Daniel Dennett is a well known Determinist but you are right; it is more complex than i made out. I think his views are pretty abhorrent, and he also has no clue about QM, and still writes with a traditionally classic worldview. My view is that any philosopher who has not taken into account mechanics at the Quantum scale is missing the big picture.

Anyway, leavng poor Dennett aside:

Aside from this study which i believe indicates there is a morality issue with a Determinist worldview, there are some other serious and dangerous repercussions for a determinist view.

For instance, can anyone be held accountable for their actions in a Determinist worldview? Some of the most inefficient ideologies in the world use Determinism as a way of equalising large populations and condemning them to a cradle to grave lifetime as a sort robot. Its very difficult to argue for any kind of personal responsibility which in my opinion, just makes for a very sick society.

Can murderers and rapists be punished under such a worldview? Yes, Determinists argue that we cant look at it like that, and that some free-will is important but their argument is a contradiction in terms. You cannot on one hand belittle the individualism and free spirit of humans and then say "dont take it too far".

As the study showed, humans who think that their decisions will not change the future are encouraged to act dishonestly. This represents a self-destructive and nihilistic impulse. It's like the worst kind of apathy.

So considering how the laws of our universe and nature seem tuned to producing biological systems which crave progress and ever increasing organisation/manipulation of the enviroment; why would the universe be based on a Determinist system which as this study shows encourages non-progress, cheating, dishonesty and immorality?

Why would nature conspire against herself by allowing evolving and advanced biological systems to think their choices are irrelevant,and free-will merely an illusion? Its got Orwell's 1984 writ large :-)

My view is that from nature's standpoint, Determinism is counter-productive.

Thanks for the link. That looks a very interesting paper.

Now I see, I did confuse the two. My apologies. On with the show!

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Yes, they can be punished, and without resorting to contradictions. Deteminists who argue otherwise (and their critics who use this as an argument against determinism) make a subtle logical error. They say that someone commiting a crime has no choice in his actions, but they assume (without realizing it) that those punishing him have a choice. If you think about it, if all our actions are determined by outside world then the jury which convicted Ted Bundy and the executioner who pulled the switch did not have any more choice in their actions than Ted Bundy did. That's the weird thing about determinism -- when taken to logical conclusion, it does not require ANYONE to change their behavior in any way. Whether you are a murderer, a saint, a stern judge or a liberal legislator, you can accept that your actions are determined by your physical reality, your genes, your upbringing, etc. -- and go on doing exactly what you were doing before you accepted it. And if you are a self-doubter who can not decide morality of his own actions -- well, that's just your bad luck: your physical reality, genes and upbringing are causing your self-doubts!

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Jetlack --

I find your position extremely disturbing. The study in OP says nothing about determinism being true or false -- all it says is that belief in determinism makes people behave badly. What you are saying in effect is, some objective information about the Universe must be kept secret from people for their own good, even if it happens to be true! Granted, you believe this particular information to be false, but you strongly imply that you would keep it secret no matter what. That's exactly the argument of some Creationists -- they claim that "belief in" (they never say "knowledge of") evolution undermines morals, and therefore should not be taught. And some extreme feminists claim that it is harmful to study (and teach) the differences between male and female brains even if these differences are real -- as these feminists cannot credibly claim differences do not exist, they say the social harm of studying such outweighs any possible gain.

In all cases, the position is "X is dangerous knowledge and must be suppressed". The practitioners of such thinking usually (abovementioned feminists are an exception) honestly believe X is also false, but do not trust the public to make up its own mind about X's validity. The mere exposure to the concept is morally dangerous! Well, you were exposed to the concept of determinism and found it wanting. Assuming determinism is indeed false, why do you have so little faith in other people? Do you claim to be smarter and have greater moral fiber than most? Because that can be the only logical basis for your position.

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Because "nature" is not a conscious entity with goals? Because evolution does not strive for any ultimate ideal, but only for an immediate reproductive advantage, and is quite capable of producing results which are self-defeating, or at least non-optimal in the long term? Nest parasitism within one's own species comes to mind.

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Ilya, I agree with everything you said, but I'm going to throw in another factor here.

Part of the problem, I think, is defining determinism.
So far I have heard that it's up to Allah if you crash your car.
I have heard that it's not important what you choose, the future is set...
This isn't determinism!
These are bad attitudes and faulty thinking.

If I believe in and understand determinism, then I also know that I still have the illusion of choices. The choices are to be made. I cannot predict outcomes- even if they are caused by the interactions of all things around me. I cannot predict that.

So I had Best Choose As Best I can.

And that's from a deterministic viewpoint.

This study didn't study the effect of determinism. It studied the effect of misconceived determinism, bad attitudes and over-all self excuse making by lazy folks that don't want control over their lives.

Perhaps the study meant to say "Fatalism".

This is the misinformation that is often spread about that infernal cat. But it's just plain wrong quantum mechanics. The reason there is an alive/dead value is because the action of the apparatus that couples the cat to the nucleus destroys the coherences between the "did decay" and "did not decay" states of the nucleus. Without that coherence, the nucleus is no longer in a superposition state of having decayed or not, it is in a "mixed state", which essentially means it either decayed or it didn't, we just don't know which. Poof, the superposition is already gone, long before any observer got into the mix. It is also sometimes mistakenly stated that the cat + nucleus remain in a pure state, but the cat was never part of a pure state, not even before it was attached to the apparatus. It's just bad quantum mechanics.
That seems likely-- but also holds for sophisticated systems of all kinds, like a roomful of air.

And what makes you think the path of a comet is deterministic?

If their belief is correct, then they had no choice about behaving badly!

Wrong.

The point of determinism is not that we don't have choices or power in our lives.

Just that these are products of our physical brains- Not divine substance.

Think of Billiards.

You shoot the cue ball at the 8 ball. That 8 ball is not going to move on its own. Something needs to move it.

This is going on at the quantum level, the atomic level, the molecular level etc on up the line.

In a persons life, they have experiences, from childhood on up to present. These experiences are influences, billiard balls if you will, that help determine where a person will go.

The factors, like the weather, are so complex, numerous and interwoven, that we cannot hope to try to predict them mathematically.

So the future is a product of the bouncing billiard balls. That does not make it known to us. Or that you can just blame fate.


If I say to you "Watch out for that open manhole!" that you are carelessly about to step in- Did I change fate?

I saved your life. I prevented your death. Is that fate too?
where do you draw the line?

Fact is that the factors, influences - when all added up together- led to that event. It is out of our predictability.

We have the illusion of Free Will. We still have choices. We still must make the best choices and try our hardest.

If I say to you, "There is not Free Will. There is only pre-determined fate."
And you decide that is true and become a lazy, good for nothing slob who doesn't contribute to society- Did that just make a self fulfilling prophecy?

Saying that determinism means you are no longer accountable for yourself is like saying that you don't have to do anything in life because you are just going to die anyway. It may sound good at the moment- but it makes no sense in reality.

As near as I can tell, determinism is nothing but a philosophy inspired by misinterpretations of science (but I agree with Neverfly we are badly in need of a more specific definition of determinism, especially couched in scientifically definable terms instead of vague philosophy)-- it has zero scientific content of its own. So the question then is, what other measure will you apply to a philosophy, other than the behavior it encourages? If I believed the study, I'd be inclined to agree with jetlack that it is problematic for deterministic philosophy. But I think studies like this are very easy to test something other than what they claim to test.

The study appears to be trying to address free will, rather than determinism. As others have pointed out, they're not the same thing.
Consider, for instance, the effect that complete indeterminism would have on our ability to exercise free will.

Grant Hutchison

The problem may be in the article that is describing the study:

Note the equation, without discussion, of "inevitability, causality, predetermination, and fatalism". Although there are clearly overlaps between these, they are hardly all the same, or they would not require four different words. Above all, as Grant points out, the direct connection of any of these to "free will" is hardly clear. Can "free will" really mean anything other than a decision undertaken in the absence of external coercion? If so, then what is that other meaning?

Typical of these studies. Once you pick them apart you find they are full of it.

The article states the particular form of determinism:

So that means you are:

As for the rest:

Why don't you instead think of logic? About the rest of your post, I can say:

regarding the validity of the viewpoint taken as the premise in the article. But, leaving aside the soundness (or lack thereof) of the arguments in the rest of the post, anyone familiar with elementary logic knows that arguing "A" is false does not make the statement "If A, then B" false; it makes it true.

The article described Fatalsim. Not determinsim. It misset the conditons then claimed results. Wrong.

Not in the least. You just admitted too, that the study misrepresented what it claimed to be attempting to study.



Determisim is rather coldly logical. Are you using Classical Logic? Can you demonstrate how it is illogical?

DO NOT misplace my quotes or EVER take a quote from another post, another thread or another forum and use them out of context again.

Wrong. The study claimed that determinism has a detrimental effect.
The study misrepresented what it claimed to study - instead using Fatalism.
The results are suspect.

How was this study conducted?
Where these people that were studied educated in philosophy?

Or just a group of random folks that the Studiers preset a mentality in their mind about Fatalism?

I'm not insulting the members of the studied panel- but if they were basically unfamiliar with Determinism and uneducated in it- then the results of the study are very suspect.

The study says it set the conditions in such a way as to encourage people to think hopelessly. It sounds very biased to me.