I often think of “determinism” as too strong a word for what’s going on. The past is fixed, and the past influences the present, but that doesn’t exactly mean that the present is determined wholly by the past, but the past as we see it from the present can be no other way than what it is and can have no other effect than what it has. This doesn’t mean the present and future are fixed unless we want to commit to a particular metaphysical claim about the universe; instead it just means that the past is “perfect” or complete and we move forward from there. We can then reasonably admit all sorts of ways the past need not determine the future while also acknowledging that the future is causally linked the a fixed past.
Well, I also explained how libertarian free will breaks the scenario and once we’ve excluded that we should be able to assume a form of determinism or probabilistic determinism.
To me this is not really a matter of whether or not we have libertarian free will. In fact I think we don’t and need not posit it to explain anything. My point is perhaps more that when we talk about “determinism” it’s often mixed up with ideas about a clock-work universe that flows forward in a particular way that we can calculate in advance, but the computation is so complex that the only way to do it is to actually let time advance so the computation plays out in the real world, and thus although the present and future may be linked to the past it can’t be known as well as we can possibly know it until we get there.
I often think of “determinism” as too strong a word for what’s going on. The past is fixed, and the past influences the present, but that doesn’t exactly mean that the present is determined wholly by the past, but the past as we see it from the present can be no other way than what it is and can have no other effect than what it has. This doesn’t mean the present and future are fixed unless we want to commit to a particular metaphysical claim about the universe; instead it just means that the past is “perfect” or complete and we move forward from there. We can then reasonably admit all sorts of ways the past need not determine the future while also acknowledging that the future is causally linked the a fixed past.
Well, I also explained how libertarian free will breaks the scenario and once we’ve excluded that we should be able to assume a form of determinism or probabilistic determinism.
To me this is not really a matter of whether or not we have libertarian free will. In fact I think we don’t and need not posit it to explain anything. My point is perhaps more that when we talk about “determinism” it’s often mixed up with ideas about a clock-work universe that flows forward in a particular way that we can calculate in advance, but the computation is so complex that the only way to do it is to actually let time advance so the computation plays out in the real world, and thus although the present and future may be linked to the past it can’t be known as well as we can possibly know it until we get there.