Determinism: the middle ground

This topic has been talked about no end. I’d like to plant my flag in what I believe to be the sensible “middle ground” in the debate.

At one extreme, the naive scientists say: “The universe is deterministic. Fact. Deal with it.”

At the other extreme, the smug philosophers say: “Things just …happen. End of story. Deal with it.”

I say: “The universe appears to be deterministic above the Quantum scale. Even though we can’t prove anything either way, whenever we’re forced to physically act, we should base our actions on the assumed premiss that the universe is deterministic. In other words, the assertion of determinism should be downgraded to a ‘working assumption’.”

Have I found the middle ground?

I don’t believe there is such a thing as middle ground here…

You’re halfway I would say - you’re there when you find a place for free will alongside determinism. So maybe you’re not halfway yet…
:sunglasses:

Yes, but you’re looking at it, Man P :wink:

I’d say free will is an illusion, and as it happens, I was thinking of adding my views on the issue of responsibility and accountability in such a world. Is this the sort of thing that would complete the journey, do you think?

If you convincingly rule out free will you might even go beyond.

I shan’t be doing that…

Now that’s a sexy proposition.

But I think Jakob’s position is going to be the primary one that assails your proposition, and without dispelling the myth of free will, you won’t be able to take this line of thought to its completion.

Glad yer like it, Mast.

Maybe I could link consciousness to quantum events - that would take free will out of the scope of what I’m saying.

Then we would be in agreement yet again. Quantum waveform thought rationally leads to the decoherence we naturally suffer.

Quality poster, I like this Sweep guy. Oh objectivity, bane of the world, why do leave me in a quagmire of metaphysicists!!!

I’m delighted you’ve spotted me 900+ posts down the line, Mast :laughing:

800+ of those happened in my absence, and well, I’m slow to warm up. Guess it’s kind of the “old jalopy” syndrome, apologies amico, can’t be spot on all the time.

All truth is conditional.
Different things are true under different conditions.
Free will and determinism are both evident under acceptable conditions for truth.

I, for myself, couldn’t care less about “truth”. I only want the facts.

Facts pretty much work the same. If you ask a scientist the rules might be a little stricter than if you ask a preacher, but they get asserted just the same.

Is the claim “All truth is conditional” itself only conditionally true?

If no, then the claim “All truth is conditional” must be false.

If yes, then in some conditions some truth or truths must be unconditionally true. If so, then those truths must be true in all possible worlds which means the claim “All truth is conditional” is false in all possible worlds.

Either way, the claim “All truth is conditional” is self-refuting.

Under the conditions required for proper semantics you are correct. It is true that under those conditions my statement would be problematic and self referential.
This does not mean that my statement does not hold. The problem of self reference could be understood as informing us about limitations of language or maybe even “understanding” (whatever that is). The point is that nothing can be proven deductivley aside from detemining its internal consisteny. I think that you’ll be hard pressed to prove that there is something other than a conditional truth outside the bounds of math and logic. And what’s this stuff about possible worlds? Are you an identity theorist? Is that a David Lewis reference? If so, could you respond to my thread in the hall of questions about de re, de dicto and de se?

Chimney Sweep, that is pure geniousness. I love it!

You know its a piece of genious as it’s so damn obvious when you think about it. Perhaps you’ve just put into words what normal intelligent people think anyhow, they’ve just been too damned apathetic to put it into words… Why do all the smart people tend towards pacifism?

I’m all for the middle ground. I mean, there is a little bit of truth in everything, right?

I agree with you there too. It’s a damn good illusion for sure, but an illusion just the same. The problem is, even if free-will is accepted as an illusion, the concept of free-will is still very valuable in the context of communication. I think this is what gives it its staying power. There is also the paradoxical matter of analyzing your thought processes with the very tool used to create them…

I endorse your comments, Michael. You might be interested to know that the thing that inspired me to express this was the situation scientists confront philosophers with, where they accuse them of being hypocrites for walking around - rather than “straight over” - open manholes.

Just to add, even mathematics (and logic as well) is standing on shaky feet. The thing is, most mathematicians don’t care because the questions that need to be answered are essentially philosophical in nature. (and there’s so much more interesting work to be done :laughing: )

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation … arithmetic

Y

Not as a default premise, no they don’t. Truth requires no substantiation, support, references, or data. Truth can be asserted as valid because that is the choice of the individual speaker, and the only authority regarding truth is the speaker, theirself.