Probability Argument Against Determinism

[Received]

The anticipated objection will be that there is no good reasons to think our beliefs would be false. But this seems easy to counter. The argument applies to rationality and not sense experience per se. If you believe that a belief was determined out of a number of different beliefs but any one of those beliefs could have been triggered and was just as likely as any other, then the likelihood of this belief would be lower than a half (since you could have just as likely believed in libertarianism, compatibalism, nothing or anything else) and thus the belief in determinism would be unjustified.

It isn't true that any belief will be determined in the sense that it has just as much of a chance of being believed as other potential beliefs, in the same sense that one raindrop falling into a bottle doesn't mean the other raindrops were equally likely to do the same -- especially the ones a mile away.

 

[essentialsaltes]

The rain does not determine your belief. It's not raining in your brain.

I keep charitably looking for a sensible interpretation of your response, and I cannot locate one.

If you prick your finger on a needle, that determines (through a chain of deterministic causal events) a sensation of pain. The needle does not stab your brain.

 

[Chesterton]

I keep charitably looking for a sensible interpretation of your response, and I cannot locate one.

I don't know how to say it more simply. I know you don't believe that raindrops falling on the lawn cause a physical event in your mind. The rain is evidence of the thing we call raining. I'm sure it's the best possible kind of evidence, as the saying goes "seeing is believing", but it cannot determine any belief one way or the other.

If you prick your finger on a needle, that determines (through a chain of deterministic causal events) a sensation of pain. The needle does not stab your brain.

A physical sensation is not equivalent to forming a belief.

 

[Ariston]

Well, thanks for the criticisms that were intended to be constructive. This still seems like a sound argument as state on my last post on this page. As a word of advice to determinists - the starting point for determinist is usually the observed regularities in the natural world. The starting point for libertarians is going to be immediate experience (where I believe all good philosophy must start). Since it is apparently true that we have free will (noone doubts that) its a belief that is basic and more certain (since its more direct like reliability of cognition) to you and me than that the regularities of nature are continuing in a regular sequence. We cannot continue to ignore consciousness, person-hood, and only focus on primary qualities. Like consciousness, thought, qualia, intentionality, values, and the self, free will cannot be addressed through methodological naturalism. But like sounds, smells, reason, ect., it is something that needs to be explained, and not explained away. This is what determinist do. They take one aspect of immediate experience that is as obvious as the computer screen in front of their face and they eliminate for no reason other than that they observe regularities in nature. Our awareness of volition, libertarianism, needs to be taken into account and since the grounds for denying free will are no better than denying other mind or the capacity to reason it seems to me unjustified to become a determinist. I do not see headaches outside of me but that is no reason to disbelieve in them when I am conscious that I am having one. These are all starting points and apparently true - innocent until proven guilty - like the belief that I have a headache when my head hurts, libertarianism is the most sensible position until the side making radical claims that are apparently false provide positive evidence that contrary to all appearances, you and me are not continuing agents that are responsible.

P.S. If this post upset you remember that matter made me type it.

 

[quatona]

Since it is apparently true that we have free will (noone doubts that)

Ah, noone holds the position you are trying to argue against.

P.S. If this post upset you remember that matter made me type it.

Well, I am not upset. But there are definitely some conditions that would count as an excuse for making fallacious posts, in my book.

 

[Chesterton]

P.S. If this post upset you remember that matter made me type it.

And it was determined a long time ago, in a singularity far, far away...

 

[essentialsaltes]

I don't know how to say it more simply. I know you don't believe that raindrops falling on the lawn cause a physical event in your mind.

Surely I'm a better judge of what I believe.

The rain is evidence of the thing we call raining.

Yes, and evidence can produce belief. If minds are physical or supervene on the physical, then physical events cause mental events.

If you were in a windowless room, and you were asked whether you believed it was raining, you might strain your ears to hear any pattering on the roof, or have a desire to look outside and gain some evidence. You would want that evidence to 'help you decide', but there would be no decision to make if you were allowed to look outside and saw it raining. The evidence of the rain would determine your belief. Even if you were insincere and answered, "The sun is shining," this would not affect your actual belief, which was determined by the evidence of rain.

A physical sensation is not equivalent to forming a belief.

Why not? You see a cheeseburger on TV and your stomach growls, and you announce to yourself "I'm hungry." At that point you believe yourself to be hungry. When you feel the physical sensation of hunger, what more is required before you believe you are hungry?

 

[Radagast]

The rain is evidence of the thing we call raining. I'm sure it's the best possible kind of evidence, as the saying goes "seeing is believing", but it cannot determine any belief one way or the other.

Why not? Do you deny that there is a causal chain from the rain to my holding a belief about it?

 

[Radagast]

Since it is apparently true that we have free will (noone doubts that)

But some of us believe in determinism plus compatibilist free will.

This is what determinist do.

That's just false. Like I said, some of us believe in determinism plus compatibilist free will.

P.S. If this post upset you remember that matter made me type it.

Not all determinists believe in physical determinism. Some believe in predestination by God.

 

[Received]

Well, thanks for the criticisms that were intended to be constructive. This still seems like a sound argument as state on my last post on this page. As a word of advice to determinists - the starting point for determinist is usually the observed regularities in the natural world. The starting point for libertarians is going to be immediate experience (where I believe all good philosophy must start). Since it is apparently true that we have free will (noone doubts that) its a belief that is basic and more certain (since its more direct like reliability of cognition) to you and me than that the regularities of nature are continuing in a regular sequence. We cannot continue to ignore consciousness, person-hood, and only focus on primary qualities. Like consciousness, thought, qualia, intentionality, values, and the self, free will cannot be addressed through methodological naturalism. But like sounds, smells, reason, ect., it is something that needs to be explained, and not explained away. This is what determinist do. They take one aspect of immediate experience that is as obvious as the computer screen in front of their face and they eliminate for no reason other than that they observe regularities in nature. Our awareness of volition, libertarianism, needs to be taken into account and since the grounds for denying free will are no better than denying other mind or the capacity to reason it seems to me unjustified to become a determinist. I do not see headaches outside of me but that is no reason to disbelieve in them when I am conscious that I am having one. These are all starting points and apparently true - innocent until proven guilty - like the belief that I have a headache when my head hurts, libertarianism is the most sensible position until the side making radical claims that are apparently false provide positive evidence that contrary to all appearances, you and me are not continuing agents that are responsible.

P.S. If this post upset you remember that matter made me type it.

The summary I'm getting here is that you can't use objectivity to fight against subjectivity. But it's just as true that you can't use subjectivity to fight against objectivity. The two are simply separated by an unbridgeable gap, in the sense of using our experience to know if there is or isn't something objective out there corresponding to it (such as our sense of self, or sense of anything "out there").

This isn't an argument against determinism, unless you're saying that because we believe things from our subjective experience to seem or "feel" true that they must be (objectively) true. Well, that's an assumption with no justification, and part of the unbridgeable gap I mentioned above.

Otherwise you haven't address my (or possibly a few other's) criticisms to your original argument.

 

[Ana the Ist]

You cannot have a sense experience of determinism so this rebuttal is irrelevant. I suppose the argument would apply to rationality and metaphysics. If you believe that a belief was determined out of a number of different beliefs but any one of those beliefs could have been triggered then the likelihood of this belief would be lower than a half (since you could have just as likely believed in libertarianism, compatibalism, nothing or anything else) and thus unjustified. That is why it is unlikely to be true.

Hmm, I am not sure if you are getting this argument. Believing in determinism provides a defeater for the belief in determinism since you would have to be committed to the faith that all your reasoning was determined which makes the likelihood of that belief low relative to other metaphysical beliefs that you are just as likely to hold. Believing in determinism undercuts the justification for believing in determinism. It is like shooting yourself in the foot. On cannot sensibly believe it.

I'll freely admit I'm not getting this argument. This is the part I don't get....I completely understand what you're saying... I just don't understand why you think it's true. Determinism isn't a method for deciding what to do, it's a description of why we choose to do what we do (I think, I'm not actually a determinist). As such, I don't see how it would change the probabilities of a correct answer when using logic

"Believing in determinism provides a defeater for the belief in determinism since you would have to be committed to the faith that all your reasoning was determined which makes the likelihood of that belief low relative to other metaphysical beliefs that you are just as likely to hold. "

Can you just explain why you think this is true? I totally understand

 

[Chesterton]

Surely I'm a better judge of what I believe.

Alright, but I'd like to see the chain of physical events in your brain diagrammed. I'm fine with the first physical parts - light hits rain, bounces to your retina, etc.

Yes, and evidence can produce belief. If minds are physical or supervene on the physical, then physical events cause mental events.

To the first sentence, no. I'm not quibbling, but evidence can be used to form a belief, it does not itself produce belief. To the second sentence, I'm curious what distinction you make between physical and mental events, while asserting (I assume) that everything is physical.

If you were in a windowless room, and you were asked whether you believed it was raining, you might strain your ears to hear any pattering on the roof, or have a desire to look outside and gain some evidence. You would want that evidence to 'help you decide', but there would be no decision to make if you were allowed to look outside and saw it raining. The evidence of the rain would determine your belief. Even if you were insincere and answered, "The sun is shining," this would not affect your actual belief, which was determined by the evidence of rain.

Yes there would be a decision to make. You may make it so quickly that you don't attend to the fact that you are thinking but you are.

True story: I once heard rain outside as it was starting to get dark. I pulled back a curtain briefly and saw rain hitting the window. Walked into another room and the rain stopped. Walked back into the first room and the rain started again, at which point I got suspicious of my senses. My neighbor had turned her sprinkler up way too high and water was hitting the side of my house, so it wasn't raining.

Why not? You see a cheeseburger on TV and your stomach growls, and you announce to yourself "I'm hungry." At that point you believe yourself to be hungry. When you feel the physical sensation of hunger, what more is required before you believe you are hungry?

Would you agree that no belief at all need follow or accompany the sensation, for instance when you were a hungry baby, or if you were a bacterium? This at least demonstrates that a sense of something, and a belief about that something, are two different things.

Why not? Do you deny that there is a causal chain from the rain to my holding a belief about it?

There is a causal connection. We all know there are actual chains of causation between physical things in the world. I'd like to be shown that a belief is a physical thing. What size and color is my belief that it's raining?

 

[Ana the Ist]

Alright, but I'd like to see the chain of physical events in your brain diagrammed. I'm fine with the first physical parts - light hits rain, bounces to your retina, etc.


To the first sentence, no. I'm not quibbling, but evidence can be used to form a belief, it does not itself produce belief. To the second sentence, I'm curious what distinction you make between physical and mental events, while asserting (I assume) that everything is physical.


Yes there would be a decision to make. You may make it so quickly that you don't attend to the fact that you are thinking but you are.

True story: I once heard rain outside as it was starting to get dark. I pulled back a curtain briefly and saw rain hitting the window. Walked into another room and the rain stopped. Walked back into the first room and the rain started again, at which point I got suspicious of my senses. My neighbor had turned her sprinkler up way too high and water was hitting the side of my house, so it wasn't raining.


Would you agree that no belief at all need follow or accompany the sensation, for instance when you were a hungry baby, or if you were a bacterium? This at least demonstrates that a sense of something, and a belief about that something, are two different things.


There is a causal connection. We all know there are actual chains of causation between physical things in the world. I'd like to be shown that a belief is a physical thing. What size and color is my belief that it's raining?

It's brown...shaped like a medium sized duke.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Alright, but I'd like to see the chain of physical events in your brain diagrammed. I'm fine with the first physical parts - light hits rain, bounces to your retina, etc.

Visual centers interpret the images. Correlation engines match water droplets in air with previous history. Linguistic engines match droplets with 'rain'. Weather dipswitches flick to 'rain'. Who knows what the actual links look like, but I don't see anything to prevent something like that.

To the second sentence, I'm curious what distinction you make between physical and mental events, while asserting (I assume) that everything is physical

None. Mind is an emergent property of purely physical systems. As wetness is of atoms.

Yes there would be a decision to make.

But, having seen and/or felt the rain, could you decide otherwise? Unless you lie to yourself, I say no. If you perceive the rain, it leads inexorably, deterministically, to a belief that it is raining. Feel free to call it a judgment that you are 'making', but there is no choice in the result. If it's raining, and you're not insane or defective, then you believe it is raining.

My neighbor had turned her sprinkler up way too high and water was hitting the side of my house, so it wasn't raining.

No one has argued that someone's determination that it is raining cannot be in error. The question is whether it follows deterministically from certain clear stimuli.

 

[Radagast]

I'd like to be shown that a belief is a physical thing. What size and color is my belief that it's raining?

Possibly you didn't read my post. I did not say that beliefs were physical things.

 

[Ariston]

"Believing in determinism provides a defeater for the belief in determinism since you would have to be committed to the faith that all your reasoning was determined which makes the likelihood of that belief low relative to other metaphysical beliefs that you are just as likely to hold. "

Can you just explain why you think this is true? I totally understand

I think the difficulty might be that it is not acknowledged that the argument is not an argument that intends to show that determinism is false necessarily but that there could be no justification for believing that it is true (and I think to absurd to believe). The reason for this is that if you believe in determinism you also have to believe that that belief (determinism is true) among other positions is true. But the basis for that belief, mental determinism, does not provide grounds for thinking that belief true relative to the array of other beliefs that could have been produced on the hypothesis (that mental determinism is true) and thus there could be no justification for holding it that it is. At best you would have to be a complete skeptic about determinism. It can only be held, and perhaps almost always is, if one begs the question in favor of it. Let me clarify with an analogy.

Suppose there is a dice, and each side represents a different coherent metaphysical option each of which excludes the other. 1. Metaphysical Naturalism. 2. Christian Theism 3. Pantheism. 4. Panentheism 5. Pansychism 6. Platonism. Now this dice is rolled and whatever position is heads up that becomes your position about what it true of reality. So Platonism comes up and you believe that the world beyond appearances has an elegant mathematical reality that underlies everything else. But then you would ask, what is the likelihood of that worldview granting the means for obtaining it. It would not follow that Platonism was wrong, you just could not have justification for thinking it true because you would have to believe that there is a low probability that a true metaphysics will be produced in this way. That is like the the position of the determinist as I see it.

If you believe determinism is true then you also have to believe that the beliefs produced could have been a number of alternatives. Deterministic mechanisms are like the dice. Yet one side of it, of what could be produced is agnosticism about free will, another compatibalist, another libertarian, another is a very limited libertarianism, one is determinism, and one is "never thought about it." If you believe that your beliefs are produced in a manner like that, then the reliability of the belief in the deterministic mechanisms is remarkably low. The justification for the belief is defeated by the grounds for the belief (although this is not to say that determinsim itself like Platonism is necessarily false). So it always will have to be an unjustified belief and will be given up or just presupposed.

 

[quatona]

I think the difficulty might be that it is not acknowledged that the argument is not an argument that intends to show that determinism is false necessarily but that there could be no justification for believing that it is true (and I think to absurd to believe). The reason for this is that if you believe in determinism you also have to believe that that belief (determinism is true) among other positions is true. But the basis for that belief, mental determinism, does not provide grounds for thinking that belief true relative to the array of other beliefs that could have been produced on the hypothesis (that mental determinism is true) and thus there could be no justification for holding it that it is. At best you would have to be a complete skeptic about determinism. It can only be held, and perhaps almost always is, if one begs the question in favor of it. Let me clarify with an analogy.

Suppose there is a dice, and each side represents a different coherent metaphysical option each of which excludes the other. 1. Metaphysical Naturalism. 2. Christian Theism 3. Pantheism. 4. Panentheism 5. Pansychism 6. Platonism. Now this dice is rolled and whatever position is heads up that becomes your position about what it true of reality. So Platonism comes up and you believe that the world beyond appearances has an elegant mathematical reality that underlies everything else. But then you would ask, what is the likelihood of that worldview granting the means for obtaining it. It would not follow that Platonism was wrong, you just could not have justification for thinking it true because you would have to believe that there is a low probability that a true metaphysics will be produced in this way. That is like the the position of the determinist as I see it.

If you believe determinism is true then you also have to believe that the beliefs produced could have been a number of alternatives. Deterministic mechanisms are like the dice. Yet one side of it, of what could be produced is agnosticism about free will, another compatibalist, another libertarian, another is a very limited libertarianism, one is determinism, and one is "never thought about it." If you believe that your beliefs are produced in a manner like that, then the reliability of the belief in the deterministic mechanisms is remarkably low. The justification for the belief is defeated by the grounds for the belief (although this is not to say that determinsim itself like Platonism is necessarily false). So it always will have to be an unjustified belief and will be given up or just presupposed.

Let´s ignore the countless non-sequiturs and other logical fallacies in this argument for a moment and pretend it were solid reasoning.

Could you explain, please, how choosing your beliefs freely/arbitrarily makes them more likely to be true than them being determined?
IOW: even if this were a solid argument, I still wouldn´t see how it poses a problem for determinism any more than it does for any alternative notion ("free will"), as well.

 

[Albion]

Ariston, your thinking seems sound to me, but the topic seems completely theoretical. Does anyone around here believe in determinism, or, for that matter, are there Christian churches that actually believe in determinism??

 

[Ariston]

Ariston, your thinking seems sound to me, but the topic seems completely theoretical. Does anyone around here believe in determinism, or, for that matter, are there Christian churches that actually believe in determinism??

Thanks. Martin Luther (but not Lutherans typically) and Blaise Pascal were both determinists. There has been large schools of theological determinists and many Calvinists have held not only that salvation is entirely determined (irresitable grace + unconditional election = determined salvation) but have held that God determined every in the act of creation. This is technically called fatalism meaning that every event is predetermined and thus inevitable and distinct from the more modest claim just that our actions are determined. By far most Christians have held to limited free well (libertarianism). On a side, most people are not aware that many if not most quantum physicists have not (for the better part of the last 75 years) believed in determinism but are indeterminists because they believe that there is a level of randomness at the micro-level. This does not mean that there is free will in the libertarian sense (which I hold) but only that the future is open to a range potential outcomes that are not strictly causally connected.

 

[Ariston]

Let´s ignore the countless non-sequiturs and other logical fallacies in this argument for a moment and pretend it were solid reasoning.

Could you explain, please, how choosing your beliefs freely/arbitrarily makes them more likely to be true than them being determined?
IOW: even if this were a solid argument, I still wouldn´t see how it poses a problem for determinism any more than it does for any alternative notion ("free will"), as well.

It does not cut both ways because libertarians do not believe that all beliefs arise through a mental coercion. Limited freedom allows for limited free thought. So if I hold to libertarianism I also hold that I arrived there through a process of partial free rational thinking. That is, it is not clear how your argument would run since libertarians do not believe in all devouring deterministic mechanisms that have established all their beliefs.