Hard Determinism: Is it Necessarily True?

[-Job-]

Neither we nor the universe are windup toys that do their programed thing and then stop when the spring unwinds.

And conveniently too, as the alternative isn't very pleasant. Luckily we're not biased here in this discussion.

 

[out of whack]

If hard determinism is true, Every single event at present will be due to the past events and all those past events due to the first cause.
Doesn't this mean that our thoughts are a result of the first cause?

That's the conclusion, yes.

If so, What we think is not based on logic and that if we believe in hard determinism it is because of whatever happened to me at past and not a logical outcome. Isn't this saying hard determinism doesn't necessarily exist?

I think that 99% of the time, what we think is absolutely not based on logic. We spend most of our day interacting and reacting, but not following a strict logical pattern. At least in my case. I like to believe that all my actions are rational but I know it's a delusion and a rationalization that makes me feel better. Once in a while though, I do take the time to focus and take some premises to a logical conclusion, which is just one of the many types of mental processes people use. But then, applying this particular mental process or some other mental process does neither validate nor invalidate hard determinism.

If all events cannot be known or predicted then hard determinism can not hold.

This is not a logical conclusion. Knowing and predicting are quite different from determinism. Regardless of the existence or non-existence of determinism, you still cannot know everything and you still cannot predict everything. The universe (all there is) is too big, complex and inter-related for any part of itself to be able to do that.

 

[baywax]

Knowing and predicting are quite different from determinism. Regardless of the existence or non-existence of determinism, you still cannot know everything and you still cannot predict everything. The universe (all there is) is too big, complex and inter-related for any part of itself to be able to do that.

This is why I voted no. And its why the universe examplifys the phrase "the left hand don't know what the right hand is doing". There may be a natural synergy working between the universe's left and right hand but it is not a conscious "knowing" of what the right hand is doing. That is why hard determinism is a pipe dream.

It is also impossible to prove whether hard determinism exists or does not since the scope of our limited awareness can neither fathom the entire universe nor observe the actions and interactions taking place in such a vast and complex universe. In fact we are still unaware of many of the complexities of our own species.

Looking outside of our own psyche for hard determinism is the equivalent of hiding our heads in the sand. The actions of every individual are determined by that individual's own conscious and subconscious motives and subseqent responses. There is the probablility that these motives and responses are determined by innate instincts such as survival. What determines the function of an instinct is anybodies guess but my guess is "natural law", whatever that is.

 

[mubashirmansoor]

The actions of every individual are determined by that individual's own conscious and subconscious motives and subseqent responses.

Does your right hand determine what to do by itself?

 

[Ki Man]

wave functions in the quantum world don't follow dterminism.

 

[baywax]

Does your right hand determine what to do by itself?

Its a figure of speech.

 

[out of whack]

There may be a natural synergy working between the universe's left and right hand but it is not a conscious "knowing" of what the right hand is doing. That is why hard determinism is a pipe dream.

I don't follow. Are you saying that hard determinism is a dream because the universe is not conscious? How does universal consciousness (or lack thereof) fit in your reasoning?

The actions of every individual are determined by that individual's own conscious and subconscious motives and subseqent responses. There is the probablility that these motives and responses are determined by innate instincts such as survival. What determines the function of an instinct is anybodies guess but my guess is "natural law", whatever that is.

You are saying that natural law determines our instincts, which determine our conscious and subconscious motives and responses, which determines our actions. This loosely describes determinism.

 

[baywax]

I don't follow. Are you saying that hard determinism is a dream because the universe is not conscious? How does universal consciousness (or lack thereof) fit in your reasoning?

No. The analogy was a figure of speech. My point is that there are too many determiners in the universe to pin point one, hard determiner.

You are saying that natural law determines our instincts, which determine our conscious and subconscious motives and responses, which determines our actions. This loosely describes determinism.

Yes but natural law is made up of very many determiners. And as has been pointed out, there are determiners that we are unaware of since we don't know everything about the universe or natural law. Hence, this is pretty much a pointless discussion. Especially when you look at what has already been pointed out in this thread which is the Butterfly Effect aka Chaos Theory.

 

[out of whack]

My point is that there are too many determiners in the universe to pin point one, hard determiner.

Ok. You dismiss determinism on the basis that there are multiple determiners instead of only one. I do not agree with your conclusion, but it may only be a matter of interpretation of what "determinism" means.

Hence, this is pretty much a pointless discussion. Especially when you look at what has already been pointed out in this thread which is the Butterfly Effect aka Chaos Theory.

True, this is as pointless as philosophy can be. We cannot prove determinism beyond the shadow of a doubt because if uncaused events do occur, we cannot really know that they are truly without cause. We can still theorize and create quantum models that work well enough under this assumption. But as all good scientific theories, these remain falsifiable.

I should reiterate that determinism does not equate predictability. Too many people fail to make the distinction. A chaotic model can be unpredictable in spite of being perfectly deterministic.

As for "free will", I see exactly two possibilities:

1. All events are deterministic (have a cause) therefore our will is determined without our consent by previous causes, so we are not truly "free".

2. Some events are spontaneous (without a cause) therefore our will can spontaneously be altered without our consent, so we are not truly "free".

For all practical purposes, free will is a human-based concept that reflects the partial separation of what goes on within my mind from what goes on within yours. Other minds cannot sneak into my own and mess around with my wires to affect my decisions. That separation of the minds is the independence, the freedom that people seek. I think this is all we can hope for.

 

[baywax]

Ok. You dismiss determinism on the basis that there are multiple determiners instead of only one. I do not agree with your conclusion, but it may only be a matter of interpretation of what "determinism" means.

the teaching that every event in the universe is caused and controlled by natural law.
www.carm.net/atheism/terms.htm

Philosophical doctrine that human action is not free but determined by external forces. [OED]
www.genomicglossaries.com/content/clinical_genomics_email.asp[/URL]

the doctrine that all events are the inevitable result of antecedent conditions, and that the human being, in acts of apparent choice, is the mechanical expression of his heredity and his past environment.
[url]www.willdurant.com/glossary.htm[/url][/quote]

Each of these definitions cites a different determiner. There's "natural law" cited then there's "external forces" and another is "heredity" and "past environment" so I guess I can see that determinism isn't about a one omnideterminer of some sort. Its more of a theoretical condition. Much in the way quantum states are theoretical conditions.

Because there is no way of verifying hard determinism (which seems odd because to determine something is a form of its verification) I'd say the closest we can come is to say that an individual's awareness of events is as hard as determinism will get. Because that means the events have been determined.:smile:

 

[Gramsci]

I believe in determinism, atleast in the cause-effect way. Although I believe that we have a free will. Why? Because I believe that it's an axiom. Free will can in my mind be compared to other axioms such as A=A. We can't prove either of them but it's impossible for you to deny these axioms in actions. Whenever you talk or use anything in this world you´re confirming that A=A and if you argue against ditto you´re contradictory, the same goes with free will. People who don't believe in a free will can't claim that their position is the true one, since different actions has made them believe that it is true.

Also the concept of determinism is infalliable and being infalliable not that scientific. But free will also is infalliable but through our introperspection it feels like we have one, so, in my eyes we can't be sure what's true or not, but we have to choose.

Please excuse my bad english.
/Magnus

 

[baywax]

Something that pertains to this thread and the "Selflessness" thread.

BASIC DERIVATIVE CONCEPTS
Everything in nature is worthy of respect-including all persons. We define respect as representing that attitude (thought and feeling) resulting from understanding the concept of total determinism. Applied to humanity, this implies, “There but for the differences in our determinants go I.”

All persons are totally selfish. This makes sense when we define selfishness neutrally, to mean responding to one’s own motivations (determinants). The question of whether one’s actions are selfish or unselfish thus becomes irrelevant. The real issue is whether one's actions are intelligently, healthily, and socially selfish, or stupidly, neurotically, and anti-socially selfish.

There are no bad people, only persons who have a greater or lesser degree of mental health.

Healthy behavior is social, equitable, tolerant, cooperative, and respecting to all.

Morality represents man's traditional attempt to formulate practical rules for living one's life.

To the extent that they are neurotic, the powerful tend to mislead, deceive, or lie to the weak.

Parents tend to corrupt. Power brings out corruption (neurotic behavior)-with apologies to Lord Acton.

Consistent with the Psychosomatic Principle, there is no life of the personality (mind, soul, spirit, psyche) after the death of the body. Death only results in the recycling of our constituent chemicals.

All concepts of heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo, and the like, are false.

There is no anthropomorphic god with a knowledge of, concern and plan for, individual organisms.

www.determinism.com/concepts.shtml

 

[Tournesol]

Excellent, We can never prove randomness... .

That observation is not a proof of determinism

 

[baywax]

That observation is not a proof of determinism

I am the most ignorant of people to be talking about QM but apparently when Einstein discovered quantum mechanics he was surprized that it completely contradicted determinism. Is there further proof to this?

 

[muppet]

This question is a running debate I have with a friend of mine, a philosophy student and hard determinist who'll be my housemate next year
First off, the existence of God doesn't settle the debate one way or another, but the existence of a soul (which most religious believers also affirm) absolutely puts paid to the theory, as you divorce human action from the behaviour of physical systems governed by deterministic laws and instead invoke the sentience of a free will in the image and likeness of God.

If you accept that randomness is an inherent part of QM (and there's good reasons for doing that, notably Bell's Inequality) then the question of whether or not humans have free will becomes whether or not microscopic randomness affects either the stimuli which brains process or the decision making process within the brain. My friend's contention is effectively that the huge sample space of observable phenomena means that quantum randomness is swept under the macroscopic carpet; that is, the statistical laws might as well be deterministic in as far as they affect our observations.
My own opposition is that certain microscopic events have macroscopically observable consequences. For example, a random mutation in DNA can manifest itself in a visible way, such as an extra toe. That particular example is unlikely to prove life-changing, but something such as Down's syndrome can radically alter the life of both the sufferer and their parents. For this reason I feel that human experience is not predetermined in the total way described by hard determinists.

 

[mubashirmansoor]

Yes... both determinism and freewill have strong reasons behind the scene and the problem is we can't select the right ones from the false ones... Maybe the whole discussion is just useless...

I've come to some little different conclusions concerning what we like the universe to be, ie; predetermined or not WE choose what sounds good to us and then find some reasons to support it. If this is true the people (like me) who choose hard determinism are the ones who are not somehow satisfied with their acts and decisions in the past, and in order to reduce the burden and get a relief they choose its all predetermined as a result I DID NOTHING.

The ones choosing freewill are much satisfied with there past and there isn't much that makes them go mad about the past of their life, as a result they say WE DID EVERYTHING.

_____________

In this way (if true), the discussion on freewill or determinism is totally psychological and far away from logic and even philosophy at least with our present science.

I'll be glad to know your comments on this :)

 

[navneet1990]

i kinda disagree with that
true maybe that our actions or the state of our system maybe predetermined. but the flow of energy from initial point to final maybe different and it is this choice that we call free will. the freedom to choose the path.
whatever is happening has happened,is happening and will continue to happen but in a different form. this difference in the course of actions is what constitues the free will.

 

[mubashirmansoor]

i kinda disagree with that
true maybe that our actions or the state of our system maybe predetermined. but the flow of energy from initial point to final maybe different and it is this choice that we call free will. the freedom to choose the path.
whatever is happening has happened,is happening and will continue to happen but in a different form. this difference in the course of actions is what constitues the free will.

So are you disagreeing with this discussion being psychological instead of logical ? which I mentioned in post number 51.

Thanks for the reply :)

 

[nickwalker12]

This is a great topic, I've joined just to write here. I'm a believer in Hard Determinism, and the two arguments that go against it seem to be;

• Randomness
• Free Will being an Axiom

Firstly, Randomness: I think that the illusion of randomness stems from the human inability to comprehend such extraordinary events and complexities of nature. An example is the fact that no human instrument can calculate when a single atom will decay. Or the example of how we cannot know the position and velocity of an electron (if I'm not mistaken). We either know one, or the other.

As out of whack mentioned:
"Knowing and predicting are quite different from determinism. Regardless of the existence or non-existence of determinism, you still cannot know everything and you still cannot predict everything. The universe (all there is) is too big, complex and inter-related for any part of itself to be able to do that."

But just because we do not understand it, does that mean its random? Random in itself is flawed. How does nature create randomness?
For example; You have a letter, A, and at a random point in time that letter will change from A to B. Its completely random. There are two problems with this.
Firstly, the fact that it will happen makes it not random at all. We know for sure that it will change, just not when.
Secondly, what cause makes it change? For something to change, it needs to be changed. You can't type a letter on a keyboard without pushing down a key. You can't stand up without something (or things) controlling your muscles. Everything needs a cause to have an effect, and the only way something can be truly random is if its cause is random. But then how far back does this have to go?

We live in a world that has rules. A computer physics simulation has laws, as does the world. Just because we cannot understand them, does not make them random.

The illusion of Randomness exists only because the human mind cannot, or does not, comprehend what’s happening. Its impossible to program randomness, in a computer and in a world. Determinism is simply cause and effect.

Your a nice person because you've grown up with good moral teachings, because you've naturally (nature is deterministic) picked up the traits of a nice person. Every thought you have, has been determined.

Which brings me to the next point, The Axiom of Free-Will; Sure you could say free will exists, as a human does what he wants. He has the freedom, the liberty, to do what he likes. However, this is confused with freedom of mind. Your mind is not free, it’s the opposite. Everything you do is done for a specific reason. A cough, a laugh, a hand shake, a bite of food etc. Its impossible to do something simply to do it. You might attempt that, but ultimately your doing it to prove a point, which means your not simply doing something to do it. Everything you do, you do for a reason (or multiple reasons), however small or simple. More importantly, that reason is always fixed, it cannot be controlled at the specific time of the decision. I eat peanut butter because I like it, fixed. I’m about to leave for work because I want to get to work on time for my new job, fixed. I didn’t choose to want to make a good impression, I just do. Its me.

Freedom of mind implies that your mind has no influences. Your mind is random, which its not. Everything, literally everything you will ever do/have done, is done for a reason. Randomness doesn’t fit into this.

When I hit a key on a piano, there is a chain reaction that causes sound. This can only happen if the properties of the piano are fixed. If one part of the piano suddenly lost a few laws of physics, it may go through the other objects, make light instead of sound etc. I struggle to see how people can honestly believe anything other than a deterministic world. You tell me how randomness works, how an atom suddenly decays (atom decay follows a pattern, just like the “randomness” of a flip of a coin. The more coins you flip, the clearer the correlation).

Cheers.

EDIT: The other argument is that of changing the future. What your actually doing is acting out the deterministic world. For example, think of events as a train track, with multiple routes. A train follows one path out of infinitely many. Why? Because its determined to do so. If you change your mind, determinism has already factored that in. If determinism was a being, he'd tell you that he knew you would change your mind, because something made you change your mind, that had already been factored in. You cannot change a deterministic world, as whatever happens, has already been determined. Laws of physics (even ones that humans cannot understand) means determinism. Full stop.

 

[Boy@n]

If nature is all there is, then perhaps yes, present and future are dependable on past events, thus all being determined.

But why wouldn't it be possible that Mind emerges out of Nature and goes beyond it in its freedom of choosing?

(To not mention possibility of soul, as non-physical substance, binding with physical substance as brains and body, where soul might be of different realm than known physical Universe, thus soul being unnatural, or supernatural - that is, not being governed by natural laws.)

Do a sily (thought) experiment: take a blank paper, draw several dots on it, and now chose one. Is your choice determined by your past life and experiences, or it's independent of them and spontaneous in that particular moment?

I strongly believe it's spontaneous, moreoever, I think a human being has a very efficient method of choosing without effort even if there are several options of same value. For a computer making a good algorithm for "free" chosing is very difficult, since there have to be exact rules on how computers "simulates" chosing and produce randomness -- it's very hard (if not impossible) for a computer to generate random numbers of very high quality (to generate high quality random numbers for security applications computers are not used but analog devices).

I'd go as far as to say that I think "initial sparkles" which then ignite thoughts, images, words, are perhaps based on quantum fluctuations -- if you silence your mind, if you force yourself to not think of any image or word, or anything at all, you'll note that mind is still full of activity, and that it's very hard to hold it from generating a complete thought. Of course though, that past life experiences influence on which "sparkles" in mind we then focus and build more thoughts upon them. Which then determinates our choices and actions.

So, I'd say "sparkles", or say, initial bare thoughts, are spontanteous, what we focus on is less so, and more dependent on our character, or say, who we are in that moment. And who we are changes, in lesser or higher degree, and that's based on both: our free-will and our learned experiences.

 

[nickwalker12]

But why wouldn't it be possible that Mind emerges out of Nature and goes beyond it in its freedom of choosing?

Two problems:

• How?: To say mind and body are separate is to believe in some strange supernatural part of space that houses each individuals thoughts. I think humans are naturally self centred, and thus must explain their own very existence with elaborate claims. Personally, I think that everything your thinking right now, its all just brain activity.
• Why?: Why is the mind separate to the body? Is it a realm that gives you free will? Thus, how do you make decisions if your not using any earthly influences. What I mean is, is that in, for example, a decision to eat one food over another, the fact that I like peanut butter is not supernatural, its physical, its better on my taste buds. Why go to the supernatural to answer that question, when earthly answers are more than satisfactory, they're beneficial because I'd stay alive if I ate.

Do a silly (thought) experiment: take a blank paper, draw several dots on it, and now chose one. Is your choice determined by your past life and experiences, or it's independent of them and spontaneous in that particular moment?...


...I think a human being has a very efficient method of choosing without effort even if there are several options of same value. For a computer making a good algorithm for "free" choosing is very difficult, since there have to be exact rules on how computers "simulates" choosing and produce randomness.

And to reply to your example. Its easy as long as the decision is not important. Imagine if you had some sick psychopathic killer holding you at gun point, and he says that out of the 13 dots, if you pick any of the wrong 12, he will shoot. It makes the decision a lot harder, despite the fact that its purely chance. Everything a computer does, needs a purpose. If you asked a computer to pick a dot, it would use a "random" generator to decide, unless you programmed it to have a certain bias to certain dot positioning...

I strongly believe it's spontaneous...

I fully disagree with you there. Of course you have some spur of the moment replies, but the well thought out ones take time. And, in the case of stubbornness (Theists *cough cough*) some people will have an answer before you even ask the question.

If someone asked you: Are you male or female? Your answer would surely be on the spot. However, if someone asked you: What is 249*19? you'd take a varied amount of time to work out the answer.

And then the holey deterministic answer, its not at all spontaneous. Take an example of a split in the road. You either go down path A or path B. When asked if the decision is spontaneous a determinist would surely say no, for that man has known since he started his journey which direction to go in, otherwise he would be lost! More specifically, he would have known his answer as soon as he looked at his map to plan out the journey!

If one set of influences are greater than the other (for example: 'A road is the right path' is a greater influence than 'B road looks interesting') you'd have your answer before you were even asked the question. However, the closer the influences balance out (just think of each influence as a mathematical value), I.e. equal 0 the harder the decision. For example: Peanut butter is equally as good as marmite, which to eat? I can't decide.

You get the idea. If you don’t, just think: Marmite has a 20 "influence". Peanut butter also has a 20 "influence". The difference is 0. Peanut butter, however, is 10 better than chocolate spread, which has 10 "influence".

A nice thing to call the numbers are "motons". Moton = motivational factor.


What I would agree with you on, however, is the sparking of influences. When your asked a question, all the influences you can think off (Marmite, peanut butter etc.) "spark" to mind, unless you were already thinking about them. This is how you can persuade people. You can change the moton value of an influence, or add a new influence in altogether. Eg;
"But this is not so bad..." making the moton less.
"Have you ever considered this?" a new motonic value.

Its an odd way to describe decision making, but i think it works. It surely fits in with "weighing up the options.