Why would I have been joking? What he said is false, and he should have known it. This is a philosophy forum. It is also something easy to look up. But, you are right. I have a way with two things. And one of them is with words.

Why would I have been joking? What he said is false, and he should have known it. This is a philosophy forum. It is also something easy to look up. But, you are right. I have a way with two things. And one of them is with words.

I am not as dumb as you presume I am, it is easy to look up cause or determine in the dictionary no expertise required there.

I also do not forgive you for not forgiving me

Determinism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1. Yes there is more than one possible future.
2. I don't know [whether the state of the present completely informs the future]. But certainly, according to the best evidence, not in the case of micro-events. In the case of macro-events, I don't know if it completely "informs" the future. But it certainly largely does.

There seem to be two conceivable ways in which the indeterminacy of micro-events could influence macro-events:

1. A situation could be artificially set up in which a micro (quantum) event is magnified to the macro level (e.g. Schr?dinger's Cat).

2. Where a course of events is highly sensitive to small changes in the initial conditions, micro-events could naturally affect the initial conditions and hence the subsequent events.

So, as I see it, the present cannot completely inform the future, even in the case of macro-events.

I did not say you were dumb. And I forgive you for not forgiving me.

There seem to be two conceivable ways in which the indeterminacy of micro-events could influence macro-events:

1. A situation could be artificially set up in which a micro (quantum) event is magnified to the macro level (e.g. Schr?dinger's Cat).

2. Where a course of events is highly sensitive to small changes in the initial conditions, micro-events could naturally affect the initial conditions and hence the subsequent events.

So, as I see it, the present cannot completely inform the future, even in the case of macro-events.

Sensitive Dependence on Initial conditions is of course one of the features of chaotic systems and the unpredictablity and new properties which arise in complex systems even when based on deterministic principles. I would say the world as a whole certainly would quality as a chaotic system.

Determinism generally is the notion that given a specified state of the world at time t, and given that the laws of nature are fixed, the course of future events is fixed as a matter of natural law. (There is only one possible future which is determined by the current state of the world and the laws of nature). Any earlier complete state of the world entails any later state of the world in all its details. The present could also be used to specify the conditions of the past. Determinism is a bidirectional in time notion.

If deterministic systems can generate 'ontological' (i.e. real) randomness, doesn't that contradict your definition of determinism above? How can a system be said to be deterministic if it allows any degree of randomness?

Well, I think determinism is false.
Causality is true but determinism is false, hence my reason for indicating they are not the same concept. The ontology of nature is ordered possiblities not determinism. Degrees of unpredictablity and hence a form of freedom, novelty and creativity is inherent in nature. I only define determinism that way to reject it.

No one claims that causation and determinism are the same concept. But determinism is defined in terms of causation.

I don't know what it would be for causation to be true (or false). Everyone allows that that there are causes, don't they. So what would it mean for causation to be false?

Determinism is the theory that every event has a cause, and every cause is an event. That seems to be false on the micro-level.

I understand prothero to be saying that it is false on the macro-level as well. If I follow him correctly, he is saying that (a) not all randomness arises from quantum indeterminacy, and (b) the term "deterministic laws" is a misnomer.

I definitely think determinism is false on virtually all levels of the "real" world. The deterministic world is an imaginary world not a real world. The laws of nature at their most fundamental level are habits, regularities, or causal but not deterministic (in the classical sense). There are many possibilities for the future (particularly for the human future) and freedom, novelty, and creativity are "real" not "illusions". Freedom in a completely unpredictable world would be useless so what we have are ordered possibilities. Even the lowly electron has "ordered possibilities".

Since either pure determinism or pure randomness would rule out free will, I don't see how a mixture of determinism and randomness will do the trick. If I act partly like a clock hand and partly like a roulette ball, how am I free?

Why would determinism (pure) rule out free will? Why could you not do what you want to do? Clock hands do not have wants, so far as I know. People do.