so my main issue with determinism is basically this: causal chains dont stay simple. they branch out like a tree, every physical event depends on an astronomical number of preceding interactions.

and if you trace those dependencies back far enough (or just look across a big enough system), you eventually hit quantum events. and under the standard interpretation of QM, those arent deterministic — the theory just gives you probabilities for outcomes, not a single fixed one.

so i keep wondering if determinism can even survive at large scales / over long timescales. sure macroscopic stuff looks deterministic in practice, but the causal history behind it eventually fans out into a massive number of microscopic quantum events.

which kinda makes we wonder if theres an inductive argument here — if the causal chain keeps branching and eventually bottoms out in genuinely indeterministic events, doesnt that mean the universe as a whole cant be strictly deterministic?

obviously this all hinges on whether quantum indeterminacy is actually fundamental vs just epistemic (i.e. we just dont have the info yet), and stuff like the Many-Worlds interpretation messes with the argument too since technically everything's still "deterministic" at the wavefunction level. but overall i think QM makes classical Laplacean determinism a lot harder to defend than people usually give it credit for.

Free will means you could've actually done otherwise in that exact moment. That only makes sense if there were multiple paths open to you.

But if multiple paths were actually possible, that's indeterminism, not determinism. Determinism means only one path was ever possible, you just didn't know which one ahead of time.

So how does "you have free will" survive next to "only one outcome was ever possible"? Can anyone explain it to me?

Ciao ragazzi, è da poco che sto studiando il determinismo, il libero arbitrio, il compatibilismo e il libertarismo.

Il problema è che leggere sul determinismo mi rende triste, mentre vorrei essere felice. Mi viene da pensare che se fosse vero il determinismo non ci sarebbe più gusto in niente.

E se esco con gli amici perché dovrei dire qualcosa se era già determinato che la dicessi? Che gusto c'è nel pensare che non sono io l'artefice del mio futuro?

Mi viene la paura di non riuscire più a divertirmi, fare ciò che voglio e sentire la felicità perché è tutto determinato e anche il termine felicità è un termine inventato da noi umani perché nella realtà la felicità intesa come concetto non esiste.

Però scusate, la sensazione e l'emozione della felicità esiste e la proviamo eccome, come sentiamo il dolore, determinato o no. Su questo siete d'accordo?

Forse se esco con gli amici certo che devo parlare e devo farli ridere e ridere anch'io, senza pensare "tanto è tutto determinato", perché poi altrimenti non mi godo la vita. Sarà anche tutto determinato, le nostre azioni e le azioni delle nostre persone, ma tanto io non so cosa deve succedere in futuro. E anche se una cosa è determinata se è bella è bella comunque, e se mi fa provare qualche emozione positiva cosa cambia se è determinata o meno? Prendo e porto a casa.

As I was lurking here I was getting curious about a certain thought process.

So, if I'm accepting of the fact that everything is determined then wouldn't that include me being accepting of the fact that some people's belief in their own free will is determined?

The way I see the case presented is usually with reference to causal chains, genetics, environmental upbringing, etc. I think it’s all true, but makes the case more difficult to explain to others and more contentious.

At the end of the day, people are just made of particles. Particles follow the laws of physics. There is no soul that could be the true originator of thoughts and actions that exists outside of the laws of physics. Free will is a non-starter.

I entirely believe hard determinism. Just read Spinoza’s Ethics and was entirely blown away. Is there anyone else you guys recommend or anyone who builds off Spinoza? Many thanks

Me as a determinist can't properly grasp brute facts because of my belief system. What about you guys? Why would/why would you not? How can it logically be possible, and why are brute facts true/wrong?

Hi everyone. I've been trying to understand the free will vs. determinism debate, and I think I'm stuck on a basic point.

Suppose determinism is true. My genes, upbringing, experiences, memories, beliefs, personality, and current circumstances all contribute to making me the person I am. Then, when I face a choice between A and B, my decision will be the result of all those previous causes.

Me = genes → upbringing → experiences → memories → beliefs → personality → desires → reasoning → decision

But here's what I don't understand:

Why does the fact that my decision has prior causes mean that I didn't freely choose it?

If I am not something separate from my character, beliefs, desires, memories, etc., then those things are me. If those things lead me to choose A after I think through the situation, why should we say that the prior causes "forced" me to choose A rather than saying I chose A because of who I am?

Why does the causal chain preceding my decision make the decision less mine?

I understand the usual compatibilist response that free will can mean "acting according to your own reasons and desires without external coercion." But I'm trying to understand something deeper:

If I am itself the product of previous causes, and my will is an expression of that causal history, why can't a determined decision still genuinely be my free decision?

If I consider "ME" as a product of my previous experiences then a decision caused because of my previous causes are also mine. THUS, I have free will.

Published in Nature in 2005.

Here’s a link:

https://www.scribd.com/document/851932386/Chiang-Ted-What-s-Expected-of-Us-Nature-7-July-2005

What if you had a computer that could predict the time you will fall asleep tonight provided you gave it enough data? If you feed the computer all the relevant physical information that determines when you will fall asleep, then it will give you a prediction. But once it makes the prediction, couldn't you always just decide to stay up a little later?

There are three options

1. The computer makes a prediction that you will fall asleep at a certain time. You try to stay up past the time it predicted, but you are unable to do it. Something forces you to fall asleep no matter if you snort cocaine and shoot up adrenaline. It seems bizarre that you'd be unable to stay up a little later in this case. It's as if some force takes over to prevent it and that's not how things normally operate.

2. The computer's prediction doesn't mean you can't stay up past when it says you'll fall asleep. This means your choice is underdetermined by the relevant casual factors AKA determinism is false and human choices have some weird power to introduce new causal chains into the world independently of everything else. This seems really weird.

3. The situation isn't possible. Your choice is either determined or random, but either way no amount of data you can give the computer will be compatible with one and only one possible future. Your future actions may be determined but are never predictable. It's impossible to know what you will do in the future no matter how much data you collect. This also seems weird because other events are predictable in principle, even very complex ones that depend on lots of causal factors. Weather events are in principle predictable if you have enough data. For whatever reason, this doesn't apply to human choices.

What do you think?

Robert Sapolsky often talks about determinism, and how chemical interactions in the brain create the next set of chemical interactions. He is a stark believer that there is no free will.

If a man understands the universe differently than he did yesterday, and this causes him to have a different outlook, surely he must then have new emotions in relation to the stimulus related to his new understanding.

Where in the chemical deterministic standpoint, can you fit in man’s ability to understand information, and to create new perspectives which genuinely affect mood.

How do we reconcile, the ability to change ourselves based on our understanding and perspective, with the common view that this chemical set of interactions and brain configuration, will necessarily create the next.

Or even simpler, how does ‘understanding’ whatever that really means, alter chemicals and synapses in the brain.

How does an understanding even work?

Do we breach determinism when we understand determinism?

I don’t understand

I'm interested in your opinions on a thought experiment about determinism, manipulation, and changing people's desires.

Assume strict determinism: every thought, desire, decision, and action is the result of prior causes. Suppose I give someone a rose, buy them coffee, care for them when they're sick, etc. Those actions can causally influence how they feel about me and may eventually make them love me. Their response depends on their brain, biology, past experiences, current state, and every other relevant condition. Their later reasoning about the rose is also just part of the causal chain.

Now imagine a hypothetical device that produces an effect which can also influence someone's desire to love me. Importantly, I'm defining it as closely as possible to the rose case: it doesn't simply override their mind or magically force love regardless of who they are. Its effect interacts with their particular brain, biology, history, current state, and so on. They can feel the effect, notice it, and think about it. If, given all the relevant conditions, the effect causes them to love me, they do; if not, they don't.

My intuition is that, under strict determinism, I don't see a fundamental difference between the two. In both cases, I'm intentionally introducing an external cause in order to influence someone's desires. In both cases, their subsequent thinking is itself causally determined. And if the device has the same relevant causal structure as giving a rose—just using a different medium—why should one count as ordinary influence while the other counts as manipulation?

I'm not claiming that determinism automatically makes every possible kind of manipulation ethical. I'm specifically asking where the morally or philosophically relevant difference would be in this case.

What do you think? Is there a flaw in my reasoning? If you think the device is importantly different from the rose, what exactly is the difference, and why does that difference survive once we assume strict determinism? Please point out any hidden assumptions or weaknesses in the argument.

Neurosurgeons found that if we stimulate certain regions of a patient’s brain, we can manipulate the desire to move a hand, the eyes, or the lips. This suggests that we are bound by the laws of nature. We’re nothing but biological machines. This supports determinism, but if ontological entities have some latitude within the system, isn’t logic itself an illusion? To go deeper, illogic is simply what fails to be logical. But if the system is objectively logical to us, there’s a problem, because that logic is relative to our expectations, so it might actually be illogical. Returning to the idea of determinism, quantum mechanics and black holes suggest that an outside observer could have created the universe with some latitude. These mathematical structures dictate what we describe as logical in our specific reality because they’re consistent. If an outside observer can create another world using different deterministic rules, it shatters the assumption that our logic is a universal requirement for stability. So why does humanity call it logic if logic itself could be fundamentally untrue on a cosmic scale? The term makes it sound like it’s the absolute structure of the universe. We could’ve used a less grandiose term

Side note: this is just a deep thought, so take it with a grain of salt, because if logic itself might be unreliable, then my argument that human logic is an illusion must also be treated as an illusion since I’m using logic to make the argument

Your thoughts?

It seems to me we use the term cause in two very different ways that are completely independent of each other, and that confusing these for each other results in a lot of problems.

Temporal causation
One way we use the term cause is in discussions about events causing other events. I push the button and this causes the engine to start. This is past event to future event causation. When we talk about causal determinism, this is what we are discussing. Here's a hopefully somewhat uncontroversial definition of determinism for the purpose of discussion.

Causal Determinism: The idea that the past state of the world at some time necessitates specific future states of the world at all later times, as transformed according to natural law.

I say causal determinism, to differentiate it from logical determinism or any other senses. Actually the broader point I'm making here isn't really to do with determinism versus indeterminism, but I'm using this to establish one sense in which we use the term cause. We use it the same way when we talk about indeterminism in relationships between temporal events though.

Hierarchical causation
Another way we talk about causation is in terms of bottom up or top down causation, basically something like reductionism and weak emergence, versus top down or strong emergence. The conclusion I've come to is that this is a completely different concept. I'm not even entirely sure it has any common features with the idea of causal determinism at all.

I came to this conclusion observing some people talking about the relationship between causal determinism and beliefs about the neurological basis of mental processes, such as making decisions. I realised that what seems to happen is people seem to rotate the concept of past-to-future causation into the hierarchical dimension, as though microphysical processes such as chemical reactions in the brain cause thoughts in the way that ball A hitting ball B causes ball B to hit ball C. I don't believe that's the way to think about emergence at all.

Emergence isn't a temporal process, it's a hierarchical or structural one. It's looking at the exact same activity happening at the same time at different degrees of detail. The temperature of a gas is the motion of the gas molecules, it's not something that is caused by their motion in the sense that a gas molecule hitting another causes the other one to be deflected. Likewise the temperature of the gas isn't something that causes the molecules to move a certain way. Viewed this way, causation in the event-to-event sense is a completely different concept. In fact confusing these is pernicious. Even talking about the relationship between the microphysical and macro descriptions in causal terms leads to fundamental misconceptions. I don't think we should be talking about what I'm calling hierarchical causation at all. We need other terms.

I won't go further into what I think those misconceptions are, or what I think about emergence now. Maybe another time. For now I'd be interested to see how others think about this. I'm coming to believe that the fact we use cause in both these senses is a significant problem.

Feelings need justification, reasons amplify feeling and in turn those feelings when it overwhelms. It compels you into doing something.

No. I think it is more accurate to say that, feelings need justification, reasons manipulate feelings. And in turn those reasons. Whichever feeling it overwhelms, your action will be according to that strongest feeling.

If your conclusion lead you to being calm after all the reasoning. Of course you'd feel like a monk. If your conclusion leads you to being irritated after you reasoned everything out. Of course you would act irritated, like whatever the usual irritated trait does. Your actions are based on how the reasoning toned down your feelings. If it didn't tone it down, well you might scream, cry or laugh etc, etc etc.

The only reason why you would reason when choosing something, is because your mind is carefully justifying which is a better choice, out of all the options to pick for you personally

So you always choose the best perceived choice for you.

Your mind always wants the best choice for your character. "Are you sure about that? I will jump into lava to prove that wrong."🤦🤦Obviously.. Your mind perceived that you proving me wrong is more important than your life, is why you did that.

And sometimes, you just become a slave to your belief (belief is something you cannot control, say whatever you want about it. You know what is true to you and what is not). You want your belief justified as, you would feel very satisfied if you ever prove it to be true.

And there is something that people keep forgetting. Not everytime you would reason things out. Most of what you do, happens subconsciously.

Once a satisfying belief has been justified and installed, you do not question it every minute. It just sits in your mind, quietly shaping perception and action.

You will always choose the option that you feel is strongest to you.

And everything always comes back to your belief, is what shapes your life.

If you feel that your belief is false, of course it would compel you to question it out and find proofs if it's actually false or not. The feeling of uncertainty is what makes you genuinely question something, after all no?