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I think your thoughts of determinism ... just that everything is fixed.

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I can't make heads or tails of the first three paragraphs of your response. Here's the American Heritage Dicstionary's definition of determinism: The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs.

So, clearly, this is a key point: If the universe is deterministic, then so are we.

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About the combination of randomness and determinism ... This mean looks like a deterministic truth, but actually is just a statisical value.


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Suppose a cosmic ray has a chance of disrupting the computer in the return vehicle of the first lunar astronauts, right as they are executing the rocket burns to line themselves up to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. If the cosmic ray collides with a memory module and flips a bit in the computer's memory, the computer will execute the burn incorrectly, sending the astronauts to their doom.

If the astronauts die, none of them will ever have more children, and the space program itself would be in jeopardy. Otherwise, the space program continues and at least some of the astronauts have additional children. However it works out, it's clear that whether that single cosmic ray hits or misses the computer has far-reaching consequences into the foreseeable future, because it impacts not only the astronauts but all their future progeny for as long as human beings exist.

If the universe is deterministic, then it's not a random event -- it happens based on uncountable, unknowable variables and the rules of the universe. However, if randomness determines whether or not the collision occurs (like quantum mechanics says it would), then a single random event can have significant impact on future events. The behavior of that system is not the convergence uncountable random events.

Now, this is not an argument in free will. It is an argument that if the universe is indeed random at the quantum level, then the future truly is unpredictable and that means there exists the possibility that human beings have free will.

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I think dr dotr's logic still stands. if we take his point 3 (determinism) from the mix, it's not a free action and if we take point 4 (randomness) out, it's not a free action. If we take 25% determinism and 75% point randomness, it's 25% not free and 75% not free, which is 100% not free. So no free will...

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You're combining Boolean logic and linear algebra. That just doesn't fly.

You're basing your thinking on a faulty assumption. You can't assume that since rule-based means "not free" and random means "not free", any combination of rule-based and random also means "not free".

In order to prove your point, you have to prove that there are no emergent behaviors when you mix non-random behavior and random behavior. I personally don't know how to prove or disprove that.

I'm saying that I don't know if it's true that there are emergent behaviors when you combine rules and randomness. I'm saying that

1> If we do have free will, its existence depends on there being some emergence between deterministic rules and randomness.

2> In order to have that emergence, the universe has to allow both randomness AND predetermined behavior.

3> We know the universe has deterministic properties. We don't know for sure whether the universe allows for true randomness.

4> Therefore, we have to know whether or not the universe allows randomness before we can even begin to ask about free will.