It is extremely improbable that you'll get a 1000 heads in a row but it isn't impossible. A clairvoyant person could be just one very lucky dude/gal if you prefer. — TheMadFool

Keeping in mind that flipping 1,000 heads in a row is no less likely than any other specific series of heads and tails, there are 2 ^1,000 possible combinations of heads and tails. Of course 1,000 heads could come up on your first flip. It's much more likely you will flip coins until the end of the universe before it happens. That, to me, is a fine definition of impossible, which is the case I've been trying to make since the OP.

I scanned responses to this briefly and might have missed if someone had mentioned this: Around the turn of the century (1900) a patent office worker made the comment that he thought he'd be out of work soon because it seemed like everything that was ever going to be invented had already been invented. Even if this story is just a myth I think it makes a good point about nearsighted thinking. — SteveKlinko

At about the same time a scientist, I think it was Lord Kelvin, said that the enterprise of science had reached a conclusion. All that was left was to straighten the drapes and polish the floor. On the other hand, I don't see that we've made much progress on metaphysics since Aristotle and Plato. Epistemology, e.g. the philosophy of science, has progressed mightily. I think it's fair to say that social philosophy has also.

just fucking get on with it — Bitter Crank

I was at the YMCA today. One of the weight lifters, tired and sweaty, had a t-shirt that said - "Suck it up and get on with it." He didn't know he was a philosopher.

I'm with both of you.

Average Joes are boring people who fail to see the beauty of philosophy, and appealing to them is what is wrong with contemporary philosophy. — BlueBanana

I don't know if you're from the US. If so, this arrogant attitude is one of the reasons Donald Trump is president. Such contempt. It's also one of the reasons people laugh at philosophy. There was a thread recently that discussed that issue - "Bias against philosophy in scientific circles/forums." So, you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Also, before I became an engineer, I worked for a living doing skilled and unskilled manual labor. I also work with construction workers as part of my present job. I don't find them boring at all. We don't discuss philosophy much, but we do discuss the best way to complete the work and how I might want to change my designs in the future to avoid problems we may be having. A lot of them are really smart and competent. In order for that to work, I need to show them respect. When I do, they show it to me too.

if you want work to be productive or ideas to have practical value, look at sciences. None of that is philosophers' job or purpose. — BlueBanana

That says it all.

Why does consciousness arise? — khaled

There are no answers to why questions, at least not in science. Sometimes we can figure out how. As for how do mental processes arise, I believe it is through the action of biological processes in the brain and elsewhere in the body.

Time for me to go to bed.

I do find it surprising that you don't understand what I wrote, since it is crystal clear to me, and I tried my best to express my thoughts clearly. — Janus

I have found it's very common that I write something that I think is clear but other people don't understand what I'm trying to say.

If you are interested enough to want to understand, then indicate the parts of what I wrote you are having difficulty understanding and I will try to explain further, and hopefully clear it up. — Janus

Sorry, I've gone back and reread the second and third paragraphs of your previous post twice and I just can't figure out what they mean.

Of course not. I'm just showing that what you presented isn't scientific evidence, it's opinion. Granted, an opinion we all share (except solipsists), but still an opinion. — khaled

We're not getting anywhere. I'm think we've taken it as far as we can.

Is it not true though?
P1: When these neurons turn off I stop being conscious
C1: these neurons are sufficient for me being conscious (logical)
C2: these neurons are necessary for me being conscious (not logical)

You're claiming C2 and I'm claiming it doesn't follow from the evidence — khaled

I believe that biological processes are sufficient to explain human mental processes. Nothing else is required.

It was. The original "hard problem" I posed was "How does consciousness arise?". You answered with "through biological processes" and now I'm showing that that's a sufficient not necessary condition and therefore doesn't satisfy as an answer to the hard problem. — khaled

I think you have your logic backwards. I'm just talking about people now. I'm not talking about other ways that consciousness might arise, only how it has in people. There is no hard problem.

NONE Of this couldn't have been done by a very advanced chat bot. Mental processes are not actually necessary for anything you're describing here. — khaled

So, the world is full of very advanced chatbots. Is that correct? I started a new Tai Chi class today with about 15 people I'd never met before. They were all robots. Is that correct. My mother was a robot? My wife is a robot. Everybody but me is a robot. Do you expect me to take this seriously?

The conclusions are intuitive, even if they are in reaction to some evidence you have read, and interpreted the way you have. — Coben

Calling my conclusions "intuitive" doesn't mean anything. If you want to say that you don't agree with them without additional evidence, fine. That's a reasonable response. I don't have more to offer, so we'll have to leave it at that.

Which, then, does not entail you have some position to demonstate. You are skeptical about his position. — Coben

If all this is is my misunderstanding of what @khaled has said, then I guess we're done.

All I said was that we know that biological processes are sufficient for consciousness, — khaled

I wasn't aware that you had said that. I must have misunderstood.

from that we can't claim that they're necessary for it. In order to show they're necessary you'd need to first find every instance of mental processes in the universe (impossible because as I said you can't detect mental processes in anyone but yourself) and then show that all of them require biological reactions (which isn't guaranteed even assuming you managed to do the initial impossible task somehow) — khaled

Sure, although trivial. We're only talking about one particular type of mental process - those that are manifested in people. Us. Here. Now. There's lots of talk of non-biological mental processes, e.g. artificial intelligence. I didn't think that's what we were discussing.

What evidence do you have that anyone other than yourself has mental processes at all? None. That's the point. We can't "detect" mental processes in anyone but ourselves. — khaled

That is completely untrue. I have all sorts of evidence of mental processes in other people. I talk to them and they describe their experiences. I see them solve problems. I watch their behavior and recognize patterns that are consistent with my own behavior when I have specific experiences, e.g. I see mother's hold and touch their babies and I understand that as evidence that they love their children as I love mine. They say "look at the red light," and, when I look up, the light is red.

If he presents the hypothesis that they do then he needs to demonstrate that, but he was asking you for evidence of your hypothesis. — Coben

Unless I have misunderstood him, he does believe that mental processes come from other than merely biological processes. If that's true, he should provide the evidence. If I'm wrong about what he believes, let him tell us so.

If you know you're not the right person to show him your conclusions are correct, what's makes you think your conclusions are correct yourself.

Now don't get me wrong, basing conclusions on intuition is something we all do, but I think that needs to be up front. — Coben

Here's what I wrote:

It is my understanding of how things are based on 1) a limited amount of specific reading on the subject and 2) my underlying belief in the way things work. What we see in the world is what we get. There aren't any places where secret knowledge is hidden. — T Clark

That's more than intuition and less than specific evidence. It's the best I can do right now and I'm comfortable standing behind it.

You don't know that. — khaled

It is my understanding of how things are based on 1) a limited amount of specific reading on the subject and 2) my underlying belief in the way things work. What we see in the world is what we get. There aren't any places where secret knowledge is hidden.

I would like to see those theories. — khaled

I'm not the right one to have a detailed discussion of the state of cognitive science. If you want to know more, you'll have to do some research.

Like for example: that biological processes are necessary for mental ones. — khaled

I guess I would turn it around. What is the evidence that mental processes come from anywhere other than biological processes?

Alright then. Why are you conscious. Please give me the theory of consciousness that will explain whether anything is conscious or not definitively — khaled

Consciousness is a mental process, one among many. Mental processes are manifestations of biological processes. Those processes have been and are being studied by cognitive scientists. They have developed theories about how mental processes in general and consciousness specifically develop from biological processes.

I don't know what else to say. My forays into cognitive science are limited, so I can't give you much more detail.

How do you know that? You have a sample size of 1. That’s not enough to make a general theory — khaled

As I have said, there are theories of the biological nature of mental processes backed up by scientific studies. To a certain extent, that's beside the point. There is nothing I see that indicates there is any reason to look outside everyday reality - what we observe on a day to day basis with our senses and those senses extended by technology. I can't see any reason to start looking for magic.

Again, how do you know that? You have a sample size of 1. Another equally likely theory is that everything is conscious. Why would that not be the case? That’s why the problem is called hard. — khaled

I certainly don't know for sure, although the only way everything could be conscious is if we drastically change the meaning of the word "conscious." As I said, I don't think the hard problem of consciousness is hard. I don't even think it's a problem.

So are you saying that conscious experience arises out of the mere fact that chemical actions are happening there? So is my Soda bottle conscious? The question is: what specific properties in my brain make it conscious? That we don’t know. Is any chemical interaction conscious? — khaled

What I said previously is that it is my understanding that mental processes are a manifestation of biological processes and biological processes are a manifestation of chemical processes. It's not the mere fact that there are chemical processes, it is the specific chemical processes that are present. It's not the mere fact that there are biological processes, it is the specific biological processes that are present.

Does consciousness only arise after a certain amount of complexity? Etc. — khaled

I have been talking about mental processes in general, not consciousness specifically. Consciousness seems to me to be a run of the mill mental process. Just one among many. Not a big deal. Nothing to get excited about.

Given that, yes, it seems likely that a certain level of complexity is probably required for mental processes to arise out of biological processes.

The hard problem of consciousness is WHY is there such a manifestation? Why couldn’t all the brain processes be happening “in the dark” so to speak. — khaled

As with all other things in the world, just because. That's how it works. No mystery. You put all that stuff in a jug, shake it up and down, pour it out, and that's what happens. It's the world. It's how things are. Why is that so hard to understand?

But “life” is an abstract concept. It doesn’t actually exist. Can you point at “life” directly? Not an instance of a living thing but “life” itself. Obviously not, the request doesn’t even make sense. On the other hand, consciousness is a very real experience, not just an abstract property. — khaled

I don't see why consciousness is any realer than life. Seems to me that the only reason you do is because you can't separate your experience of consciousness from the rest of what makes it up.

If there is a “you” to think, then you’re obviously conscious. — khaled

The "you" is also an illusion. This is not a novel idea. Are you familiar at all with eastern philosophies?

That's right, there is no such thing as a completely deterministic system. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree, but from what you've said, I think you and I have different reasons for thinking so.

But again, I am not making any metaphysical or ontological claims here, I'm merely trying to get clear about what these terms are being used to posit, and in what context, epistemic or ontic, such posits are apt. — Janus

Sorry. I'm lost. I could keep track of some of what you wrote, but in the end, it spun off.

But the mind is not an object of perception, rather 'that which perceives'. You can't get behind 'it' or outside 'it' to see what 'it' is, but such is the habit of 'objectivism' that this is the only way we can consider the matter. — Wayfarer

Yes, you can get behind it or outside it to see what it is. The confusing difference is that you can also see it, feel it from the inside. That confuses people into believing it doesn't fit in with the rest of the world, but it does.

Mental processes are different in kind from information-technology processes (and will be re-conceived as, I dunno, social-semiotic processes) in the same way that vital life force processes are different in kind from chemical processes (and have been re-conceived as bio-chemical processes). — bongo fury

I don't understand. My way of saying it sure seems simpler.

So seemingly real as an illusion such that a difference that makes no difference is no difference? — PoeticUniverse

I don't know what that means.

But do you believe what we perceive as consciousness is something different than the sum of its biological parts? Or is it just the sum of all the biological activity, thereby, not making it any different, just seeming to be different because of how it "appears to us"? — rlclauer

Mental processes are different in kind from biological/neurological processes in the same way biological processes are different from chemical processes.

It is my understanding that the human mind is structured, at least partially by evolution I suppose, to see things in dualities in spite of the fact that the universe does not. That may be an explanation for some of the dichotomies you have listed, e.g. up/down, here/there. In addition, the way you have structured your question may also be a result of that dualistic tendency.

I agree with everything you said but I am having a bit of trouble with this sentence. How is the mind different? Our perception of the self as a disembodied separate entity is an illusion, but how does it then become different than the processes? I guess just because it is the amalgam of those processes, and not the processes in and of themselves? Help me out? — rlclauer

First, I don't know if this lead to any misunderstanding, but my quote isn't right. It should read "chemical activity," not chemical and biological. Biological activity is life.

Now, back to consciousness. Consciousness is a mental process. It is my understanding that mental processes develop out of biological processes in a manner analogous to how life develops out of chemical processes. I have been working to avoid the word "emergence" because that always leads off at odd tangents that are often not helpful to the discussion.

Would you say the self is an illusion, or a bi-product of brain activity? — rlclauer

Both, in different ways.

Our experience of the world is a manifestation of brain activity. That manifestation, whatever you call it, the mind I guess, is different from brain activity in the same sense that life is different from chemical and biological activity.

Our awareness of our self is an illusion as described in eastern religions. In a sense, we are one with existence, the Tao. In another sense, we have separated the world into pieces - things, concepts, words, our selves. All of those are illusions.

The Scientific and Physicalist view is that Consciousness is somehow located in the Neurons. It is a reasonable assumption given that Conscious Activity is Correlated with Neural Activity. But Science has no Theory, Hypothesis or even a Speculation about how Consciousness could be in the Neurons. — SteveKlinko

This is not true. There is a well-developed branch of cognitive science which studies the biological and neurological basis of consciousness. They have developed models that describe plausible mechanisms for the manifestation of consciousness.

Science has not been able to show for example, how something like the Experience of Redness is some kind of effect of Neural Activity. In fact, the more you think about the Redness Experience and then think about Neural Activity, the less likely it seems that the Redness Experience is actually some sort of Neural Activity. Science has tried in vain for a hundred years to figure this out. If the Experience of Redness actually was in the Neurons, Science would have had a lot to say about it by now. Something has got to be wrong with their perspective on the problem. — SteveKlinko

This is a false problem caused by an unwillingness or inability to imagine consciousness as just another process. I can certainly understand that. It takes a conceptual leap and a realization that our precious sense of self is nothing special. People, including scientists, used to believe that biological life could never arise out of physical mechanisms. They sometimes hypothesized undetectable vital forces that brought matter to life. Consciousness is not different. There is not hard problem of consciousness, just a lack of awareness.

The Inter Mind Model (http://TheInterMind.com) can accommodate Consciousness as being in the Neurons, but it can also accommodate other concepts of Consciousness. The Inter Mind Model is structurally a Connection Model, in the sense that the Physical Mind (PM) is connected to the Inter Mind (IM) which is connected to the Conscious Mind (CM). These Connections might be conceptual where all three Minds are actually in the Neurons. But these Connections might have more reality to them where the PM, the IM, and the CM are separate things. — SteveKlinko

I did read the "Inter Mind Model" section of the article you linked. I didn't find it convincing and I didn't see any evidence for the IM concept.

We can be in a state of great uncertainty with regard to the future of a deterministic system ..... purely due to our epistemic uncertainty concerning it; measurement precision of input variables and initial conditions. — fdrake

Such randomness isn't just a result of epistemic uncertainty; our knowledge of the coin and our bodies helps us little to change how coin flipping works; but nor is it a-causal ontological indeterminism - the system is fully deterministic; once a trajectory is fixed, the coin will land as it would land from the start. But when we come to flip the coin, it does form a distribution of heads and tails; this must therefore arise from variation in our set up; in which initial conditions we propagate forward along their trajectories. Where those initial conditions vary is due to the variability in the behaviour of our body material in a process held as equivalent (coin flipping, "fixed background"), not in states of knowledge regarding the coin. — fdrake

It has been my position in this thread that I don't think this make sense from a pragmatic point of view.

As I said in the OP:

It feels intuitively to me that in some, many, most? cases unraveling cause is not possible even in theory. It's not just a case of being ignorant. Part of that feeling is a conviction that sufficiently complex systems, even those that are theoretically "caused," could not be unraveled with the fastest supercomputer operating for the life of the universe. There is a point, isn't there, where "completely outside the scope of human possibility" turns into "not possible even in theory." Seems to me there is. — T Clark

Also, it is my understanding that some magicians (and cheaters I guess) can control their coin flips so that they can control whether a flip comes up heads or tails. I'm thinking through what that means for our discussion.

The equations that update climate models are deterministic, nevertheless they're run lots of times to produce "probability of rain tomorrow" and so on. — fdrake

Sure, I can see that the equations may be strictly deterministic. but that doesn't mean the system in the real world is. I don't think. Maybe. Kind of, sort of.

Are you talking about weather or climate models? I read somewhere that the appropriate time scale for weather forecasting is about a week. After that, predictions become very imprecise quickly. I don't know what the time scale is for climate models. I assume much longer. Also, climate models are greatly simplified as compared to actual climate systems. It is my understanding they can, accurately we hope, predict trends and tendencies reasonably far into the future, but not detailed specifics.

Thanks. Really helpful post, although it's helpful in making me think about broader issues, not necessarily about coming to conclusions about my original questions. That's fine with me. Some thoughts:

a system can be deterministic but not predictable; the light switch with external random source, predictable but not deterministic; any system with little random variation. — fdrake

Just to be clear, in my formulation, which I've labeled "pragmatic," if an event isn't predictable, it isn't deterministic. Billiard balls yes, multiple coin flips no. Let's work a little on definitions, please. What you are calling "ontological determinism" is what I called "determinism" in the OP, i.e. if someone knows the position and motion of everything at a given time, they can predict the state of the universe at any time in the future. What I think we are now calling "epistemic predictability" is what I am calling "predictability" in the OP, i.e. a system is sufficiently simple that it is practical for us to keep track of all the causal factors in order to predict future states. Is that correct? If so, I will be happy to use those terms in the future.

We can be in a state of great uncertainty with regard to the future of a deterministic system, like a chaotic one, purely due to our epistemic uncertainty concerning it; measurement precision of input variables and initial conditions. Allegedly there cannot be a state of ontological uncertainty with regard to the future of deterministic systems because (their future is not random because {their future states are completely specified by any input state}). So the chain of entailment goes: — fdrake

Maybe I don't understand or maybe I disagree. It is my understanding that chaotic systems are completely unpredictable given passage of sufficient time. Sufficient time is determined by a time scale which varies based on the system.

I want to say more and I will, but I have to go now for a few hours.

This is the salient distinction I was trying to tease out with fdrake. Putting it another way is to say that randomness is indeterminability. Ontological randomness would be ontological indeterminism, which is defined as microphysical events being not merely epistemically random, meaning they are not determined by anything at all, they simply happen without cause. — Janus

Are you using "indeterminability" as a synonym for "indeterminism?" I don't think that's correct. It seems to me it is closer to being one for "unpredictability."

I'm not sure I agree with "...they are not determined by anything at all, they simply happen without cause." Maybe it's in agreement with my position, but with all the new terms flying around, I'll need to think about it.

[Edit - changed "predictability" to "unpredictability" in first paragraph.

Without wading too much into this, I deliberately avoided questions of 'in/determination' - indeed avoided the word(s) altogether - insofar as I think one can treat randomness - in the sense I outlined - without at all engaging in questions of determination and cause. I'll only say that I'm not convinced that one can make sense of the idea of indetermination or randomness ('ontological randomness'), and that what we need instead is a far richer conception of 'determination' than is usually presented, which is usually just fatalism evacuated of any causality whatsoever. — StreetlightX

As I indicated in the OP, I see the determinism/predictability question as just one in a larger set of issues. I would love to broaden that discussion or focus on a different question as we have started to do by bringing randomness into it. Would it make sense to do that in a separate thread. I had been thinking about suggesting that anyway, but I didn't want to disrupt the current discussion, which I am enjoying very much.

Alternatively, we could revise the title to read "Determinism vs. Predictability - Now - New and Improved with added Randomness!"

T Clark has rejected a nonexistent form of determinism, fdrake is banging away about his pet worldview, nobody wants to talk to anybody else. This thread was doomed to end this way since the big bang. — frank

In spite of your snotty criticism, I have found this thread very helpful in clarifying my ideas about determinism and predictability. Randomness has now been added which, although perhaps a bit outside the OP, I am also finding helpful and interesting. I hope it will continue. I'm pretty happy with the way things are going.

If you don't find it interesting or helpful, I can see why it wouldn't be satisfying, in which case maybe you should try something else.

Clairvoyance, knowledge of events, may not be deterministic in nature. It would allow us to make predictions too.

So determinism implies predictability but the converse isn't true. — TheMadFool

If clairvoyance could give actual, verifiable predictions of future events, that would be good evidence for determinism, although perhaps not exactly in terms of the issue in this thread as I've laid it out and as it has developed.

Taleb and Nobel laureate Myron Scholes have traded personal attacks, particularly after Taleb's paper with Espen Haug on why nobody used the Black–Scholes–Merton formula. — alcontali

You have referenced Taleb many times. I admit, having not read his books, I had always seen him as a charlatan like Malcolm Gladwell. You've convinced me to give him a try. I've downloaded one of his books, "Antifragile" from the library. I'll get back to you with my impressions.

Again, there is no difference between predicting the outcome of 1000 coin flips or 1000 billiard collisions. We are still talking about predictions based on the forces involved with each event. — Harry Hindu

You and I (and several others) have gone back and forth on this quite a few times in this thread. I think we've taken it as far as we're going to get.

It's either realism or solipsism. — Harry Hindu

Yeah...., well...., no.

For example, defining knowledge as a justified true belief is clearly unsustainable.

Edmund Gettier famously breached the stalemate in 1963 with his counterexample cases. The entanglement phenomenon also decisively breaches the classical JTB definition. The problem is now completely up in the air, even on the empirical side of things. — alcontali

What in God's name difference does it make if JTB or TB is true? Who has ever cared about that other than a few people with too much time on their hands? Who cares how we define knowledge? This is probably what the professor in the OP was talking about - this is the kind of crap philosophers are forced to waste their time on.

What is important is if philosophy is meaningful to people. Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are meaningful to a lot of people. We still quote them, thousands of years later. Gettier isn't. It doesn't matter except to a small group of people if knowledge is a true belief or justified true belief. It doesn't make a difference in their lives and it doesn't cause them to wonder about things. — RogueAI

Also - if JTB is on the cutting edge of unresolved philosophical questions, philosophy is in big trouble. The Gettier paper was written when I was 11 years old, 56 years ago.

People generally know more about the Kardashians than a single philosopher living or dead. Are you sure you want to pin importance on what the average Joe thinks is interesting? — Artemis

As Lincoln wrote - of the average Joes, for the average Joes, and by the average Joes. The contempt philosophy shows for average Joes is one if the reasons it is irrelevant.

I'm reminded of discussions of the standard meter. Every meter rule is a meter long by being the same length as the standard meter. But the standard meter is incomparable. It is a meter long by fiat. So perhaps the quintessential Hamlet is whatever it is said to be by whoever is the current executive director of aesthetics ... — unenlightened

I think you're saying that the quintessential Hamlet (or anything else) is the one used as a standard by which others are judged. If so, then I think that's a very good description. It doesn't really mean "good." It's as you say, a question of comparison. If that's what the word means, then I think it probably should be thought of as a matter of consensus rather than an individual judgment.

A friend and I had an ongoing joke. Whenever we thought something was really good, we'd say it is the Adolph Hitler of it's class, e.g. "Casablanca" is the Adolph Hitler of films.

Peirce did not posit "randomness as a fundamental ontological principle", but chance. The two are not interchangeable. — StreetlightX

Well, don't leave us hanging, tell us the difference.

I think the example of the light switch/light bulb system captures the definitions you gave in your opening posts. That is, determinism (or non-determinism) relates to the system itself while predictability relates to an agent's knowledge (or information about) the system. — Andrew M

I think I was too offhanded in my response to your post. Let me explain more.

Your post provides a good description of a simple system where it is reasonable to talk about what I have been calling "empirical determinism." My main point, however, is that as a system becomes more complex, it quickly becomes practically impossible to predict it's outcomes empirically. At that point, it no longer makes sense to talk about the system as determined in that sense.

By the way, I have been making the distinction between empirical and probabilistic determinism and predictability. I have a feeling those are not the right terms to use. Are they ok or are their others I should be using?h