Philosophy Now Forum

Scott Mayers wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: It's a fact that 99% of all cosmologies ever dreamed up have since the dawn of science have proved false, except one. Multiverses is doomed with the geocentric hypothesis, and the steady state theory.
The only cosmology that works is the one that "saves the appearances" within the limits of the data, and offers predictive results inferred from the system. In other words, keep it simple, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Drawing out the limits of the scientific and logical methods are fair, but lead to this conclusion, not the ad hoc addition of goblins on horses, divine movers or multiverses.

You perceive that reality can only require simplistic explanations. I can't speak for Occam as I hadn't actually read his works to determine, but I find it odd that people keep uncarefully defending segments (shortest distance between two points) as meaning that curves cannot exist! [similar to that linear vs non-linear determination as Leo raised from Chaos theory]

The multiverse is a completely logical construct based even on our individual experiences and is more certain than to pose a place that lacks optional possibilities. This doesn't mean that you can specify that we can speak about some other exact contingent world with as much confidence as we do our own, it just means that we recognize things such as space as having variability....that a memory space in a computer could contain either a one or a zero and that we can re-run the computer given real different input data that creates REAL and variable programs. We may not be able to directly observe multiple realities but this rationale asserts that either we accept this as true or we abandon it for fatalism.

I'm not sure that you are processing what I say with reason.
No, I'm not saying that the universe has to be simple. I AM saying you can only go on what you are sure about- NOT dream up some shit and expect it to stick.
And your remarks about curves and lines is asinine. Both curves and straight lines are ONLY conceits used used to describe the universe. They do not have material reality. And the analogy is poor indeed.
I think you might want to revise your term "contingent reality", its meaningless here.
The rest is verbose gibberish. How you get to fatalism is anyone's guess.

Seem to me that you need more that a coffee and a cig to straighten out your opening remarks.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: It's a fact that 99% of all cosmologies ever dreamed up have since the dawn of science have proved false, except one. Multiverses is doomed with the geocentric hypothesis, and the steady state theory.
The only cosmology that works is the one that "saves the appearances" within the limits of the data, and offers predictive results inferred from the system. In other words, keep it simple, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Drawing out the limits of the scientific and logical methods are fair, but lead to this conclusion, not the ad hoc addition of goblins on horses, divine movers or multiverses.

You perceive that reality can only require simplistic explanations. I can't speak for Occam as I hadn't actually read his works to determine, but I find it odd that people keep uncarefully defending segments (shortest distance between two points) as meaning that curves cannot exist! [similar to that linear vs non-linear determination as Leo raised from Chaos theory]

The multiverse is a completely logical construct based even on our individual experiences and is more certain than to pose a place that lacks optional possibilities. This doesn't mean that you can specify that we can speak about some other exact contingent world with as much confidence as we do our own, it just means that we recognize things such as space as having variability....that a memory space in a computer could contain either a one or a zero and that we can re-run the computer given real different input data that creates REAL and variable programs. We may not be able to directly observe multiple realities but this rationale asserts that either we accept this as true or we abandon it for fatalism.

Hobbe's Choice wrote: I'm not sure that you are processing what I say with reason.
No, I'm not saying that the universe has to be simple. I AM saying you can only go on what you are sure about- NOT dream up some shit and expect it to stick.
And your remarks about curves and lines is asinine. Both curves and straight lines are ONLY conceits used used to describe the universe. They do not have material reality. And the analogy is poor indeed.
I think you might want to revise your term "contingent reality", its meaningless here.
The rest is verbose gibberish. How you get to fatalism is anyone's guess.

Seem to me that you need more that a coffee and a cig to straighten out your opening remarks.

You denied and then reinstated the same thing. And while you may think that real segments or curves do not actually exist, then you need to refer to where I also explained the same thing using the physical things you can relate to. I used a town analogy [maybe in the thread, "Models versus Reality"?] that acts as an aim to a goal, such as truth. The practice of getting there and arriving is true no matter which route you take. Since reality of a landscape does not always permit you to always take a shorter route doesn't mean that such routes do not exist. They are infinite. Also, it may not be possible to actually take the shortest route even if we perceive it since we could be unable to cross certain barriers (like a tall and steep mountain.)

If you can't follow, just ask rather than presuming me an idiot as I don't presume this of others. If you believe in only ONE UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY DETERMINATE world, you believe in a fate. The Greek Fates were three feminine entities that cut strings to specific but arbitrary lengths for each individual who passed through Hades to be reborn with ONE UNIQUE and PERFECTLY DETERMINATE lifespan. This idea is what came to be called "fatalism" with this general meaning. It is like that Chaos theory whereby the initial determination of what you become is based upon free willed arbitrary and 'real' options (an indeterminate range of possible worlds or lives like a non-linear set of projections) BUT determine what follows after that initial coin toss to be determinate or fixed thereafter.

EDIT: And to Obvious Leo, too, who may be reading, note how in Greek mythology that the nature of cycles of life to require each to go through Hades then back to life through the Fates' decision also supports your view. To both you and Hobbes, this is NOT an insult but only a proper description of what you believe in kind. Contrary to many who think these different, they reduce to meaning the same thing. Those who interpreted 'fate' as only the end result ignore that only the initial condition in Chaos theory is indeterminate while all that is in between to the end is fixed. You can't have it both ways by presuming possibilities you are ineligible to have after a unique initial beginning. If merely any point is allowed to be "initial", this reduces to a multiverse theory as I hold because no special point in time would require dependency to be determinate unless they are both determinate and indeterminate simultaneously.

Scott Mayers wrote: If you believe in only ONE UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY DETERMINATE world, you believe in a fate.

Let me correct this utterly false statement for you with the addition of only three more letters.

Scott Mayers wrote: If you believe in only ONE UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY PRE-DETERMINATE world, you believe in a fate.

Determinism and pre-determinism are NOT synonymous terms.

You've revealed over and over again that you simply don't understand the most basic principles of chaotic determinism, Scott, so I suggest you do some homework before you embarrass yourself further. You are simply WRONG and I'm afraid that there isn't a more polite way of saying it. You are not only wrong but you are way, way wrong and it makes all of your posts about multiverses look frankly fucking ludicrous because your logic is bogus from beginning to end. Your above statement is a good example. Without the prefix I added it is simply WRONG and I can prove it with a very simple example which you absolutely KNOW to be true.

You have lived a unique and perfectly determinate existence and yet there is no reason whatsoever why your life should have turned out the way it did other than the fact that that's the way it happened. As they say in the popular culture nowadays "it is what it is" or indeed:

"life is what happens to you while you're making other plans"....John Lennon.

If you don't understand that this is a fundamental truth of existence then you belong with the priests and not in a conversation with the grown-ups. Every single event which has occurred in your life was CAUSED to occur but none of these events were caused to occur in order to achieve some particular outcome. They were caused to occur because every single event in the universe initiates a cascade of causal consequences which resonate throughout the future FOREVER. Newton was simply wrong and so are you. The universe is self-causal and both you and the science of physics are going to have to grow up and face the facts.

Scott Mayers wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: It's a fact that 99% of all cosmologies ever dreamed up have since the dawn of science have proved false, except one. Multiverses is doomed with the geocentric hypothesis, and the steady state theory.
The only cosmology that works is the one that "saves the appearances" within the limits of the data, and offers predictive results inferred from the system. In other words, keep it simple, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Drawing out the limits of the scientific and logical methods are fair, but lead to this conclusion, not the ad hoc addition of goblins on horses, divine movers or multiverses.

You perceive that reality can only require simplistic explanations. I can't speak for Occam as I hadn't actually read his works to determine, but I find it odd that people keep uncarefully defending segments (shortest distance between two points) as meaning that curves cannot exist! [similar to that linear vs non-linear determination as Leo raised from Chaos theory]

The multiverse is a completely logical construct based even on our individual experiences and is more certain than to pose a place that lacks optional possibilities. This doesn't mean that you can specify that we can speak about some other exact contingent world with as much confidence as we do our own, it just means that we recognize things such as space as having variability....that a memory space in a computer could contain either a one or a zero and that we can re-run the computer given real different input data that creates REAL and variable programs. We may not be able to directly observe multiple realities but this rationale asserts that either we accept this as true or we abandon it for fatalism.

Hobbe's Choice wrote: I'm not sure that you are processing what I say with reason.
No, I'm not saying that the universe has to be simple. I AM saying you can only go on what you are sure about- NOT dream up some shit and expect it to stick.
And your remarks about curves and lines is asinine. Both curves and straight lines are ONLY conceits used used to describe the universe. They do not have material reality. And the analogy is poor indeed.
I think you might want to revise your term "contingent reality", its meaningless here.
The rest is verbose gibberish. How you get to fatalism is anyone's guess.

Seem to me that you need more that a coffee and a cig to straighten out your opening remarks.

You denied and then reinstated the same thing. And while you may think that real segments or curves do not actually exist, then you need to refer to where I also explained the same thing using the physical things you can relate to. I used a town analogy [maybe in the thread, "Models versus Reality"?] that acts as an aim to a goal, such as truth. The practice of getting there and arriving is true no matter which route you take. Since reality of a landscape does not always permit you to always take a shorter route doesn't mean that such routes do not exist. They are infinite. Also, it may not be possible to actually take the shortest route even if we perceive it since we could be unable to cross certain barriers (like a tall and steep mountain.)

If you can't follow, just ask rather than presuming me an idiot as I don't presume this of others. If you believe in only ONE UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY DETERMINATE world, you believe in a fate. The Greek Fates were three feminine entities that cut strings to specific but arbitrary lengths for each individual who passed through Hades to be reborn with ONE UNIQUE and PERFECTLY DETERMINATE lifespan. This idea is what came to be called "fatalism" with this general meaning. It is like that Chaos theory whereby the initial determination of what you become is based upon free willed arbitrary and 'real' options (an indeterminate range of possible worlds or lives like a non-linear set of projections) BUT determine what follows after that initial coin toss to be determinate or fixed thereafter.

EDIT: And to Obvious Leo, too, who may be reading, note how in Greek mythology that the nature of cycles of life to require each to go through Hades then back to life through the Fates' decision also supports your view. To both you and Hobbes, this is NOT an insult but only a proper description of what you believe in kind. Contrary to many who think these different, they reduce to meaning the same thing. Those who interpreted 'fate' as only the end result ignore that only the initial condition in Chaos theory is indeterminate while all that is in between to the end is fixed. You can't have it both ways by presuming possibilities you are ineligible to have after a unique initial beginning. If merely any point is allowed to be "initial", this reduces to a multiverse theory as I hold because no special point in time would require dependency to be determinate unless they are both determinate and indeterminate simultaneously.

I already gave you an adequate response to this stuff.

Hobbes. I'm hoping that you might be able to see how this notion of the causal cascade can be applied to the question you posed about the nature of the will in human consciousness. In chaotically determined systems causality operates both top-down and bottom-up in emergent hierarchies of complexity, each of which constitutes its own causal domain, rather like the nested Russian matryoshka dolls. One can model the awareness of self as the outermost of these dolls and all the various physical structures of the body/mind interface as being embedded in hierarchies beneath it, all constituting a part of the causal cascade. For example the endocrine system can release a hormone which causes the mind to be affected in a particular way but this is not a one-way street. The mind is a higher-order causal domain which can in turn initiate a causal cascade which resonates all the way back down the causal chain again.

This is the basic idea behind the Maturana/Varela model of Autopoiesis ( from the Greek, self-creating), because in the Santiago school the mind is defined as that which creates itself. As you can see with my endless banging of the same drum I extend this same self-creating principle to the entire universe. Just as I am myself becoming the universe is likewise itself becoming.

This is hardly cutting-edge philosophy, by the way, because this is the view of practically every major philosopher in history. Physics is most conspicuously the odd man out so it should come as no surprise that the models of physics are modelling a universe which makes no fucking sense. The geeks don't understand determinism, just like Scott doesn't.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote: If you believe in only ONE UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY DETERMINATE world, you believe in a fate.

Let me correct this utterly false statement for you with the addition of only three more letters.

Scott Mayers wrote: If you believe in only ONE UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY PRE-DETERMINATE world, you believe in a fate.

Determinism and pre-determinism are NOT synonymous terms.

You've revealed over and over again that you simply don't understand the most basic principles of chaotic determinism, Scott, so I suggest you do some homework before you embarrass yourself further. You are simply WRONG and I'm afraid that there isn't a more polite way of saying it. You are not only wrong but you are way, way wrong and it makes all of your posts about multiverses look frankly fucking ludicrous because your logic is bogus from beginning to end. Your above statement is a good example. Without the prefix I added it is simply WRONG and I can prove it with a very simple example which you absolutely KNOW to be true.

You have lived a unique and perfectly determinate existence and yet there is no reason whatsoever why your life should have turned out the way it did other than the fact that that's the way it happened. As they say in the popular culture nowadays "it is what it is" or indeed:

"life is what happens to you while you're making other plans"....John Lennon.

If you don't understand that this is a fundamental truth of existence then you belong with the priests and not in a conversation with the grown-ups. Every single event which has occurred in your life was CAUSED to occur but none of these events were caused to occur in order to achieve some particular outcome. They were caused to occur because every single event in the universe initiates a cascade of causal consequences which resonate throughout the future FOREVER. Newton was simply wrong and so are you. The universe is self-causal and both you and the science of physics are going to have to grow up and face the facts.

A UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY DETERMINATE world IS what defines a PREDETERMINATE one!! I choose the adjectives "unique" and "perfect" to convey this as it dictates a specific essence that does the predetermination, like an immanent being who has the options available to decide as the Fates do in Greek mythology. In literal fatalism of the Greeks, they at least only interpreted this predetermined one's lifespan but allowed one to be free to choose their actions in life. Only the death was limited.

However, in Chaos Theory, it attempts to reverse the role of where the determination orginates: at the beginning after the predeterminer opts from a multiple set of choices that it has to start the whole thing going. But if following the initial decision of such an immanent being is determined thereafter, this doesn't even allow entities within it to ever even choose at any point within it. This is fatalism to the extreme because it predetermines ALL of ones life including the end in one unique universe. You don't allow for other universes at all! Thus this universe is also PERFECTLY immune to be anything different too, even if you may feign an IDEA of how it could have been that you assert never is possible.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:
I already gave you an adequate response to this stuff.

Adequate for whom?

Scott Mayers wrote: A UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY DETERMINATE world IS what defines a PREDETERMINATE one!!

This statement is simply false and so I didn't bother reading the rest of your comment.

Name me just ONE scientist in the entire world who would agree with it.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote: A UNIQUE AND PERFECTLY DETERMINATE world IS what defines a PREDETERMINATE one!!

This statement is simply false and so I didn't bother reading the rest of your comment.

Name me just ONE scientist in the entire world who would agree with it.

If you won't respect reading me, don't expect me to comply to your odd request. We are discussing philosophy proper here, not opinions of scientists. I see that you need to take a step back and learn some Philosophy 101. The first requirement in these courses are always LOGIC.

I recommend "The Art of Reasoning", by Kelley, for a full course on the development of logic as an overview. Then take some course on Propositional and Symbolic logic specifically to understand how it is developed and closed upon its metalogic. I initially learned this through Lemmon's "Beginning Logic" as it both developed the logic AND then stepped back to show how they are closed.

I don't rely on a need to bandwagon on another person's authority when and where I can argue with clarity myself with my own intensive investment in logic. So requesting that I require a thumbs up from someone else is absurd. And that you feign a wisdom to know that NO scientist agrees with me is something you'd also have the burden to present. This is even more absurd. You don't even count physics as scientifically valid. Yet, all science is a type of physics. Chemistry is just a subset of physics that deal with reactions of matter specifically. And Biology is a subset of carbon-based chemistry (Organic Chemistry).

Don't you dare presume to lecture me on logic when you offer such a blatantly circular argument to try and refute what I'm saying. You ASSUME that the universe had a beginning and then presume to draw your conclusions that the universe had a beginning from this assumption. Fuck off with your initial states and shove your "first causes" up your arse before you started pontificating about logic.

Obvious Leo wrote:Don't you dare presume to lecture me on logic when you offer such a blatantly circular argument to try and refute what I'm saying. You ASSUME that the universe had a beginning and then presume to draw your conclusions that the universe had a beginning from this assumption. Fuck off with your initial states and shove your "first causes" up your arse before you started pontificating about logic.

Take a break, Leo. You're becoming abusive and it only indicates your own frustration here because I'm certain that I'm hitting the core of your problem philosophically in your mind. I am sincerely not the owner of your anger and think you just need space to breathe. My apparent 'arrogance' here by you is only a reflection of my real confidence to argue, not a false front. I'm not trying to defeat you, only to convince you of my views. I expect the same in return without prejudice.

You're right, Scott. I'm getting frustrated because this is a conversation about determinism and the nature of determinism has been my life's work. I've invested too much of my time in it to behave dispassionately when confronted with the confused ramblings of a dilettante. However I don't question either your motives or your sincerity and thus apologise for my intemperate language.

I have nothing more to say to you on the subject.

north western wrote:Does hard determinism imply that a blueprint for our universe was included in the big bang?
Or could the outcome been different?

If it simply means that the view is incompatible with freewill, then I think one can explore a deterministic account from a biological perspective in addition to the determinism of physics. Physics typically deals with push/pull types of cause and effect. Biology looks at selection. These are both deterministic accounts for material things. Both explanations should be taken together.

However, it seems like many people's arguments sound like those who argue for nature vs nurture. One camp finds examples to support one position. The other camp finds examples to support the other position. And then instead of having a conversation the two camps go to war bashing each other over the heads ("you're a dummy". "Well, you're a bigger dummy").

Perhaps it is because of nature that nurture works as it does. Perhaps the causality of physics allows biological selection to work as it does. Extending the biological selection paradigm could lead to talking differently about the implications of determism.

north western wrote:Does hard determinism imply that a blueprint for our universe was included in the big bang?
Or could the outcome been different?

No it does not mean there was a blueprint. That would assume that the information had a place to exist even before the BB.
This sort of thinking is fatalism - the idea that whatever you might do or think, your pathways has already been decided by God.
The primitive universe is simple, and contained no information. The universe made itself at with each step determined by the last and determining the next.
The thought that asked could the outcome have been different is meaningless.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:The universe made itself at with each step determined by the last and determining the next.

The bit that baffles me about this self-evident truth is the fact that those who favour the god hypothesis don't find this awe-inspiring enough. In my opinion only a philistine with neither music in his heart nor poetry in his soul could fail to be awe-struck by a self-causal cosmos which mandates its own comprehensibility. The universe sufficient to its own existence is a truth far bigger than god and one which many of the ancient philosophies have cherished for millennia.