of "free will" whose form and structure can't be described or measured or physically verified, that is clearly the claim that bears the burden of proof. A non-physical "power" responsible for human choices isn't the "default state" and isn't the most parsimonious assumption.

[ QUOTE ]
If we are determined in the ideas we accept, then X, the determinist, is determined to believe in determinism, while Y, the believer in free will, is also determined to believe in his own doctrine. Since man's mind is, according to determinism, not free to think and come to conclusions about reality, it is absurd for X to try to convince Y or anyone else of the truth of determinism. In short, the determinist must rely, for the spread of his ideas, on the nondetermined, free-will choices of others, on their free will to adopt or reject ideas. In the same way, the various brands of determinists—behaviorists, positivists, Marxists, and so on—implicitly claim special exemption for themselves from their own determined systems. But if a man cannot affirm a proposition without employing its negation, he is not only caught in an inextricable self-contradiction; he is conceding to the negation the status of an axiom.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is another ridiculous straw man that shows Mises has no experience in the subject and is "determined" to delude himself. When he uses the term "determined" he seems to mean "predetermined," a word with a radically different meaning. It becomes clearer and clearer as the article goes on that Mises doesn't know the difference between fatalism and determinism.

[ QUOTE ]
A corollary self-contradiction: the determinists profess to be able, some day, to determine what man's choices and actions will be. But, on their own grounds, their own knowledge of this determining theory is itself determined. How then can they aspire to know all, if the extent of their own knowledge is itself determined, and therefore arbitrarily delimited? In fact, if our ideas are determined, then we have no way of freely revising our judgments and of learning truth—whether the truth of determinism or of anything else.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, completely false. Will isn't the same thing as free will, nor is freedom. There is no reason why freedom and choice and even spirit can't arise from deterministic mechanics. And once again, Mises brings up fatalism. Perhaps he's "fated" to be unable to give up this straw man.

[ QUOTE ]
Thus, the determinist, to advocate his doctrine, must place himself and his theory outside the allegedly universally determined realm, that is, he must employ free will. This reliance of determinism on its negation is an instance of a wider truth: that it is self-contradictory to use reason in any attempt to deny the validity of reason as a means of attaining knowledge. Such self-contradiction is implicit in such currently fashionable sentiments as "reason shows us that reason is weak," or "the more we know, the more we know how little we know."

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll talk about some of the sentiments he's referring to. "Reason shows us that reason is weak" isn't something I've ever heard. Reason does, however, show us that any logical system is incomplete, for instance. This isn't a "popular sentiment," this is a proven fact. If anything, it's a testament to the strength of reason that it can identify its own limitations. "The more we know, the more we know how little we know" is a bit cheesy, but it refers to a true phenomenon. That is, the more we learn about the scope of the universe and the fields of knowledge, the "larger" we realize that scope is. Few people expected 3000 years ago that the universe is as big as it actually is, and that there's so much to learn about it. By learning that the scope is wider than we have previously believed, we also learn by implication that the amount of knowledge we can learn but haven't yet learned is greater than we previously expected. Also on the personal level, sometimes a person may have a deluded belief that a subject such as mathematics is simple or small until he gains enough of a familiarity to realize just how vast the field is. In that sense the cocky ignoramus may believe he knows everything, but the person who has actual knowledge recognizes its limitations. This doesn't represent any direct relationship between how much you know and how aware you are of how little you know, but it illustrates the grounded reasoning from which these statements came into popular use (at which point they were promptly butchered).

[ QUOTE ]
Some may object that man is not really free because he must obey natural laws. To say that man is not free because he is not able to do anything he may possibly desire, however, confuses freedom and power. It is clearly absurd to employ as a definition of "freedom" the power of an entity to perform an impossible action, to violate its nature.

[/ QUOTE ]

Desire itself is a causal mechanism. The idea is that if a man has a desire for something, he will act in order to achieve this desire. That is a deterministic mechanism. Once again it seems Mises doesn't even know what determinism is, and therefore really shouldn't be expounding on the subject in the first place. Incompatibilist free will is quite simply the ability to do something while having no reason for doing it. Desire represents such a reason and is therefore incompatible with an action of free will, unless that desire itself exists for no reason (or the reason for the desire exists for no reason of its own, etc).

[ QUOTE ]
Determinists often imply that a man's ideas are necessarily determined by the ideas of others, of "society."

[/ QUOTE ]

What on earth is he talking about? My guess is that Mises hung out with social theorists rather than philosophers or hard scientists. I don't see how else he could make a statement like this. No educated determinist can deny that biology and personal choices have a profound impact on emotion and thought. I'm aware that some psychologists, sociologists, and perhaps economists make contrary statements, but that's out of a total ignorance of the philosophy of determinism and the science of biology.

[ QUOTE ]
Yet A and B can hear the same idea propounded; A can adopt it as valid while B will not. Each man, therefore, has the free choice of adopting or not adopting an idea or value .

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no such implication. Once again, Mises equates choice with "free" choice. The choice part isn't what determinists argue against, it's whether that choice is "free" in the sense defined by free will that is the question. Mises hasn't yet even tried to explain how any of these choices are "free." In most instances of A and B I've personally seen, A and B have clear reasons for choosing the way they do, and therefore free will doesn't apply in the situations. There are other situations that are more questionable (why did he choose the red pencil instead of the blue pencil), but in most cases it is causes such as personality, situation, and perceived self-interest that clearly determine the individual's choice.

[ QUOTE ]
It is true that many men may uncritically adopt the ideas of others; yet this process cannot regress infinitely. At some point in time, the idea originated, that is, the idea was not taken from others, but was arrived at by some mind independently and creatively. This is logically necessary for any given idea. "Society," therefore, cannot dictate ideas. If someone grows up in a world where people generally believe that "all redheads are demons," he is free, as he grows up, to rethink the problem and arrive at a different conclusion. If this were not true, ideas, once adopted, could never have been changed. We conclude, therefore, that true science decrees determinism for physical nature and free will for man, and for the same reason: that every thing must act in accordance with its specific nature. And since men are free to adopt ideas and to act upon them, it is never events or stimuli external to the mind that cause its ideas; rather the mind freely adopts ideas about external events. A savage, an infant, and a civilized man will each react in entirely different ways to the sight of the same stimulus—be it a fountain pen, an alarm clock, or a machine gun, for each mind has different ideas about the object's meaning and qualities. Let us therefore never again say that the Great Depression of the 1930s caused men to adopt socialism or interventionism (or that poverty causes people to adopt Communism). The depression existed, and men were moved to think about this striking event; but that they adopted socialism or its equivalent as the way out was not determined by the event; they might just as well have chosen laissez-faire or Buddhism or any other attempted solution. The deciding factor was the idea that people chose to adopt.

[/ QUOTE ]

More straw men presumably taken from ignorant social scientists. I rarely hear philosophers or hard scientists make the kinds of arguments Mises is responding to here.

[ QUOTE ]
What led the people to adopt particular ideas? Here the historian may enumerate and weigh various factors, but he must always stop short at the ultimate freedom of the will.

[/ QUOTE ]

No he mustn't. In some cases he clearly can't. If I'm offered the choice to live or die, and I choose to live, it's because I value life more than death. You think that's an absurd proposition? You think some "free will" unrelated to such reasons is really the source of my choice? Don't be absurd. I can tell you right now that if offered such a choice I would make it because I don't want to die. And if I wanted to die, I'd make the different choice. Also I have reasons for not wanting to die - I have hope for my future, I kind of like life, I can't come back from death but I will die eventually, so I sacrifice nothing by living but I sacrifice everything I might achieve by dying, I have an innate sense of self-preservation that influences my decision toward living, etc. These reasons completely explain my desire to continue living. Nothing magical about it, it's very reasoned and logical.

[ QUOTE ]
Thus, in any given matter, a person may freely decide either to think about a problem independently or to accept uncritically the ideas offered by others. Certainly, the bulk of the people, especially in abstract matters, choose to follow the ideas offered by the intellectuals. At the time of the Great Depression, there was a host of intellectuals offering the nostrum of statism or socialism as a cure for the depression, while very few suggested laissez-faire or absolute monarchy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, Mises hasn't even come close to mentioning "freedom" in the philosophical sense.

[ QUOTE ]
The realization that ideas, freely adopted, determine social institutions, and not vice versa, illuminates many critical areas of the study of man. Rousseau and his host of modern followers, who hold that man is good, but corrupted by his institutions, must finally wither under the query: And who but men created these institutions? The tendency of many modern intellectuals to worship the primitive (also the childlike—especially the child "progressively" educated—the "natural" life of the noble savage of the South Seas, and so on) has perhaps the same roots. We are also told repeatedly that differences between largely isolated tribes and ethnic groups are "culturally determined": tribe X being intelligent or peaceful because of its X-culture; tribe Y, dull or warlike because of Y-culture. If we fully realize that the men of each tribe created its own culture (unless we are to assume its creation by some mystic deus ex machina), we see that this popular "explanation" is no better than explaining the sleep-inducing properties of opium by its "dormitive power." Indeed, it is worse, because it adds the error of social determinism.

[/ QUOTE ]

SOCIAL determinism? You do realize this entire debate from Nielso's first response has been about philosophical determinism, don't you? Anything Mises has to say about social determinism is wholly irrelevant, I doubt anyone on this forum is a social determinist.

Social determinism is the hypothesis that social interactions and constructs alone determine individual behavior (as opposed to biological or objective factors). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_determinism)

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No mysterious miracles or wholly random events occur.

[/ QUOTE ]

Notice a difference, maybe?

[ QUOTE ]
It will undoubtedly be charged that this discussion of free will and determinism is "one-sided" and that it leaves out the alleged fact that all of life is multicausal and interdependent. We must not forget, however, that the very goal of science is simpler explanations of wider phenomena. In this case, we are confronted with the fact that there can logically be only one ultimate sovereign over a man's actions: either his own free will or some cause outside that will. There is no other alternative, there is no middle ground, and therefore the fashionable eclecticism of modern scholarship must in this case yield to the hard realities of the Law of the Excluded Middle.

[/ QUOTE ]

In a way, there is a middle ground in compatibilism. But it's true that incompatibilistic free will is a black-and-white proposition, which is why those of us typically in the "gray area" suddenly act like "hard" determinists. Those who speak of free will as a mystical entity are asking for whatever they get, frankly.

[ QUOTE ]
If free will has been vindicated, how can we prove the existence of consciousness itself? The answer is simple: to prove means to make evident something not yet evident. Yet some propositions may be already evident to the self, that is, self-evident. A self-evident axiom, as we have indicated, will be a proposition which cannot be contradicted without employing the axiom itself in the attempt. And the existence of consciousness is not only evident to all of us through direct introspection, but is also a fundamental axiom, for the very act of doubting consciousness must itself be performed by a consciousness. Thus, the behaviorist who spurns consciousness for "objective" laboratory data must rely on the consciousness of his laboratory associates to report the data to him.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is epistemological, not metaphysical. I typically agree anyhow, but even if I didn't it's way off the subject. From an epistemological standpoint, free will is equivalent to randomness. Only if the metaphysical reality of that free will is taken into consideration is it meaningful, and that metaphysical reality has been proposed independently of epistemological concerns.

[ QUOTE ]
The key to scientism is its denial of the existence of individual consciousness and will. This takes two main forms: applying mechanical analogies from the physical sciences to individual men, and applying organismic analogies to such fictional collective wholes as "society." The latter course attributes consciousness and will, not to individuals, but to some collective organic whole of which the individual is merely a determined cell. Both methods are aspects of the rejection of individual consciousness.

[/ QUOTE ]

I basically agree with this. But I also think abstractions have a high degree of utility. "American society" may not exist per se, but it's useful to speak of even if it's vague and open to misinterpretation. I can say puritanism is more prevalent among Americans than among Europeans, and that is a useful statement in spite of the generalization and abstraction.

[ QUOTE ]
The False Mechanical Analogies of Scientism

The scientistic method in the study of man is almost wholly one of building on analogies from the physical sciences. Some of the common mechanistic analogies follow.

[/ QUOTE ]

He's talking about the social sciences now, not really interested in even discussing them.

[ QUOTE ]
Man as Servomechanism: Just as Bertrand Russell, one of the leaders of scientism, reverses reality by attributing determinism to men, and free will to physical particles, so it has recently become the fashion to say that modern machines "think," while man is merely a complex form of machine, or "servomechanism." What is overlooked here is that machines, no matter how complex, are simply devices made by man to serve man's purposes and goals; their actions are preset by their creators, and the machines can never act in any other way or suddenly adopt new goals and act upon them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please? Obviously computer science was another area Mises was unfamiliar with. [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence"]Emergence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_determinism) is one of the most relevant aspects of current technology. Computer can already devise their own goals and perform actions they were never programmed to perform. Virtually none of this has hit the market yet, but research looks promising.

[ QUOTE ]
They cannot do so, finally, because the machines are not alive and are therefore certainly not conscious.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree and argue such at length on the thread about consciousness, but so far Mises hasn't explained his assumption that consciousness and determinism are mutually exclusive. As a result any such discussion is meaningless. Actually, the idea of free will provides an argument for machines being more than men - if the measured and observed traits aren't relevant to free will, then it stands to reason computers without free will can accomplish as much as men with free will, and do so in a more stable way (without relying on miracles or randomness). Also if there is a nonphysical free will, then there's no way to determine whether such a will is acting in a computer or not. When you get into mysticism, nothing is ever solid and it's impossible to suggest that free will applies to anyone other than yourself.

[ QUOTE ]
If men are machines, on the other hand, then the determinists, in addition to meeting the above critique, must answer the question: Who created men and for what purpose?—a rather embarrassing question for materialists to answer.
...

The Mathematical Method: Not only measurement but the use of mathematics in general in the social sciences and philosophy today, is an illegitimate transfer from physics. In the first place, a mathematical equation implies the existence of quantities that can be equated, which in turn implies a unit of measurement for these quantities.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, to say it clearly - biology is a hard science. He can't lump it with the social sciences, it's as hard as they get. We're talking about specific quantifiable properties of cells, that have been observed and experimented on extensively in physical ways. In the second place, not all math involves concrete measurements and quantities. In the third place, there are plenty of measurable quantities that can be used to make illustrations that have nothing to do with any attempt to quantify free will. Finally, by proposing free will as something that is impossible to observe, measure, and quantify, and that has no physical but only a mystical existence, Mises is getting into much more unstable territory than philosophers using math to illustrate points.

[ QUOTE ]
Second, mathematical relations are functional; that is, variables are interdependent, and identifying the causal variable depends on which is held as given and which is changed. This methodology is appropriate in physics, where entities do not themselves provide the causes for their actions, but instead are determined by discoverable quantitative laws of their nature and the nature of the interacting entities. But in human action, the free-will choice of the human consciousness is the cause, and this cause generates certain effects. The mathematical concept of an interdetermining "function" is therefore inappropriate.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wrong again. Brain chemistry has a clear effect on human action. To the extent that a person may involuntarily perform an action if his brain is stimulated in a certain way. Every human action follows chemical pathways. There is every indication that human thought and action come from the brain. The study of how the brain works is hard science. Of course, since incompatibilistic free will is mystical by definition, it can't happen in the brain. But since the brain determines specific actions, if this free will were in fact the ultimate "first cause" of these actions, then the free will would have to influence the brain chemistry in order to bring them about. But there's nothing indeterministic that influences brain chemistry above a quantum level! Therefore, the only way free will could affect human action is if it exhibited itself as quantum randomness. That strikes me as a pretty hokey proposition. And as I explained to jason earlier, even if quantum randomness were mystical, that still would be no indication the randomness is determined by free will. The evidence for free will is even less than the evidence for God.


[ QUOTE ]
...
(because this essay is so good I'll leave this part in)

Indeed, the very concept of "variable" used so frequently in econometrics is illegitimate, for physics is able to arrive at laws only by discovering constants. The concept of "variable," only makes sense if there are some things that are not variable, but constant. Yet in human action, free will precludes any quantitative constants (including constant units of measurement). All attempts to discover such constants (such as the strict quantity theory of money or the Keynesian "consumption function") were inherently doomed to failure.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not talking about economics, I'm talking about chemistry.

[ QUOTE ]
Finally such staples of mathematical economics as the calculus are completely inappropriate for human action because they assume infinitely small continuity; while such concepts may legitimately describe the completely determined path of a physical particle, they are seriously misleading in describing the willed action of a human being.

[/ QUOTE ]

Brain chemistry is ultimately based on the physical paths of particles. The human brain is an amalgam of physical particles, and physical action happens according to the brain. Brain chemistry is always relevant to human action, even if you believe in a "mind" independent from the brain. If that "mind" can't interact with the brain somehow, then no human action can happen.

[ QUOTE ]
Such willed action can occur only in discrete, non-infinitely-small steps, steps large enough to be perceivable by a human consciousness. Hence the continuity assumptions of calculus are inappropriate for the study of man.

-----------------------------------------------------------

[/ QUOTE ]

Once again he's talking about the social sciences, which leads me to wonder whether my criticisms have been relevant. Is it possible this entire article was written in response to social determinism, and Mises himself was a philosophical determinist? It seems very likely to me. Unfortunately I don't know much about any purely philosophical works by Mises. But not one of the things he's said in the article are relevant to philosophical determinism. They all apply either to social determinism or to philosophical fatalism.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
If you see an effect, and you learn the cause of that effect, how does it follow that it the cause-effect was all predetermined?

[/ QUOTE ]

It doesn't. Predetermination implies that people can't change the course of events. Determinism makes no such claims. What determinism does say is that the cause had its own cause, which also had a cause, which also had a cause, all the way back to a "first cause." The idea is that "first causes" aren't happening every time a human being makes a choice. (Obviously an event might have more than one cause, I'm saying "a cause" for simplicity, but I could say each event has causes, each of which have causes, each of which...)

[ QUOTE ]
If I am the cause of someone else's gunshot wound to the head, and it was simply determined to be that way, then what am I guilty of?

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would you be guilty in the first place? How would free will make you guilty? There is no logical explanation for guilt and punishment, period. Now, in terms of justice, you could be punished in order to influence your decision whether to commit the crime again, and to discourage others from committing the crime. This is all causal and based on causal assumptions about your actions.

Also, why was it "simply" determined? Because humans are made of atoms, does that make humans "just" a bunch of atoms? Words like "simply" and "just" are highly deceptive here. The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, the fact that action is determined doesn't mean it's "simply" determined - will and choice and values and responsibility all apply.

[DougShrapnel]

[ QUOTE ]
all the way back to a "first cause."

[/ QUOTE ] Could you elaborate about this "first cause". If there is such a thing, are we not certain that it must be random, since if was determined it wouldn't be a "first cause". This shows that randomness exists at some level in the universe. It doesn't say either way if we have free will or not. Just that it is possible that we do have free will. We can structure the "first cause" hypothetically to create a universe with free will or without, but I don't see how anyone can tell without fully understanding the "first cause". Full understanding of the first cause is the only means to decide if free will exists or if it does not. Since the one thing I am sure of regarding the first cause is that it is random, I logically assume the possibility of the mechanism for randomness and free will to exist.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
all the way back to a "first cause."

[/ QUOTE ] Could you elaborate about this "first cause". If there is such a thing, are we not certain that it must be random, since if was determined it wouldn't be a "first cause". This shows that randomness exists at some level in the universe.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, it means that we do not understand it. 'Randomness' doesn't mean or explain anything; it's the equivalent of calling 'God' the first cause.

[DougShrapnel]

[ QUOTE ]
No, it means that we do not understand it. 'Randomness' doesn't mean or explain anything; it's the equivalent of calling 'God' the first cause.

[/ QUOTE ] Saying anything about the nature of the first cause, in our case if it contained the possiblity for free will to emerge or not is equivaling of preaching the nature of God. Determinism does nothing but beg the question.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
No, it means that we do not understand it. 'Randomness' doesn't mean or explain anything; it's the equivalent of calling 'God' the first cause.

[/ QUOTE ] Saying anything about the nature of the first cause, in our case if it contained the possiblity for free will to emerge or not is equivaling of preaching the nature of God. Determinism does nothing but beg the question.

[/ QUOTE ]

What does that mean: free will

[DougShrapnel]

[ QUOTE ]
What does that mean: free will

[/ QUOTE ] At the minimum it's the abilty to assert some control over the causes of your actions.

[Lestat]

I understand what you're saying, but if I understand things correctly, quantum arguments state that there is indeed randomness and unpredictability at the sub-atomic level. This means a very large collection of neurons do not have to be funtioning strictly in a determistic manner.

I do not believe in souls, but do believe that one is master of his own fate to an extent. If I am poor and my life is not going well, I can *decide* to take actions in order to bring about a more desirable outcome. It is my ability to make decisions that lead me away from a deterministic world view.

Yes, it may be nothing more than the way neurons and synapses fire within my brain that lead to these decisions and actions. But still, I am a unique individual among billions on this planet. And I am in control.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What does that mean: free will

[/ QUOTE ] At the minimum it's the abilty to assert some control over the causes of your actions.

[/ QUOTE ]

And what causes you to do some thing over another thing.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue">I am a determinist because I do not think anything can be random. </font>

I'm not a physicist and don't keep up with the trade, but I do think there are good arguments which state this isn't true. Random and unpredictable events DO occur at the sub-atomic level. So it might be time for you to re-think this.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="blue">I am a determinist because I do not think anything can be random. </font>

I'm not a physicist and don't keep up with the trade, but I do think there are good arguments which state this isn't true. Random and unpredictable events DO occur at the sub-atomic level. So it might be time for you to re-think this.

[/ QUOTE ]

That you cannot predict or understand something does not make it random.

[madnak]

Determinism is the idea that every event has causes back to the "first cause," or possibly in an infinite chain of causes. If there is a first cause, determinism is true. If you define free will in such a way that it can manifest from causal mechanisms, then you aren't defining it in a way that contradicts determinism. Free will is typically brought against determinism as it applies to human action - if human action happens according to causes, then some people suggest that it changes the nature of responsibility. This reasoning supposedly applies regardless of any first cause or its nature. If the human being can't change the physical reality in the present moment, it's not what is typically considered "free will."

Personally I don't see how determinism is relevant to issues of responsibility and morality. Whether it's causal, random, or magical, the implications of human action seem the same to me. The only thing free will has going for it is that because it's beyond human comprehension, people can use it as a way to resolve contradictions inherent in theistic principles, in the same way they can use the "God works in mysterious ways" argument to accomplish the same thing. Typically this is represented by the position that evil happens due to free will, specifically that free will (defined as the subjective experience of choice) and determinism are incompatible (incompatibilism). Though there's no evidence that the subjective experience of choice is incompatible with determinism, and plenty of evidence to the contrary, it's convenient to some theists to suggest it is, and that the experience is inherently mystical. By doing so, they imply that evil actions are performed, not due to desperation or self-interested action or human emotion or even insanity, but due to this "magical factor" that exists outside the physical realm. Since they suggest this "magical factor" is necessary for the subjective experience of choice as well as for human evil, they can write off human evil as an "unfortunate necessity."

However, nowhere along the way do they have any logic to back up their position. Typically they perpetuate misconceptions, such as the idea that if everything is caused, and the original state of the universe led ultimately to the current state of the universe, everything must be "predetermined" or fated and therefore nobody can do anything about anything. That doesn't follow, but it sounds logical to many people because they confuse predetermination (the fate of the universe being decided beforehand and lack of human ability to do anything about it) with the concept that reality is somewhat stable and the current state results from the past state.

If you're talking about actual randomness being free will, I don't know that such a definition of free will is internally contradictory. But that viewpoint is basically probabilistic determinism, whether you label it "free will" or not. If you're talking about apparent randomness, then it only qualifies as free will to the extent that it subverts individual human action. No humans were around during the "first cause," therefore it has little bearing on free will whether or not it's random. It may be mystical, but so long as every antecedent event is based on the primary event, incompatibilist free will doesn't exist.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
I understand what you're saying, but if I understand things correctly, quantum arguments state that there is indeed randomness and unpredictability at the sub-atomic level. This means a very large collection of neurons do not have to be funtioning strictly in a determistic manner.

I do not believe in souls, but do believe that one is master of his own fate to an extent. If I am poor and my life is not going well, I can *decide* to take actions in order to bring about a more desirable outcome. It is my ability to make decisions that lead me away from a deterministic world view.

Yes, it may be nothing more than the way neurons and synapses fire within my brain that lead to these decisions and actions. But still, I am a unique individual among billions on this planet. And I am in control.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing about determinism contradicts any of that.

[Lestat]

Then what is it that I don't understand about determinism?

First, as I understand it, determinism is NOT fatalism, right?

Second, determinism means things cannot work out to be any other way. Is this right? So even though there is no way to determine "how" things will turn out, the fact is they "have" to turn out that way.

Free will as I understand it, means that things don't necessarily "have" to turn out a certain way. So even if events are leading to a certain conclusion, then can be altered by an idependent action. This action could be caused by an interfering random event or a purposeful conscious one.

The point is, if things are truly random and unpredictable in the quantum world, there is every reason to believe this is true for all scales, since everything is predicated based on what happens in the quantum world to some degree. If this is so, this would blow determinism out of the water as end results are not necessarily determined by antecedent causal events.

Someone PLEASE explain to me what it is I'm not grasping here! I'm sick of not knowing what it is I don't know.

[Riddick]

I think I'm completely missing the difference between determinism and causality. You seem to be using them interchangeably.

[Riddick]

[ QUOTE ]
Is it possible this entire article was written in response to social determinism, and Mises himself was a philosophical determinist?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ive only skimmed your response, but one thing that is possible is that Mises didn't write this article, rather Murray Rothbard did in 1960.

[DougShrapnel]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What does that mean: free will

[/ QUOTE ] At the minimum it's the abilty to assert some control over the causes of your actions.

[/ QUOTE ]

And what causes you to do some thing over another thing.

[/ QUOTE ]I believe this is the general disagreement. I can't say that I know. It seems like you can stucture it deterministicaly or based on free will.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
I think I'm completely missing the difference between determinism and causality. You seem to be using them interchangeably.

[/ QUOTE ]

Determinism is the idea that everything, including human action, works according to causality, that is, according to cause-and-effect relationships. Anything that is completely causal works in a determinist way, but it's possible for some things to be causal without everything being causal. Most of my references to causality and causation were with regard to human action, because if human action is deterministic then free will is irrelevant. I admit if human action is causal that doesn't mean everything is.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
Ive only skimmed your response, but one thing that is possible is that Mises didn't write this article, rather Murray Rothbard did in 1960.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oops /images/graemlins/blush.gif

[Riddick]

I understand that every effect has a preceding cause and have no issue with that.

But when I create and then start whistling a tune that I made up in my head, what caused me to whistle that particular never-before-heard tune if it was not purely of my own volition?

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
Then what is it that I don't understand about determinism?

First, as I understand it, determinism is NOT fatalism, right?

Second, determinism means things cannot work out to be any other way. Is this right? So even though there is no way to determine "how" things will turn out, the fact is they "have" to turn out that way.

[/ QUOTE ]

That depends on your perspective. In a universal sense, sort of. I don't think it's even meaningful to speak of how things "have" to turn out, or whether they "cannot" work another way. In the first place, when you ask whether something can have worked another way, you typically mean if the circumstances were different could it have worked another way. Rarely do people use that construct, conventionally, to mean that something might have turned out differently if the circumstances were identical. Determinism says that the future would change if circumstances were different.

In the second place, you're taking a view that is linked to the present moment and gives it a special importance, but determinism is a broad view that looks at events outside of any specific time frame. If there's one future, it will be whatever it is. It won't be anything else, and in a certain sense it "can't" be anything else, there's only one future. However, that future will be what it is because of events in the present. So of course you can change the future. It's just that the actions you take to change the future exist within a causal context - they still have plenty of impact. The fact my arm is based on chemical pulleys and levers doesn't make it any less significant when I flex my arm. The fact my brain is based on neurons and action potential and neurotransmitters doesn't make it any less significant when I think a thought. And the fact my entire body is made of physical particles, atoms and molecules, doesn't make it any less significant when I love someone. There's no reason why it would. The view you're taking here seems to have the same logic as the theist view that "atheists can't have morals, because without a God how can there be morality?" Similarly, you seem to be saying "humans can't have choices, because without free will how can there be choice?" And in neither case do I see any logic. If you could clarify and explain why you believe determinism negates choice, that would help.

And third, the assumption there's only one future may be faulty. If your choices are based on an apparently random event, for example, then two new "universes" might be created, one in which you choose one way, the other in which you choose an alternate way. I don't know about the physics underlying such a possibility, but it's seen frequently in sci-fi. There are others ways in which the view that when you make one choice it leads to one single future may not be valid. Personally I tend to believe in one reality and one future, but that assumption isn't necessary. You say that things must happen in a certain way, but I believe it's very possible for things to happen in many different ways at once! Multiple universes may not be the only mechanism by which this could happen.

[ QUOTE ]
Free will as I understand it, means that things don't necessarily "have" to turn out a certain way. So even if events are leading to a certain conclusion, then can be altered by an idependent action. This action could be caused by an interfering random event or a purposeful conscious one.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again I think your terminology is loose here. You have to describe what you mean when you say an event "has" to happen. And when you say events are "leading to a certain conclusion." I think the biggest issue here is the term "independent action." No action is totally independent. Determinism involves the sum of all actions happening everywhere. If you remove any action, no matter how small, then the remaining universe is no longer deterministic because that action now lies outside the deterministic context. You, for example, are a critical part of the deterministic framework of reality. No event goes without saying unless your input is already included in the "calculation." Until such a time as they're made, your decisions can change the future. Most determinists believe your actions are theoretically predictable based on previous states. That doesn't indicate that they're pre-existing or predetermined, the actions don't exist until you take them. Personally, I don't think it's possible to predict human action theoretically, I think problems of the observer influencing the results and inability to perfectly measure or quantify quantum states would prevent us from making predictions even without quantum randomness. Of course, adding probability to the mix means that not only is the universe not predetermined, it can't even by predicted. Not even by an omniscient being, unless he can see the future directly.

[ QUOTE ]
The point is, if things are truly random and unpredictable in the quantum world, there is every reason to believe this is true for all scales, since everything is predicated based on what happens in the quantum world to some degree. If this is so, this would blow determinism out of the water as end results are not necessarily determined by antecedent causal events.

Someone PLEASE explain to me what it is I'm not grasping here! I'm sick of not knowing what it is I don't know.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's true. This is why probabilistic determinism is so popular. What's confusing you is that fact probabilistic determinism isn't really determinism. As a probabilistic determinist I'm adding to that confusion. I'm holding this debate mainly in opposition to the people who suggest that free will exists in an incompatibilist sense. So I'm using the arguments of some of the "hard" determinists because randomness doesn't seem like "free will" to me any more than causation. But I'm really a probabilistic determinist (I believe randomness can happen) and a compatibilist (I think free will exists). I'm simplifying my arguments by speaking as an incompatibilist "true" determinist, and in so doing I'm contradicting myself, so it makes sense to be confused. I should be more careful about that.

[madnak]

It was purely of your own volition. I think your volition itself is an effect that has a preceding cause, and I think the cause is related to brain chemistry.

I think psychology and functionalist interpretations of human action are limited in their ability to describe it. So abstractions like "you chose note X because you were feeling insecure" are pretty meaningless. But I think you prefer that tune over other tunes, and that you might have chosen a different tune depending on your mood or the weather or who knows what, but again I don't think psychology can quantify that kind of thing. Only when (if) biology can calculate the actions of every particle in your brain will such a thing ever be predictable.

[Riddick]

So you don't really have any idea why I chose certain notes in a tune I created, but you know its deterministic, and the burden is on the free-will people to prove otherwise? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[madnak]

I do have an idea why. You whistle that particular tune because your brain sends signals that cause you to do so. All of these brain mechanics are causal. The fact that the specific selection of your tune hasn't been isolated yet doesn't approach the proof it was a chemical process. Generally making a conscious selection involves some feedback loops between your forebrain (particularly your prefrontal cortex) and other areas of your brain, and your lips and lungs move based on electric impulses transmitted by the nerves. See also: GMontag's post.

The brain is composed of 100% deterministic components, therefore there is no existence of a "free will" above the quantum level. Also there's nowhere for a supernatural mechanic to apply (other than at the quantum randomness level).

[Lestat]

Thank! This is no doubt the most thorough explanation I've received so far. Let me re-read it a couple of times and think about it. Thanks again madmak!

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
But when I create and then start whistling a tune that I made up in my head, what caused me to whistle that particular never-before-heard tune if it was not purely of my own volition?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because you needed an example of "free will" in order to prove your point /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Andrew Karpinski]

[ QUOTE ]
I understand that every effect has a preceding cause and have no issue with that.

But when I create and then start whistling a tune that I made up in my head, what caused me to whistle that particular never-before-heard tune if it was not purely of my own volition?

[/ QUOTE ]

How can you believe in free will, if you think every effect has a cause? The essence of a non determinist viewpoint is, in my opinion, an uncaused effect.

[JMAnon]

[ QUOTE ]
Where do people get the idea from that if everything is determined, there is no reason to do anything? That there is no morality and no responsibility?

Determinism doesn't mean we know what is going to happen; in fact: causality says that we CANNOT know what will happen because of a ton of theoretical problems (let alone practical).

Example:
I go to the grocery store to get food. I assume causality in doing that. If I don't assume causality, then there's really no reason to do anything because my actions do not have any logical implications. So I could step in my car, start it, be on the other side of the moon, and turn into a monkey doing a hoolahoop dance. But if I accept causality, then me doing all the actions will have causal consequences and I can actually get the stuff to my house.
Thinking that it doesn't matter what I do, and that the groceries will or will not end up at my house no matter what is using an inverse of the idea that cannot be applied that way. Nobody knows whether they will end up there, and if I decide to be a nihilist and do nothing, there is one thing I know for sure: it's that they will not end up there.

Interested in some thoughts..

[/ QUOTE ]

Most theories of morality assume free choices by a moral agent. If all of your choices are determined (even if they don't "feel" determined to you) then you are not morally blameworthy, even if you kill, torture, or rape someone, because you had no choice (literally) but to do it.

[PokerAmateur4]

[ QUOTE ]
Choice and determinism aren't contradictory. Choice as it's normally defined is a causal mechanism; I choose one of a number of options for a reason.

[/ QUOTE ]I think they are contradictory. If you define choice as your ability to change anything.

If there is determinism, no matter what choices you make, you will be in the same location and overall state 10 years from now, no matter what. This is because all the causes are already set into motion to create the future, your choices are only an illusionary control via "free will". A calculator chooses to display "4" when you hit 2+2=, but it only appear that the calculator made a choice, it was predetermined.

I know close to nothing about quantum mechanics, but I don't see how chance playing into occurences changes the apparent lack of control that we have as expressed above.

[siegfriedandroy]

how do you define 'morality'?

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
how do you define 'morality'?

[/ QUOTE ]

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