@ToolGuy Like Bob Dylan from Brownsville Girl “If there’s an original thought out there I could do with it right now”

But that’s completely predetermined, right?

@mrdunn Yep.

@BohoHeathen
Humans are a plague on humanity.

@Fernapple Does the predetermination trace its origin all the way back to the first perturbations in the rapid expansion of the universe after the Big Bang? Or do our choices play a roll in determining outcomes?

@mrdunn All the way back.

@Fernapple interesting! Is there a beginning to this chain of causality, an original uncaused cause, or is it an infinite regression?

@mrdunn Unknown.

@Fernapple is it really unknown? Can it not be logically deduced?

@mrdunn No I think that it is a paradox. The religious believe that they can get round the paradox of course by just dropping in god, as they always do. But of course it is equally possible to ask the same question of a creator. "Is there a beginning to this chain of causality (god), an original uncaused cause (god), or is it an infinite regression (of god)?" As it is of the physical universe, the question who created god is just as valid. Therefore that does not resolve the paradox but only moves it back a stage, and the statement that god is eternal and outside of time, so that therefore it trumps the paradox out of existence, is merely an assertion not supported by any evidence and so just an appeal to magic/miracles.

For interests sake you may also like to think about two other possibles. One: the universe goes round in a loop. (the big bang being a stage in the loop). Two: the universe is static and cause and effect plus time are only local illusions, which form part of a static whole; like one of those old paintings where the sails of the windmill went round by clockwork.

@Fernapple the “possibles” you have posited are also just hypothesis unsupported by any evidence.

I was alluding to the supposition that causal determinism cannot be traced to an original cause because it is instead the result of an infinite regression of causes. This is logically untenable because if there is an infinite regression of causes then one can never arrive at a first cause, and if there is no first cause, then there can be no intermediary causes either. Therefore, there must be a first cause.

To label it unknown, or a paradox, is just an appeal to ignorance.

@mrdunn Yes of course all possibles are unsupported by evidence, that is accepting what listing possibles are all you can do is for. I did not claim that they could be said in any way to be true, only "possibles" and I leave it open ended, because I am sure there are many more possibles, some of which will no doubt occure to you. At the point where there is an end to evidence the most sensible thing to do is to list the possibles as well as you can, and then accept your need for more evidence, or else you are in danger of postulating magical answers.

It is not an appeal to ignorance, but an acceptance of ignorance, which is quite a different thing. Appeal to ignorance is a fallacy in informal logic, which asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven untrue. At no time did I assert that any of the ideas were true which is why I use the word possibles.

It is another related "possible" that since humans are creatures whose brains evolved for survival on the plains of Africa, not for understanding the working of the universe, that therefore although the universe may follow its own perfect laws, our brains are quite incapable of understanding them. For example, perhaps one day, we may invent a robort/computer, which can gather all the evidence needed and solve the riddles, but there is no certainty that it would be able to explain its results to us however hard it tried. Nor is there any certainty that they are solvable by any brain.

@Fernapple if causal determinism is the way of the universe, then the human brain hasn’t evolved for survival on the plains of Africa at all, it is just an illusion that it has, like thinking. The human brain and it’s faculties of knowing, contemplating, understanding, and imagining were “locked in” at the moment of the first cause along with everything that any brain would ever think it knows or contemplate or understand or imagine. Postulating possibles is moot as they are merely the product of a chain of causality from which there is no escape. In like manner “certainty” and “solvable” are illusory concepts.

@mrdunn It is of no importance in that sense if there is an illusion of reality or not, because if everything is an illusion then the illusion stands in the place of reality and may therefore be treated as the equivalent of reality. And the illusion therefore still obeys laws, such as those of evolution, which can be understood or not. Certainly there could be two degrees of illusion in that sense, both the illusion that is the universe and the inner model of the outer illusion which may exist in the smaller illusion which we call our brains, (which certainly is an illusion even if there is an outer reality ) but that does not alter anything since the perceptions that we have, are all that we have, and nothing about them changes if we regards them as illusions or reality since there is no alternative with which to compare them.

@Fernapple no matter how convincing an illusion may appear, to claim the illusion can stand in the place of reality is a false equivalency, either it is an illusion or it is reality, it cannot be both.
I am trying to gauge whether your world view is pre deterministic or fatalistic or perhaps a bit of both?
I personally reject hard determinism as a description of reality because the fact that there is indeterminacy at the quantum level of realty gives rise to uncertainty at the level of human brain functioning, and that is not compatible with hard determinism.

@mrdunn Of course an illusion can be the equivalence of reality, if you are part of the illusion then without any alternative viewpoint then the illusion has to stand in for reality because there is nothing else.

@Fernapple that is a nonsense. An illusion cannot exist without a reality which one perceives to be other than it is, otherwise it is not an illusion.

@mrdunn Quite, but how would you know that anything you perceived was anything but an illusion, unless your brain was an evolved structure which evolved by a mechanism such as natural selection, which placed a premium on a brain which could create a good model of that reality, because those with a poor model do not survive and reproduce as well.

@Fernapple I’m having trouble following your reasoning. Do you mean to say “how would you know that anything you perceived was anything but reality” ? like the poor troglodytes in Plato’s allegory of the cave? One can only recognise an illusion if one is aware of the overarching reality, but whether or not one recognises the illusion doesn’t alter reality, it just means one is either aware or ignorant of the truth.

@mrdunn That's it. Or to use the modern anology, "We would never know if we were a brain in a vat." Our brains have to model truth for us in our heads using the information that our senses provide, and so therefore we are in the cave of our own skulls to a degree anyway, there being no escape from that cave for anyone, even Plato. But there is also the point that, even if there was a second outer cave like Plato's within which we sit, we have no way of knowing of outer reality, or there may even be a whole series of nested caves one within the other, which we have no way of knowing the boundaries of or escaping. ( Except perhaps Plato's alone which we escape when we abandon our belief in human culture as a source of truth.)

Therefore the point is that in the end the search for an outer reality is (with the one exception of Plato's cave) pointless and profitless, so that our model of the caves core being our nearest approximation to reality we have, we can only regard them as the equivalent of reality.

The search for that outer truth being without profit or point, since we can not even see the caves walls, then it follows we can only then look for evidence based truth about the laws which explain the universe as we see it, be that within or without a cave. And the best evidence based model of how our brains work that has been found so far, to my mind at least, is the view that our brains evolved by mutation and natural sellection inorder to aid survival /reproduction, on a medium sized planet. In which case we can reasonable assume that they are adapted to provide, a model within our skulls, which is a fairly good approximation, to the reality of life on the surface of a medium sized planet. It will of course be an unknown degree short of perfect, and we can also therefore conclude that any talent we have for understanding the greater universe, cosmology or the quantum world is purely an accidental side effect, and must therefore be treated with caution.

It is good or wise therefore, to my mind, to regard even sense based perception with care, and then to set a hierarchy to our understanding, with scientifically tested evidence first, the evidence of senses second, what can be logically reasoned from those two third, (Though since the first two are doubtful and logic imperfect it is wise to regard that as unlikely to be good truth. ) cultural information which is the third at second hand with deliberate lying sometimes added may be held very unlikely to contain any truth except by accident.

Which is why I tend to regard speculation about things such as determinism, based on things such a quantum physics, about which we have only limited and qualified scientific knowledge, as questionable. Great fun if you are only doing it for fun, but not something to base a solid world view on. And it is also why I like at the limits of my knowledge to list possibles, with just sometimes a statement about estimated probablities but no more.

Please forgive if this is a bit rambling, misspelt etc. but I am hurried by work. Hope to catch you again later.

@Fernapple Please pardon my delayed response, I needed some time to properly consider your post.

I agree with you that all we can ever really have is a “nearest approximation to reality” but it still corresponds to reality, nonetheless.

I think your statement “we can also therefore conclude that any talent we have for understanding the greater universe, cosmology or the quantum world is purely an accidental side effect” (of evolution), must itself, be treated with caution. In any case, how could there be an “accidental side effect” in a purely deterministic universe? Nihil est sine ratione.

Quantum theory is a fundamental theory in physics, to label it “questionable” is somewhat chauvinistic (in my opinion).

I think both science and religion play a role in helping us find the parameters of our “caves”. They both give us clues and insights into the verities and nature of an overarching reality that is not entirely, directly, sensible to us. Very analogous to a fetus developing in the womb, acquiring the limbs, members and organs that it will need once it leaves the “womb cave” and enters the “universal cave”, where it will have the opportunity to acquire knowledge and develop attributes (the limbs, members & organs it will require when it leaves the "universal cave" ).

@mrdunn Sorry but I do not call quantum theory questionable only that use of it. Except of course in so far as all science is regarded by all scientists as questionable, since the phiosophy of science is basically that nothing is ever proven.

I can not however ever agree that religion could ever be a way to truth, or out of the cave, since I am sure that it is itself a cave of the very worst sort. Though to use the metaphor as I have little doubt Plato intended it, then religion is almost certainly one, perhaps all, of the shadows on the wall. It would then have been dangerous no doubt to openly address a criticism of religion, especially in the aftermath of what happened to Socrates. So that therefore addressing it indirectly in a cryptic metaphor was the only safe way, and perhaps the reason for inventing the metaphor in the first place, though of course he then ran with it and made it say much more.

@Fernapple I see, so using quantum physics to test the falsifiability of determinism is questionable. “God does not play dice”. That’s a bit of a contradiction with your “hierarchy of understanding”, but then again, not surprising, considering you regard all scientifically tested evidence and sensory perception as “doubtful” and any logically reasoned conclusions that may be gleaned from the aforementioned as “unlikely to be good truth”. Yours is a very dimly lit cave indeed!
And yet you are very, very certain that religion contains no truth whatsoever, and you have little doubt as to Plato’s intended meaning in the allegory of the cave? Perhaps you place a little too much confidence in your own, “predetermined” conclusions?

@mrdunn I do not see that the statement is in any way a contradition of the hierarchy of understanding, quite the reverse it comes directly from it, and that everyones cave is dimly lit is the whole point of it. ( Even Einstein is said to have gone wrong with the playing dice metaphor.) Especially since there is only a tenuous link between the scientific quantam theory and the popular and philosophical questions of freee will etc..

I did not say that religion contains no truth whatsoever, the statement was "that religion could ever be a way to truth" in the context of the cave metaphor. Of course religion contains some truth, it is hard to prevent truth entering any belief system, if you toss a coin and say heads every time, you will probably be right half of the time, but that does not make tossing a coin is a good way to truth. Please try not to straw man me, that is usually the last resort of the religious appologist when they think they have lost and loose their dignity.

As to my interpretation of Plato it was, I admit, speculative, but I am reasonably confident about it , though well prepared to accept correction from historians of philosophy. Though it has to be said it came from a light hearted paying with the metaphor, and it was fifty years ago that I read Plato, so memory fades. (Which is another of the many ways that it is possible to go astray in the search for truth, adding to the dim confusion of the cave. )

I am certain of very little, but two things. One being the uncertainty of nearly everything and the need to hold everything as questionable. And the other being that, the only philosophy which started by accepting uncertainty and the and the need to hold everything as questionable as it first and guiding priciple, science, has because of that, become paramount far above all other philosophies, and yeilded far more worth because of it.

@Fernapple There is no straw man. Your statements are contradictory and not consistent with your assertion that the universe is purely deterministic.

@mrdunn On the contrary, there is no connection between a universe which may be deterministic, and the understanding of determinism, which may never exist. But yes I do appologize when I said deterministic I did not state that I hold that as a belief based possition not as one based on evidence based knowledge, which as you will have guessed I hold belief to be a very weak form of truth.

@Fernapple I think we all function with a certain degree of conviction in our beliefs, some more so than others, and most of us, when pressed for the details of, or evidence for, our beliefs, will often struggle to define or clearly articulate them.

I agree with you that cause and effect is clearly the mode of operation in the macro universe, but we differ in interpreting this to mean that the universe is deterministic. Reality becomes very fuzzy at the quantum level and I believe this points to there being more to reality than we can directly sense or measure. My intuition tells me that the forms, shapes and laws of this physical universe are the shadows on the wall of the cave. I might be wrong about that.

I have enjoyed conversing with you, thank you for engaging me.

@mrdunn Yes sorry to start of badly when I said, "of course" it implied more convition than I really have, and it was a flip answer meaning that I usually regard myself as deteriminist in the macro way of most none believers, not that I held to determinsim being proved in every way. And I did not think that it would lead to a conversation, which has been very interesting though. The only real issue being that since the quantum world is usually regarded as a model by most scientists, and subject to possible change as are all scientific theories, that even Einstien got his fingers scorched over it, and that philosophy and neurological determinism may be quite different and come from different fields. It is, I think you will argree, questionable whether you can make really make a jump from one to the others.

No, I think that self control is an illusion just as much a god. We are completely deterministic.

And I have a touch of wind.

@Moravian Is it that the foul wind that blows in one's bowels? (A tip of the hat to Ben Franklin).

@WonderWartHog99 That's the one

@Moravian Here's hoping it's all gentle freeps and not triple flutter thunder blasts.

Hail yeah!

@Coffeeman Nobody can stand you if you had beer and hard boiled eggs for lunch.