2013-01-06, 22:02 | Link #61 | ||
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With Asuras's example: To me, they're both influenced by their situations. The man living at home finds himself in an unrestricted environment while the man in chains finds himself in a restricted environment. Yet, both people still have their own free will. The only difference is that the person living at home is more capable of acting according to his will than the man in chains. In other words, it's not that the man in chains has necessarily lost his free will, rather he lost the freedom to act on his will. Both men are influenced by external factors, yet can retain free will. Quote:
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2013-01-06, 23:17 | Link #62 |
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@Qilin:
It's not my view that human behaviour and choice is unaffected by the deterministic logic. It would be however, if souls did indeed exist and were not part of the physical world. The thing is, predictability of the future in different degrees is elemental to the definition of some variations of determinism, but not to others, making it possible for souls and determinism to coincide in some cases, but not in all of them. It's a bit hard to find common ground in mind games like these, especially since there's probably about 1000 definitions of what a soul is. @monster: That's apparently how this Mr. Stance defines it, but I'd disagree on that.
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Last edited by ZGoten; 2013-01-06 at 23:30. |
2013-01-07, 04:46 | Link #63 |
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Let me throw in something into consideration:
Multiverse. A concept so sci-fi and seemingly out there is now widely accepted among Theoretical Physicist. If you refer to my earlier post about my take of "fate", then add in the idea that "all possible outcome that happened is as real as any that didn't". There are infinite number of world "composition" and infinite number of how that composition could play out, and they are all "real". This way, Determinism and Freewill can coexist just fine.
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2013-01-07, 05:41 | Link #64 | ||
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But whatever. As with a lot of philosophy, nearly everything boils down to language games after a certain point. Quote:
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2013-01-07, 06:06 | Link #65 | |
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Last edited by erneiz_hyde; 2013-01-07 at 06:18. |
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2013-01-07, 08:51 | Link #66 | |
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Just to make my position here clear, determinism, to me, is equated to the possibility of absolute prediction of the future based on knowledge of all causal relationships within a system, the system in this case being the particular multiverse in question. Anything else that isn't that is not something I would label as true determinism. EDIT: Reading up a bit on compatibilism makes your position a bit clearer to me. The way I understand it, compatibilists have a somewhat different conception of "free will", which allows them to accept the coexistence of "free will" and determinism. I can acknowledge that. See, this is what inconsistent definitions can do to otherwise intelligent discussions.
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Last edited by Qilin; 2013-01-07 at 13:12. |
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2013-01-07, 10:04 | Link #67 | |
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2013-01-07, 11:16 | Link #69 |
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We are moving in circles, I have adressed that already. In a world without divine intervention through gods or souls, you are correct. In one with that kind of stuff, predictability of the future is not mandatory with the lightest deterministic approach. That's how I understand it.
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2013-01-07, 11:22 | Link #70 | ||
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2013-01-07, 11:26 | Link #71 |
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And another turn ...
The smallest common ground of all determinstic approaches is that there is a cause-effect-relation that affects everything (physical I should say), with only one possible outcome. Nothing more, nothing about predictability. In a purely physical world, this definition, however, must inevitably mean predictability of the future, even though it's not part of the definition. In a universe that is not entirely physical, though, predictability is not a given, because the non-physical part (souls, godly intervention) of it may not abide by the same logic as physical material or no logic at all. The definition of determinism therefore has two different kinds of consequences depending on which universe we are talking about.
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2013-01-07, 11:36 | Link #72 | |
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How does "one possible outcome" not equate to "certainty of the future"? The moment you limit the future to "one possible outcome", the very concept of choice becomes nothing more than an illusion regardless of whether some ethereal agent is working behind the scenes. Having just one possible outcome automatically discounts the possibility of anything having the power to choose anything else. What I'm trying to say here is that having just one possible outcome cannot coexist with the idea of free will, which refers to the capacity to choose between several different outcomes. Let's forget about the "soul" for a moment. This doesn't make any logical sense to me.
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2013-01-07, 12:28 | Link #73 |
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I'm sorry, I can't make it any clearer. No, let's not forget about souls, because that is precisely what we are talking about. Souls, if they existed, may not abide by natural laws and are therefore outside the deterministic equation, meaning that everything would be predictable until the soul decides to take action. So for somebody who does believe that his individuality is bound to a soul, free will and determinism are compatible. But I'm getting tired of repeating the same thing over and over, sorry.
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2013-01-07, 12:45 | Link #74 |
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So I'm just supposed to accept that you're contradicting the definition of determinism you gave to begin with?
My personal disagreement is more a matter of the logical form of your claims rather than the content itself. I'm not going to press you any further on this, but let me just say a lot of it reads to me like: "A is B and A is not B". Unless you mean that the "one possible outcome" you referred early on doesn't take the soul into account just yet?
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2013-01-07, 12:50 | Link #75 |
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Of course the definition doesn't take souls into account, which is why I am not contradicting myself, but instead mentioning two distinct consequences of the definition based on whether or not spiritual or divine intervention exists in a universe. If they don't, future is predictable, if they do, it may be not.
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2013-01-07, 13:04 | Link #76 | |
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Even so, I still can't in good faith call such an idea "determinism" in that distorted state. Maybe that's just me, but whatever.
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2013-01-07, 16:21 | Link #78 | |
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