Demystifying Determinism

[SIB]

I guess I suffer from "meaning is more important than the word used.". if everything was caused by a set of conditions before it then predestine fits good enough. Of course a rational individual will quickly concede that there may be no agent involved in thinking about the outcome.

 

[Jarhyn]

I guess I suffer from "meaning is more important than the word used.". if everything was caused by a set of conditions before it then predestine fits good enough. Of course a rational individual will quickly concede that there may be no agent involved in thinking about the outcome.

Not really, no. Predestination 12 volcanoes vs predestination: volcanoes(12) • seed(1234) ≈> Urist goes on a killing spree.

Destination happens as a calculation of the predestinations together, over time.

You can't get to the destination without the journey. It doesn't fit because predestination happens regardless of the journey. Predestination describes some absolute aspect of some specific destination of the journey, true, but the seed describes only the first step! All the rest of the complexity only happens from process.

The journey still happens. You won't, cannot possibly, observe the future wherein the perfectly reliable waiter brings @Marvin Edwards the steak, wherein Marvin does not place an order. Only in systems wherein Marvin picks up the menu, makes a choice of it, and places an order of that choice, does the waiter bring Marvin steak.

And the choice Marvin makes of the menu is done by things which are virtually impervious to the statistical whims of QM and "many worlds" cosmologies: neurons. If we replace Marvin with a machine that must pick in some much more clearly deterministic ways, one built of transistors, the resulting contraption would STILL not belch out a series of tones "steak please" based on whatever deterministic fuzzy logic were to execute inside the thing without collecting the objects on the menu and processing them.

Clearly, a choice MUST be made, and when the menu is processed, whatever it is processed by, it is processed into a single option. Such is choice made by and within a deterministic system.

 

[Kylie]

You haven't shown that what they are doing actually is a choice.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word the overwhelming majority of competent English speakers use to describe the human process of selection. That's how words get their meaning.

You (and DBT) are using a completely idiosyncratic and nonsensical version of 'choice'.

So it's a choice because people think it's a choice?

As I have already stated many times, if the outcome is inevitable, then it's the ILLUSION of choice, nothing more.

 

[Kylie]

Could you move over a bit? That brick wall is looking mighty inviting to me at this point.

If it was determined that I would do X, I can NOT do something other than X.

Stop. Take a breath.

If it was determined that we would order the Chicken, then we will order the Chicken.
If it was determined that we would order the Steak, then we will order the Steak.

We are looking at two "possibilities".
In one case the probability of the Chicken is 100% and the probability of the Steak is 0%.
In the other the probability of the Steak is 100% and the probability of the Chicken is 0%.

How do we determine which of these two possibilities is correct?

It's simple. We ignore that question and instead concentrate upon deciding which dinner we think we will enjoy most. If we decide that we will enjoy the Chicken more, then we choose the Chicken. If we decide that we will enjoy the Steak more, then we choose the Steak.

Coincidentally, we now know which of the two possibilities had the 100% probability and which of the two possibilities had 0% probability.

We normally discover the inevitable choice by our own choosing.

And again, if the outcome for one option is 100% and the outcome for the other option is 0%, then it's not really a choice, is it?

The fact we do not know is irrelevant. Why you keep bringing it to what we know is beyond me.

Here, let's share this bottle of aspirin.

The fact that we do not know what is inevitable is the reason for our choosing. If we already knew what we would inevitably choose, then we wouldn't bother choosing, but would instead simply do what was inevitable. Less work for us if we knew in advance what we would inevitably do.

We don't need to know what the inevitable outcome is.

If the outcome is inevitable, then it's going to happen no matter what. Our knowledge or lack thereof makes no difference.

Assuming that it is a deterministic universe, we would have to wait and see.

That would certainly be the easiest, but we have this Waiter with a pad and pencil, impatiently tapping his foot and wondering why we aren't telling him what we want for dinner.

*sigh*

But, as I apparently have to remind you YET AGAIN, it's not a choice.

Either it will be a choice or the Waiter will ask us to leave the restaurant, so that someone else can have our table, someone who is willing to make a choice.

It will be the ILLUSION of choice if the outcome is inevitable.

If the outcome is determined, then I do not have the freedom of making the choice myself.

Not only are you free to make the choice, but it is causally necessary from any prior point in time that you will actually be making that choice yourself.

Have you been deliberately ignoring what I've been saying?

Again, IT'S NOT A CHOICE. How you keep missing this obvious fact is beyond me.
The person ordering only THINKS they have made a choice.

The Waiter is asking us to leave. Now everyone in the restaurant is staring at us. Perhaps we should consider "thinking" that we have a choice next time.

*sigh again*

And did I say that nothing causes my choice? No.

My point ... is that the idea of the universe's state at any point in time being an unavoidable consequence of some earlier state is not correct.

Then are you (perhaps) saying that nothing causes the state of the universe to change from one state to the next?

Again it's the all or nothing with you.

When did I ever say that NOTHING causes anything else?

My argument has been that there are some things that follow as a result of other things, but there are also events that are not specifically caused by previous events.

You keep using that word CAN when I've already explained that it can possibly apply to a situation where there's a WILL.

When we do not know the single thing that WILL happen, we imagine the multiple things that CAN happen, to prepare ourselves for what inevitably DOES happen.

Yes, IMAGINE. We IMAGINE we have a choice, but in a purely deterministic universe, we do not.

When we do not know the single thing that we WILL choose, we consider the multiple things that we CAN choose, to decide/determine what we WILL choose.

The multiple things we IMAGINE we can choose.

We assume there is a single thing that WILL happen, but it is UNKNOWN to us. So we step out of the context of ACUALITY, and enter the context of POSSIBILITY, in which multiple things CAN happen and multiple things CAN be chosen.

Our ignorance of the inevitable outcome does not mean that outcomes other than the inevitable outcome are possible.

That's the point of CAN. It is there to enable us to logically reason about things that may or may not happen. We need that ability to deal with our ignorance of what WILL happen and what we WILL choose to do.

So we have to assume that the universe is not deterministic to think about what CAN happen.

Otherwise, if we work under the idea that the universe is purely deterministic, then we'd have to say, "One of these outcomes WILL happen and all the others WILL NOT happen. The one outcome that WILL happen is the only one that CAN happen, because any outcome that WILL NOT happen CAN NOT happen. I don't know why some outcomes CAN NOT and WILL NOT happen, but that doesn't change the fact that there is only one possible outcome."

You must do MORE than just assert that something is correct. You must DEMONSTRATE it. Simply saying people make choices is NOT a demonstration.

That's why I brought you to the restaurant, to see people actually making choices in physical reality. That's the demonstration.

I did not see people making choices.

I saw people who THOUGHT they were making choices when in fact they were doing the only possible thing they could have done.

Educated guesses are a far cry from KNOWING.

Correct. Determinism only asserts the theoretical possibility of knowing. And it is our "not knowing" what will happen that forces us to embrace the notion of possibility and probability, of things that can happen, even if they never do happen.

Once again, our ability to do it or not is irrelevant.

 

[Kylie]

More posting, alas.

Kylie wishes to prove that free will is incompatible with determinism, and as an example she posits an omniscient agent who knows in advance everything that I will do. Such an agent, while fictional, is a useful symbolic stand-in for determinism in a thought experiment.

She hopes to establish, I guess, that if this agent knows infallibly in advance that Kylie will eat chicken for dinner, then Kylie will eat chicken.

I agree! Kylie will eat chicken, in this scenario. No doubt about it.

But here is where things get slippery. Kylie, like all incompatibilists, now makes an illicit move. She purports to show in this scenario not JUST that Kylie WILL eat chicken, but that Kylie MUST eat chicken. And that is the point where the incompatibilist goes off the rails.

As I tried to show in the post that Kylie has clearly misunderstood, there is no reason to accept that Kylie “must eat chicken.” The erroneous argument condenses to this:

If an omniscient agent knows in advance that Kylie will eat chicken, then Kylie must (necessarily) eat chicken (no possible alternative, no free will for Kylie).

As I explained in the post in question, the above commits the modal fallacy, which I have invoked in different contexts. Since Kylie eating chicken is a contingent (could have been otherwise) matter, then her eating chicken can never be a necessary truth. Only necessary truths — e.g., that triangles have three sides — can never be otherwise. There is no (logically) possible world at which triangles have four sides, for example.

As I explained in my post using a different example, the corrected argument for Kylie and chicken goes like this:

Necessarily, (If an omniscient agent knows that Kylie will eat chicken, then Kylie will [but not must!] eat chicken).

The upshot that in the presence of an omniscient agent, Kylie is free to eat whatever she wants. That is, she has free will — she has live options!

What if Kylie chose to eat liver (ugh!) instead of chicken?

No problem!

Then we get:

Necessarily, (If an omniscient agent knows that Kylie will eat liver (ugh!), then Kylie will [but not must!] eat liver (ugh!)).

Kylie can eat what she wants! What she can’t do is evade detection of her choice, even before she makes it, by an omniscient agent. But the choice is clearly there. Kylie’s free choice supplies the truth grounds of what the omniscient agent knows in advance. If she chooses chicken, the OA foreknows chicken. If she chooses liver, the OA foreknows liver. That’s it!

Turning to determinism, this is the crux of the dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists. The incompatibilist wants to say that given antecedent circumstances x, y, and z, then Kylie MUST eat chicken — no free will.

It’s the same illicit move as discussed above! The compatiblist says only (and correctly!) that given antecedent circumstances x, y, and z, Kylie will [but not must!] eat chicken. Kylie is free to eat what she wants. What if she chooses to eat liver (ugh!) instead? Then there would be DIFFERENT antecedent circumstances — a, b, and c, perhaps.

The difference between WILL and MUST makes all the difference in the world!

Please observe that (most) compatibilists agree with incompatibilists that under the exact same circumstances, Kylie will eat chicken. The compatiblist just points out that since Kylie does not HAVE TO eat chicken, determinism poses no problem to free will.

The compatibilist correctly cashes out “could have done otherwise” to mean, “would have done otherwise, if …” If what? If circumstances had been different! Which makes perfect sense. We think in these terms all the time!

Marvin goes to the restaurant and orders a salad for lunch. In so doing he remarks to his dining companion, “I had a huge breakfast, so I’m going to have a light lunch. But I can tell you the steak is really good here. If I had skipped breakfast, I would order the steak.”

Free will and determinism, in compatible action together.

This sure looks like the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. You look at what happened, and then declare that that particular outcome was inevitable.

Let's go back to what you said about me saying, "Kylie MUST eat chicken."

I am using the word MUST in the sense of something that is required. If I want to get into the nightclub, I MUST show my ID to say that I am old enough to legally enter. If I want to legally drive a vehicle, I MUST have a license to show that I have the qualifications needed to do so safely.

So, if God (as used in your argument) knows for a fact that my eating of the chicken is 100% guaranteed to happen, then I MUST eat the chicken.

To get outcome A, I MUST perform action B. In my first example, outcome A was getting into the nightclub and action B was showing my ID. In my second example, outcome A was legally driving a vehicle, and action B was having a license. And then, Outcome A was God being correct about what I would eat, and action B was me eating chicken.

In any case, even without this quibbling about the meaning of "must", you've shown that a deterministic universe has no free will. Your first example, where God knows I will eat the chicken means I will eat the chicken and you agreed that there is no free will in that case, shows that if the outcome is set in stone, then no free will is possible. The presence or absence of some being who can be aware of this inevitable outcome is irrelevant, since things do not require awareness in order to exist. So if the outcome is 100% set in stone and nothing else can happen - as it would be in a purely deterministic universe - then no other option is possible for me save to do whatever that outcome is. Hence, I have no free will.

The problem is that you are saying that I CAN do something else when the possibility of me doing that is absolutely zero. "Can" requires a non-zero probability.

 

[Jarhyn]

You haven't shown that what they are doing actually is a choice.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word the overwhelming majority of competent English speakers use to describe the human process of selection. That's how words get their meaning.

You (and DBT) are using a completely idiosyncratic and nonsensical version of 'choice'.

So it's a choice because people think it's a choice?

As I have already stated many times, if the outcome is inevitable, then it's the ILLUSION of choice, nothing more.

No, people call it a choice because there is something happening which we needed a word for and "choice" worked as well as anything.

When observed closely, it was a process happening in which from a number of input "alternatives", selects a subset

 

[Marvin Edwards]

And again, if the outcome for one option is 100% and the outcome for the other option is 0%, then it's not really a choice, is it?

Choosing what you will order for dinner is literally, actually, objectively, and empirically a real choice.
And, given determinism, there was a 100% probability that you would be making a real choice.

So, the real question here is how did we talk ourselves into believing that what we see happening in physical reality is not really happening. The answer is figurative thinking. We say to ourselves, "If that was choice was inevitable since the Big Bang, then it is AS IF we never really made a choice."

The way we confirm whether we were speaking literally or figuratively is simply by checking it against what actually happened in physical reality. We considered two or more options, and selected one of them. Yep, sure enough, choosing really happened, and the choice was a real choice.

If the outcome is inevitable, then it's going to happen no matter what.

How do events become causally necessary/inevitable? By reliable causal mechanisms. These mechanisms can be very simple, like the mass of the Sun exerting gravitational force upon the Earth, causing it to travel around the Sun every year. Or, the causal mechanism may be very complex, like the DNA molecule that carries the plans and equipment to build a living organism. And then there is the living brain of an intelligent species, that can imagine, evaluate, and choose what it will cause to happen.

So, we have physical, biological, and rational causal mechanisms that we use to explain events, to understand "Why did this happen?". Determinism survives by assuming that each of these mechanisms is reliably deterministic within its own domain, and that every event will be reliably caused by some specific combination of physical, biological, and/or rational causation.

Rational causation performs logical operations, such as adding and choosing. Adding inputs two or more numbers, performs its function, and outputs a sum. Choosing inputs two or more options, compares the expected benefits of each option, and outputs a choice.

These rational operations enable humans to control what they will cause to happen in the real world. For example, we perform arithmetic to help us decide whether we can afford this new car. If we cannot afford it, we won't buy it. But if we can afford it, then we may decide to buy it. Buying the car causes changes in the real world, like the dealer ordering more cars and the factory building more cars. Perhaps others will see our new car and be motivated to buy themselves a new car.

So, these choices going on in our heads are part of the overall causation that makes determinism work. Within our personal domain of influence, our choices are part of the causal chain that makes future events causally necessary.

Part of the rational causal mechanism is the notion of possibilities. When we do not know the single thing that we WILL choose to do, we consider the things that we CAN choose to do, imagine the likely outcomes of each option, and based on that evaluation select the choice that we believe will be best.

So we have to assume that the universe is not deterministic to think about what CAN happen.

If you like. Or, we can simply recognize that what we WILL do is different in nature from what we CAN do. There is a single thing that we will do, while there are multiple things that we can do.

Otherwise, if we work under the idea that the universe is purely deterministic, then we'd have to say, "One of these outcomes WILL happen and all the others WILL NOT happen.

Correct. That is precisely what determinism implies. One option will be selected and the other options will not be selected.

The one outcome that WILL happen is the only one that CAN happen, because any outcome that WILL NOT happen CAN NOT happen. I don't know why some outcomes CAN NOT and WILL NOT happen, but that doesn't change the fact that there is only one possible outcome."

Well, no. We cannot conflate what WILL happen with what CAN happen. Nor can we conflate the single ACTUAL outcome with the many POSSIBLE outcomes.

Using your assumptions will BREAK choosing. Choosing is a logical operation that requires at least TWO things that we CAN choose to do.

I hate to have to put this before you again, but here's the demonstration of why your assumptions simply do not work:

Waiter: "What will you have for dinner tonight?"
Customer: "I don't know, what are my possibilities?"
Waiter: "In a deterministic world, there is only one thing that you can order."
Customer: "Oh. Well, what is that one thing that I can order?"
Waiter: "I do not know."

Your assumptions break choosing. And, since the ability to choose has been a boon to intelligent species survival, we should take care not to break it.

Have you been deliberately ignoring what I've been saying?

Of course not. I have been contradicting what you have been saying, and demonstrating exactly where your statements were incorrect.

My argument has been that there are some things that follow as a result of other things, but there are also events that are not specifically caused by previous events.

I don't think you can provide an example of an "uncaused" event. You have mentioned events where the outcomes are unpredictable in a practical sense. But that is not the same as being uncaused by prior events.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

So, if God (as used in your argument) knows for a fact that my eating of the chicken is 100% guaranteed to happen, then I MUST eat the chicken.

The question for free will is whether you chose to eat the chicken because you wanted to. God's knowledge may be simply that you would consider the other items on the menu, say to yourself, "Wow, that fried chicken looks great!" and decide to order the chicken yourself.

The same applies to determinism. The reason it was inevitable that you would order the chicken was that you would consider the other items on the menu, say to yourself, "Wow, that fried chicken looks great!" and decide to order the chicken yourself.

The problem is that you are saying that I CAN do something else when the possibility of me doing that is absolutely zero. "Can" requires a non-zero probability.

And, of course, every item on the menu had a non-zero probability before you made your choice, just like all the horses in the race had a non-zero probability before the race started.

Probabilities are only useful when the single actuality is still unknown. Within a deterministic system, nothing changes as to what we know and when we know it. So, nothing changes as to when the probability is non-zero and when it becomes zero.

 

[Jarhyn]

The question for free will is whether you chose to eat the chicken because you wanted to. God's knowledge may be simply that you would consider the other items on the menu, say to yourself, "Wow, that fried chicken looks great!" and decide to order the chicken yourself.

And this is the grand design of why I bring up Urist: I did in fact do this. I was that god. Urist had that mind. The thoughts happened. Urist wanted to fight.

Urist assembled of their methods a way to walk down the hall. I watched him do it. I watch the math of their choice to walk down the hall. I observe the selection play out.

for_each (need in needs),
if( (best_need's priority) < ((need's priority) + get_noise() ) )
best_need = need.

An observably dererministic system did exactly the act of making a Deterministic choice as a fundamental aspect of it's operation.

 

[The AntiChris]

You haven't shown that what they are doing actually is a choice.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word the overwhelming majority of competent English speakers use to describe the human process of selection. That's how words get their meaning.

You (and DBT) are using a completely idiosyncratic and nonsensical version of 'choice'.

So it's a choice because people think it's a choice?

I really didn't say that.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word people use to describe the selection process. Where else does the word get its meaning?

You may believe that choice is not what people think it is, but that doesn't change the fact that the thing they (in your view) misunderstand is still 'choice'.

 

[Kylie]

You haven't shown that what they are doing actually is a choice.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word the overwhelming majority of competent English speakers use to describe the human process of selection. That's how words get their meaning.

You (and DBT) are using a completely idiosyncratic and nonsensical version of 'choice'.

So it's a choice because people think it's a choice?

As I have already stated many times, if the outcome is inevitable, then it's the ILLUSION of choice, nothing more.

No, people call it a choice because there is something happening which we needed a word for and "choice" worked as well as anything.

When observed closely, it was a process happening in which from a number of input "alternatives", selects a subset

Choice implies a freedom that can not exist within the event in a deterministic universe.

 

[Kylie]

And again, if the outcome for one option is 100% and the outcome for the other option is 0%, then it's not really a choice, is it?

Choosing what you will order for dinner is literally, actually, objectively, and empirically a real choice.
And, given determinism, there was a 100% probability that you would be making a real choice.

Irrelevant. I am not talking about whether a choice would be made or not, I am talking about the OUTCOME of that choice. Your attempt to move the goalposts demonstrates your dishonesty.

So, the real question here is how did we talk ourselves into believing that what we see happening in physical reality is not really happening. The answer is figurative thinking. We say to ourselves, "If that was choice was inevitable since the Big Bang, then it is AS IF we never really made a choice."

And yet you can't comprehend that it works the other way around. "If that outcome was inevitable since the Big Bang, then it is AS IF we made a choice, but we never actually did, since a choice requires multiple possible options, yet one option being inevitable renders all other options as IMpossible, no matter how possible they may seem to us."

The way we confirm whether we were speaking literally or figuratively is simply by checking it against what actually happened in physical reality. We considered two or more options, and selected one of them. Yep, sure enough, choosing really happened, and the choice was a real choice.

And yet the illusion of choice fits this perfectly as well. We experience an event which APPEARS to be the making of a choice.

If the outcome is inevitable, then it's going to happen no matter what.

How do events become causally necessary/inevitable? By reliable causal mechanisms. These mechanisms can be very simple, like the mass of the Sun exerting gravitational force upon the Earth, causing it to travel around the Sun every year. Or, the causal mechanism may be very complex, like the DNA molecule that carries the plans and equipment to build a living organism. And then there is the living brain of an intelligent species, that can imagine, evaluate, and choose what it will cause to happen.

So, we have physical, biological, and rational causal mechanisms that we use to explain events, to understand "Why did this happen?". Determinism survives by assuming that each of these mechanisms is reliably deterministic within its own domain, and that every event will be reliably caused by some specific combination of physical, biological, and/or rational causation.

Rational causation performs logical operations, such as adding and choosing. Adding inputs two or more numbers, performs its function, and outputs a sum. Choosing inputs two or more options, compares the expected benefits of each option, and outputs a choice.

These rational operations enable humans to control what they will cause to happen in the real world. For example, we perform arithmetic to help us decide whether we can afford this new car. If we cannot afford it, we won't buy it. But if we can afford it, then we may decide to buy it. Buying the car causes changes in the real world, like the dealer ordering more cars and the factory building more cars. Perhaps others will see our new car and be motivated to buy themselves a new car.

So, these choices going on in our heads are part of the overall causation that makes determinism work. Within our personal domain of influence, our choices are part of the causal chain that makes future events causally necessary.

Part of the rational causal mechanism is the notion of possibilities. When we do not know the single thing that we WILL choose to do, we consider the things that we CAN choose to do, imagine the likely outcomes of each option, and based on that evaluation select the choice that we believe will be best.

How in the world does this address the point I was making?

If it's inevitable, then it's going to happen no matter what. If it's going to happen no matter what, then it's not a free choice.

So we have to assume that the universe is not deterministic to think about what CAN happen.

If you like. Or, we can simply recognize that what we WILL do is different in nature from what we CAN do. There is a single thing that we will do, while there are multiple things that we can do.

If it's inevitable that we won't do them, then we CAN'T do them. We merely THINK we can.

Otherwise, if we work under the idea that the universe is purely deterministic, then we'd have to say, "One of these outcomes WILL happen and all the others WILL NOT happen.

Correct. That is precisely what determinism implies. One option will be selected and the other options will not be selected.

The one outcome that WILL happen is the only one that CAN happen, because any outcome that WILL NOT happen CAN NOT happen. I don't know why some outcomes CAN NOT and WILL NOT happen, but that doesn't change the fact that there is only one possible outcome."

Well, no. We cannot conflate what WILL happen with what CAN happen. Nor can we conflate the single ACTUAL outcome with the many POSSIBLE outcomes.

Using your assumptions will BREAK choosing. Choosing is a logical operation that requires at least TWO things that we CAN choose to do.

So you are saying we CAN do a thing when it is inevitable that we will never do that thing.

What sort of logic tells you that it's possible for you to do something that has a 0% chance of being done?

I hate to have to put this before you again, but here's the demonstration of why your assumptions simply do not work:

Waiter: "What will you have for dinner tonight?"
Customer: "I don't know, what are my possibilities?"
Waiter: "In a deterministic world, there is only one thing that you can order."
Customer: "Oh. Well, what is that one thing that I can order?"
Waiter: "I do not know."

Your assumptions break choosing. And, since the ability to choose has been a boon to intelligent species survival, we should take care not to break it.

How many times do I have to tell you that this example is relying on the limited information available to humans?

I even tried to demonstrate it but you had a hissy fit that I was making the waiter omniscient.

Have you been deliberately ignoring what I've been saying?

Of course not. I have been contradicting what you have been saying, and demonstrating exactly where your statements were incorrect.

You have not demonstrated anything, you've merely asserted it.

My argument has been that there are some things that follow as a result of other things, but there are also events that are not specifically caused by previous events.

I don't think you can provide an example of an "uncaused" event. You have mentioned events where the outcomes are unpredictable in a practical sense. But that is not the same as being uncaused by prior events.

The decay of a specific radioactive atom.

Now, I'm not talking about the process that the atom undergoes when it decays. I'm speaking of the event that triggers that process. Can you show it to me? Can you point to an atom and say, that atom will decay in 3... 2... 1... NOW!" and be correct? No you can't.

 

[Kylie]

So, if God (as used in your argument) knows for a fact that my eating of the chicken is 100% guaranteed to happen, then I MUST eat the chicken.

The question for free will is whether you chose to eat the chicken because you wanted to. God's knowledge may be simply that you would consider the other items on the menu, say to yourself, "Wow, that fried chicken looks great!" and decide to order the chicken yourself.

Let's say that God knows that tomorrow I will eat the chicken. If he came to me and said, "Kylie, you're going to eat the chicken," would I be able to instead choose the steak just to spite him?

The same applies to determinism. The reason it was inevitable that you would order the chicken was that you would consider the other items on the menu, say to yourself, "Wow, that fried chicken looks great!" and decide to order the chicken yourself.

And the same principle applies. Let's say you were able to use determinism to figure out that it was inevitable that I would choose the chicken tomorrow night. If you informed me of the inevitable outcome. would I be able to choose the steak instead?

The problem is that you are saying that I CAN do something else when the possibility of me doing that is absolutely zero. "Can" requires a non-zero probability.

And, of course, every item on the menu had a non-zero probability before you made your choice, just like all the horses in the race had a non-zero probability before the race started.

Probabilities are only useful when the single actuality is still unknown. Within a deterministic system, nothing changes as to what we know and when we know it. So, nothing changes as to when the probability is non-zero and when it becomes zero.

No, they did not. One item and one item only had a non-zero probability, and that was the item that I was determined to choose. All the other items had a probability of zero, because it was determined that I would not select them.

If it is inevitable that I will not choose a particular option, that option has a probability of zero.

 

[Kylie]

You haven't shown that what they are doing actually is a choice.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word the overwhelming majority of competent English speakers use to describe the human process of selection. That's how words get their meaning.

You (and DBT) are using a completely idiosyncratic and nonsensical version of 'choice'.

So it's a choice because people think it's a choice?

I really didn't say that.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word people use to describe the selection process. Where else does the word get its meaning?

You may believe that choice is not what people think it is, but that doesn't change the fact that the thing they (in your view) misunderstand is still 'choice'.

A choice requires the presence of more than one option with a non-zero probability.

If one outcome is inevitable, then that option has a probability of 100% and all other apparent options have probabilities of zero percent and thus they are not true options. With only one option with a non-zero probability, it is not a true choice. At best, it is the ILLUSION of choice, as I've stated several times now.

 

[The AntiChris]

You haven't shown that what they are doing actually is a choice.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word the overwhelming majority of competent English speakers use to describe the human process of selection. That's how words get their meaning.

You (and DBT) are using a completely idiosyncratic and nonsensical version of 'choice'.

So it's a choice because people think it's a choice?

I really didn't say that.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word people use to describe the selection process. Where else does the word get its meaning?

You may believe that choice is not what people think it is, but that doesn't change the fact that the thing they (in your view) misunderstand is still 'choice'.

A choice requires the presence of more than one option with a non-zero probability.

If one outcome is inevitable, then that option has a probability of 100% and all other apparent options have probabilities of zero percent and thus they are not true options. With only one option with a non-zero probability, it is not a true choice. At best, it is the ILLUSION of choice, as I've stated several times now.

You haven't understood a single thing I've said.

 

[DBT]

You haven't shown that what they are doing actually is a choice.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word the overwhelming majority of competent English speakers use to describe the human process of selection. That's how words get their meaning.

You (and DBT) are using a completely idiosyncratic and nonsensical version of 'choice'.

So it's a choice because people think it's a choice?

I really didn't say that.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word people use to describe the selection process. Where else does the word get its meaning?

You may believe that choice is not what people think it is, but that doesn't change the fact that the thing they (in your view) misunderstand is still 'choice'.

The words that people use has no bearing on the nature of the world, which if deterministic, permits no alternatives, therefore no choice.

A determined word may have the appearance of choice, the illusion of choice. You may think that you could choose otherwise, but in reality, you cannot. You cannot because events in a determined system go as they must, not how they are chosen in the sense that an alternative was possible.

 

[The AntiChris]

You haven't shown that what they are doing actually is a choice.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word the overwhelming majority of competent English speakers use to describe the human process of selection. That's how words get their meaning.

You (and DBT) are using a completely idiosyncratic and nonsensical version of 'choice'.

So it's a choice because people think it's a choice?

I really didn't say that.

It's a 'choice' because that's the word people use to describe the selection process. Where else does the word get its meaning?

You may believe that choice is not what people think it is, but that doesn't change the fact that the thing they (in your view) misunderstand is still 'choice'.

The words that people use has no bearing on the nature of the world, which if deterministic, permits no alternatives, therefore no choice.

A determined word may have the appearance of choice, the illusion of choice. You may think that you could choose otherwise, but in reality, you cannot. You cannot because events in a determined system go as they must, not how they are chosen in the sense that an alternative was possible.

And you, too, haven't understood a single thing I've said.

You've confirmed my suspicion (formed over many years) that you really don't understand how words gain their meaning.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

The question for free will is whether you chose to eat the chicken because you wanted to. God's knowledge may be simply that you would consider the other items on the menu, say to yourself, "Wow, that fried chicken looks great!" and decide to order the chicken yourself.

And this is the grand design of why I bring up Urist: I did in fact do this. I was that god. Urist had that mind. The thoughts happened. Urist wanted to fight.

Urist assembled of their methods a way to walk down the hall. I watched him do it. I watch the math of their choice to walk down the hall. I observe the selection play out.

for_each (need in needs),
if( (best_need's priority) < ((need's priority) + get_noise() ) )
best_need = need.

An observably dererministic system did exactly the act of making a Deterministic choice as a fundamental aspect of it's operation.

The analogy of Urist still doesn't work for me, because Urist does not have any interest in the outcome. All machines are created by us to do our will. Our machines (a program is a logic machine) have no will of their own, even though we may imagine that they do. Because computers can perform logical operations, we may say that they make choices, but they do so for us, not for themselves.

 

[Jarhyn]

The question for free will is whether you chose to eat the chicken because you wanted to. God's knowledge may be simply that you would consider the other items on the menu, say to yourself, "Wow, that fried chicken looks great!" and decide to order the chicken yourself.

And this is the grand design of why I bring up Urist: I did in fact do this. I was that god. Urist had that mind. The thoughts happened. Urist wanted to fight.

Urist assembled of their methods a way to walk down the hall. I watched him do it. I watch the math of their choice to walk down the hall. I observe the selection play out.

for_each (need in needs),
if( (best_need's priority) < ((need's priority) + get_noise() ) )
best_need = need.

An observably dererministic system did exactly the act of making a Deterministic choice as a fundamental aspect of it's operation.

The analogy of Urist still doesn't work for me, because Urist does not have any interest in the outcome. All machines are created by us to do our will. Our machines (a program is a logic machine) have no will of their own, even though we may imagine that they do. Because computers can perform logical operations, we may say that they make choices, but they do so for us, not for themselves.

That's the thing though: more appropriately the point is to show that having a free will does not require such an obvious self interest.

At the end of the day though you are falling into a genetic fallacy: it does not matter why they hold the will, or make the choice. In fact reality has no real quality of "to whose intent is it doing this" as per the computer. It is a detached, independent object operating without continued direction.

Again the point is to show that even if GOD himself did some things, it does not change the fact that the person decided for themselves.

I really only started a chain reaction, and from then on I just watched what it did on its own.

In some ways the point is to show a single will being free, and a single will being constrained as per the requirement based definition, and to do so in a clearly deterministic system.

From there your special will, "free will-to-decide-for-self" is just a matter of describing the heuristic of it, because wills in general have already been proven out as objectively existing and freedom objectively being a boolean quality of them.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Choosing what we will order for dinner is literally, actually, objectively, and empirically a real choice.
And, given determinism, there was a 100% probability that we would be making a real choice.

Irrelevant. I am not talking about whether a choice would be made or not ...

You have repeatedly claimed that there is "no choice" in a deterministic system.

I am talking about the OUTCOME of that choice. Your attempt to move the goalposts demonstrates your dishonesty.

And you say that in the same breath in which you move the goalpost from "no choice" to the "OUTCOME of that choice".

And yet you can't comprehend that it works the other way around. "If that outcome was inevitable since the Big Bang, then it is AS IF we made a choice, but we never actually did, since a choice requires multiple possible options, yet one option being inevitable renders all other options as IMpossible, no matter how possible they may seem to us."

There is the restaurant menu. It contains multiple POSSIBLE options. Choosing one option never makes the other options IMPOSSIBLE. For example, although you actually chose the Chicken, you could have chosen the Steak instead. Under the given circumstances, you NEVER WOULD HAVE chosen the Steak, but you still COULD HAVE.

To test this, why don't you order the Steak for me. Thank you. And now you see that you had the ABILITY to order the Steak all along.

To say that you CAN order the Steak never implies that you WILL order the Steak. It simply means that the Steak was available on the menu as a real option that you COULD HAVE chosen IF you wanted to.

And yet the illusion of choice fits this perfectly as well. We experience an event which APPEARS to be the making of a choice.

Yes, it certainly APPEARS to be the making of a choice, just like it APPEARS to be us walking into the restaurant, and like it APPEARS to be us sitting down at a table, and like it APPEARS to be us opening the menu, and, sure enough, it APPEARS to be us telling the waiter what we have chosen for dinner.

"Appearances can be deceiving", but there is no reason to doubt the choosing any more than to doubt the walking or the sitting or the reading or the ordering.

All of the events appeared to happen in physical reality. And we may even assert that, given determinism, every event was reliably caused by prior events. For example, the walking to the table led to the sitting which led to reading the menu which led to making a choice which led to giving the waiter our order. Reliable causation. Oh, and of course, free will. Because no one other than us made the choice for us.

And, as it is with most choices, there was a single outcome, that was chosen by us from a list of multiple possibilities.

How in the world does this address the point I was making?

Sometimes, in a conversation, it is not just about the point you are making, but about the point someone else is making.

If it's inevitable, then it's going to happen no matter what. If it's going to happen no matter what, then it's not a free choice.

In order to assess what's "going to happen no matter what", we need to be clear on what is actually happening. That's the point of this lengthy explanation:

How do events become causally necessary/inevitable? By reliable causal mechanisms. These mechanisms can be very simple, like the mass of the Sun exerting gravitational force upon the Earth, causing it to travel around the Sun every year. Or, the causal mechanism may be very complex, like the DNA molecule that carries the plans and equipment to build a living organism. And then there is the living brain of an intelligent species, that can imagine, evaluate, and choose what it will cause to happen.

So, we have physical, biological, and rational causal mechanisms that we use to explain events, to understand "Why did this happen?". Determinism survives by assuming that each of these mechanisms is reliably deterministic within its own domain, and that every event will be reliably caused by some specific combination of physical, biological, and/or rational causation.

Rational causation performs logical operations, such as adding and choosing. Adding inputs two or more numbers, performs its function, and outputs a sum. Choosing inputs two or more options, compares the expected benefits of each option, and outputs a choice.

These rational operations enable humans to control what they will cause to happen in the real world. For example, we perform arithmetic to help us decide whether we can afford this new car. If we cannot afford it, we won't buy it. But if we can afford it, then we may decide to buy it. Buying the car causes changes in the real world, like the dealer ordering more cars and the factory building more cars. Perhaps others will see our new car and be motivated to buy themselves a new car.

So, these choices going on in our heads are part of the overall causation that makes determinism work. Within our personal domain of influence, our choices are part of the causal chain that makes future events causally necessary.

Part of the rational causal mechanism is the notion of possibilities. When we do not know the single thing that we WILL choose to do, we consider the many things that we CAN choose to do, imagine the likely outcomes of each option, and based on that evaluation select the option that we believe will be best. That becomes our choice.

In order to play its role, the mind must have two or more options to choose from, two or more things that it CAN choose to do. The fact that it will only choose ONE of these things does NOT mean that it COULD NOT have chosen the other.

The logic of the language is part of the choosing mechanism. It is how the human mind calculates and explains its choices.

If it's inevitable that we won't do them, then we CAN'T do them. We merely THINK we can.

THINKING that we CAN is sufficient. A possibility exists solely within the imagination. As soon as a "possibility" is made real in the physical world it is immediately renamed an "actuality". We cannot walk across a POSSIBLE bridge. We can only walk across an ACTUAL bridge. But this does not imply that a possibility is insignificant, because we cannot build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge. The notion of possibilities enables the mind to invent, plan, and build new actual things, like our actual bridge that we can now walk across.

And this is why we cannot say things like, "If it's inevitable that we won't do them, then we CAN'T do them", because there will be many things that we inevitably won't do, which we still must consider to be things that we CAN do, in order for the human mind to choose what it will invent, plan, and build in the real world.

Or, for that matter, simply to choose what it will order for dinner. There must be multiple things that CAN be chosen on the way to determining the single thing that WILL be chosen. There must be multiple possibilities on our way to getting to the single actuality.

When viewed through determinism, we these thoughts about what we CAN do are part of the causal chain that are necessary to decide what we WILL do.

Otherwise, if we work under the idea that the universe is purely deterministic, then we'd have to say, "One of these outcomes WILL happen and all the others WILL NOT happen.

Correct. That is precisely what determinism implies. One option WILL be selected and the other options WILL NOT be selected.

But we CANNOT logically say that the other options COULD NOT be selected, because it is logically necessary that at least TWO options CAN be chosen in order for choosing to accomplish its work.

That's why this doesn't work:

The one outcome that WILL happen is the only one that CAN happen, because any outcome that WILL NOT happen CAN NOT happen. I don't know why some outcomes CAN NOT and WILL NOT happen, but that doesn't change the fact that there is only one possible outcome."

We cannot conflate what WILL happen with what CAN happen. Nor can we conflate the single ACTUAL outcome with the many POSSIBLE outcomes.

Those assumptions BREAK choosing, as we've demonstrated in the example:

Waiter: "What will you have for dinner tonight?"
Customer: "I don't know, what are my possibilities?"
Waiter: "In a deterministic world, there is only one thing that you can order."
Customer: "Oh. Well, what is the one thing that I can order?"
Waiter: "I do not know."

How many times do I have to tell you that this example is relying on the limited information available to humans? I even tried to demonstrate it but you had a hissy fit that I was making the waiter omniscient.

As a practical matter, it is ALWAYS the case that we are relying on the information that is available to us. None of us are omniscient (and that is why the omniscient waiter does not resolve the problem). We evolved the notion of possibility to logically deal with this uncertainty.

So you are saying we CAN do a thing when it is inevitable that we will never do that thing.

Exactly.

What sort of logic tells you that it's possible for you to do something that has a 0% chance of being done?

The same logic we use every day whenever we make a choice. When we do not yet know what we WILL do, we imagine what we CAN do, evaluate our options, and determine for ourselves what we WILL do.

At the beginning of the choosing operation, it is true, by logical necessity, that every option has a real chance of being chosen. Or, as you would say, "a probability > 0".

The decay of a specific radioactive atom. Now, I'm not talking about the process that the atom undergoes when it decays. I'm speaking of the event that triggers that process. Can you show it to me? Can you point to an atom and say, that atom will decay in 3... 2... 1... NOW!" and be correct? No you can't.

That is a problem of prediction, not a problem of causation. According to Wikipedia, there are several theories as to what causes radioactive decay. But we cannot observe this happening in a single atom, because we have no way of looking at the specific cause within a specific atom. Thus, there is a problem in predicting this type of event.