Richard Swinburne: The Impossibility of Proving that Human Behavior is Determined

Commenter: Jason Runyan

[nesaralititumir]

Brilliant arguments. It's always so enlightening to listen to such a theologian.

[mooseyzed]

Does he end up answering the objections at the end of the video and is the recording available?

[krzyszwojciech]

Um... RS's conclusion is we're fine to assume that we're making the decisions.
Well, even under determinism we're fine to assume that. The brain is a decision-making organ.

And there's no way to just 'feel' determinism or inderdeterminism.

edit: The last presentation - agreed.

[heavymeddle]

If it is impossible to prove it then why believe it? Why believe anything you can't show to be true? 🤔

[benjaminschooley]

Human behavior can absolutely be environmentally determined regardless of whether or not the behaviors in question are a function of a choice made by the individual.

[juraquille]

Proverbs 16:1, 9 (KJV)
1 The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD.
9 A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.

[drewdrake]

Either you do things for a reason, or you do not.

If you do things for a reason, that reason is what determined what you did.
( when someone asks you why did you do that, and you present a reason, you are telling them this is what determined, - the decisive factor in -, the action I chose )
If you do things for no reason whatsoever, then essentially you're doing things randomly.

There is no free will

[MyContext]

We may never make absolute predictions about human decision making, but we can show that such is deterministic and get fairly decent at making predications.

Everything that we currently know supports the idea that we are deterministic creatures (all our thoughts/actions are tethered to biological processes) even as it is the case that we cannot make absolute predications due having insufficient data. Our inability to make absolute predications will likely remain unavailable even as our capacties for prediction become better. This is both the case objectively and subjectively. Subjectively we each make models of the people that we know. The better our understanding the better our capacities to make predications even if such is NOT absolute. This point is also understood objective by having sufficiently distinctive brain structure differences to make predictions about hos such will function. This is also sustained by observing common cognitive issues to have brain structure abnormalities in the same locations.

I offer two deterministic systems to improve/refine the general point that we are deterministic. 1) Weather systems and 2) AI (Artificial Intelligence systems)

We understand weather to be a product of deterministic factors which given a sufficiently accurate model will allow fairly accurate predictions. The overall complexity of the system precludes having every variable and/or sufficiently accurate absolute values so as a consequence the accuracy of the overall prediction(s) is compromised even as such is still useful for limited periods of time with anything beyond being increasingly less certain as a byproduct of the various errors inherent to the dataset and scope of calculation.

An AI system entails a process for learning about a dataset so as to learn to process data like the dataset and/or similar to the dataset. We understand that the processing of an AI system is deterministic, however, even with that information IF one doesn't have the dataset AND the specific learning process one cannot fully predict the results. The same issues apply to the brain. The organic wiring of the brain regarding the processing of data is analogous to a unique AI configuration even as the general configuration is comparable. The core issue being that ANY change will change how data is processed and thus will result in incremental differences of results. This is layered on top of unique experiences which effectively make for a unique dataset with regard to its "training".

It should be noted that we are continually making advances to understanding how brain in general work with more predictive outcomes being understood as a byproduct.

Consider the following material as more support for the idea that we are deterministic creatures.

[robertoesquivel]

Sucks that Swinburne can't understand that God is in control and that our free will contradicts that, I mean I understand where he's coming from but He's God, He will destroy the wisdom of the wise and surely some things we can never grasp a hundred percent like how God is divinely ominicient and yet we have free will of our own and choices to make. Yes, no one comes to the Father unless they're chosen, but on our end, in this finite universe, choosing life, choosing Christ, is still a choice we have to make.