LuckyR wrote: ↑March 28th, 2023, 2:16 pm
Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 28th, 2023, 11:17 am
...Philosophical novices often labor under the impression that causality is bound up with determinism, and that if we deny determinism then we must abandon causality. This is apparently what is happening here, but it is a very strange mistake. Determinism does not mean "causes exist;" determinism means, "all causes are event causes," or, "all events are determined by antecedent causes." This mistake is simply a misunderstanding of what determinism means.
Exactly. Thus why I prefer putting the question thusly:
A) Does antecedent state 1 always lead to resultant state 2 or
B) Can antecedent state 1 lead to multiple resultant states? Say, 2 or 3?
Indeed. I didn't realize this was such a common problem until, soon after joining, I encountered it in
Steve3007's claims about determinism and predictability (
link).
Probably the confusion has something to do with quantum hypotheses about randomness, which leads folks to think that determinism means that all events are caused and no events are random/uncaused, and that non-determinism means that some events are random/uncaused. Also when I was new here,
CIN explicitly premised his argument against free will on this strange dichotomy between events which are event-determined and events which are random (
link).
The third option should be obvious: events which are agent-determined. Agents are real causes. An agent can cause his thumb to move or cause himself to think a certain thought, and these are really caused by the agent himself. The deterministic account which denies any causal power to the agent will fail to understand what is really occurring in these situations.
LuckyR wrote: ↑March 28th, 2023, 2:16 pmAs an aside, in the realm of human decision making, the entirety of human experience, both subjectively and objectively is consistent with B, though A is possible despite no experience of that being the case.
Yes, and I think it is important to resist the rejoinder which says that we also have no experience of (B). We do have experience of (B). Loads of it. Every time we think a thought or make a decision or perform an action we are having an experience of (B). Granted, if we define "experience" to be third person scientific event verification, then of course we will not have experience of (B). But this just begs the question, because agents are not events. Counterfactual freedom obviously cannot be scientifically observed, although it can be inferred, such as by the fact that the scientific enterprise depends upon it.