Reified? That entails a fallacy. Do you mean actualized? — Relativist

Nope:
re·​ify ˈrā-ə-ˌfī ˈrē-
reified; reifying
transitive verb: to consider or represent (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing : to give definite content and form to (a concept or idea).

Let's take a simple example, F=ma. Force equals mass times acceleration. Not quite right, but close enough. I claim F=ma is descriptive only and has no power in itself to make anything happen. Certainly not to force F to equal ma. How or why F=ma a whole separate topic. And in fact it doesn't, quite.

Or do you think it does?

I claim F=ma is descriptive only and has no power in itself to make anything happen. — tim wood

I agree, but what does the equation describe? It describes some aspect of reality (if it's true).

Personally, I lean toward law realism: there exist laws of nature, which are causal relations between the properties of things. You had said:

As to QM, the language of description - which is after-the-fact and tentative - seems to be implied to have a causative power, and I do not see how that can be. — tim wood

Under the paradigm of law realism, the causative power within a quantum system is intrinsic to the quantum system: it's evolution is both necessary and deterministic.

What are the reasons that you find satisfactory, and why? What is it about necessity between events -- ball A causes ball B to move in such and such a direction -- that is more satisfactory than the stochastic description -- photon A causes electron B to be in the first or second energy state at such-and-such a probability?

the singular nature of the end result. I want to know why one thing happened, if your explanation doesn't tell me exactly why this one thing happened, then it doesn't seem sufficient, right?

Like maybe that IS just the truth, but if it is the truth then the PSR isn't true there.

Under the paradigm of law realism, the causative power within a quantum system is... — Relativist

presupposed. And semper presuppositions. Without them we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning, nor into it at night. The problems arising when the presuppositions, and their nature, what they are, is forgot, and what they provide is taken for a real thing.

I want to know why one thing happened, — flannel jesus

If that's all you care about, then make it up your own reason. You'd be in large company if you did. And arguably you'd have to anyway, grandly called the hypothesis. It's a good question; you just haven't developed it enough for it to be a sensible question - which again puts you in large company.

presupposed. And semper presuppositions. Without them we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning, nor into it at night. The problems arising when the presuppositions, and their nature, what they are, is forgot, and what they provide is taken for a real thing. — tim wood

Fair enough - it's presupposition, but it is POSSIBLY true. By contrast, we agree that mere description (equations) is not causitive - that's not even possible.

I claim F=ma is descriptive only and has no power in itself to make anything happen. — tim wood

I'll differ here - it's what I do. And lead the thread off on an aside.

F=ma is a definition, not a description. There were no forces sitting around, waiting for Newton to describe them. Rather he defined force as the product of mass and acceleration, as the change in an objects motion.

And treating it this way actually makes your point contra stronger. The force is defined as the change in velocity times mass, which is quite different from the reification of saying that force causes the change in velocity times mass.

A can of worms.

Both the principle of sufficient reason and determinism are misunderstandings. As pointed out, neither actually does anything.

Yes, it's a definition of force, but it also identifies a physical relationship among force, mass, and acceleration- so it is predictive.

...but it also identifies a physical relationship among force, mass, and acceleration — Relativist

Well, not quite. A force just is the product of mass and change in velocity - in mechanics, at least. So it's more that F=ma defines the physical relationship between mass and change in velocity.

Yes, it is predictive.

I'll differ here - it's what I do. And lead the thread off on an aside.
F=ma is a definition, — Banno

Point taken.

F=ma defines the physical relationship — Banno

Yes, but there is a physical relationship present that exists irrespective of us putting it into intelligible terms.

but it also identifies a physical relationship among force, — Relativist

Keeping up with language is like playing whack-a-mole. I invite you to ponder, beyond the mere convenience of the term, just what "physical relationship means." I don't mean to do away with language - that is scarcely possible - but to be on guard against being lulled to sleep and into error by casual usage. These TPF pages are filled with failures of understanding made by those beguiled by taking some piece of language as true when it isn't.

Yes, but there is a physical relationship present that exists irrespective of us putting it into intelligible terms. — Relativist

's response is spot on. What is a "physical relationship"? We sometimes say the force caused the body to accelerate, but that force just is the change in velocity. There's an odd circularity in attributing causation to forces.

I don't mean to do away with language - that is scarcely possible - but to be on guard against being lulled to sleep and into error by casual usage. — tim wood

Glad you don't mean to do away with language, but this "casual usage" is pertinent to a very practical (and seemingly successful) means of interacting with the world. Granted, it's a paradigm- but one that is fleshed out pretty thoroughly.

My own reasoning in regards to this matter is, if determinism is not true - which is to say, if there are events in the history of the universe which, if played back again under the exact same prior conditions, might happen differently - then it seems to me that those events didn't have "sufficient reason" to occur. — flannel jesus

There’s a lot I agree with in this OP, but I think the framing assumes a sharper 'either-or' than the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) really requires.

It’s easy to assume that PSR, if true, must entail strict determinism—that every event is fixed in advance by prior conditions in a fully specifying, Laplacean sense. But I think that’s based on a misunderstanding, both of what “sufficient reason” means, and of how complex systems actually behave.

The essay Karma and Chaos (which I've linked here because it’s well worth reading) offers a useful perspective. It shows how chaos theory and complexity science describe systems that are lawful but not rigidly deterministic. These systems operate according to real constraints—there are rules, boundaries, and patterns—but they do not unfold in a strictly predictable way.

A familiar example is the so-called butterfly effect in meteorology. Weather systems follow physical laws, but small changes in initial conditions can lead to dramatically different outcomes. The system is lawful, but not fully predictable in practice. It doesn’t mean “anything can happen”—the system tends to evolve within certain zones or attractors, but the path it takes can vary widely.

So, if PSR says that every event happens for a reason, that reason might be something like the boundary conditions of a system, or the lawful structure that constrains the range of outcomes—not necessarily a single, fully specified event that had to happen and no other.

In other words, the reason why something happens might be that the system is lawful but open-ended, rather than strictly deterministic. There is sufficient reason why some outcomes are possible and others are not, but that doesn't mean every outcome is rigidly predetermined.

This is close to the Buddhist doctrine of kamma (karma) - the context in which the essay was presented, in fact. Kamma doesn’t mean that every detail of life is predetermined. It does mean that actions have consequences, shaped by past conditions and tendencies, but these are still open to choice and change (which is why, incidentally, the interpretation of karma as fatalism is mistaken). Hence it's a model of lawful but open causality—a dynamic interplay of conditioning and freedom, order and variability. Chaos theory provides a contemporary scientific parallel to this view, describing how systems can be shaped by lawful structures while still allowing for spontaneous shifts and new outcomes. (Interestingly, C. S. Peirce argued for something similar, calling it 'tychism'—the idea that real spontaneity or chance plays a causal role in the universe, but in a way that doesn't undermine its lawful structure, and in fact may be essential for its ongoing development..)

So I’d say that PSR doesn’t necessarily imply determinism. It implies that there are real reasons and structures underlying what happens, but those reasons might allow for a range of lawful possibilities, not a single predetermined outcome.

In short, PSR may invite us to ask why this rather than that, but the answer might be: because the system allows for variation within lawful constraints. That’s not determinism in the classical sense, but it isn’t randomness either. It’s something more dynamic—a lawful openness.

I would disagree with the rigidity of this notion. Suppose this pen which I am holding has a sufficient reason for why I am spinning it. Furthermore, there is sufficient reason for my existence. So, if there is sufficient reason for my existence that is spinning this pen (with sufficient reason to spin it), it does not necessitate either determinism or free-will because PSR does not necessitate the nature of the object.

Suppose I need to choose between two doors. I would have sufficient reason to choose one door over the other. But, if I were to have free-will, and if I were to have chosen the other door, I would have sufficient reason as well.

PSR is similar to there being a sufficient reason for, say, our choices. Those choices can be either from a free-will or a deterministic system.

Here is a useful distinction:

Some contemporary Thomists, like Gilson, insist it is against the spirit of Thomas to appeal to any general principle of sufficient reason. The reason they give is the danger of confusing it with the rationalist Principle of Sufficient Reason first explicitly introduced into modern philosophy by Leibniz, the great rationalist. But the Principle [as I understand it] is quite different from the Leibnizian rationalist one. The latter interprets the sufficient reason as some reason from which we can deduce by rational necessity the existence of the effect. It looks forward: given an adequate cause we can deduce the effect as flowing necessarily from it. It follows, of course, that no efficient cause can be free, and that God creates the world out of necessity, not freely, i.e., that to be rational God must create the best possible world. Our Thomistic interpretation is quite different. It does not try to deduce anything; it looks backward, i.e., given this effect, it needs such and such a cause to explain it. The cause must be adequate to produce it, be able to explain it once this is there. But in no way does this require that the cause has to produce it; in a word, our world needs an infinite Creator to explain it. But this in no way implies that such a Creator had to create it. It is not, like that of Leibniz, a deductive principle, deducing the effect from the cause, but as St. Thomas expresses it [sic!], like most other metaphysical explanations, it is a "reductive explanation," tracing a given effect back to its sufficient reason in an adequate cause. — W. Norris Clarke

interesting

the singular nature of the end result. I want to know why one thing happened, if your explanation doesn't tell me exactly why this one thing happened, then it doesn't seem sufficient, right? — flannel jesus

I guess it'd depend upon what you want out of your sufficiency.

I'm inclined to say that if the probability distribution of an event is consistent between tokens of said event then there's still a "singular nature of the end result" -- it's just that it's a probability distribution which is neither 1 or 0.

I also think that while we like to know a relationship such that A necessitates B, this is only because we like to control nature and such relationships enable us to do so. But nature need not conform to our desires, and we have to be open to that possibility.

But I can imagine a consistent way to believe the PSR while accepting that possibility -- namely since we are already allowing causes into our ontology we need only say there are at least two kinds of causes, and note the logical relationships which differentiate the kinds (necessity between A->B, or a necessary probability between A->B/C)

I guess it'd depend upon what you want out of your sufficiency. — Moliere

I guess I can't get over the idea that it seems fundamentally reasonable to ask "but why this result in particular?"

Electron can be spin up or spin down. We measure it down. Why was it down? "Because it could be up or down". That's cool, but why was it down?

It's okay if there's no particular reason why it was specifically down - sure, maybe that's reality, maybe there is no particular reason why it was specifically down - but if that's the case, then there's a fact without an explanation. We can explain why it was <up or down>, but not why it was down.

And that's what PSR means to me - maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but PSR I would paraphrase as "everything has an explanation". If so, then the fact that it was down and not up should also have an explanation, and "it can be down or up" just isn't the end of the explanation. To my mind, there's still that unanswered question.

The PSR , like I've said before, isn't necessarily true. Maybe we don't live in a world where everything has an explanation. That's okay too.

My current view is,

PSR -> determinism
But not the other way around necessarily

But neither the PSR nor determinism are necessarily true.

Electron can be spin up or spin down. We measure it down. Why was it down? "Because it could be up or down". That's cool, but why was it down? — flannel jesus

Suppose the many-worlds interpretation -- is "It was down because you're in the down-electron universe, whereas another version of you is in the up-electron universe" a sufficient explanation?




Cool. I don't agree for reasons I already stated, but ultimately that's just a battle of terminology. I can go along with the notion that the PSR implies determinism.

How then, using this terminology, does determinism not imply the PSR? What is the deterministic scenario in which the PSR is false?

Suppose the many-worlds interpretation -- is "It was down because you're in the down-electron universe, whereas another version of you is in the up-electron universe" a sufficient explanation? — Moliere

Yes

Because ironically, in the many worlds there's a single state of affairs in the end with a complete explanation.

"Single state of affairs? In many worlds?" I hear you ask. Yes. Find out why in the next episode.

How then, using this terminology, does determinism not imply the PSR? What is the deterministic scenario in which the PSR is false? — Moliere

The universe we live in happens to evolve deterministically, but there's no particular reason for, say, the physical constants or the starting conditions of the universe. They just are what they are with no underlying reason.

M'kay.

I agree that there's no particular reason for the physical constants or starting conditions of the universe.

I don't know why you'd claim our particular universe evolves deterministically when we have QM as an obvious counter-example to the various examples we'd be tempted to invoke. There is at least one natural phenomena, according to science, which does not behave according to the relationship of necessity between events.

How do you arrive at a belief that the universe we happen to live in is deterministic? Much more how to make it an obvious belief?

F=ma is a definition, not a description. There were no forces sitting around, waiting for Newton to describe them. Rather he defined force as the product of mass and acceleration, as the change in an objects motion. — Banno

Not so fast...

Let us ask, “What is the meaning of the physical laws of Newton, which we write as F=ma? What is the meaning of force, mass, and acceleration?” Well, we can intuitively sense the meaning of mass, and we can define acceleration if we know the meaning of position and time. We shall not discuss those meanings, but shall concentrate on the new concept of force. The answer is equally simple: “If a body is accelerating, then there is a force on it.” That is what Newton’s laws say, so the most precise and beautiful definition of force imaginable might simply be to say that force is the mass of an object times the acceleration. — R. Feynman, Characteristics of Force (from The Feynman Lectures on Physics)

Read on...

don't know why you'd claim our particular universe evolves deterministically — Moliere

I wasn't making a statement about our universe, you asked me for a scenario in which something would be true. It's a hypothetical to answer your question.

But qm is only a counter example depending on interpretation - you brought up many worlds, many worlds is deterministic

I wasn't making a statement about our universe, you asked me for a scenario in which something would be true. It's a hypothetical to answer your question. — flannel jesus

Mkay.

But qm is only a counter example depending on interpretation - you brought up many worlds, many worlds is deterministic — flannel jesus

Wouldn't we be able to ask "Why am I in universe 1 rather than universe 2?"

?

Is there an answer to that question in the many-worlds interpretation?