Is Fatalism Worse or Equal to Religion?

[chezlaw]

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B) There is free will. Accordingly, there must exist an agent/force/whatever that functions outside of the known laws of science. There is no empirical evidence for said agent. Modern psychology repeatedly shows that behavior is lawful, suggesting that there is no need for such an agent (the vast majority of psychiatrists are determinists)

Occam's razor shreds the latter to pieces.


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Hit your thumb with a hammer if you want to demonstrate the existence of something that functions outside of the known laws of science.

chez

[atrifix]

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It not only has to go back and capture a causal link to an event the agent had no control over, but it now has to correlate proofs and predictions on how this event affects everything from the synapses and neorons inside the agent's brain, to his motor skills, in order to bring about one and ONLY one result, no?

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This is correct. Determinism states that there is a causal link, and that this causal link, given an initial condition, necessarily brings about a later condition. My only point is that the specifics of the causal mechanism, and the specifics of the initial condition, are only important insofar as they would affect the later condition--not how they affect the claim of determinism. The important corollary is that the truth of determinism is unaffected by the inclusion/exclusion of God.

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btw- You use the term "theory". Is determinism really a scientific theory? That's pretty strong and means I should be studying rather than questioning it.

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Not really. A little poetic license. I often use the word theory to refer to philsophical theories, not scientific ones, for example, "deontological theories". Determinism has some ideas in science; I believe Hawking and some others have written a bit about it, but it's definitely a question of philosophy. If we could predict people's actions with as much certainty as billiard players can predict billiard balls (and if determinism is true, then this should be concievably possible), then it might become a scientific theory, but that seems unlikely at present.

Awesome post. Thanks.

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Philosophical determinism is the denial of free will. This can be caused in two ways: by physical determinism, or by causally predetermined events combined with the possibility of purely random events.

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OK. So, I can still consider myself a determinist, even if I believe QM allows for a probabilistic universe.

Lestat: For me, not believing in free will comes after a lot of introspection. I realized that I always act based on my strongest inclination. Then, I realized that I didn't choose those inclinations, but rather my past and my current situation led me to be inclined that way.

Another way to look at it is this: you can choose to do what you want. But did you choose to want that? We don't choose our desires -- they are a part of us. We can "choose" to do things to try to change our desires -- but we can't choose to desire to make that choice (ad infinitum).

The question of responsibility is answered by realizing that we don't have a choice to hold people responsible. And, in a practical sense, our non-freewill choice to hold someone responsible, may cause them to change their actions (even if they feel like they are using their free-will to make that choice).

[hmkpoker]

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B) There is free will. Accordingly, there must exist an agent/force/whatever that functions outside of the known laws of science. There is no empirical evidence for said agent. Modern psychology repeatedly shows that behavior is lawful, suggesting that there is no need for such an agent (the vast majority of psychiatrists are determinists)

Occam's razor shreds the latter to pieces.


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Hit your thumb with a hammer if you want to demonstrate the existence of something that functions outside of the known laws of science.

chez

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I think we have a pretty reasonable understanding of pain.

[hmkpoker]

Didn't you say you were raised Calvinist? Don't they have some kind of quasi-determinist sentiment?

[chezlaw]

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B) There is free will. Accordingly, there must exist an agent/force/whatever that functions outside of the known laws of science. There is no empirical evidence for said agent. Modern psychology repeatedly shows that behavior is lawful, suggesting that there is no need for such an agent (the vast majority of psychiatrists are determinists)

Occam's razor shreds the latter to pieces.


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Hit your thumb with a hammer if you want to demonstrate the existence of something that functions outside of the known laws of science.

chez

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I think we have a pretty reasonable understanding of pain.

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Really, you have an understanding of the experience of pain. Which scientific theory would that be?

chez

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Really, you have an understanding of the experience of pain. Which scientific theory would that be?

chez

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Indeed. I know a lot more than most about it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] and I can assure all you that, at least according to contemporary medecine, pain is one the most purely subjective experience.

On another note, chez, I really don't appreciate your quoting some books. I, unfortunately, found Dawkins unputdownable. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I am currently on Rendezvous 24, damn you. I am doing little else. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[chezlaw]

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Really, you have an understanding of the experience of pain. Which scientific theory would that be?

chez

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Indeed. I know a lot more than most about it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] and I can assure all you that, at least according to contemporary medecine, pain is one the most purely subjective experience.

On another note, chez, I really don't appreciate your quoting some books. I, unfortunately, found Dawkins unputdownable. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I am currently on Rendezvous 24, damn you. I am doing little else. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I hate to suffer alone [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

chez

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I can't believe so many (that I respect), do not believe in free will. Non-free will is totally inconceivable to me. I really need to look further into this.

So I decide to make a surprise stop at my mom's house. No wait.. Never mind I don't have time. Screw it, I haven't seen her in a while, I'm gonna go.. Oh I forgot! I promised my girlfriend we'd go out to dinner, etc. etc.

You mean to say ALL this waffling was set in motion by the big bang? I can't conceive it.

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What's the most inconceivable part? That it all originated from the big bang or that all that waffling is not evidence of free will?

The former seems to require a bigger leap of faith now that quantum mechanics has introduced evidence of particles behaving in a genuinely random way. If this is indeed true, then obviously determinism fails and your waffling cannot be traced back through direct causal links to the original state of the universe.

As far as all this waffling being predetermined, let's just isolate what happens at the time of the waffling and ignore the previous 6 million years. Surely you agree that everything in the universe is in a specific, unique state the moment before you start waffling. In other words, regardless of how it came to be that way, your brain is in a particular physical state, as is your immediate surrounding environment. So, tell me where the following reasoning breaks down for you:

1) You think with your brain.
2) Your brain is a physical entity.
3) Physical entities and their component parts interact with other physical entities and forces according to immutable laws of physics.
4) Your thought processes are a result of the current physical state of your brain, how it is interacting with itself, and how it reacts to external stimuli.
5) Since these thoughts are determined by the interactions of physical components that follow strict, unchanging physical laws, they are in essence pre-determined by the state of the universe immediately prior to the thoughts occurring.

Now, I didn't spend a lot of time on this, so that deduction may be incomplete or slightly inaccurate, but I think it is close enough. If you can indicate which part you don't agree with, maybe we can isolate exactly what you find so inconceivable.

[atrifix]

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OK. So, I can still consider myself a determinist, even if I believe QM allows for a probabilistic universe.

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Indeed you could. By the way, although the other distinctions I made (like hard vs. soft determinism) are widely accepted, I'm not too sure about the rigor of "physical determinism" vs. "philosophical determinism". When I usually talk about these I talk about something like "determinism vs. indeterminism" (causality vs. probabilism) and "determinism vs. libertarianism" (free will vs. non-free will). The reason that both have the same name is because determinism as the denial of free will origianted in the Newtonian mechanical idea of events linked by known causes. When the Einsteinian/quantum revolution came around, the theory was altered, but not in any substantial way. Perhaps it is time for a new name to avoid confusion. Statements like "Doug has no choice about whether he will ride the bus" just become "Doug has no choice about the probability that he will ride the bus".