No, you said that you knew of deterministically-inclined Christians. I was describing the religious frame in which their analogous concept of "predestination" functions. Determinism or fatalism absolutely do not require an omniscient being (although positing their existence can aid understanding, as in the thought experiment of Laplace's demon)Originally Posted by StonedOne
Once again, not my beliefs, just some common Christian ideas and how they back the notion of predestination.
You're missing the point of probability. Except in quantum physics, where it at least seems that we can only know things probabilistically, the point of probability in science is not that cause and effect relationships do not exist, it's that we cannot know every factor involved in them. I.E. if we knew (as Gwahir stated,) the force with which we flipped a coin, the wind speeds at the time, air pressure, and all the other tiny conditions, we could absolutely say what way up the coin lands. As it is, we do not measure all of these factors (it's totally impractical!), so probability theory allows us to make simple predictions based on our limited knowledge of factors. It's not that the end result isn't accurate and definite, it's that we don't know the factors to determine what it is.
As Mutton stated, the determinist answer to the criminal problem is that as the criminal is nothing but what's formed him( just like the rest of us), it doesn't excuse him from what he did. In order for society to function, we have to continue to expound the philosophy of personal responsibility, even though people are just the products of the factors that made them.
No, pens don't fall to the floor because someone's decided they will, they fall because of eternal and immutable laws that govern the universe. Like I said, it's easier to make sense of determinism by hypothesising some omniscient being, but that being is totally unnecessary. It's just that the universe works in a mechanical way (no one seems to disagree with this) so that a comet headed towards earth continues to head there, a sparked lighter with gas in it makes fire etc. etc. All predictable causes and effects. All that determinists point out that makes it so difficult for people to accept is that human beings are not exempt from these laws.
But if you accept that people are shaped by these laws, then the inputs they give are determined by the factors that made them. See Bandura's Reciprocal Determinism if it makes it clearer. Sure people can make an impact on their environment, but this impact is decided by what they do, which is decided by what they choose to do, which is decided by their personality, which is preprogrammed into them by external factors. In turn, what they do changes others, which makes those others behave in a certain manner. You see?
The Milgram experiment, like all psychological studies, did not see everyone doing the same thing because of individual differences. If we knew every factor that affected a person from their birth to the experiment, and what all of these factors did to someone, then we would absolutely be able to say what they would do. The fact that most people were affected by the small number of factors the experimenter could control is to me evidence for fatalism, not against it.
Ok, the psychologist you're describing was a behaviourist, which is the most vulgar expression of determinism found in psychological study. Don't get me wrong, I think that behaviourism is right on the money with it's precepts that ultimately everything is about behaviour (i.e. interaction and learning), but the approach itself is limited because it can't know everything a person has ever experienced, making it ineffective on a grand scale, and it's idea that everything is classical or operant conditioning is way too reductionist. To see how behaviourism has been refined to accommodate vicarious learning, reciprocal determinism, and other more nuanced ways humans work, see "Neo-behaviorism", the brainchild of Bandura.
Well, I hope I've shown you that that's not true.
sounds like reciprocal determinism
Sure, you decide. However, the thing you call "you" is essentially just a black box with inputs and outputs streaming either way. No disagreement that you're so complex that to all intents and purposes it appears as consciousness and free will, but in the most ultimate scale, science seems to indicate that it'll be determined. It remains to be seen whether science can solve the intricacies of the human mind. Psychology's still a comparatively young science. We don't even really have a paradigm yet, let alone know our limits.
This is interesting. The way theories work is that every time they're confirmed we continue to use them. If they break just once, we have to rework the theory. I think perhaps we can afford to treat causality in this way (obviously it's failed at a quantum level). This is quite odd coming from me, but I guess there is such a thing as vulgar materialism. Just because causality isn't physical doesn't necessarily mean it has no place in science.
Again, I think you've got to see it the way that I described above. There's a definite distinction between that and faith as you'll find it in spiritualist circles.
You're going to have to operationalise the will if you want to continue talking about it. It sounds too metaphysical and vague for me to debate it otherwise.
Ah, but saying what can't be done was the only tool I had at the time to help describe fatalist thinking. If you point out someone can't know something they haven't learned (e.g. Chinese), then extend to the point that they can't change a fundamental part of their character instantaneously (e.g. their religious beliefs), then you can creep up to the point that what they want to do follows just as naturally from every condition that preceded it. It was an explanatory device. And you know that I'm going to say that if you go studying Islam, that's because of the interactions and conditions imposed on you at that point and before.
The first, I think, should free will exist, would be it's ultimate expression. The right to stop choosing, to stop being, is the ultimate right and decision. The second, by contrast, is reductio ad absurdum.
Yeah yeah no one here has religious sympathies and even if they did these too tired arguments wouldn't change anything.
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