The people that use it in the D1 way (it seems pretty prevalent) just call it 'determinism'. — noAxioms

If people are saying determinism is compatible with randomness, they're doing something extremely strange. Wikipedia lists randomness as "an extreme antonym" to determinism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

A more extreme antonym of determinism is indeterminism, or the view that events are not deterministically caused but rather occur due to random chance.

Lumping it with the others is perhaps confusing, but the word is very much used that way — noAxioms

You said it's your term. Now you're saying it's "very much used that way". My head's spinning. Which is it? Is it in common use or is it your term?

[edit] Ignore the above, I'm happy to just let it drop given that you want to find something else.

The style of reasoning — javra

What style of reasoning is it? I just think he's (a) trying to name a concept that already has sufficient names, and (b) naming it in a misleading and confusing way. Hopefully he takes the feedback and just doesn't continue to insist on calling this "philosophical determinism". Seems like an easy fix.

Philosophical determinism' is my term, and is often the sort of determinism referenced by the dualists. It means naturalism, but that sounds good, and they don't want their stance to be 'unnaturalism', so they pick a word 'determinism' that means that your decisions are determined by natural physics and not by you (the immaterial thing they envision themselves to be). So D1 boils down to 'not dualism', and has nothing to do with the presence or absence of randomness in natural law. — noAxioms

Ah, I don't think javra was assuming you're just making the term and the meaning of it up. I agree with @javra that calling such a concept "determinism" is very confusing, and is probably not the best name for that idea. In fact, you said it's basically just not-dualism, and that already has a name: monism. Physicalism or materialism also seem to cover it, if I'm understanding it correctly

Quine on modalities... modalities resist substitutivity for reasons like this... swapping the modality in this case brings a falsehood. — DifferentiatingEgg

Sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about buddy.

this thread started because corvus was applying denying the antecedent like it was a general rule. He even gave an explicit example in his first few posts.

If it's raining, the ground is wet, he said. A fair enough implication, no reason to reject this.

Then he says, therefore if it's not raining, the ground is not wet.

The man completely forgot that there's other ways for the ground to get wet. Maybe the sprinklers were on, maybe someone just watered the lawn.

So what corvus failed to realize was that, if a implies b, that doesn't always mean not a implies not b. That's why his thinking is terribly fallacious.

Sorry for butting in, but if I'm reading this conversation between you and javra correctly (and I'm not at all confident I am, I would love to be corrected), you're saying that Philosophical Determinism allows for randomness, because Philosophical Determinism is somehow substantially different from Causal Determinism?

if there isn't a reason for something that happens, it's random.

So if I ask "why did this happen?" and there's an explanation for why it happened, "it happened because of this and this and this", that's not random - or at least not entirely random.

But if I ask "why did this happen?" and there's no reason at all - not just no known reason, ontologically no actual reason - it's random.

So it's odd that people have been trying to dispel me of the notion that libertarian free will isn't about randomness, and here you are affirming the notion.

But also it means we don't have free will when it comes to very important ethical decisions. If I choose to save a baby's life, and I have reasons to do that, then you say I'm not free. And if I decide to murder a bunch of babies, and I have reasons to do that, then you say I'm not free. So I don't have free will in those moments and am not responsible for them? Weird.

Well, how your decision could be free if it is based on a reason? — MoK

You've presented such a bonkers idea that I don't even know where to start. I'm going to pass.

Choosing the ice cream you like is an unfree decision since you have a reason for your choice — MoK

So freedom is only when you choose things that you don't have reasons to choose? Wowza, what a wild conception of free will.

ok

interesting comic.

eh? can you please be specific?

(probably shouldn't say "literally never", i did used to be a hard determinist. i haven't said anything like that in this thread.)

I have literally never said anything like that at all.

I'm saying people experience their choices as being related to the state of themselves, as opposed to unrelated. The ice cream they choose isn't random, people generally don't choose flavours they know they hate (because "i know i hate that flavour" is part of the state of themselves), and they slightly more frequently choose flavours they like a little (because "i know i like this a little" is part of the state of themselves) and the way more frequently choose flavours they like a lot (because "i know i like this a lot" is part of the state of themselves), and some people are more daring than others so more willing to take a risk on a flavor they're unfamiliar with (because "i value trying new things" is part of the state of themselves)

In other words, it seems as though what *determines* why someone makes one choice instead of another is pre-existing states. And that's what determinism is about - determining the future based on facts that currently exist.

you experience your choice following from the state of you, including your desires and wants, which is part of the state of everything.

You don't experience your choice coming out of nowhere at all, random and unrelated to any pre existing facts about the world and facts about yourself

The possibility of multiple outcomes preceding a choice doesn't have to imply randomness, but the weighing of the options by the will - which is what we experience. — Tzeentch

Yeah, exactly, so in a choice there's no randomess, the choice follows naturally from the preceding state of everything (which of course includes the state of you), which is what you experience. No indeterminism required.

Determinism implies we never have a choice. Is that a better way of putting it? — Tzeentch

Not necessarily that either. You can still have choices, it's just that your choices follow from... well, follow from YOU, follow from the state of you. If you made a choice at t2, determinism just means that choice was necessarily going to follow from the state of your world, and the state of you, at t1. And that's what you want out of free will - you want the state of YOU to be the thing determining a choice. And if it's true that the state of you at t1 determined the choice at t2, then you "made a choice", and it doens't conflict with determinism.

As far as I know, the libertarian idea of free will doesn't imply that it would have to be. — Tzeentch

But for determinism to not be the case, something must be random. So when someone says "we can only have free will if detreminism isn't the case", they're saying "we can only have free will if there's randomness".

Of course, many people seem to disagree. Which is why the randomness / determinism dichotomy has to be the first thing we talk about if we want to get anywhere.

Determinism implies the outcome of our choice was already decided beforehand, agreed? — Tzeentch

"already decided beforehand"... mmm... kinda yes kinda no. Not "decided". Not "beforehand". Not necessarily. It just means that the outcome follows from the preceding conditions. It's not like Zeus is sitting up there in the heavens writing what he wants to happen, and then observing it happen, which is what "decided beforehand" feels like.

Is it not a fair assessment that the libertarian idea of free will corresponds with an almost universal human experience? — Tzeentch

Some certainly think so! But my decisions don't seem random.

Doesn't our experience of free will oppose itself to determinism? — Tzeentch

That's very debatable. My experience of my decision making process doesn't feel like it involves randomness, and I understand randomness to be the alternative to determinism. Our experience of free will certainly involves us not knowing what we're going to choose, but not knowing the future is not opposite to determinism.

"type of free will". Not all free will, just some types. That's why I used the word "type"

Does the thought experiment of the two Bobs provide a strong argument against free will — Tzeentch

I interpret it to be a strong argument against any type of free will which opposes itself to determinism. If you say "free will requires determinism to be false", to me that means "free will requires that Bob2 can actually sometimes behave differently from Bob1", but it doesn't seem that bob2s different behaviour can be explained by anything other than randomness.

Plato demonstrated in The Theaetetus, that "knowledge" as we know it cannot be described as JTB. This is because the possibility of falsity cannot be excluded, therefore we cannot hold truth as a criterion. In other words, the requirement of truth cannot be justified, therefore the idea that knowledge is JTB cannot itself be knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover

I always thought the T in JTB was weird. I mean it makes sense, but then it makes Knowledge just as inaccessible as Truth itself. We only have access to justifications about our beliefs, there's no oracle who can tell us if that belief satisfies the T or not.

So we can only really appeal to our justifications when calling a certain belief "knowledge", we can't ever appeal to the raw T.

So are we just supposed to be agnostic about if any belief is knowledge? Because... well, of course if we think it's J then we think it's T, but we can't really distinguish between the beliefs we think are justified and are actually true vs the beliefs we think are justified but aren't true. I mean, if we could - if we could know, "I'm justified in this belief but it isn't really true", then we wouldn't believe it anymore.

It just feels like the J is doing all the work and the T is coming along for the ride.

To go into more detail on why the PSR can't hold if Bob 2 does something different from Bob 1:

First of all, I recognize that my take on the PSR that I'm about to give is not necessarily standard, and is potentially contrary to what the standard view is. I'll argue for it nonetheless.

Everything is the same about bob and his entire universe in both worlds before Bobs choice. And since everything is the same, all possible reasons are the same. So if Bob1 makes some choice, that means there's a sufficient reason why Bob 1 made that choice. And since everything is the same preceding the choice, then there must be a sufficient reason for Bob2 to make the same choice. And yet he doesn't?

And instead he does something else. Something that didn't happen to Bob1. And if it didn't happen to Bob1, that means the preceding state of the world wasn't such that there was a sufficient reason for that choice to happen. So Bob1 didn't have a sufficient reason to make that choice, and given that all facts are the same before the choice for Bob1 as Bob 2, that means it also doesn't have sufficient reason to happen in bob2s world. And yet it happens anyway?

So if Bob2 makes a different choice from Bob1, and you insist the Psr holds, we have an action that does have sufficient reason to happen and yet doesn't happen anyway, and an action that doesn't have sufficient reason to happen and yet does happen anyway.

Now you might retort, no, actually both actions have sufficient reason to happen in both universes. Action 1 and Action 2 were both given sufficient precedent in both universes, and so either one happening matches the PSR. To which I would reply, touche...

But then we'd still need a sufficient reason for the difference. What's the sufficient reason for why Bob2 did something different from Bob1? It looks to me like the only possible answer is "just cause". Bob1 had sufficient reason to do action1 or action2, and he did action1 "just cause". And Bob2 did action2 "just cause". Just cause they could. There's no reason why one did one and one did the other, other than they could. So why did they do something different? To explain a difference, you must appeal to a difference, and since there's no difference between bob1 and bob2 prior to the choice, there's no explanation, there's no sufficient reason.

I think so anyway. I could easily be wrong, I'm not infallible. That's just the way I see it.

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to be unfair or silly with that.

I'm a programmer. In programming, a function can be deterministic or not. A deterministic function is one for which, for any given input, you'll always get the same output. So if you input w, and you get x as a response once, if it's deterministic then every time you input w you'll always get x. And if you input y, and you get z once, then every time you input y you'll get z.

And in contrast, an indeterministic function is simply a function where that isn't true - it's a function where, for at least some inputs, you'll get a different output. Maybe you input w and you get x once, and maybe you do it 9 more times you get x again, but the tenth time you get n̴͚̎̌ȍ̶͓͖͔̱̠̘̣̓̿̓̒̈́t̷̪̝̮̦̫͐̎̄̌͜ͅx̴͇̖̬̮͉̝̞̂̄͗͝ - the fact that you got a different output from the same input makes that function indeterministic. Even if it only happens sometimes, rarely.

You've brought in all sorts of fancy ideas like teleological reasons as opposed to causal reasons, but when we simplify everything you've said into a system that takes an input and produces an output - well, the input is the set of all relevant facts before Bobs decision, and the output is Bobs decision a few moments later, and since you said Bob will always choose the same, then it really doesn't matter if you choose to use the word "causal determinant" or "teleological determinant". It doesn't matter what types of facts you use in the function that takes the input and turns it into the output. You can call it whatever you want, you can call it causal or teleological or Susan if it makes you happy, but if the output is always the same from the same input, then what you have on your hands is a deterministic function.

You're semantically convinced that determinism and teleology are somehow opposed, that if teleology is involved it can't be determined. I, on the other hand, see no reason why teleology can't be part of a deterministic function. In fact what you described is explicitly a deterministic function that uses teleological reasons to produce an output. Teleology and determinism are perfectly compatible.

I don't expect you to agree with any of that, but I'm writing this in the hope that you might at least understand why I'm calling that determinism.

Not being causally inevitable, the two worlds of Bob 1 and 2 would readily allow for the possibility of different choices made, despite the PSR yet holdin — javra

The PSR doesn't hold if Bob 1 and Bob 2 do different things.

Can you provide even one philosophical reference for what the term “determinism” signifies such that it does not entail causal inevitability, be it via this or similar phrasing? — javra

I personally don't think what you've described is fundamentally different from causal inevitability. I consider your distinction to be a word game. My conception of determinism isn't vulnerable to that word game.

But I still don't understand why you say you are a compatibilist if you are agnostic regarding determinism. — Patterner

Imagine the universe in a snow globe. Imagine 2 snow globes, one in each hand. In your left hand, it's a lot like this universe, but where a random-collapse quantum interpretation is true. In your right hand, it's a lot like this universe, but one where a deterministic quantum interpretation is true. My understanding of free will is such that, as long as humans and human decision making is an emergent feature, both of those universes have human beings with tthe only sort of "free will" I think means anything.

My understanding of free will is *compatible with* determinism, but that doesn't mean it's incompatible with indeterminism. Being compatible with one thing doesn't mean incompatible with another. We have free will, regardless of determinism.

Indeterminism is a short-hand for physical indeterminism — Bob Ross

There's plenty of conceptual things that are deterministic that have nothing to do with anything physical. There are plenty of conceptual things that are indeterministic that have nothing to do with anything physical. I'm not partial to this "physical" talk. We live inside a system that evolves from the past to the future, it doesn't matter if that system is 100% physical or 100% non physical or some combination.

I mean I'm sure it matters in some sense, I'd be certainly curious to know, but it doesn't affect any of the reasoning here.

you say your concept isn't determined because things are teleologically determined, not causally determined. To me it's just 6 of one, half dozen of the other. Determined it's determined. It looks exactly the same as determinism to me, you just have some abstract reason not to call it determinism despite it walking like a duck and quacking like a duck. Determinism has a simple criteria to me, and what you described passes that criteria.

I'm not insisting you call it determinism, but as far as the reasoning in the op of this thread goes, it's determinism, not indeterminism. You can have your reasons for calling it indeterminism, those reasons just don't appeal to me, they aren't compelling to me.

Libertarian free will ... will thereby necessitate a metaphysics ... which is different from that in which the only two ontically occurring options are either that of a) randomness or b) causal inevitability — javra

It seems that, at least for some flavours of libertarianism, this is the case. And this is really the crux. I believe it's tautologically the case that those are the two options.

One might phrase (b) as causal inevitability, or determinism, or an instance of the principle of sufficient reason. I'm actually leaning towards that latter phrasing lately - that determinism inside a universe means everything that happens in that universe has sufficient reason to happen. And the alternative is, some things happen that don't have sufficient reason. If everything that happens has sufficient reason, that's what I call 'determinism'. If some things don't have 'sufficient reason', then that means there's some aspect of their explanation which is reason-less, because it isn't sufficiently explained with reasons, and a reason-less happening is another way of looking at something random.

So it seems I am just doomed to never understand these libertarians because this dichotomy of determinism / randomness is an inevitable consequence of the way I've defined these words. And it seems they're similarly doomed to not understand why that's the dichotomy.

Do you think there's a way around the dichotomy?

I already discussed substance dualism to a good extent — MoK

nothing i've said is pro- or contra- substance dualism. I don't care about it either way. It just seems completely orthogonal to any point I've made.

Do you have something to say other than just bare contrarianism? If not then yeah, probably.

well too bad

I don't pretend to perfectly know how reality works, which is why I'm agnostic about if pieces of reality may be a bit random. Quantum mechanics could easily be a bit random.

of course it is. But you said "something cannot be...". Something can be

ok well I can write a program of Conway's game of life that's mostly deterministic and a little bit random so I guess I'll just go with that and stick with what I'm saying.

I have no idea whether or not anything, in reality, is determined or random.

I do have an idea, however, that the processes by which things happen are either deterministic or in some part random. That if a process isn't deterministic, that can only mean that the part of that process that isn't deterministic is random.

So you said physical means stuff that exists, but now you're saying that's not correct, and physical means something else?