Good_Egg wrote: ↑May 15th, 2023, 3:57 am
That's a step forward, Leontiskos, but it doesn't quite go far enough.
The example I raised previously is of a dice game, where I'm asserting that it is rational to act as if the outcome of a roll of the die is random, even whilst asserting that such outcome is described by deterministic Newtonian physics.
What makes it rational is indeed a form of ignorance.
Imagine I had a dice-rolling machine that was precisely made to ensure that the dice rolled over exactly three times when I pressed the button. So that I could choose to roll a 6 by placing the 6-face uppermost when loading a die into the machine. With such a device, treating the resulting die rolls as random would be self-contradictory, as you say.
The difference between that and a normal die roll is a matter of ignorance, of unpredictability, of the unknowability of the cause-effect chain, rather than any ontological difference.
Can we say the same of choice ? That it is rational for me to treat you as a mind, an agent who makes real choices, even whilst asserting that mind is some sort of emergent property of brains which are governed by a deterministic physics ? But only so long as I am ignorant of the cause-effect pathways involved ?
So that for example if I build an AI which is transparent - meaning that I can trace the logic that makes it say what it says - then it is irrational to act as if it is really choosing. But if it is non-transparent - if the guiding logic is obscured in the complexity of the workings - then acting as if it were genuinely a mind making choices is rational. Because ignorance?
???
Okay, that was helpful.
So in a game of dice or any game of chance, the key point for the purpose of our discussion is that what is taking place is a competition between more than one agent, and all agents are similarly situated with respect to the outcome of the chance event (namely they are ignorant of the outcome). This is why it makes sense to cast lots. It is why we do it. Of course it also follows, as you say, that the outcome is deterministic in principle but random in practice, and this is due to our lack of knowledge (ignorance).
The reason there is no contradiction in throwing dice is because the proximate act is coming to know the outcome of a chance event, and the more remote end is gambling or some similar thing. This is altogether different from our case of the determinist who thinks he makes authentic choices, and thus your analogy fails. With the determinist there is no competition between agents, there is no gambling, there is no intention to know the outcome of a chance event, etc. There is just a basic contradiction, "All of reality is deterministic and therefore choices do not exist. Also, I make authentic choices." If you think such a contradiction obtains in the case of the gambler, then try to set it out.
The key thing to note is that the gambler's act is not in tension with his presuppositions, and this is because his presuppositions in no way rationally preclude him from gambling. The parallel case for the gambler would be, "Dice are deterministic realities and therefore it makes no sense to gamble. Also, I gamble." The problem is that the consequent, "it makes no sense to gamble," does not follow from the antecedent, "dice are deterministic realities." The reason why is given above, where I identified what exactly a gambler is doing. It is not irrational to gamble given mechanistic physics. It is irrational to believe one is making authentic choices given determinism.
Honestly Good_Egg, the fact of the matter is that intelligent determinists do not even disagree with me here. Folks on these forums, who are confused about determinism and its implications, may disagree with me. But if you read actual determinist philosophers they will freely admit that determinism is incompatible with authentic choices, and with the belief that authentic choices exist.