What is Determinism? | Gentleman Thinker

Today we explore the philosophy of cause and effect, determinism and free will, with Pierre-Simon Laplace!

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Assets:

[FizzyK-]

Watching this video fills you with Determination....

[ShawnRavenfire]

The common counter-argument to determinism is quantum uncertainty.  Of course, now people counter free will with randomness.  It's kind of a no-win situation.

[mikeh]

I loved this video. I've been thinking about determinism a lot, lately.

[caa]

always fun to independently think up these things and find out some greek guy beat you to it a couple years back

[carterchambers]

I'm going to try to explain some physics that relates here. It has been found that different observers disagree okay the sequence of events, the distance between them, and the time between them. This would suggest that reality is predetermined. Spacetime is thought to refer to both space and events and time. Therefore it seems very rational to support determinism.

[tillbrainman]

such a great topic. i wanted more. free will is a weak term poorly signifying the phenomena. we are only free to make the choices available to us or, our will is free within the limited choices available.

[lhandrovhal]

This video was the equivalent of reading the first paragraph in the wikipedia entry. How is this valuable in any way?

[madeleineabela]

I remember learning a bit about determinism when I was doing an essay about Stoicism, not sure what I believe though.

[DaBriceisRight]

I'd love to hear a Gentleman Thinker episode on Anselm's Ontological Argument and how we define "god" as a result of it.

[Eon]

But wait, I didn't learn anything today. I read about this in highschool. No wait Olli come back, I need more!

[credterfe]

Determinism means history could not have been otherwise, because the beginning (the initial condition ) of the world determines the end. If however some decisions were made with 50/50 probability, then both outcomes were equally possible and alternative histories could exist like the branches of a tree. We could imagine what it would be like in our mind but they are virtual to us not real. Whether determinism is absolute or not we are in one version of history the real history . The future even if it is determined could be more rosy than most people could imagine and efforts with optimism should be made for a better more just world.

[ericvilas]

Of course, now we know that the universe behaves probabilistically in many cases, but still, whether it's deterministic or probabilistic, free will is still challenged, because randomness has nothing to do with free will.

...Enter compatibilism, of course.

(I could talk about free will all day - that's one of the things I love about Homestuck)

[therealzilch]

My position, fwiw, is that the Universe is derterministic, but since we don't and can't have perfect knowledge of everything going on, we have free will as far as we're concerned. It's only gods who have no free wil. Good thing for them that they don't exist.

[sindrehsoereide]

While determinism seem to notbe able to coexist with most definitions of free will, it is entirely possible that a universe which is not deterministic and without free will. Random is not the same as free. In other words: all possible universes that have determinism does not have free will but not all possible universes without free will are deterministic.

[niinestormtv]

Wish she would do more of these these days, they’re very cute

[stephenlawrence]

Laplace didn't sum up causal determinism. He added to it that the future is predictable in principle.
This needs to be treated separately because causal determinism might be true whilst the future might not be predictable in principle. So the correct terms are:

1) Causal determinism

2) Predictive determinism

If these ideas are not seperated it leads to common errors made by even very good scientists.

[PatrickHogan]

Could have used this video three weeks ago for my essay.

[deistrevolution]

+Philosophy Tube You should do a video about Deism? It is a theological/philosophical position that combines the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge with the conclusion that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a single creator of the universe.

[Siberius-]

Yep. You got that one all correct.
Laplace's quote only works if acausality doesn't exist, is the caveat.
Laplace is probably correct.. but it's still an assumption about the universe.

[mrmarten]

Is randomness the opposite of determinism? Quantum mechanics seems to negate determinism, because of its randomness. I'm not absolutely sure that quantum mechanics describe the universe as it is, but it looks like it is.
The universe to me doesn't seem compatible with determinism (even if it can be described by mathematics), maybe
I'm missing something here. I would be interested to hear your thoughts about it.