The objective and subjective of determinism

Great Debates
1

The question of determinism or indeterminism has two aspects among many others.

I refer to the objective aspect, meaning prescinding from our personal concern as one supposedly exercising or not exercising free will; and the subjective aspect, meaning how one is to live with the logical conclusions from thinking about determinism and free will.

Objectively everything seems set up already, one thing leads inexorably to another in the march of time. Here is an example from my own home front.

On a hot late afternoon last Wednesday, I heard the ambulant ice cream vendor in the street outside our gate, and thought it would be nice to have some ice cream for myself and of course the family.

As I opened the gate accompanied by our dog, Barney, to call the ice cream vendor, a stray dog outside happened to come along curious about Barney,

Barney rushed out to attack the stray dog – typical behavior just like humans, showing off to people they want to impress.

It was a fierce fight lasting at most 90 seconds; the stray dog seemed to have gotten a bad beating, and fled.

What about Barney? He didn’t look so victorious, he was bleeding from the lower jaw. On examination, it was worse, he seemed to have bitten more than he could chew: he broke his mandible on both sides; thus he could not close his mouth.

So, off to the pet clinic, x-ray, surgery to wire back the mandible, and several nights in the clinic for observation.

And I am left up to this moment thinking about if I didn’t have that whim for ice cream, and going all the way back to Adam and Eve and God.

That’s the objective part. Now, the subjective part, how are we supposed to live and act, when things will happen which will happen come what may, withal our free will and deliberation, whatever.

For myself, I just try my best with my resources to live and act according to my best knowledge and intentions; for the fact is that even though everything is set up already, nonetheless we don’t know how they are set up and we do have a life to live and a mind endowed apparently and obviously with choice to pursue that life.

Susma Rio Sep

2

I once reasoned that although pure physical determinism may be possible, indeed likely, it was a useless concept in that it teaches me nothing about how to live. It seemed to me that perceived free will was a more useful concept, and more likely to lead me to success. I ignored a physical reality which was potentially likely but unverifiable.

3

More to the point, it doesn’t really matter if the world is deterministic or not: since we can never make models that take themselves into account, we’ll always perceive ourselves as reaching conclusions and making decisions freely.

4

William James again.

I think that you’re already there:

This seems to me as good an approach to it as any others I have seen.

5

The universe is obviously deterministic. We think and act within a framework of derterminism. But paradoxily, derterministic evolution has evolved our minds in a manner that functions best when the experiencing organism (that’s us) incorporates the working concept of “Free Will” into the cognative equation. Unfortunately two “nothings” interacting don’t make a “something” and the only thing the human mind knows absolutely is that “something” exists rather than “nothing”. And since “something” exists aboslutlely…the universe is not deterministic.