Re: Is Fatalism Worse or Equal to Religion?
Let me try this again to see if I can get any better clarity. Determinism posits that, for a given agent/action, there is some set of states, call them t0, t1, ... tn, and a causal (and/or causal-probabilistic) link connecting those states. Thus if the agent had no choice over t0, then he likewise had no choice over t1, and t2, so on to tn. So say Nt0 means "Todd has no choice about", then if (t0->t1->...tn), and Nt0, it follows that Nt0->Nt1->Nt2->...Ntn. That's not really a rigorous way to state it formally, but you get the idea.
Okay, so determinism claims that there is some initial condition that no one had any choice over and there is a causal link that no one has any choice over. But exactly what those are is very difficult to determine. It is the kind of thing that can be known by observation (unlike, say, ethics), but to do so is so enormously complicated, it's just not practically feasible. It might require, for instance, knowing the position of every atom in the universe. But all that is necessary for determinism is a) an initial condition that no one has any choice over and b) a causal link that no one has any choice over. Although no one knows exactly what those are, anything that anyone puts forward (Newtonian mechanics, Einsteinian mechanics, intelligent design or otherwise) is going to fall into those categories. The only way to circumvent this is to make a pretty large leap--for example, ascribing choice to probability, which, while logically consistent, just seems bizarre. And similarly the initial condition doesn't need to be traced back all the way to the big bang, but only to a time that no one had any choice about, so perhaps before the evolution of humans (or, in the case of single agents, a time before the agent's birth, say).
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12-13-2005, 07:07 AM
Linear Mode
