Deterministic Deterrence
There has been a debate throughout civilized history as to whether or not all occurrences in the physical universe, and/or our lives, are predetermined, one event following by necessity from a previous one, and predictable causing the next event to occur. Well, it is my contention that the debate is resolved. Determinism loses. Game over.
Here is another definition:
"Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences."
This idea was held by many philosophers, and in many religions, dating back 1000's of years. It was especially enforced and supported by many philosophers and scientists during the 17th and 18th Centuries, such as Spinoza, Hobbs, and Hume. But all these speculations held little merit if not anchored to the idea that the physical universe is deterministic and we are a part of the physical universe. The 'Laws of Nature' are evoked as the ultimate reality, and therefore physics and the understanding of physics that evolved in the 17th Century with Newton and classical mechanics were intricately woven in with the rationale for this philosophy. This was the logic and mathematics to back the arguments and is probably what made it convincing to many thinking men. For the elegance and workability of Newton's works could really not easily be doubted. So it behooves us to understand what this means in terms of physical states.
In a deterministic closed state (see below), when the system is in state A, it always goes to state B. When in state B the next state is always state C. And so on. When you see state C, you know system is was always in state B previously. This could be said to be a Four State Universe. The 'Laws of Nature' of this universe are the rules which tell which state occurs next. This invariance of law in the order of the states is what classical physics is based upon.
Now given that this example involves only discrete states, but even if the number of states was infinite, and more flowing, the same principles apply to all mechanical and other systems which comprise classical mechanics. These were underlying assumptions in all of Newton's work. So it is not too surprising that this theme carried over into the philosophy of the time. And this assumption works very well for systems of particles that are large composites (of atoms and molecules) and for many physical universe interactions. But it turns out it is a very limited subset of the possibilities of all physical systems.
There are other possibilities, which become much more apparent when dealing with very small particles.
The icing on the cake is that the modern physics, e.g. quantum mechanics, develops the laws of nature from a different set of different assumptions which include this non-deterministic behavior, and not only does it nearly perfectly predict the behavior of atomic and sub-atomic particles (which classical mechanics fails at), but it also predicts and includes all the laws of classical mechanics as a subset and special case of the general laws of this non-deterministic behavior.
Now the philosophers of old, and the 17th and 18th century, did not have this data about how the physical universe really works. The latter had the work of Newton and other scientists to go by, and what ideas that weren't based on the logic of known laws of physics at the time was speculation and opinions. But having the data we now have there is no doubt that 'causal determinism' is not a valid philosophy, or ideal to live life by. Whether this implies that free will is supreme is a discussion for another time.
Here is another definition:
"Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences."
This idea was held by many philosophers, and in many religions, dating back 1000's of years. It was especially enforced and supported by many philosophers and scientists during the 17th and 18th Centuries, such as Spinoza, Hobbs, and Hume. But all these speculations held little merit if not anchored to the idea that the physical universe is deterministic and we are a part of the physical universe. The 'Laws of Nature' are evoked as the ultimate reality, and therefore physics and the understanding of physics that evolved in the 17th Century with Newton and classical mechanics were intricately woven in with the rationale for this philosophy. This was the logic and mathematics to back the arguments and is probably what made it convincing to many thinking men. For the elegance and workability of Newton's works could really not easily be doubted. So it behooves us to understand what this means in terms of physical states.
In a deterministic closed state (see below), when the system is in state A, it always goes to state B. When in state B the next state is always state C. And so on. When you see state C, you know system is was always in state B previously. This could be said to be a Four State Universe. The 'Laws of Nature' of this universe are the rules which tell which state occurs next. This invariance of law in the order of the states is what classical physics is based upon.
Now given that this example involves only discrete states, but even if the number of states was infinite, and more flowing, the same principles apply to all mechanical and other systems which comprise classical mechanics. These were underlying assumptions in all of Newton's work. So it is not too surprising that this theme carried over into the philosophy of the time. And this assumption works very well for systems of particles that are large composites (of atoms and molecules) and for many physical universe interactions. But it turns out it is a very limited subset of the possibilities of all physical systems.There are other possibilities, which become much more apparent when dealing with very small particles.
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The icing on the cake is that the modern physics, e.g. quantum mechanics, develops the laws of nature from a different set of different assumptions which include this non-deterministic behavior, and not only does it nearly perfectly predict the behavior of atomic and sub-atomic particles (which classical mechanics fails at), but it also predicts and includes all the laws of classical mechanics as a subset and special case of the general laws of this non-deterministic behavior.
Now the philosophers of old, and the 17th and 18th century, did not have this data about how the physical universe really works. The latter had the work of Newton and other scientists to go by, and what ideas that weren't based on the logic of known laws of physics at the time was speculation and opinions. But having the data we now have there is no doubt that 'causal determinism' is not a valid philosophy, or ideal to live life by. Whether this implies that free will is supreme is a discussion for another time.
posted by Eclectricz at
2:55 PM
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