Talk:Determinism
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[edit] Determinism and ethics
To argue that determinism negates morality is akin to arguing that determinism negates sex. Determinism can present no argument as to why we should or shouldn't feel emotionally compelled to behave in a certain way, it only points out that our feeling compelled to behave in any way is the result of heredity and environment and not "free will". This renders moral responsibility meaningless but not morality itself. The idea of morality being meaningful or meaningless is a value judgement and a question for philosophers, not scientists or 'logic'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.71.57.17 (talk) 01:06, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Paradox on Laplace's demon
"Would not knowledge of the predicted future allow one to change the predicted future (simply by consciously avoiding predictions), therefore invalidating the original predicted future and revealing determinism to be an inaccurate basis for prediction?"
- Not really. If the original prediction was correct, it would have taken this into account. So if there is any deviation between the prediction and the actual outcome, then that means that the prediction was wrong. 12.10.248.51 (talk) 17:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
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- beats the heck out of me. imagine an all-knowledgeable machine telling the future, e.g. that you will be at your friend's house in two hours. is the machine broke? it is supposed to tell the truth. so pretending it tells the truth, what holds you back "breaking the fate" and going somewhere else instead? I've talked about the paradox at the following places:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Determinism#Looking_into_the_future
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Laplace%27s_demon#Another_argument_against_Laplace.27s_demon
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- The true basis for the theory is that what will happen is what is going to happen and you cant do a damn thing about it. Take into account this hypothetical situation. A prediction is made saying the world will end. Does you knowing the world will end change the fate of the world? The world is tied together and everyones actions are connected. Cloudblazer (talk) 15:59, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
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- I think the paradox results from you giving the machine a causal role in your choice. It's like this. Suppose I build a machine to predict the future and I tell it "I am going to buy either a black bucket or a white bucket. I want you to predict which one it is, and I will then choose the opposite."
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- The machine can't possibly give you a correct answer because your choice is dependent on the machine's answer.
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- The machine still knows the correct answer, but it can't tell you while you haven't made the choice as that represents new information that changes the outcome. So suppose the machine says "black", it knows you will buy a white bucket because of that, but it's not a paradox of determinism, it's a paradox that stems from the way you're framing the problem. Think about it this way: if the machine tells you you will buy a black bucket, and you then buy a white bucket or don't buy a bucket to prove it wrong, you're still in a deterministic path where the choices you make are the product of earlier events.
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- Your actual choice - to visit your friend or not, to buy a black or white bucket - is going to be the result of your psychological makeup - your desire to see your friend versus your desire to prove you have free will - and the machine would be able to predict the outcome. It just can't tell you because as soon as it tells you, the new information determines a new outcome, so the act of telling makes the prediction out of date.
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- But for all that, I still think the idea of free will is relevant because we will probably never have enough information to make predictions to any level of relevant accuracy. If you could measure every variable when you rolled a dice you would not have any reason to bet on any number but the winning one, but as long as the situation is too complex for us to fully understand, we can make meaningful choices. 152.91.9.219 (talk) 03:29, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
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- hmmmm, that's nice talk. reminds me of that "problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." if i ever get more insight on the problem, i'll be sure to post here and let you know. by the way, for the ones interested, some more chat on the matter can be found on my talk page. Twipley (talk) 01:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
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[edit] Looking into the future
If determism is right, you should in theory be able to produce a machine which can calculate the future. But then you could be able to see what you were doing in the future. Then what about if you decide not to do it. What happens then? Does it say anything about that in this article? --212.247.27.110 17:40, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
- oh! here he is the one that I've been looking for. :)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Laplace%27s_demon#Another_argument_against_Laplace.27s_demon
- I'm glad to have found you! ...may I reply to MikeUpNorth: "but, would you be capable of imagining yourself not be able to not do what the machine saw you'd be doing? it's a strange paradox: the machine tells you you'll be at this place in two hours, but in reality it is mistaken because you'll not be there (because you want to change the future). Whatever people think, I myself would not be able to imagine that going somewhere else than where the machine pointed to would be impossible. I mean, your legs would be out of your control and bring you where you're supposed to be? give me a break." opinions welcomed! Twipley (talk) 07:08, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
You are basing this on the premiss that hard determinism and free will can co-exist; it is a necessary truth that they cannot. If we accept hard determinism to be true then all human actions and behaviours are governed by an unbroken chain of prior events just like everything else. This means the ability to 'decide', as you put it, does not exist in any real sense. MikeUpNorth 09:46, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Still an interesting theory but one point: this machine would have to have every single piece of information that exists (not an easy feat by any means (and probably impossible, when you consider energy cannot be created/des... i.e. you would have 2 universes going at once) including the fact that someone built the machine and looked at his/her future so the outcomes would be the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.3.147.244 (talk) 16:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
arguably the machine would to take into account all factors, including your reaction to the machine's prediction
[edit] Worth noting...
Using determinism as a basis for predicting the future, would not knowledge of the predicted future then allow one to change the predicted future (simply by consciously avoiding predictions), therefore invalidating the original predicted future and revealing determinism to be an inaccurate basis for prediction? Physical impossibilites aside, of course.
- You could only change something if it weren't predetermined anyway. The ability of individuals to change the future arbitrarily assumes free will, which gets into the whole free will -v- determinism thing. WhiteC 18:23, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
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- Another mention of the 'free will' vs determimism thing. Don;t forget QM doesn't allow free will either.
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- I'm not sure if this is the right proceedure for reviving older discussions - I've moved this section from the archive. Anyway, carrying on from the two previous entries:
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- The idea of determinism assumes that the future is determined, therefore if such a computer could be contrived that had the memory and ability to capture and store all the present information/rules (current state, basically) of the universe, it could predict the future with certainty for all eternity based on those conditions or causes (given some unimaginable processing power). Obviously such a computer or form of intelligence is not conceivable, but it still poses a theoretical problem.
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- What theoretical problem is posed by this? It's basically time travel; If you could accurately predict the future like that, you knowing the future, would be a part of the calculation and your decisions could not change the future from the prediction. If you traveled back in time, you might try to change what is going the happen, but you can't because from your original point of view, whatever you did/do in the past already happened Obviously these things are impossible, but they do not pose any theoretical problem.
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- The problem with this is that given an intelligent life form knows the future, it will then be possible for it to change things, rendering that future no longer true. I don't believe that free will could stop this - even if we have no free will our genetic make-up could still cause us to behave in this way. The key problem here for me is that such a machine would then have to try to take its own existence into account, which if it lead to a change in the future from its own determination of the future (a person acting on that knowledge, for example), the results could not be computed as a series of infinite loops would be created. Therefore such a calculation could never be made even in theory, if it allowed for anything acting upon that prediction in some way as to change it.
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- Answer: It may seem a bit paradoxical at first glance, but in theory this is how it would work. If an intelligent life form had precise awareness of the future and took action upon the present to alter that specific course of progression which his foreknowledge had revealed, the following would hold true. As you've indicated above, the course of progression in question could in fact become altered (from what this acquired information seemed to decree) by actions taken because of the awareness itself. However, the crux here is that if it were altered, the altered course of progression would not truly be an alteration of the steadfast determinative pattern. Instead, it would be the opposite: a forever-standing preset part of the progressive determinate universe. As would the intelligent life form's foreknowledge of what would have occurred absent 1) his foreknowledge, 2) his altering action, and 3) the subsequent effect upon the target outcome. The key is that any precise knowledge of the future and all that would stem from it would as well be predetermined. As such, any changes stemming from such conditional foreknowledge would in fact not be changes from what has always been the inflexible determinate course of progression. Ergo, in order to have a precisely accurate determinative awareness of what is to occur, any machine or person's calculations would be required to factor in *themselves*, their own foreknowledge, and, most importantly, whatever actions they would in fact take upon events leading to the end point in question.
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- Question, what is the smallest item that could be used to store information about the smallest possible particle? The answer is surely 'the smallest possible particle'. So the best computer we could hope to create that could store the information about the mass, momentum, location, etc of every particle in the universe would itself have the mass of the universe. In which case we now have a universe with twice as much mass, so where do we strore the info for the extra bits (another universe mass computer), and so on. The only option is to assume that the computer IS the universe. It is the only thing that can predict the future, and it is doing exactly that - in real time. --WBluejohn 20:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
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- This is just the same logic as travelling back in time, in fact it is basically the same thing, as you are bringing the future 'back in time' to the present. I am unsure whether it is possible, only in theory, to calculate the future without acting upon that knowledge to change it. Richard001 09:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Laplace's demon only works if the information of the future does not have an effect on the present state of the universe, laplace's demon must be omniscient but powerless to all within the universe otherwise laplace's demon would become a paradox, it can only exist either 1) outside the universe or 2) within the universe as a spirit who is powerless to physical events. Omniscience IS possible, Omnipotence is NOT possible because all in the universe is governed by strict unchanging physical laws, one may argue that an entity tweeked the laws of physics so everything would happen according to a plan, but the fact that the laws of physics are so simple e.g. E=mc2 and shows that they have not been tweaked as finely as one might imagine. The future is predetermined but without intent. User; Joshua Reid —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshuareid (talk • contribs) 10:53, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
[edit] First Paragraph.
The current 1st para is flawed in two ways;
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur. The principal consequence of deterministic philosophy is that free will (except as defined in strict compatibilism) becomes an illusion; this philosophical belief is known as hard determinism. In contrast to determinism is libertarianism, which is the doctrine that voluntary actions are caused by a self free from prior causation; and indeterminism which is the theory that some or all events are not completely determined.
The passage in bold is somewhat WK:POV and also dealt with much better under the "nature of determinism" section.
It also fails to clarify the difference between determinism and fatalism. The question of the relationship between determinism and predictability should also be dealt with.1Z 17:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I have shortened the first paragraph. It is not possible or desirable to explain all the complexities of determinism-libertarianism-compatibilism in the introduction. 1Z 21:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
There is no difference between determinism and fatalism. The page is flawed.24.4.56.66 (talk) 08:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Determinism vs Fatalism
It is acknowledged, in the second paragraph no less, that people generally mistake determinism for fatalism - and vice versa. I think given this popular misconception, a fuller explanation of the differences between causal determinism and fatalism is warranted.
For example, the following from the Fatalism page sums it up succinctly: "Therefore, in determinism, if the past were different, the present and future would differ also. For fatalists, such a question is negligible, since no other present/future/past could exist except [that which] exists now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.116.167.165 (talk) 09:16, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
- I agree that the point needs cleaning up. Also, determinism just involves predictability (say, in a mathematical or theoretical sense). There is no necessity for causality, ie, there is no need for a cause of everything. The fact that a pendulum is here now is not caused by it being there then, it is just following a completely determined path. When two balls collide, one is not the cause of the collision.
- The problem is that you get these religious arguments that something had to cause the universe to exist. It is just deterministic, it doesn't need a cause. The past does not cause the future, but a theoretical complete knowledge of the past in determinism would allow you to predict the future. (Except that the means of predicting it would have to be part of that past!) Mike0001 (talk) 11:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- Obviously the past does cause the future. If at a given moment you are falling through the air next to a tall building, the future (in which you are on the ground, dead) was caused by the past (in which you jumped off the building); if you hadn't jumped, you would have lived therefore your actions (past) caused your death (future). Determinism does not allow you to predict the future completely because the causes of any event are unimaginably complex but clearly the future is somewhat predictable because once you have jumped off the building you can predict with certainty that you are going to hit the ground and die.
[edit] First Cause
The article says:
"(2) There is no event A0 prior to which there was no other event, which means that we are presented with an infinite series of causally related events, which is itself an event, and yet there is no cause for this infinite series of events."
This is seriously misleading. An "infinite series of causally related events" is not "itself an event". This is senseless because in reality an infinite group of events would have no limits (no start, no end). One can always "add" one more event into the series. [EPLeite 01:26, 23 August 2008 (UTC)]
- The statement fails to take into account the nature of an infinite series as truly infinite, instead treating it as a real number. RealityRipple (talk) 12:39, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV on Cognitive Sciences
Not every emergentist cognitive scientist defends determinism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.146.4.89 (talk) 09:08, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
The above statement is pov. There is no references given to back the above stated assertion. However the passages regarding emergentist perspctive in the article have been stated with references. thanks Robin klein (talk) 18:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Cleanup and rewrite
Huge mess that needs immediate attention. Viriditas (talk) 09:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Archived
Wow, this page was way too long so I've created some archives. If you want restart an archived discussion, please do not edit the archive but start a new section on the current talk page. Astronaut (talk) 20:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Free will in theology
There should perhaps be a short mention on the debate of Free will in theology, which is largely related to the question of determinism. ADM (talk) 12:59, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Deleted section
I today deleted this section cause it was not cited an in my opinion is misleading:
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- By now we not only see that we are unable to describe a very large piece of reality exactly but we also moved from direct to statistical formulations of physical laws. Many of today's scientists still understand physical laws as rules that drive the world and believe there must be some most basic rules all the others are derived from, but this view is much weaker now than in Newton's era. [cite this quote]
- You have to present the science that states that there are weaker believe in determinism now, rather than in Newtons era.
- You have to discuss the part of reality that we cannot describe exactly. What effect does this have on the life as such. The most of this is annulled on molecular level.
- Stephen Hawking thinks that there also may be room for determinism within Quantum_mechanics:
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- “These quantum theories are deterministic in the sense that they give laws for the evolution of the wave with time. Thus if one knows the wave at one time, one can calculate it at any other time. The unpredictable, random element comes in only when we try to interpret the wave in terms of the positions and velocities of particles. But maybe this is our mistake: maybe there are no positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities. The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability.”
- (A Brief History Of Time by Hawking)
- “These quantum theories are deterministic in the sense that they give laws for the evolution of the wave with time. Thus if one knows the wave at one time, one can calculate it at any other time. The unpredictable, random element comes in only when we try to interpret the wave in terms of the positions and velocities of particles. But maybe this is our mistake: maybe there are no positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities. The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability.”
-- Hogne (talk) 11:35, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
The reason modern physics is not as deterministic as in Newton's time is because of two of the three fundamental theories of physics; Quantum Mechanics and Thermodynamics. However, these theories introduce the concept of probability for completely different reasons and in completely different ways. And both can be disposed of if you want!
If you want to get rid of probabilities in QM you only need to realize that all probabilities here are introduced not by the theory itself but by it's philosophical interpretation. If you simply chose to adhere to any of the minority interpretations of QM that are deterministic you don't have to view QM as probabilistic at all. You will for sure have to accept some other very weird things in the process, but all probabilities can disappear from QM if you really want.
If you want to get rid of probabilities in Thermodynamics you only need to realize that all probabilities here are introduced as a means to reduce very complicated calculations into a form that are manageable and indeed solvable. The only prize we have to pay for this is that the results are not certain anymore, only probable in nature. Until quite recently probabilistic reasoning in thermodynamics was also only seen as an heuristic and not a fundamental and indispensable ingredient in the theory. Now Chaos Theory has taught us that the problems involving many interacting particles (three is enough) are really theoretically unsolvable without probabilistic reasoning. We can therefore now talk about Deterministic Chaos, meaning theoretical (mathematical) systems that are indeed deterministic but where we nevertheless need to invoke the probability concept to calculate the evolution of any quantity larger than a mathematical point. In this way 'determinism' and 'indeterminism' aren't seen as contradictory concepts today, as they originally were.
So for these reasons physicist of today are more sympathetic towards indeterminism than physicists two centuries ago. But it's still true that physical theories are stated in a "deterministic" way. The physicist then, when applying the theory, introduces probabilities as an aid. Either as an aid in interpreting the deterministic theory (QM), or as an aid in solving the complicated equations the theory produces (thermodynamics).
iNic (talk) 00:24, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
