You can keep on explaining everything that's wrong with determinism, but you're beating a dead horse.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:29 pmAnd that's fine. But it doesn't even remotely imply that everything science CANNOT study is also Determined.RCSaunders wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:58 pmMy point is that what the physical sciences study must be physically determined by the principles that describe that physical existence,Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 12:58 am
Not at all.
Determinism is not necessary for physical science.
...physical science is not the sum total of all knowledge. It's just one area, and addresses things that are purely physical. All that's necessary for physical science to work is for the things that physical science deals with to work in a law-like way. And they do.
No, that's not so. There's a third alternative.If "Determinism," assumes everything is determined physically, and that the only alternative to determinism is that nothing is determined,
"Determinism," on the one hand, and "predictability" or "law-governedness," on the other, are two different things. The latter refer only to those things science can legitmately study...which are physical phenomena, and does not rule against anything else existing, or against other areas of life and experience not operating by the same rules. That's fair enough. And it makes science possible.
So a properly modest science does not lapse into Scientism. It does not arbitrarily declare itself "ruler of all." And it doesn't range into things like consciousness, or identity or rationality or will, because those things are larger than simply physical. There is no reasonable expectation that a purely physical science will ever fathom them. It can, at most, nibble around the edges, wherever those things overlap with the physiological or physical world; but there are limits to what that approach can do...limits we all recognize, especially in areas like aesthetics, creativity, innovation, intuition, cognition, language, and a whole bunch of other things that are essential to the totality of humanity as a phenomenon.
But the latter, "Determinism" is a gratuitous claim that ALL things must operate that way, and anything that does not cannot possibly be real. That has nothing to do with science, and nothing to do with reasonableness. It's a creed, an unwarranted extension from law-governedness.
So you can have science, and science that works, and physical laws, and even predictabiilty -- with no smattering of Determinism. Determinism is a form of Scientism, not of science. In fact, because it's a gratuitous and unproven hypothesis overlaid on the data, it's an impediment to science: it burdens science with things for which science is not equipped, and for which it cannot reasonably be expected to answer.
I already said:
You seem to have some objection to the word, "determined," itself. I actually have some reservation about that word myself, since I know what are mistaken called, "laws," in the physical sciences are not laws in the sense that physical reality is regulated by them or required to conform to them. I prefer the term, "scientific principle," which only describe what exists physically and its nature--only what it is and what it does--not why it is or why it does what it does, because why is a baseless assumption that something makes reality what it is, as though it could be something else.I have no interest is defending or refuting anyone's pet view of, "determinism." I'm only defending my view that everything that is merely physical is determined (in the sense that the principles of physics thoroughly describe its behavior) but that those physical entities with the additional attributes of life, consciousness, and volition cannot be thoroughly described by physical principles alone.
I have never, by the way, referred to my view or defended it as, "determinism."