conclusive determinism

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An essay on conclusive determinism
Matthew Milne

Introduction
Determinism, like all other philosophical theories is inconclusive, perfectly unprovable.

This philosopher begs the question: If life is a chain of events, is the meaning of life to carry out those events?

Chain logic is the process of deduction I will be using to answer this question.
N.B.
Chain logic: The process in which an established fact is derived to give several other truths

Chapter 1
Establishing the root fact
Life
Collective definitions of life are vague at best.

The New Universal dictionary (1965)
(I chose this dictionary because it gives many definitions for life)
Defines life as:
1.a state in which the organs of an animal or vegetable continue to exercise their natural functions
2. a state of living
3. animate existence
4. vitality
5. union of body and soul
6. the period from birth to death
7. the period during which anything lasts
8. manner of living
9. the animal mating principle
10. collectively animals
11. the history of events or person
12. human affairs
13. position in society

I can take each one a step further by describing each one as a chain of events.

  1. exercise = functions = processes = chain of events
  2. a state of living = processes = a chain of events
  3. animate = movement = processes = a chain of events
  4. vitality = energy = processes = a chain of events
  5. body = functions = processes = chain of events
  6. period = time = processes = chain of events
  7. same as above
  8. living = processes = chain of events
  9. mating = processes = chain of events
  10. animals = behaviour = processes = chain of events
  11. history = chained events through time = chain of events
  12. human affairs = things we do = processes = a chain of events
  13. position in society = processes = chain of events

Additional proposals:
14. preparing for heaven or hell = processes = chain of events

Even inanimate objects are involved in events (chemical reaction = chain of events)

Sufficed to say, anything you can describe as existing in time, is part of a chain of events.

Good, we have now established the fact: life is a chain of events.

Chapter 2
Establishing the base definition

Because we are describing life, we need to prove or disprove the competing theories of what it actually is.
The subject I can best define most people’s beliefs by is free will.
Most people including the majority of philosophers believe a human being has free will.
So an investigation leading to deduction subsequently proving or disproving the notion, will give us the best definition of life.

Chapter 3
Defining the base definition

Cambridge online advanced learner’s dictionary describes free will as:
Free will:
The ability to decide what to do independently of any outside influence.
Independently highlighted as the key word.
Independent:
Not influenced by other people, events or things.

Chapter 4
Disproving the base definition by the root fact

Consider a decision

  1. decisions are made by thinking
  2. thoughts are made by the interaction of chemicals, cells and neurological impulses
  3. interactions between chemicals, cells and neurological impulses can be described as a set of processes = a chain of events
  4. Thought processes are a chain of events
  5. Therefore the decision is the result of a chain of events
  6. Since the chain of events influences the thought, it can’t be made independently
  7. If the thought is not made independently it is not made freely
  8. If it’s not made freely there is no free choice
  9. If there’s no free choice there’s no free will.

Chapter 5
Conclusions and further hypothesis

Conclusive determinism concludes:
1.a chain of physical events is responsible for everything in, and everything that happens in, the universe.
2. There is no free will as there is no free choice because decisions are part of and influenced by a chain of events.
3. Life is a chain of events, which all animate and inanimate objects participate in.
4. If life is a chain of events then individual lives are links in the chain, thus having their own chain of events.
5. Therefore, individual life is a chain of events, which is part of a larger chain of events so the purpose of that life is to carry out those particular events.
6. Therefore, the meaning of life is to carry the chain of events specific to it.

Sources:
The new universal dictionary (1965)Psychology publishing co. LTD. Marple, Cheshire
Cambridge Advanced learner’s dictionary
dictionary.cambridge.org/

2

Matmilne,

Your conclusion in Chapter 4, quoted below, is where you could run into problems.

I believe this is the the crux of the Free Will/Determinism arguement. Is thought solely due to chemical actions and states in the brain? Some could argue that there exists an immaterial mind or soul where pure thought resides and the interactions of chemicals seen are the result of this mind/soul activity. So in other words some could argue, thoughts are not made by these chemical interactions which can be seen, but rather these chemical interactions are the material effects seen by immaterial causes of thought.

Here, of course, we delve into metaphysical and theological questions, and I don’t really want to get into that. I was just pointing out that this has been a point of contention between the determinism and free will conflicting views.

I personally can’t be sure.

3

Your mind works to the following formulae.

Input - process - output.

In other words your senses pick up something and a set of processes is then conducted.

people who do not have senses are vegetables.

In order for your mind to start a train of thought, something has to ignitye it.
This is always physical i.e. chemical or electrical

Even if mind was seperate from body, there has to be some sort of interface. This is physical so again, would class as a chain of events.

As i said earlier, no matter what you describe, it can be described as a chain of events. Hence no free will.

Does that help?

4

your basically just starting with the assumption that thoughts are a product of physical brain processes and nothing more and then using that to conclude that thoughts are a product of physical brain processes and nothing more.

i like the idea that random events are orchestrated. things like the zero point field and solar radiation will always be throwing photons into your brain, smashing right into your ‘physical-only brain processes’.

whos to say that god isnt inside the sun, shooting photons into your brain to force you to make decisions that coincide with his will. or you have some kind of free will on file in meta-land and sun god uses that to shoot photons into your brain to change your decisions away from what they would naturally be, but towards what they should supernaturally be.

the fact that we dont know exactly what the brain processes are means that we cant see them. the fact that we cant see them working means that we cant say that they arent supernaturally controlled by Ra. do you have a better explanation for howard hughes’ pure evil? i dont think so. :wink:

5

Who indeed.

I never once said god was or wasn’t in control.

I did say that human beings weren’t.
Life, is a chain of events that extend through time. You can’t get away from that fact, and you never will.

If the facts differ from your theory, then your theory is wrong, not the facts.

Incidentely, have you met god?
You seem to know it’s gender.

6

matmilne,

Using the genetic pronouns he, him or his does not imply any special insight into the gender of God. They are just generic pronouns regularly used without any specific implications.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that Future Man would agree.

7

ah yes, the minor niggles.

Anyway life is a chain of events, there must be thousands of examples of that phenomenom.

Anyway chain logic (or the logic of cause and effect) dictates, if life is a chain of events then the meaning of life is to carry out those events, whatever they may be.

The universe must be millions of times more complicated than presently thought.

8

In all honesty this small essay seems quite quaint to me - the methodology runs rather viciously contrary to what I would consider to be sufficient; considering the complexity of the topic, and the confused manner in which it is usually articulated.

Firstly, if you are going to attempt to use chain logic, you need to be more thorough.

Also using dictionary definitions usually indicates a failure not so much in realising where those particular definitions came from, but rather more importantly in understanding semantics.

Future Man’s point on the circularity of your argument is a good one. Choosing terms is not like picking a fact from which other ‘truths’ are then derived. It is rather more like a dialectic where one implies the other.

Now your ‘chain of events’ is also a part of this. Of course you have taken each of the definitions for life, and bastardised or homogenised them into derivations of what you can then say is there essence. Unfortunately ‘chain of events’ is rather loaded and implies probably more than you are consciously aware you are proposing. You imagine yourself to be reducing or simplifying, but you are abstracting and this does not establish facts so much as establish narrative.

In any case there must be more to your ‘chain of events’ then presented here, otherwise you have proven very little.

You have chosen a definition of free will which is not very current. It is a straw man in your argument.

Also I can raise several superficial objections to your subsequent argument against free will - although really you will not grasp where I am coming from based on this alone.

  1. Decisions are not always made by thinking. Actually the idea of conscious and unconscious thought as a clear dichotomy is invalid. The idea of free will as a kind of self-possession is outdated. However this means that any determinism which bases itself on a refutation of this free will is itself outdated as well. It is only its opposite, which makes it still too similar.

I cannot even agree or disagree on free will, as the question is not being asked correctly.

  1. Ah yes, ‘thoughts are made by chemicals, cells and neurological impulses’. But ‘are made by’ does not equal ‘are’ as in order for one to cause the other they must in some abstract sense be outside each other. Or at least this seems to be implicit in your thinking.
    Or else will you say that they are self-causing? I would imagine you would not. This I think is only the beginning of your problems.

  2. Irrelevant

  3. Does not follow anyway.

  4. "

  5. "

  6. Such a freedom would be like chaos, which is to say not free, but random. But then this distorts your pretty disjunction wherein either we have free choice or we don’t.
    etc etc for the others.

You are jumping all over the place, which makes your certainty seem strange and hard to justify.

Also, you seem to confuse ‘meaning’ with ‘purpose’.

Really I am not sure what to make of this topic. Usually I am not concerned so much with this, so much as with how individual people rationalise their own positions and build their arguments. With this particular essay though there is so much to say that it occurs to me that perhaps I could not make myself intelligible to you if I tried. Hence the sparsity of actual refutations in my response. It is like attempting to untangle a huge vine, or a Gordion knot. Except you cannot just cut it like Alexander, as the process involved is actually what is most important. Anyway enough blabbering.

Regards

9

life is not a chain of events. its one event, but we can only see little parts of it at a time. life, existance, death, …its all one event. its obvious existance isnt a chain…chains have starts and finishes. so if existance has always been everthing inside it has always been, including life. you can not have a chain of events inside infinity, because it would put a time on infinity. my theory is that everything has and will exist, and that life(energy) is traveling around inside of it in some specific pattern. so to ultra simplify this- picture a circle. the circle is existance (past present and future) now picture a little dot slowly moving around the circle. that dot is life, energy…its what we call present time. you werent born before you died and you dint, here the joke before you laughed…i think.

10

James no. 2 replying to matmilnes original post…

I completely agree, esspeccially with the last sentence.

Excepting infinity as truth while trying to simplify it logically by deducing right from wrong among infinite perspectives at best is a single story or version.

Matmilne… WHAT IS STRATEGY.

Any attempt to assign intentions onto a body based on the observations of the past and present is useless for the element of deception, a strategic element, does not adhere to the logic or reason of an observer outside of the strategic center.

A strategist willfully implements strategy based on an equation.

How does one equal more then infinity.

The strategic center which represents one beleives it will beat all potential opponents who represent infinity.

The strategist must beleive more then he doubts because he has an active role in determining his own success. This is not a matter of good and bad or forcing and yeilding other wills. It is a matter of coordination.
If you beleive you are right then you will need more then logic to convince those with whom you dissagree. You will need strategy.
Isnt that original post you made a form of strategy?

If we were all antennas of information and couldnt decieve or force anybody to do anything them we could all live in the magical world of anythings possible and forget about surviving, but we dont.

11

convincing people is very difficult as you know.

my strategy is the following.

Get people to read the theory so that it is stored in their memory. Subconciously their mind will work away at it and begin to piece events in their lives together. They will suddenly realise what i was talking about and things will go from there.

Over the next few years more and more people will read and more and more people will understand. It’s then just a case of getting something in the media and away it goes.

Einstein had to do this until max planck realised the truths in his theories. Then things went from there for him. I fortunately have other routes into the publishing industry, especially via music so i should be able to get something published in the next few decades.

What i need is for an academic to read and understand what i’m getting at.
Once that happens things might be easier.

12

I have a feeling you might want to read some Wittgenstein and Foucault. And what you’re doing is, as james no.2 has pointed out, a complete waste of time. You are using a dictionary? Come on…think outside the box…words do not irrefutably describe meaning. Wittgenstein should help clear this up…and problematise your whole enterprise here. (Not that the whole project isn’t utterly implausible anyway). Try reversing away from youor supreme apparent confidence and start to admit to your ignorance…that’ll be a healthier place to start and might even yield some helpful results for you.

13

i only used a dictionary to give me as many definitions of life as possible.

On the front of the accuracy of this theory. everything is a chain of events. No matter what you think of, it is all part of the universe or related to it, and therefore, is part of a chain of events.

for, god’s sake, the universe started a long time ago, if it wasn’t a chain of events it would be impossible to know anything about it.
For example, the motions of the planets. All governed by events that occur in the universe. Without the events, the planets wouldn’t move, and where would that leave us. The motion of the planets is a chain of events.

If the unierse was random, it couldn’t be scientifically or logically analysed.
There would be no equations, no maths, no medicine, no computers since all of these rely upon chains of events, especially computers and equations.
Since this is not the case, the only thing the universe can be is a chain of events.
History is the alternate name for a chain of events, so unless you are all contesting the existance of history then none of you have a case that can be contrary to the theory.

This theory is not a theory like religion. This is a thoery like evolution, where there are huge ammounts of evidence to back it up.

If you want to understand think about buying a bottle of milk, then think where it came from and all the events and people involved. Then run back from the beginning and tell me that the universe is not a chain of events.

14

You are a very confused guy.

15

yeah? well so was Einstein.

And for the record, i have green-brown eyes.

16

I’ve got three words for your believers.
Cause and effect.

Conclusive determinism is the combination of the following: cause and effect + chaos theory + determinism = chain theory = conclusive determinism.

i am saying something new by taking cause and effect one step further.

Philosophy and physics should never disagree as they are both trying to explain the universe.

quantum mechanics is wrong on the grounds of randominity. At the subatomic level things behave randomly according to quantum mechanics, yet they create perfectly organised atoms at the atomic level and perfectly organised reactions at the chemical level. Perfectly explained human beings at the physical level and perfectly explainable laws of motion at the planetary level. I can’t see how it’s possible for randominity to exist on a small scale as this would surely be multiplied as the scale of particle increases making everything in the universe completely random. Such a universe would be impossible to analyse as the behaviour could not be predicted with the result there could be no sciences.

It may not be possible to completely prove the theory, but there are a lot of coincedences in the universe if it’s not true.

Yes i’m arrogant, and for that i appologise but i have completely convinced myself and i just wish i could communicate the thought process, maybee in a few years i could.

So I want constructive criticism not mindless belief.

I make a plea to any scientists who understand conclusive determinism to help out.

17

I’ve got three words for your believers.
Cause and effect.

Conclusive determinism is the combination of the following: cause and effect + chaos theory + determinism = chain theory = conclusive determinism.

i am saying something new by taking cause and effect one step further.

Philosophy and physics should never disagree as they are both trying to explain the universe.

quantum mechanics is wrong on the grounds of randominity. At the subatomic level things behave randomly according to quantum mechanics, yet they create perfectly organised atoms at the atomic level and perfectly organised reactions at the chemical level. Perfectly explained human beings at the physical level and perfectly explainable laws of motion at the planetary level. I can’t see how it’s possible for randominity to exist on a small scale as this would surely be multiplied as the scale of particle increases making everything in the universe completely random. Such a universe would be impossible to analyse as the behaviour could not be predicted with the result there could be no sciences.

It may not be possible to completely prove the theory, but there are a lot of coincedences in the universe if it’s not true.

Yes i’m arrogant, and for that i appologise but i have completely convinced myself and i just wish i could communicate the thought process, maybee in a few years i could.

So I want constructive criticism not mindless belief.

I make a plea to any scientists who understand conclusive determinism to respond.

18

I agree with most of what you are saying but I will have to admit that your “essay” isn’t really up to par to make a good argument.

I completely agree that life is a “chain of events” as you say, that each event is the result of previous events. However, you need to put forth a better argument. Basically all you have here is examples of cause and effect. If you put a little more effort into this, it will probably be much more convincing.

On a side note, you have to understand that it is hard for people to accept the idea that they do not have free will. When I first read up on determinism, I didn’t believe it because I couldn’t imagine that I didn’t have free will. It took me months to accept determinism, and I only did so after seeing it occur frequently in everyday life.

19

everyone else is having the same problems as you used to have, it’s impossible to get through to them because they refuse to give up their dillusions.
any suggestions?

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Only one, be more understanding of where they are coming from. Calling people “sheep” just because they disagree with you isn’t helping your cause. Like I said, try to get into a little more detail on your essay. That should help.