Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:13 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 1:23 am
If you believe such events happen, then you're a believer in magic, not science.
If you want to call it "magic," that's fine (even though conventionally that term has connotations that don't apply here). The question is how you're ruling it out as a logical possibility.
Well, for one thing, you have provided no reason for us to think it's a "possibility" at all. It seems you can't actually provide a single instance of an "acausal" event, but rather presume somehow that quantum probability is not a "cause."
Well, that, and that everything is "physical" -- presumably with the exception of quantum events. Because if they're "physical," then they're not "acausal" either. Their cause would then have to be something physical.
I definitely wouldn't characterize myself as a "believer" in science. I'm certainly not prone to anything akin to scientism. In my view, science gets some things right, and the basic gist of its methodology is valuable (even if it the methodology makes a number of unwarranted assumptions--the methodology still has instrumental value despite the unwarranted assumptions), but it also forwards a lot of crap and there is a lot of very bad philosophy committed under its rubric.
Well, for a Physicalist, the sort of things science investigates (physical phenomena) have to be the totality of things. There can't be anything outside of that.
Someone has no idea what logical possibility is. You're conflating it with empirical fact.
No, I think it's neither logical nor empirical. The empirical merely tells us where the prima facie case is, and hence, who has the burden of proving the case.
That would be you. On the side opposing you are all appearances, the presuppositions of science, and the natural presumptions of all human beings when they act.
On your side is...?
Re Stanford, what I described doesn't fit this, for example: "Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature."
Yes. You don't seem to know what Causal Determinism is. Stanford does.
Let's go with Stanford.
??? The bit in quotation marks there was copy-pasted from Stanford. So does Stanford know what causal determinism is or not?
Yes. I copy-pasted it. I know where it came from. Stanford's definition is colloquial, but it's generally accurate, and one Causal Determinist would recognize. So I will accept it.
The definition you offered, (roughly, that there can only be one outcome for one cause) is not an adequate definition of Causal Determinism, for the very obvious reason it
does not even address cause ; and also because it focuses on the idea of "one outcome," which is not required for Determinism, since probabilistic Determinism is also an option, one that your defence of non-Determinism needs to address.
Thus, your chosen definition does not include what's important, and it excludes possible elements of Determinism. I'm afraid it's just not adequate for the task.
Causal Determinism is not outcome-focused, but is also called "Historical Determinism." Here's another brief summary:
"The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision, is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs."(Free Dictionary)
"Antecedent." That means that Causal Determinism points primarily back to the chain of causes, not merely forward to the outcome. It's concerned with what
causes things to happen. Hence, the name.
And the OP question is whether or not human volition is one of the
causes. So let's go back to focusing on causes.