I think the main point of difference for us is that just because I can say I believe everything is caused by earlier events, doesn't actually give me a trail. I doubt that Laplace's demon could exist, and definitely don't believe that it does. Anyway, without the trail existing in a meaningful way (even for something as small as my particular life) in the past, and even moreso the future, my making decisions becomes something I must struggle with. In other words, the circle drawing is important because immediate causes are all I have. And even then, the immediate causes are way too complex for me to take into account.

I agree. That would be part of consciousness that would not necessitate free will for you? Desire + Lack of path -> Need to predict -> ... -> consciousness. Probably missing a few hundred steps there, but I hope you follow.

I have such a capability.

I agree. In the instance of the Rube Goldberg machine, we are, in effect, Laplace's demon. On the grand scale of things, everything is arbitrary in the view of Laplace's demon. On the small scale of me making a decision, arbitrariness it is all I have. Despite my claim that everything is caused, I cannot know the causes well enough to know the future. In effect, I am forced, in a deterministic universe, to act as if it is not determined, since I cannot determine how it is determined. In other words, since I don't know the future, I can't just "go through the motions."

I dub thee Nitty McNitterston. Probably have to also have a nickname of "Changy Irreleventus McSubjecton." Must be from Irish and Latin decent. Just kidding, since I am guessing you find the tides interesting in some way.

*Yeah, me too on the name and nickname.

You clearly do not belong in this forum. Didn't you read the FAQ?

I want to stick with this paragraph, because it highlights a bunch of pieces in your picture that I find incoherent.

What do you mean by "making a decision" in a deterministic universe? What does it mean for a "decision" to be "made" by "you"? Does the marble "decide" to fall? Does the rock "decide" to fall? Does the toothpaste "decide" to squirt?

You also put a strange premium on knowledge. Knowing or not knowing is irrelevant. You "go through the motions" because you have no *choice* about it. That you know or don't know makes no difference. This error is consistent with all that you said in your first paragraph:

It looks as if you're placing an emotional value into the phrase "going through the motions" as if it means "living as if it doesn't matter what you do." That's not the meaning I had intended to convey.

Going through the motions simply means that there's some prescribed path (defined before you were even born) that dictates what you're going to do. All this talk above about "making decisions" isn't really about decisions that *YOU* make. Because there are no "decisions" to make. Rather, it was "made" for you by that which preceded you. That you don't know the trail does not mean that the trail does not exist.

In fact, the existence of the prescribed path is precisely what you are asserting if you take the determinist position. (This includes the act of making a decision.) Regardless of what you know about it, you're stuck with it. You still cannot escape that it's all an illusion.

Thanks for the reply. At this point we are at odds due to beliefs, definitions, results and implications. It is the implications that seem to be the difficulty, but I am not sure. At this point we are almost talking in two different languages, but this is extremely interesting to me.

I will try to be as clear as possible, given the above difficulties. This will take some time though. At some point we may agree to disagree, but this discussion is worthy of continuing.

Please be patient. I have a life to live outside of this conversation, but this is, I think, good for both of us.

Just don't throw cookies.

I'm more or less exactly a Dennett-style compatibilist.

I'm pretty sure "function" is already well-defined. The Wiki definition works just fine: "a function is a relation between the domain and the codomain that associates each element in the domain with exactly one element in the codomain."

If you want to get even more technical, then I can narrow down my definition even further, and assume that the state of the universe can be expressed as an n-dimensional array. Unfortunately I don't know set theory, but I assume that elements of the domain and codomain can be n-dimensional vectors (since I know that in basic math, it's possible to define a function in which each vector maps to another vector). Correct me if I'm wrong, I know the more "basic" definitions of functions allow vector functions so I can't imagine the set-theoretic definition doesn't.

If we describe each unique combination of any specific time t (a scalar representing, in unitless terms, how much time has passed relative to some arbitrary reference point) and a state of the universe s (an n-dimensional vector - easiest way to imagine this is that each distinct parameter of the universe represents a "dimension" and the value of that parameter for any given s is a coordinate along the appropriate dimensional axis). Of course, how you conceptualize it doesn't really matter. Point is, every element in the domain is a vector m in which the first element of the vector is a time t and the subsequent elements of the vector are the elements of one of the s states of the universe. The only restriction here is that each t in the domain is associated with every s in the domain, and that each s in the domain is associated with every t. For example, if there are only 3 possible values of t and 3 possible values of s, then there will be at least 9 possible values of m (one for each of t₁s₁, t₁s₂, t₁s₃, t₂s₁, t₂s₂, t₂s₃, t₃s₁, t₃s₂, and t₃s₃). Every possible combination of t and s must be represented in the domain.

The codomain is simply S, the set of all s values. Every t value corresponds to a single s value, and every m maps to the s associated with its relevant t.

What do I mean by "systematic and non-arbitrary?" I'm thinking along the lines of "can be produced by a deterministic algorithm," but maybe that's vague. But since Turing machines are well-defined, I think I can use them to express more-or-less what I mean (possibly a bit narrower or a bit broader than I intended, but at least more precise).

The relation is systematic and non-arbitrary if a Turing machine, containing in its memory a t, any s, and a set of instructions, can calculate the particular s value corresponding with that t. The set of instructions must be the same for all t and s combinations.

So this is really simple, and probably can be expressed as such by someone with more experience in this stuff. There is a set S of vectors, and a set T of time "coordinates." Every member of the set T corresponds to a specific member of the set S. Given a particular member of the set T and any member of the set S, you can "algorithmically" determine which member of the set S corresponds to that particular member of the set t.

One more try at a summary, as simple as possible: f(t) = s, where s is a (vector) element of a set S, t is a scalar. A Turing machine following a specific series of calculations can produce s given t and any single element of S (whether that element is s itself or something else).

Or to slightly expand on my original definition, "given the state of the universe at any given time, it is possible to predict the state of the universe at any other time." Given any s and any t, it is possible to predict the state of the universe corresponding to that t.

A "deterministic universe" is just an S for which the above criteria apply. S is the universe.

Not really. Propositional logic is just as rigorous as mathematical logic. When you claim that there exists a logical contradiction among a set of propositions, you're making a very strong and specific statement. You're no more justified in making offhand statements about logic than you are in making offhand statements about mathematics.

It's one thing to claim that you don't believe that determinism and free will coexist. It's another thing to claim that they are logically contradictory. That is, at best a conjecture. And it's the type of claim that demands support. Accusing someone of being inconsistent when they make two seemingly-unrelated claims is silly unless you can back up the accusation.

If a mathematician claims that the statements "P ≠ NP" and "if A^x + B^y = C^z, where A, B, C, x, y, and z are positive integers with x, y, z > 2 then A, B, and C must have a common prime factor," that is, if someone claims that the two conjectures cannot both be true, then he won't be taken seriously unless he can prove it. Logic works in the same way.

Unfortunately, if you want to take an argument with the guy into serious territory, you have to convince him to show his reasoning. I mean, you can't prove that P ≠ NP and Beal's conjecture aren't contradictory, can you? The only way you could do that is to prove both conjectures, and then say "since they're both true, they can't be inconsistent." But even then, can you prove that the set of axioms from which the theorems derive is non-contradictory?

I don't know that reading my posts again would be especially productive. There are plenty of contradictions that aren't exact negations of that statement (for example, "the universe can't be described as a set of parameters"), but it doesn't matter. I may not be able to mathematically define a deterministic universe, but that's only because I don't know that mathematical terminology. I'm defining a deterministic universe as a mathematical object, so maybe referring to it as such will make communication easier.

Well, it's incompatible with many conceptions of determinism. So it's "semantically" narrow. As opposed to a definition in which I try to encompass all forms of determinism, which I think would end up being so vague as to be useless.

The first definition is really stupid, and looking at the discussion page it's not hard to see why. I'm only surprised the debate hasn't been faster and more heated.

The other two definitions are completely consistent with my view of time.

The history comes largely out of folk superstitions from a bunch of people living many centuries ago. Obviously the first determinists didn't accept a particularly clear view of time, they were pretty much morons.

When Newton's mechanics worked according to what you call the "reverse time concept," that started to change. The Enlightenment saw increasing acceptance of this view of time, as many people came to believe that physics could explain the world. With the advent of quantum physics and special relativity things got tricky, of course.

Propositional logic still has to start from assumptions...and you can't prove the assumptions. Which is what you required from me.

You claimed a contradiction in my position. It doesn't matter whether I can prove the assumptions - in fact, I've already stated that I don't believe the claims I'm making.

But that doesn't help you. You are claiming that determinism and choice are logically contradictory.

That means that, regardless of the truth of the assumptions, they contradict one another.

The incompatibility thesis relates to the validity, not the soundness, of compatibilism. If my position is indeed invalid, then you should be able to demonstrate that. REGARDLESS of whether my claims are actually true.

The concept of determinism contradicts the concept of choice/free will/etc.

They are incompatible.

You're claiming the opposite. Now, with your infinite knowledge of the powers of propositional logic, think of a way that one COULD attempt such a proof.

GL...I'll get the popcorn.

You can stop right there, because now you're making a clearly meaningless connection between a mathematical function and your use of a function. This definition of function allows the functions to be basically arbitrary. You've boiled your determinism position down to nothing. (In fact, your position is talked about in that book that I linked to that I don't think you actually read.)

From pages 10-11 (quoting Russel):

In other words, congratulations! You have said absolutely nothing at all (and you are continuing to do so). So you're right that I can't "prove" a contradiction because there's nothing that can possibly contradict your position except its negation.

How is your definition incompatible with *ANY* conceptions of determinism?

It's consistent with *your* view of time... but it's not consistent with the determinists' view of time, since the determinists' view of time is WRITTEN INTO THE DEFINITION IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY YOU DID IT when you first started. What do you think the definition of "antecedent" is?

In other words, your position has neither an intellectual nor historical backing.

I'm not claiming the opposite. I'm claiming that you have no logical reason to suggest that they are incompatible.

We have two unrelated propositions. You are claiming that they are contradictory. I am calling bull****. That's all that's going on here.

Is it hard to prove that the statements "the universe is deterministic" and "people have choice" are contradictory?

Well yeah, I think it's pretty hard, since I don't think the statements are contradictory. It's also pretty hard to prove that "the sky is blue" contradicts "the Hoover Dam was built in 1936." I can't prove that those two statement contradict one another.

But IF I had the audacity to claim those two statements as contradictions, THEN I would sure as **** be able to establish that. When you claim that two unrelated statements are contradictory, the onus is on you to prove that.

I've given reason to suppose that they're incompatible.

1) The aptness of the domino analogy.

If it's apt, then that's reason to accept that free will/determinism are incompatible.

2) You eating a bagel vs toast next week.

It's only possible for you to eat a bagel and that's entirely predicated on the states of the world today and the laws of the universe (we could go back further if we wanted). You think that you're free to choose the toast, but you're not: you couldn't do other than what you're going to do next week at breakfast.

This is reason to suppose that free will/determinism are incompatible.

I've already done this twice.

The Turing Machine element is what makes it meaningful. It's only determinism if it is possible for a Turing Machine to calculate the state of the universe at any time t_f from the state of the universe at any other time t_i (my revision of the earlier "systematic and non-arbitrary").

It's inconsistent with fatalism, with a universe in which past states can predict future states but not the other way around, with a universe that can't be described as a set of parameters, I could go on.

Well, since you're the only one who seems to think it's apt in the first place, that's kind of a fail. Regardless, your domino analogy is an appeal to emotion, AND it rests on assumptions external to those of determinism and choice (not allowed in logic). And we're talking about a logical system, you can't establish a contradiction in a logical system by "making a cool metaphor." That can be a way to explain your position if it's counterintuitive, but it's not a way to make a point. Not in analytic philosophy, at least.

Another inapt appeal to emotion with no logic, resting on assumptions external to the question of the compatibility thesis (again, you don't get to bring external assumptions into the mix when you're demonstrating a contradiction), AND it's question-begging!

If this is your idea of how a logical argument works, you've got nothing.

You're going to have to explain what you mean by "reason" and why "suppose" is even relevant here (we're not talking epistemology). You've already explained what you mean by incompatible - internally contradictory.

And we know what that means - two propositions are contradictory when (from one definition) a statement of the form "a and not a" can be inferred from those propositions.

If that's not your position, then back off it now.

My view is the same as the determinist view. I continue to hold that view of time, but I no longer subscribe to determinism.

My position (on time) is based on physics, and on basic economy. But I don't need any "backing" regardless.

IF determinism and choice are fundamentally incompatible, THEN every "version" of determinism is incompatible with every "version" of choice (so long as all the versions are consistent with the definitions). I could use a version of determinism in which a giant clown chooses everything that happens, and I don't need to "back up" my giant clown - because if there is even one counterexample to your claim, even one hypothetical universe in which determinism and choice can logically coexist, then the two are not contradictory.

None of these are an appeal to emotion.

Also, I'm not referring to the domino qua redness example. But merely the picture of events as dominos that don't have any power to change the course of events any more than they were determined to do so by the past arrangement of dominos and the laws of physics.

Your understanding of how argumentation works is very sophomoric. You appear to have taken a single logic class and you think that that's all there is and that anything that doesn't fit that very narrow mould isn't logical or sufficiently good reason for establishing a conclusion.

It was an appeal to emotion. Your argument was that the dominoes had no meaning or purpose. That's no less an appeal to emotion than saying the atheist universe is a "cold, uncaring void."

And this is non sequitur after non sequitur. And it's not even the same argument as before! Now, "the picture of events" doesn't have power to change events "any more than" they were determined.

I'm going to assume that this is sloppy language - obviously nobody is claiming that a "picture of events" can "change events," whatever that means. Let's assume that you mean "cognitive agents" do not any more power to change events than can be expressed based on prior conditions and the laws of physics.

Um, so what? Choice is the power to change events, it is NOT the power to change events over and above prior conditions and physics. Nowhere is choice defined as the power to change events MORE THAN THEY WERE DETERMINED TO DO SO, choice is only defined as the power to deliberately change events, period. If choice changes events exactly to the extent it was determined to do so, it is still changing events and it is still choice.

Anyhow, the correct way to structure an analogy like this is to find an example in which all of the necessary conditions for choice are present except free will, and then demonstrate that choice doesn't exist. That suggests (doesn't quite imply but at least comes close) that free will is a necessary condition for choice (as all the other necessary conditions are present and yet no set of sufficient conditions is present).

For example, if I said "an artificial intelligence capable of cognition plays a chess game, but it has no choice because the outcome of the chess game was decided beforehand," that would at least be an attempt at an apt analogy. The AI is capable of cognition, one of the necessary conditions for choice, so I have taken away free will but I have not taken away cognition. Of course, it's still a nonsensical analogy and simply untrue (the outcome wasn't decided beforehand, and if it were that would not imply that the computer is incapable of choice), but it would at least be hitting the target.

What you have done is to take away all of the conditions necessary for choice, including those that have nothing to do with free will (such as cognition). That doesn't cut it. You took away free will and cognition, so the fact that no choice exists in your analogy could be a result of your removing free will (the conclusion we're supposed to reach), or it could be a result of your removing cognition (the conclusion I, at least, actually reach).

So you aren't, even in the best possible interpretation, making a case about free will - you are making a case about free will and/or cognition. And I will agree with that point - choice cannot exist without free will and/or cognition. But while dominoes do not have cognition, humans do - and that is the difference between dominoes and humans. Cognition. Not free will.

I've never taken a logic class. I do know that most philosophers avoid attempting to accuse their opponents of being internally contradictory, because that kind of claim automatically moves the debate to a level of raw logic.

Very few of the claims argued in philosophy are of this nature (so-and-so has a contradiction in his reasoning), partly for that reason. But this is the claim on which you've chosen to hang your hat - that compatibilists (including those like Hume, Schopenhauer, and Dennett) are actually contradicting themselves.

This isn't about how argumentation in general works, it's how your specific claim (that there exists a contradiction within a logical system) works. If you were only claiming something like "I don't believe that both free will and determinism are correct; I believe that our world is either a pessimistic world or a libertarian world," then it would be a different story. But that's not your claim.

This is a much better analogy than dominoes, but it's still not an analogy that supports your point. On the contrary.

Remember that your claim is that our choices do not exert influence over events.

In this Goldberg machine, our choices are the "most proximate" cause, in other words the rock P. The big bang is the "most ultimate" cause, the switch A.

So your argument is that in a deterministic universe, our choices do not influence the course of events because that course was already influenced by the big bang.

Your picture here shows why you are wrong. While it is certainly correct that A influences the outcome, it is equally undeniable that P influences the outcome. The fact that A exerts power over events does not imply the P doesn't exert power over events.

A causes the toothpaste to squirt, but so does P. And, for that matter, so do D and N. The fact that A causes the event doesn't imply that P doesn't cause the event - A and P can both cause the event.

Similarly, the fact that the big bang determines an event doesn't imply that your choices don't determine that event.

In terms of the power over an event - if A had never happened, then the toothpaste would not have squirted out. Therefore, A has the power to influence the event. But if the rock P had not been there, the toothpaste would similarly have failed to squirt. Ergo, the rock P also has power over the event.

Back to determinism. If there had never been a big bang, then no events would have happened. So clearly the big bang has power over events. But if you hadn't made your choices, then their outcomes would also never have happened. So clearly (on the same basis) your choices also have power over events.

Ergo, just as the switch A and the rock P can both have power and influence, so the big bang and human choices can both have power and influence. Which is compatibilism in a nutshell. The relevance of switch A does not negate the relevance of rock P.

Just lol @ emotion.

Wow...seriously. Nowhere is a single emotional word present or implied in my arguments. It's about incompatibility or inconsistency, not 'oohh, what a shame and what a cold universe if determinism is true' That's a total straw man and disingenuous at best.

Eh, fair enough.

Maybe you don't realize what you're saying about Turing machines. You've got issues with the question of finite/infinite machines here. Are you assuming that there are only a finite number of states of the universe? Or will it be necessary to have some sort of "infinite" precision in order to successfully compute the state at some other time?

Turing machines are only allowed to have a finite program that works with a finite alphabet. Furthermore, while you have a (semi-)infinite tape, the only initial tapes that are allowed must be finite (if you ignore the blanks).

This doesn't seem to be a requirement of fatalism. Are you sure you're not making up stuff as you go again?

I have no idea how to interpret this with your current definitions.

I don't even know what this means.