Demystifying Determinism

[DBT]

It is not I who misunderstand the nature and implications of determinism. Which I have been describing for some time now.....

Just look in your mental mirror and have an honest look at your own position

I have invited you many times to actually do the work you claim can be done, to back up your mere assertions.

You make myriad statements which you believe, like a pigeon which enjoys chess, makes your point.

The way actual argumentations works, something you have not done, requires actually finding some specific linkage or tether between what you claim makes me wrong, and the thing I said.

You have to find and explain why the thing I said necessarily implies randomness or variation for this to be a valid argument.

The issue here is that you have not. The issue here is that you cannot. It is not there. It does not exist.

I lost patience with what you say a long time ago because what you say does not relate to your own definition of determinism. The reasons have been explained time and time again.

You never had a valid argument.

 

[DBT]

Incompatibilism is justified, not by semantics, not by definitions, nor labels, but the hard reality of determinism.

Compatibilism is justified by the simple observation of the customers in a restaurant, each deciding for themselves what they will order for dinner.

Surface appearance.

If determinism is true, every action was inevitable before the customers even knew what they would order.

It is entailment, where all actions are entailed by the prior states of the system, of which we are aspects.

That is a long, long way from freedom of will.

And we may assume that every action was indeed inevitable before the customers even knew what they would order. The point is, this makes no difference. Each customer is still there in the restaurant, reading the menu, and choosing for themselves what they will order. And that is all that free will is.

This is the simple insight that the hard determinist fails to acknowledge.

It makes all the difference. If all actions within a deterministic system are inevitable long before they come to the point of being performed, they are clearly not freely willed or chosen. They are entailed.

Inevitability is not choice. Choice requires the ability to take any of a number of options when they are being presented, which is not possible within a deterministic system.

Entailment does not permit alternatives.

Entailment does not equate to 'free will.''

''Actions are entailed by antecedents, therefore free will'' is patently absurd.

''Determinism entails that, in a situation in which a person makes a certain decision or performs a certain action, it is impossible that he or she could have made any other decision or performed any other action. In other words, it is never true that people could have decided or acted otherwise than they actually did.''

 

[Jarhyn]

I lost patience with what you say a long time ago because what you say does not relate to your own definition of determinism

You claim this but you refuse to actually back up your assertion. If there is a fracture between these two forms of determinism this necessarily implies that I would be tucking in deviation or randomness, which necessarily implies that would be there to find.

Either you can find it, or there is no such fracture in the logic.

Then, both you and FDI keep going on about how you both suck at understanding logic so I hold out little hope.

All you have left is assertion fallacies.

You never had a valid argument.

 

[The AntiChris]

It is not my belief that all events fixed by antecedents excludes alternate choices and actions.

That is how a deterministic system works, not because I believe it, but how it is defined.

This is false. Your understanding of what determinism entails is mistaken.

Determinism is the philosophical and scientific thesis that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. No more, no less.

The meaning of the word 'choice' is defined by how people use the word.

 

[Jarhyn]

events are determined completely by previously

So, I want to spend a minute looking at this.

Specifically I am looking at that "determined completely by previously".

If I may, @The AntiChris, this would in fact expand to "events are determined by completed logic exercised by previously"?

As such the full paragraph would then read:

Determinism is the philosophical and scientific thesis that all events are determined by completed logic exercised by previously existing causes. No more, no less.

Is this a valid interpretation?

 

[The AntiChris]

events are determined completely by previously

So, I want to spend a minute looking at this.

Specifically I am looking at that "determined completely by previously".

If I may, @The AntiChris, this would in fact expand to "events are determined by completed logic exercised by previously"?

As such the full paragraph would then read:

Determinism is the philosophical and scientific thesis that all events are determined by completed logic exercised by previously existing causes. No more, no less.

Is this a valid interpretation?

I'm afraid I'm not sure what "events are determined by completed logic exercised by previously" means.

If it's any help, my definition is basically the Wiki version.

 

[Jarhyn]

events are determined completely by previously

So, I want to spend a minute looking at this.

Specifically I am looking at that "determined completely by previously".

If I may, @The AntiChris, this would in fact expand to "events are determined by completed logic exercised by previously"?

As such the full paragraph would then read:

Determinism is the philosophical and scientific thesis that all events are determined by completed logic exercised by previously existing causes. No more, no less.

Is this a valid interpretation?

I'm afraid I'm not sure what "events are determined by completed logic exercised by previously" means.

If it's any help, my definition is basically the Wiki version.

That for every configuration of things there is a completed (if this is the local of the particles and this is the global of the particle then this is the result).

Which is to say there are no weird race conditions that can't be repeated by offering the same universal moment.

In set theory as seen on computers, you could liken it to the configuration of initial input bits of a CPU and BIOS before it is turned on, regardless of what hard drive of data is plugged into it, and so the "truth" or "completed logic of systemic operation".

You plug different data into all that, different stuff happens, but only according to the objective logic of the machine.

That, but for a universe: a completed definition of fundamental behavior. It's the building block of "determinism".

 

[Marvin Edwards]

We may assume that every action was indeed inevitable before the customers even knew what they would order. The point is, this makes no difference. Each customer is still there in the restaurant, reading the menu, and choosing for themselves what they will order. And that is all that free will is.

This is the simple insight that hard determinism fails to acknowledge.

It makes all the difference.

Please give at least one example of an event in the real world that is different with determinism versus without it. Explain how it operates with deterministic causation and then how it works without deterministic causation.

If all actions within a deterministic system are inevitable long before they come to the point of being performed, they are clearly not freely willed or chosen. They are entailed.

We've been over this many times. If it is inevitable that we will choose the Salad from the restaurant menu, while free of coercion and undue influence, then it is entailed that this choice will be of our own free will.

Inevitability is not choice.

Assuming all events are inevitable, the choosing event must also be inevitable, and it will proceed without deviation. All of the mental events, including reading the menu, considering the options, and choosing to order the Salad will be inevitable. They will proceed just so, without deviation, in the real world.

Choice requires the ability to take any of a number of options when they are being presented, which is not possible within a deterministic system.

Choice happens, in empirical reality, within a deterministic system. Therefore the ability to take any of a number of options is not only possible, but causally necessary from any prior point in eternity.

The implications you imagine are an illusion. The system is deterministic and there are the customers choosing, from the many options on the restaurant menu, what they will order for dinner.

The choosing is just as inevitable as the choice.

Entailment does not permit alternatives.

Entailment empirically permits everything that actually happens in physical reality. This includes the menu of alternatives, our consideration of these alternatives, and our choosing the Salad for dinner. That is how events are entailed to happen (without any alternative or deviation).

The implications that hard determinism claims, that contradict what we objectively observe to be happening in physical reality, are clearly false.

Entailment does not equate to 'free will.''

Nobody said it does. But deterministic entailment includes all events, including the free will event (a choice we make for ourselves while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence).

 

[DBT]

I lost patience with what you say a long time ago because what you say does not relate to your own definition of determinism

You claim this but you refuse to actually back up your assertion. If there is a fracture between these two forms of determinism this necessarily implies that I would be tucking in deviation or randomness, which necessarily implies that would be there to find.

I make no assertion. You yourself gave a definition of determinism that involves no randomness or deviation. That definition is what I refer to and work with.

Either you can find it, or there is no such fracture in the logic.

What logic? Your argument did not relate to your definition of determinism for the reasons given.

Then, both you and FDI keep going on about how you both suck at understanding logic so I hold out little hope.

All you have left is assertion fallacies.

You never had a valid argument.

Sour grapes. You are the one who fails to grasp the implications of your own definition and then carries on like a wet hen, all ruffled feathers and displays of outrage.

You have yet to offer a clear and concise argument for compatibilism. Marvin is doing a far better job of it.

 

[DBT]

It is not my belief that all events fixed by antecedents excludes alternate choices and actions.

That is how a deterministic system works, not because I believe it, but how it is defined.

This is false. Your understanding of what determinism entails is mistaken.

Determinism is the philosophical and scientific thesis that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. No more, no less.

The meaning of the word 'choice' is defined by how people use the word.

That's ridiculous. The compatibilists have given their definitions of determinism and the terms have been agreed on. It's just the compatibilist definition of free will that is contested, and the incompatibilist argument given, cited and described by numerous authors.

Which means you are offering the absurd claim that incompatibilists do not understand the implications of determinism.

I put it to you that it is you who fails to grasp the implications of determinism, or the argument for incompatibilism.

You never have and you never will.



''Some aspiring compatibilists maintain that only humans are judged morally because only they could have acted differently. Those who try this argument must realize that they are not compatibilists at all; they are libertarians. The acceptance of determinism is a defining element of compatibilism. It forbids us to say that evil-doers could have done good if only they wanted to. Well yes, if they wanted to, but they were determined to not want to.

Hence, the compatibilist must find a defense for moral judgment that is applicable only to humans and that is safely nonlibertarian. He must look for a psychological feature that is presumably uniquely human and that is involved in the causal chain leading to action. The general version of this feature is self-consciousness and the specific version is intentionality. In other words, a person is judged to have acted freely and (ir)responsibly if he was aware of his desire to do X, foresaw the consequences (e.g., how moralists would judge him if he did X), and endorsed the desire (thereby forming an intention). Notice that a true compatibilist, who has gone on record saying that determinism is a fact of nature, must believe that the events of experiencing a desire, foreseeing the consequences of action, and forming an intention to act on the desire, are all determined. The causal chain leading a human to lift a finger is longer than the chain leading a squirrel to lift an acorn, but it is no less deterministic (he who says that it is less deterministic is not a compatibilist but a closet libertarian).'' - Cold Comfort in Compatibilism.

 

[DBT]

We may assume that every action was indeed inevitable before the customers even knew what they would order. The point is, this makes no difference. Each customer is still there in the restaurant, reading the menu, and choosing for themselves what they will order. And that is all that free will is.

This is the simple insight that hard determinism fails to acknowledge.

There is no 'choosing for themselves' - nobody thinks or acts independently of the system at large. Information acting upon the brain is not 'ourselves.'

The condition of the brain is not a choice. If the brain fails, that is not a choice. The action taken is never a choice. The system evolves as it must. Decision making is a process of entailment where the output is fixed by all the elements coming together to produce that action and that action alone.

Free will? Ridiculous.

It makes all the difference.

Please give at least one example of an event in the real world that is different with determinism versus without it. Explain how it operates with deterministic causation and then how it works without deterministic causation.

''A world without determinism'' is not relevant. The point of contention here is the existence of free will within a deterministic system.

If all actions within a deterministic system are inevitable long before they come to the point of being performed, they are clearly not freely willed or chosen. They are entailed.

We've been over this many times. If it is inevitable that we will choose the Salad from the restaurant menu, while free of coercion and undue influence, then it is entailed that this choice will be of our own free will.

We have been over it too many times.

And nothing has changed, it is still inner necessity that poses just as much a problem for the notion of free will as external force, coercion or undue influence.....which is not to take away the distinction between these things.

They are not the same, but that does not mean that acting in accordance with one's will is an example of free will, because will itself is set by the system as its progression of fixed events evolve from prior to present and future states;

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. '

 

[The AntiChris]

It is not my belief that all events fixed by antecedents excludes alternate choices and actions.

That is how a deterministic system works, not because I believe it, but how it is defined.

This is false. Your understanding of what determinism entails is mistaken.

Determinism is the philosophical and scientific thesis that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. No more, no less.

The meaning of the word 'choice' is defined by how people use the word.

That's ridiculous.

It really isn't. Everything I wrote is completely accurate.

 

[Jarhyn]

What logic? Your argument did not relate to your definition of determinism for the reasons given

Oh the irony.

You are the one who fails to grasp the implications

Yet you fail to actually outline where I step afoul of them and how. You claim I do, yet you fail to show that I do.

I will repeat this again and maybe you will "get it": you claim there is an  implication in my post, a relationship that requires "deviation" or "randomness", which it cannot have access.

I keep telling you that if you wish to make this claim, to go ahead and find the implications of real deviation or randomness.

You do not attempt it in the least. All you do is offer repeated assertions while not even understanding the basic framework of logic you stand on.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

We may assume that every action was indeed inevitable before the customers even knew what they would order. The point is, this makes no difference. Each customer is still there in the restaurant, reading the menu, and choosing for themselves what they will order. And that is all that free will is.

This is the simple insight that hard determinism fails to acknowledge.

There is no 'choosing for themselves' - nobody thinks or acts independently of the system at large. Information acting upon the brain is not 'ourselves.'

If it was "the system at large" that chose to order the Salad, why did the waiter bring the dinner bill to me?

The problem with your assertion is that it contradicts the facts. The waiter saw me reading the menu. The waiter heard me say, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

Do you wish to claim that the waiter is having an illusion?

Are you suggesting that the bill for my dinner should be paid by "the system at large"? If so, then how would that be done?

The condition of the brain is not a choice.

The brain does not choose to be what it is. Nevertheless, a key function of the brain is to make decisions about thousands of other things, including the decision to have dinner at the restaurant, and to order the Salad rather than the Steak for dinner.

That's what the brain does. It makes decisions. And there is no neuroscientist that will back up the claim that the brain does not make decisions.

If the brain fails, that is not a choice.

Well, if it fails because you decide to put a bullet in it, like my father did, then it certainly IS a choice. But, in most cases, other failures, like Alzheimer's or Schizophrenia are not chosen.

The action taken is never a choice. The system evolves as it must. Decision making is a process of entailment where the output is fixed by all the elements coming together to produce that action and that action alone.

That's ridiculous. All of our deliberate actions, by definition, are chosen. If you wish to speak in terms of how "the system evolves", then you must admit our choices are a key part of how that system evolves.

Free will? Ridiculous.

In terms you can understand, the system sometimes evolves where a choice is imposed upon us by coercion or other undue influence, where we are not free to choose for ourselves. But the system most often evolves such that we are free to make that choice for ourselves. This is known as "a choice of our own free will".

It is not ridiculous. Humans like to make decisions for themselves and are irritated when forced to do what someone else decides.

... The point of contention here is the existence of free will within a deterministic system.

Yes. And I've shown you operational free will that is consistent with a deterministic system over and over.

We have been over it too many times.

Indeed. But, as they say, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". I've laid out the simple facts of the matter, but you continue to hold on to your figurative notions, that have been shown to be literally (actually, objectively, empirically) false.

And nothing has changed, it is still inner necessity that poses just as much a problem for the notion of free will as external force, coercion or undue influence.....which is not to take away the distinction between these things.

It is all causal necessity, whether inner or outer. The inner necessity is me, sitting in the restaurant, having to choose what I will order for dinner. I consider my options and make my decision. The outer necessity is the circumstances of being in a restaurant where I must make a choice from the menu before I can have dinner.

Whether I am free to choose for myself what I will order, or, whether someone will be pointing a gun at me and telling me to order, the event will be causally necessary from any prior point in time.

Whether I am free or forced is a significant issue of great concern.

But the fact that, in either case, it will be causally necessary is not a significant issue! What I will inevitably do is exactly identical to me just being me, doing what I choose to do. And that is not a meaningful constraint. It is not something that I can or need to be free of.

Universal causal necessity/inevitability never makes any difference, because it always applies equally under all circumstances to all events. It is perhaps the greatest triviality of the universe. It is a logical fact, but neither a meaningful nor a relevant fact. It makes itself irrelevant by its own ubiquity.

They are not the same, but that does not mean that acting in accordance with one's will is an example of free will, because will itself is set by the system as its progression of fixed events evolve from prior to present and future states;

Free will is literally a freely chosen "I will", as in "I will have the Chef Salad, please." And it is certainly a part of how events evolve from prior to present and future states. For example, that's how the system evolves from an cleared table to a table with my Salad on it.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. '

Please don't go running to Dirk Pereboom to give you a quote that you cannot understand, much less defend. If you seriously wish to discuss moral responsibility in the context of determinism, then we can certainly do that.

The crippled notion of "basic-desert" responsibility, aka "just deserts", is a question as to how the offender deserves to be treated. What is a "just penalty"? And that is answered by first answering, "What is the point of Justice?".

The point of a system of justice is to protect everyone's rights. A just penalty would naturally include the following elements: (a) repair the harm to the victim if possible, (b) correct the offender's future behavior if corrigible, (c) protect society by securing the offender until his behavior is corrected, and (d) do no more harm to the offender and his rights than is reasonably required to accomplish (a), (b), and (c).

Since that is what the offender justly deserves, that is his "basic-desert" responsibility.

Questions?

 

[The AntiChris]

The point of a system of justice is to protect everyone's rights. A just penalty would naturally include the following elements: (a) repair the harm to the victim if possible, (b) correct the offender's future behavior if corrigible, (c) protect society by securing the offender until his behavior is corrected, and (d) do no more harm to the offender and his rights than is reasonably required to accomplish (a), (b), and (c).

Since that is what the offender justly deserves, that is his "basic-desert" responsibility.

That's a good description of basic-desert responsibility.

 

[DBT]

It is not my belief that all events fixed by antecedents excludes alternate choices and actions.

That is how a deterministic system works, not because I believe it, but how it is defined.

This is false. Your understanding of what determinism entails is mistaken.

Determinism is the philosophical and scientific thesis that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. No more, no less.

The meaning of the word 'choice' is defined by how people use the word.

That's ridiculous.

It really isn't. Everything I wrote is completely accurate.

Only in your own mind.

Meanwhile, you ignored everything that I said and everything that I quoted and cited.

Which for you is typical.

 

[DBT]

What logic? Your argument did not relate to your definition of determinism for the reasons given

Oh the irony.

You are the one who fails to grasp the implications

Yet you fail to actually outline where I step afoul of them and how. You claim I do, yet you fail to show that I do.

Couldn't be bothered wading back through numerous posts. Nor do I have the time to spare. My patience with your antics is kinda as well.

Give your best argument and I'll deal with it tomorrow.

Keep it short and to the point.

I will repeat this again and maybe you will "get it": you claim there is an  implication in my post, a relationship that requires "deviation" or "randomness", which it cannot have access.

I'm pretty sure the implications are there. And that I pointed them out.

I keep telling you that if you wish to make this claim, to go ahead and find the implications of real deviation or randomness.

You do not attempt it in the least. All you do is offer repeated assertions while not even understanding the basic framework of logic you stand on.

Given your remarks, you simply can't see the implications of your own definition of determinism or your attempts at justifying compatibilism.

But try again if you like. Again, keep it concise. Try not to ramble or ruffle your feathers in mock indignation.

 

[DBT]

We may assume that every action was indeed inevitable before the customers even knew what they would order. The point is, this makes no difference. Each customer is still there in the restaurant, reading the menu, and choosing for themselves what they will order. And that is all that free will is.

This is the simple insight that hard determinism fails to acknowledge.

There is no 'choosing for themselves' - nobody thinks or acts independently of the system at large. Information acting upon the brain is not 'ourselves.'

If it was "the system at large" that chose to order the Salad, why did the waiter bring the dinner bill to me?

Because the waiter has no idea of what is going to be ordered.

That's the point. We don't have the necessary information to predict future events with any great accuracy. Or perhaps you are a regular customer and your order never varies.

You can probably fairly accurately predict what close associates or your partner will order because you know them well. Some who are very close can finish each other's sentences or voice their partner's thoughts and feelings. Identical twins, etc.

But the waiter has no such privileged information, nor does the management of the restaurant. They just cater to a wide range of tastes and proclivities.

Proclivities:
''It is unimportant whether one's resolutions and preferences occur because an ''ingenious physiologist' has tampered with one's brain, whether they result from narcotics addiction, from 'hereditary factor, or indeed from nothing at all.' Ultimately the agent has no control over his cognitive states.

So even if the agent has strength, skill, endurance, opportunity, implements, and knowledge enough to engage in a variety of enterprises, still he lacks mastery over his basic attitudes and the decisions they produce. After all, we do not have occasion to choose our dominant proclivities.' - Prof. Richard Taylor -Metaphysics.

The problem with your assertion is that it contradicts the facts. The waiter saw me reading the menu. The waiter heard me say, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

That doesn't relate to what I said. Check my outline above. I've said it before.

Do you wish to claim that the waiter is having an illusion?

Are you suggesting that the bill for my dinner should be paid by "the system at large"? If so, then how would that be done?

That still misses the point. The system at large is the world, the nation, the culture of nation, its cuisine, cafe's restaurants, menus, the town you live the restaurant you go to, the proclivities of its customers, Indian, Asian, Italian, Greek, etc, etc. Countless different preferences being catered for, yet given determinism.....you guessed it: in any given instance that a decision is made, that is the only possible action in that moment in time.

Hence decision making within a deterministic system is not choosing, rather, a process of entailment.

Decisions are entailed, not freely chosen or freely willed.

Nothing is freely willed.

 

[Jarhyn]

Couldn't be bothered wading back through numerous posts

@Marvin Edwards: and you were wondering whether it was really necessary to keep digging up my original challenge that he find it...

Give your best argument and I'll deal with it tomorrow.

No, you won't, you were given it through the thread and you'll do your own damn work. It's the least you can do after over a year of making bald assertions.

I'm pretty sure the implications are there. And that I pointed them out.

No, claiming they're in there somewhere is not "pointing them out" it's making an "an assertion fallacy".

You have to isolate the words that contain the implications, state why the words make the implications, and how those implications invalidate the conclusion, and you have to manage to do it without stepping in the modal and the genetic fallacy.

This is to say, without claiming that "because you didn't choose your present state, you didn't make a choice in your present state" (something can X without being the product of its own X, even when X is choice).

The fact that you don't understand this, haven't understood this, is exactly what has frustrated @Marvin Edwards @pood, @bilby, @The AntiChris, et al.

Given your remarks

Which remarks? You're right back to doing nothing and yet still claiming credit.

implications of your own definition of determinism or your attempts at justifying compatibilism

"No deviation"? "No randomness"?

The thing that defines a system as Deterministic (and when you can actually create a deterministic system, and prove it's deterministic, come find me. I've been there and done that...) Does not prevent anything I have discussed.

As has been repeatedly pointed out, the thing that makes a system "deterministic" is that its state transitions happen on the basis of fixed logical truth.

The initial state is not actually what makes it deterministic. The thing that makes it deterministic is the "state diagram" of the system, that for every input, there is a knowable output.

You could look at a system that isn't even running, with an unstated or absent initial state configuration, and be perfectly justified in saying "the system is deterministic". The state of a completed state machine is a piece of arbitrary data.

Any operating state at all that has a knowable output from any given input that would be produced from the input is valid to a deterministic system.

Armed with this knowledge, one can then say "ok, let's take some subset of knowable things that will arise from this knowable bucket of knowledge about the system, and derive a solution towards a regulatory control, to select from a set of things that I can output which I must output to get to the outcome that drives towards a material "success", an identified portion of an identified will being executed."

I did that just up thread in the last couple days with the post on deriving the value of D necessary for Z=1, demonstrating that the solver had free will towards Z=1 only when A=1, in that deterministic setting.

It comes down to the fact that real deviations aren't necessarily to simulate the system messily or incompletely within the system, these simulations give us the approximate access we need to know what will happen IF we do various things without ever needing to actually do them to know that.

Now spend the time to read this whole post without trying to respond to it right away, read the post AGAIN for posterity, and then navigate back until you start seeing me discuss the post I cross-posted where I demonstrate in a deterministic system deriving regulatory control for Z=1 from knowledge of systemic truth.

 

[The AntiChris]

That's ridiculous.

It really isn't. Everything I wrote is completely accurate.

Only in your own mind.

It would have been helpful if you'd taken the time to point out precisely what you thought was inaccurate and why.

Meanwhile, you ignored everything that I said and everything that I quoted and cited.

Your response was compromised of one of your standard expressions or derision you trot out whenever someone disagrees with you and yet another random quote from your vast library of anti-compatibilist opinions. None of which was relevant to the point I had been making.