Philosophy Now Forum

According to Wikipedia, "Determinism is the philosophical theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes."

Okay, what about non-events? Are non-events determined?

What constitutes an event?

What distinguishes an event from a non-event?

More importantly, what, if anything caused this deterministic system rather than a non-deterministic system? Is the fact of a deterministic system some kind of first / original cause? Somewhere along that deterministic chain will we find everything being non-deterministic? What would determine / cause the event of everything becoming non-deterministic? How are events explained in a non-deterministic system?

There are two parties to the debate on determinism: those who follow reason, they are the determinists; and those who follow one or another religion, because their scriptures say God gave man free will, e.i. determinism is impossible.

I wonder why people give this day and age more credit to 2000-year-old scripts written by untalented dilettantes, with literally no knowledge on logic, science or even psychology, and which scripts have no verification data, than to today's developed and advanced views, but that's their (the religious people's) problem. They prefer stupid restrictions on life and on logic over freedom of expression and thought because they give more credit to some St. This or St. That who were basically uneducated dreamers and illogical preachers than to their own reason. So be it.

Those are the two camps, who occasionally clash.

You want to bring this up in this thread now, but it is overly redundant, as approx. 10% of all threads deal with this issue, and it remains unresolved. Totally unresolved. The smart are not willing to sacrifice reason, and the religious are not willing to sacrifice their belief in dogma for some reasonable considerations.

I see some human beings are still living in the "good" old days of when people still believe that this is a one-or the other issue.

They believe that the "side" that they are on is the logical, smart, right and intelligent "side", while the other "side" is, obviously, the illogical, dumb, wrong and stupid "side".

I wonder if any one else can find and see this rather funny and peculiar side of human beings?

Physics controls physical objects. A physical object cannot cause its own path. This means that physical objects are deterministic.

Animals, however have an internal control. The control is in the present. One can manipulate an animal but one cannot mechanize an animal. Manipulate means control its mind. It doesn't mean control its muscles. An animal is not deterministic because physical objects don't control its path but may influence its mind.

While the past has an effect on the animal, it's effect is on the animal's cognition which is in the present.

Determinism is a property of the system as a whole. It is a function of having more or less information about the inner workings of a system. It is non-sensical to speak of determinism without having an observer to determine what a system will do.

When you hear determinism - think prediction.

It is like watching a movie twice - you know what will happen.

It is like understanding how a watch works - you know what will happen.

It is like dropping a bowling ball on a trampoline. You know what will happen.

Given enough information about its inner workings every system is deterministic.

If you have perfect information - you will get perfect determination.

Partial information gets you partial determination.

For a good introduction to systems thinking I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Gen ... 0932633498