You say the U is D. You say that there is no significant difference between D and non-D. Which is to say that wrt whatever is significant they are the same. You have then two names for the same thing, or two things with the same name, D and non-D. And that is strange usage.

I have no idea where you're getting half that stuff from. "No significant difference", yes. Everything else, I don't know where you're getting everything else from. It isn't what I said and it doesn't follow from what I said.

If there are two things, and no significant difference between them, are they not wrt to whatever is significant, the same?

If there is only one thing, certainly it is identical with itself without any differences at all significant or no. Why give it two names, especially that imply difference?

"two names". I have no idea where this comes from.

If I have two employees, Sarah and Paul, and they have exactly the same skills at photography, and I need someone to take a photo, then with regard to that task there's no significant difference between Sarah and Paul. Of course I have two names for them though, they're two different people FFS. Should I call them the same name?

Sarah and Paul, — flannel jesus

Sure, for Sarah and Paul. As a Venn diagram there would be the S circle and the P circle and a perhaps small area of intersection that represents their skills at photography. But you're referring to the universe. If "Paul" is your name for the universe, and also "Sarah" is your name for the universe, then Sarah is the same as Paul. To be different there would have to be some part of the universe that is not part of the universe. Do you begin to see your problem?

no. I'm not naming "the universe". I'm naming two categories of systems. One is named determinism. One is named indeterminism.

If this world is indeterministic in a quantum sense, or if it turns out this world is aligned more with one of the deterministic interpretations of qm, there's a difference, but in regards to human behaviour and free will, not a significant difference.

They still have different names. I don't personally feel the need to give them the same name just because the difference is insignificant in regards to human behaviour and free will. They're different enough to deserve different names.

no. I'm not naming "the universe". I'm naming two categories of systems. One is named determinism. One is named indeterminism. — flannel jesus

The universe being indeterministic doesn't seem to give any more room for free will than if it were deterministic. — flannel jesus

Both the hard and soft determinists endorse determinism, which is the view that all events (including human choices) are causally determined (necessitated) by antecedent conditions.

These will do as support for what I think you said. But if you do not mean the U, what do you mean? (And as to quantum influences, I agree they do not appear relevant to this topic.)

But if you do not mean the U, what do you mean? — tim wood

I dont even know what this question is asking. If "the U" is "the universe", then the universe already has a name - it's "the universe".

Determinism and indeterminism aren't possible names for the universe, they're names for possible descriptors of the universe.

And of course quantum influences are relevant to the topic of determinism. The nobel prize in physics for 2022 was won by a group of people making large advancements in testing Bell's Theorem, which at the very least rules out one particular (and very important) flavor of determinism. So QM is very very important to the question, "do we live in a universe that's deterministic?"

So metaphysics is not about facts... — Banno

I know you've read my diatribes on metaphysics before, so you should know that, in my view, metaphysical positions, i.e. absolute presuppositions, are not facts. The are not true or false. They have no truth value.

If the world is deterministic, you may or may not convince someone of that. It just depends upon whether they were determined to be convinced.

Determinism is stupid. If you disagree, that's just the way it has to be. — Hanover

I don't have much patience for people who want to question the existence of free will in our everyday lives. I guess it is an interesting metaphysical question for some, but not for me. Determinism, on the other hand, has some epistemological value, e.g. some science, especially classical science, depends on an assumption of causation.

Bit of a noisy mess in here, eh?

Did you somehow misread me? — Pierre-Normand

Probably. Still not sure if for you conservation rules count as facts, or if they are empirical.

It's true, but never a fact — tim wood

Really? It's not a fact that 2+2=4? I'm not keen on that use. I just use "fact" for statements that are true. And facts are not all necessary - it's a fact that the cat is on the chair but might not have been.

Nothing could be more strongly proven to be false, than the law of conservation of energy. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok. No one seems to have noticed this ground-breaking revelation.

I know you've read my diatribes on metaphysics before — T Clark

They haven't stuck in my memory. So for you conservation of energy is not a fact, and not true?

Probably. Still not sure if for you conservation rules count as facts, or if they are empirical. — Banno

I think they could be construed as either contingent empirical facts or as "a bit of metaphysics," as you suggested earlier, depending on the context of their use. If we're on the brinks of a paradigm shift, and you are a supporter of the new paradigm, you may hold that one old conservation rule has been empirically shown to be false whereas the hitherto appearance of them holding a priori was due to a contingent fact (the observed regularity). Consider the constancy of the speed of light as judged in early 1905 by Hendrik Lorentz or Albert Einstein. (It's an invariance or symmetry rather than a conservation law proper, but Emmy Noether has demonstrated the deep connection between symmetries and conservation laws.) The former would have viewed it as an empirical fact that holds due to contingent properties of the aether. The latter came to view it as a necessary consequence of the very nature of spacetime measurements.

Moving from the Lorentzian to the Einsteinian view, or vice versa, can occur under empirical pressure when one's view doesn't comport with recalcitrant and resilient empirical facts anymore. But across such paradigm shifts, what counted as contingent comes to count as necessary (or synthetic a priori inference tickets, according to Sellars) or vice versa.

They haven't stuck in my memory. So for you conservation of energy is not a fact, and not true? — Banno

The law of conservation of energy is not metaphysics. It’s physics. You should work on not being such a putz.

The law of conservation of energy is not metaphysics. It’s physics. You should work on not being such a putz. — T Clark

Ah, but theoretical physicists like to act like they are metaphysicians. They rant about the fabric of reality (Deutsch), theories of everything (Weinberg), and why there is something rather than nothing (Krauss). They just want to have their cake and eat it too—and pretend that they aren't philosophers since their metaphysical pronouncements are allegedly entirely and exclusively grounded in the empirical "scientific method." I think their attitude towards the epistemological status of the thesis of determinism is quite unlike yours, for instance.

If metaphysical principles amount to the background of our empirical enquiries, then that works, fitting Watkins' view. Your question - are symmetry laws, or metaphysical principles in general, necessary or contingent - is very interesting. Noether's theorem shows (speaking very roughly) that if we have symmetry, we thereby have conservation. There's something Hegelian about it, and so to my eye seems to be more about how we say something rather then what it is that is said. That is, conservation laws, and by implication metaphysical principles in general, are not brute facts so much as a consequence of our framing of physics. If that is right then conservation laws would be necessary for physics in much the same way that moving only on column or file is necessary for the rook in chess.

The law of conservation of energy is not metaphysics. It’s physics. — T Clark

That's what I'm questioning here. Conservation of energy is neither falsifiable nor provable, and so not empirical, and yet still a part of physics. So are you happy that parts of physics are not empirical?

That you find such questions irritating is not a fault of mine, I'm just asking questions. No need to be rude.

Conservation of energy is neither falsifiable nor provable — Banno

You don't think it's falsifiable? I think it is. I think it's absolutely falsifiable. Two balls smashing into each other and bouncing away from each other each at a greater velocity than when they collided would be one way to falsify it.

A perpetual motion machine might too.

If that is right then conservation laws would be necessary for physics in much the same way that moving only on column or file is necessary for the rook in chess. — Banno

I quite agree with everything you've said but will just note a possibly unintended ambiguity in your last sentence. (1) It is necessary that there be conservations laws in physics and (2) Conservations laws such as those of physics are necessary. The first statement I think would be agreed unconditionally by Kant, Sellars and Haugeland, for instance. The second one would require more qualifications according to the latter two, since paradigm shifts do occur in physics, and the rules of chess did change, historically. Those considerations leave some issues regarding scientific realism, and the metaphysical status of specific laws of physics, unresolved (maybe as they should remain!)

Nor can you disprove it - if you came across a perpetual motion machine that seemed to be breaking the conservation law, you might hypothesis that it is somehow drawing energy frome elswhere in the universe... — Banno

The Watkins article Confirmable and influential Metaphysics sets out in Popperian terms the logic behind conservation laws not being falsifiable. Their logical structure disallows both falsification and verification.

that kind of idea would make ANYTHING unfalsifiable, not just conservation of energy. is tthat your position? that all statements are unfalsifiable?

Perhaps we should leave such issues of modality, intriguing as they are, to one side - of start a new thread. Better here to relate this conversation back to the topic of determinacy.

I take it as pretty clear that determinacy is not amongst the metaphysical doctrines that underpin physics.

But I think there are many here would disagree.

What do you say?

...that kind of idea would make ANYTHING unfalsifiable... — flannel jesus

Well, no. I'm not too happy about going in to the logic of such statements here - it should be background knowledge. See https://www.academia.edu/3843328/Watkins0002

Yes, it would. You could just insist nothing is falsifiable by providing an out for any contrary observation.

I take it as pretty clear that determinacy is not amongst the metaphysical doctrines that underpin physics.

But I think there are many here would disagree.

What do you say? — Banno

I think the idea of the causal closure of the physical domain, plus maybe some premise regarding the lack of bifurcation points in phase space (thereby excluding cases such as Norton's dome) motivate the thesis of universal determinism. Another premise is the doctrine of physicalism, sometimes expresses as a thesis about supervenience. I think the move from the causal closure of the physical domain to the general thesis of determinism is invalid (even with the adjunction of the two aforementioned premises) but what more I could say about this would overlap with what I've been arguing in @flannel jesus's ongoing thread about libertarian free will.

That's not what is being suggested. For Popper, it's the logical structure of certain sentences that makes them variously falsifiable, provable or in Watkins terms "haunted universe statements".

strictly speaking, no scientific statement is falsifiable because any scientific statement has an out.

Let's say you come up with a theory that says "such-and-such reduces infection". We do a double blind study and find that such-and-such doesn't reduce infection. "It's falsified!" you might say. No no no, it's not falsified, perhaps what actually happened is we just happened to, by pure chance, select only patients who happened to be unresponsive to such-and-such. It really is an effective treatment, we just got unlucky.

That's how you just treated conservation of energy.

But NON-strictly speaking, falsifiability isn't about that. Falsifiability is about "what would you need to see to stop believing this idea?" And if we saw a drug -not- work like I just laid out, people would stop believing it. So it's, in practice, falsifiable.

And if we lived in a world where objects had a total greater velocity after collision, we probably wouldn't live in a world where physicists believed energy is conserved. So even though strictly speaking there's always an out, in practice it's just as falsifiable as we would want it to be.

I think the move from the causal closure of the physical domain to the general thesis of determinism is invalid — Pierre-Normand

Ok. I'd go perhaps a step further and suggest that even the physical domain is not causally closed, in that some physical events do not have an explicit cause - that an individual electron moving through a double slit goes to the right and not the left, by way of an example.

But further, I'd treat acts of volition as a seperate conversation, after the approach of Mary Midgley. Saying that our acts of volition are determined is confusing seperate ways of talking - like fish and bicycles.

What you said here does not seem to be related to the point being made. It seems you have not understood the argument, perhaps becasue you lack the background. And i don't have the time to provide it.

See here.

That ai just told me that conservation of energy isn't shielded from falsification like that.

https://chatgpt.com/share/67d36240-7604-8002-b429-66d510eb756c

The idea of "conservation of energy" is a foundational principle in physics, and it is not immune to falsification

If experimental evidence were to contradict the principle of energy conservation in a way that couldn’t be explained by other factors, it would force a revision of our current understanding.

I give up. :shade: