Why Determinism could never be disproven or shown to be unlikely

[Buffy]

Ranges of precision has been the argument all along. I guess you finally decided to read your opponents posts. Unfortunately something isn't over my head because you become insecure when you realize you lost the debate.

The word "precision" first appeared in the post I responded to. Can you point to an earlier post?

 

"Determinism" as used in philosophy is indeed about consequences being an absolute certainty with no doubt whatsoever. You've got a definition that basically comes down to, "if you give me a big enough error range, I will be right every time." Cool. How many mulligans do you need?

 

Just note that this is bending the definition of "determinism" to the point where few would recognize it, and that's why you're getting so many people disagreeing with your posts here.

What "certain ranges of precision" does is blow YOUR argument out of the water, and now that you have finally understood you are simply trying to cover up this fact.

That what I was saying does not match your odd-ball definition of determinism is non-sequiter. Its tantamount to saying "Your theory that ducks quack and have wings is blown away by the fact that that is a duck [K points at a brick]."

 

Even in practical applications of the word, it does not allow for an error range: in computer science, a function must return exactly the same result for a given set of inputs every time in order to be defined as deterministic; if it uses any mechanism in its computation that is not identical based on any factor of its operation it is defined as non-deterministic.

 

But you've clearly come up with a definition that most of us consider completely unrelated to "determinism", something most of us would call "building a model" as you seem to admit:

It is very simple - determinism is about creating models that use the rules in the world to make predictions. I launch a baseball and using only factors that are going to effect the outcome with enough variance to make a difference to the catcher I calculate where the baseball will land....

What you're describing here is a system of functions that define *convergent* behavior. They allow pretty close sorta kinda explanations that limit the outcomes *most* of the time.

 

The problem is if you remove your "error range" it quickly becomes much more difficult to explain/predict outcomes. Yes its much worse if you have models with *divergent* functions, but even if we use your baseball thowing analogy, if we get the error range down to Planck Length precision (which actually *still does not satisfy* the traditional definition of determinism), you're still going to need that "full history of the universe" to explain it.

 

Is there a reason you refuse to address the issue of convergent and divergent functions? Do you understand what they mean?

 

Bottom line: "model building" <> "determinism".

 

It looks like you've led us all on a wild goose chase. If you're going to proceed with this definition of "determinism" that's fine, just remember that to a lot of us, your definition is trivial and uninteresting and has no useful consequences of any gravity. Sorry!

 

Interesting is as interesting does,

Buffy

[Kriminal99]

Doing the best I can

 

It is not my job to decipher your dogmatic views and determine which piece of information you are failing to consider to reconcile the two belief sets when you are making no effort to do the same. Rather in a debate you choose the person who is making the most amount of effort and attempt to meet each other half way. Doing so means looking for more and more information you might consider trivial and obvious but the other person may not.

 

Did not realize you were talking about infinite decimal places

 

When was acceptable ranges of precision NOT part of the equation? A baseball might be constantly changing shape, but not enough that my eyes can even tell the difference or that my glove will no longer be well designed to catch it. Limited ranges of precision is a fundamental concept in everything that we do. Thus to leave this out in this discussion is an attempt to create a fake problem - AH gotchya I didn't say limited ranges of precision. As in yeah, that baseball its going through all kinds of random changes and unpredictable interactions of particles CHAOS CHAOS THE WORLD IS DOOMED etc etc. Huh? It's just sitting there...

 

Yeah big enough error range. In the case of most of the antideterminist objections that means what? A few microns in either direction. Ranges of precision beyond what you can even percieve even with an electron microscope?

 

Come on computer, its a + or - E-5 question

 

Exactly the same result for a given set of inputs? HAHAHA. That is like saying a dice must return a number 1-6. If the computer would return the result 3.0000000000000000000000000000000000 the first time and 3.000000000000000000000000000000000000001 the second due to random factors, but the computer is not senstitive to that degree of randomness then guess what? You have defined it as deterministic. And btw it is not non deterministic in any case, because there is a reason we are not considering, don't know, or perhaps never could know for the variation.

 

I know what converging and diverging functions are. Objectively they have nothing to do with the subject. By some interpretation you have managed to connect them, perhaps believing that your subjective interpretation is objective due to its social status. (a fallacy)

 

If I remove my error range we are dead in the water. Ever seen a calculator that gives answers to infinity decimal places? Me neither.

 

What determinism is not

 

Determinism NEVER EVER depended on the ability to calculate the entire universe. Perhaps you were confused by a statement like "If you had enough information you could calculate everything that would happen" You obviously misinterpreted the statement by trying to reconcile it with your knowledge of science.

 

It means if you were GOD and you had infinite processing power and storage capacity in your pinky which existed outside the normal universe, and you knew everything without having to look then you could calculate the entire universe. The statement did not say you would not need infinite processing power. That you would was a common belief since ancient times (infinte regress). Unless you just assumed somethings in your model, and then altered this based on how often those things were false.

 

If you are a person, determinism is proven by the fact that you can always build models to predict within certain ranges of precision (that are relevant to you, as is always the case with everything that we do) and create models of random variables and break the random variables down to increase precision etc. The day the world no longer behaves according to any rules is the day determinism is disproven.

 

How do we know that things too complicated for us to calculate follow rules? It only matters if they affect something we are aware of. If they do not follow rules and effect something we are aware of, then the thing we are aware of would appear not to follow rules as well. If something does not follow rules, but does not effect us in any way, we use the same approach as we do to global skepticism - that is we ignore it. Randomness is no indication of lack of rules. We characterize randomness because we know it DOES follow rules

 

The real bottom line

 

People who claimed determinism was false were the ones leading the wild goose chase. They never understood what determinism was to begin with.

[Erasmus00]

It is very simple - determinism is about creating models that use the rules in the world to make predictions. I launch a baseball and using only factors that are going to effect the outcome with enough variance to make a difference to the catcher I calculate where the baseball will land. Despite your imagined infinite randomness inherent in the universe, I am still able to do this quite effectively. That is because we do not need to calculate the behaviors of all quantum particles in the universe just to figure out where the baseball is going to land, and even if in a given model there is something that creates enough variance that we do need to include it, with advances in technology we can just break that factor down, and any problematic factors that make it up down etc etc past any arbitrary limit but not to infinity, but rather only until we have reduced the variance in our predictions enough for our purposes.

 

First, you've altered what you mean by determinism. Your new "deffinition" is much weaker- "determinism" up to some arbitrary margin of error is hardly what I think of when I think "determinism."

 

Now, lets talk about model building. When I think building models of the natural world to within certain limits of precision, I immediately think physics. The goal of physics is, of course, to build models with increasingly smaller errors. Now, the single most successful model (based on smallest error margins) mankind has created is quantum field theory. HOWEVER, surprise, this model is NOT deterministic in the sense that you mean. In order to use this model, we have to give up calculating where the ball will land every time (to use your basebal analogy), but instead focus on predicting the average behavior or collective groups.

 

Now, here you'll say "this is an argument from ignorance. Just because no one has created a deterministic, local model doesn't mean that one doesn't exist." This is not actually true. Bell proved that ANY local deterministic model has certain properties, and Aspect showed via experiment that reality falls outside those properties.

 

Now, may I make a general point? Throughout this conversation and others, you have been pointed to general ideas in physics, mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Your response is almost always "I don't need to read that because..." What are you doing here then? Do you want to learn? because learning often requires reading. Do you want to discuss the topic? Discussions of determinism have a rich history in many fields, including physics, computer science and mathematics. By simply ignoring these areas, you are limiting the discussion to very little of actual substance.

 

Or are you simply trying to "win" the thread by annoying everyone with your willfull ignorance until people stop presenting information contrary to your claim?

-Will

[Kriminal99]

Not a definition, a means to disprove

 

No it is not a weaker definition of determinism. It means that determinism is only disproven when we can no longer do the above mentioned model building and to try and claim determinism is false when we are still capable of making those models is a straw man fallacy. I think I best summarized it in my last post:

 

Determinism is true until the world no longer makes sense

 

How do we know that things too complicated for us to calculate follow rules? It only matters if they affect something we are aware of. If they do not follow rules and effect something we are aware of, then the thing we are aware of would appear not to follow rules as well. If something does not follow rules, but does not effect us in any way, we use the same approach as we do to global skepticism - that is we ignore it.

 

Randomness is no indication of lack of rules. We are able to characterize randomness because it DOES follow rules. I can weigh a dice or flatten a penny mid toss and see how my actions affect the outcome. I can use statistics to aggregate the effects of many small high variance factors into a random variable, using a model I have tested on larger and clearly deterministic factors first - therefore showing that this if statistical estimation is not entirely dependent on determinism is at the very least unprecendented in modeling non deterministic behavior whatever that even means.

 

It is irrelevant if technical difficulties would prevent a human being from ever being able to calculate the entire universe. The people who made the statement that you could calculate the universe with enough information and processing power did not actuallly ever believe they could do it. It is silly to respond to it by saying "well you couldn't get enough information or processing power" That has nothing to do with what they said, they said IF YOU COULD get enough... And this statement was not the foundation of determinism.

 

Determinism is only disproven when something is shown to not follow rules and to happen for absolutely no reason whatsoever. When that occurs we will know because we can no longer build models in the aforementioned manner. Don't hold your breath.

 

Argument from ignorance is right

 

Bell did not actually prove anything, because he did not have any well tested premises to start with in regards to quantum particles. His inequality is not applicable with certainty to begin with because it is based on tons of assumptions that are only trivial in the macro world. There is not enough known about the particles to rule out things like ftl communication between the particles or to rule out anything else for that matter. If you are saying you can't know what causes the particles behavior, that does not effect determinism. If you are saying the particles don't behave according to any rules, then you probably just don't know the rules. It is very much is an argument from ignorance, the problem is you just don't understand the concept of ignorance.

 

Mass Skepticism is avoidable in the real world because we live in the real world every day and if something has confused us so bad that we can never know the difference, then why care. If we are just really brains in a vat, but we can never know the difference then why worry about it? But this defense does not apply to the finidings of quantum mechanics. We do not live in the world of quantum particles. Many beliefs we have about quantum particles could prove false without affecting any beliefs we have in our every day lives. Therefore any so called "findings" of QM can just be prevented from affecting outside beliefs by the claim that they are likely to be false. This is the best way to insulate the average person from the fluctuations and misdirections of scientific inquiry over time.

 

Read my religion!

 

Your claims about my willingness to read are fallacious. If I came to you and said THE GOOD BOOK SAYS DETERMINISM IS TRUE, would you read "THE GOOD BOOK"? And if tommorow someone said the same of the Old testament or the teachings of the cult of windextu would you read those too? Would it occur to you that my doing so was just an attempt to avoid actual debate and accountability and overly complicate the issue? If you went to china and everyone said "Confucius say determinism is true, and everybody knows Confucius is always right" and everyone in china really did think that would you agree just because that is what everyone thought?

 

Go ahead an present any useful arguments yourself. If there actually are any.

[Erasmus00]

No it is not a weaker definition of determinism. It means that determinism is only disproven when we can no longer do the above mentioned model building and to try and claim determinism is false when we are still capable of making those models is a straw man fallacy.

 

Once again, you have missed the point. There is a difference between being able to predict where the ball will land, and being able to predict where the ball USUALLY lands. Quantum physics says the latter is possible, but not the former. Determinism, as defined by nearly everyone other than you, asserts the former needs to be IN THEORY possible.

 

Determinism is true until the world no longer makes sense

 

ONLY because you are defining it that way. A normal, classical deffinition of determinism is a statement that with some initial conditions, we can predict EXACTLY the final state of an object. And, THERE ARE SITUATIONS WHERE YOU CANNOT MAKE YOUR MODELS.

 

Consider: a vertically polarized photon impinges on a horizontally aligned polaroid film. Question: does the photon go through?

 

There is no model that can routinely predict whether or not it goes through, though quantum mechanics CAN predict that ON AVERAGE it will go through half the time.

 

Bell did not actually prove anything, because he did not have any well tested premises to start with in regards to quantum particles. His inequality is not applicable with certainty to begin with because it is based on tons of assumptions that are only trivial in the macro world.

 

Again, I would suggest actually looking into Bell's inequalities. I will, for you, list ALL the assumptions made by Bell.

 

1. The outcome of an experiment is independant of the experiment. (i.e., whether or not a photon will pass through the polaroid film is somehow encoded in the photon). This is the minimal assumption for any sort of hidden variable/deterministic model. i.e., there is some unknown information that could tell us what will happen before we make the measurement.

 

2. Locality: if two experimenters are operating very far away, what one experimenter measures should not effect what the other experimenter measures.

 

That is it. This is all you need for the most general formulation of Bell's inequality. And again, the experimental test of this, the Aspect experiment fell outside the inequality: reality appears to be non-locally deterministic.

 

There is not enough known about the particles to rule out things like ftl communication between the particles or to rule out anything else for that matter.

 

Faster than light communication is, indeed, a loophole- because faster than light is NON-local. Of course, faster than light communication would also muddy cause and effect. Some observers would see the signal arrive before it was sent- which seems a clear violation of causality.

 

If you are saying you can't know what causes the particles behavior, that does not effect determinism. If you are saying the particles don't behave according to any rules, then you probably just don't know the rules.

 

I'm saying that the rules that govern particles are INHERENTLY probabilistic, and NOT strictly deterministic.

 

It is very much is an argument from ignorance, the problem is you just don't understand the concept of ignorance.

 

But I sure can spot irony.

-will

[Kriminal99]

Well thats not determinism

 

First of all it is not possible to predict where the ball will land with infinite precision, so predicting exactly where the ball was going to land was NEVER part of determinism. Secondly your quantum uncertainty is equivalent to global skepticism. Until balls start falling upwards enough to worry about it, your claim is irrelevant assuming you haven't made some mistake in reasoning anyways, which you probably have. Also your attempted example of a situation that cannot be modeled is not signifigant. There is simply a lack of information with which to create the model.

 

The ability to predict statement

 

Finally if you were god and could know things without looking and had infinite processing power and storage capacity outside the universe you could predict every outcome of the universe exactly. That is the only in theory prediction determinists ever made. No determinist could ever do that themselves. Did you actually think determinism was ever based on something that determinist themselves knew they were never capable of doing? No, they prove the statement by continually growing their model building capabilities past any arbitrary barrier.

 

You just don't understand the classical definition of determinism.

 

Limits of induction take 1,000,000

 

Simply put you are not competent enough to determine ALL of Bell's assumptions. You do not understand human reason itself to the degree necessary to participate in any intellectual investigation. Although I have tried many times with you to no avail except your use of debate fallacies and purposeful misquoting I will continue to try.

 

For any given experiment, belief etc there are infinite assumptions. INFINITE. Let's say you run a roofing company in a small tennesee town and your wife has pissed off the local officials by asking too much for her house. The next year your buisness completely dies out when you were making a 6 figure income the year before. Maybe everything you believe is false because you are really just a brain in a vat and someone just randomly altered your input so you would make less money that year. Ok so if thats true then there is no other indication and investigating the cause will not reveal it. What can you do? You just ignore that possibility. There are infinite possibilities like that where everything you believe is false. You ignore them all.

 

So you go to the next step. How do you know that there isn't some conspiracy to keep you from making money because your wife refused to sell the house to some politician's relative for a smaller amount than it was worth. You don't, this isn't global skepticism this is just skepticism. Paranoia if you want to call it that. There is no defense against this type of skepticism, you just have to look for any evidence that it is the case and if you fail to find any then it is temporarily "disproven" until you do. The difference is it could be true and yet consistent with everything else you believe - remember that because it is important to QM. How many of these are there? Infinite. One day you walk into a bar and ask the bartender why there are black circles around the phone number in your newspaper ad and you find out that means if anyone uses your service they will catch holy hell from the local government. True story.

 

Now you are doing a kinematics experiment in high school physics. How do you know the mass of the objects are not changing during the course of the experiment? You don't - it's just you have never seen any indication that objects change mass signifigantly before. You wouldn't have to abandon everything you believe if it was the case. You'd have to ask alot of questions, there might be a lot of new explanations that explain what you thought before as well as the new situation. That this cannot happen is an assumption, one of infinite.

 

QM- You are no longer dealing with a situation where any instincts or past experiences you have are relevant. You honestly have no clue what sub atomic particles are doing, and can't gain information on them without affecting them. You cannot make conclusions about if something is true why not something else. Maybe for the means of communication between the particles the space between them is less than the physical space between them for us, so they can communicate without breaking the light barrier. Maybe SR is the case only before some arbitrary amount of acceleration after which the rules change. Maybe the brain in the vat thing is true, but only produces arbitrary (read: deterministic based on the rules of the outside world which contains the brain vat) results when you try to look to deep into things. And so forth to infinity.

 

Tying a proposition to past experiences to save it from skepticism

 

The only way to prevent this is to say, it is impossible for X to be false (or true depending) regarding Quantum particles, without all of our other experience regarding the macro world being false as well. Because quantum particles are different than the macro world, this statement can never be made because they are not the same populations. Things can always just be different for Quantum particles than they are for us.

 

If you think your own people can word it better, then go look for other kinds of "loopholes" have been recognized and see if you can't find a bunch similar to things I have said. One day you might finally realize that all these loopholes have a common thread - they are all derived from the philisophical limits of induction or skepticism.

[Erasmus00]

Until balls start falling upwards enough to worry about it, your claim is irrelevant assuming you haven't made some mistake in reasoning anyways, which you probably have.

 

I have made the mistake of being suckered into discussing things with you again, a mistake I think I shall not soon make again.

 

I will end with a few points: your claim that determinism holds is a claim that determinism holds for everything, including small particles. In the world of small particles, things simply fail to behave in a way that can be modeled determinstically, and must instead be modeled with probabilities.

 

Since you believe that everything can be modeled (as a determinist, you must), I leave you with a few challenges:

 

1. Create for me a model (using any measurable inputs you like) that determines whether or not a vertically polarized photon goes through a polarizer at a 45 degree angle.

 

2. Create for me a model (again, any measurable inputs you like) for the following situation: a particles spin is measured to be +1/2 hbar along a verticle axis. The spin along a perpendicular axis is now measured, what is the result?

 

3. An electron is optically pumped into an excited state of an atom. Exactly how long will it take to decay?

 

I could list more, but I won't. I claim that it has been proven, on general grounds (in a deductive, mathematical way with minimal assumptions) that it is impossible to model these things any way other than probabilistically. Demonstrate for me a model capable of predicting these things with an accuracy of maybe 10%. No need to get exactly the answer, just within 10%.

 

Untill you either:

 

a. find a SPECIFIC flaw in Bell's proof or Aspect's experiment (or any of the countless tests of Bell's inequalities)

 

b. find a determinstic model for any one of the above situations

 

I am done with this conversation.

 

Simply put you are not competent enough to determine ALL of Bell's assumptions. You do not understand human reason itself to the degree necessary to participate in any intellectual investigation.

 

Bell's is a MATHEMATICAL proof. As such, it follows deductively from a finite set of assumptions. I listed them. The reasoning is not inductive, but DEDUCTIVE.

-Will

[Kriminal99]

Here is a further proof that determinism is false: A Proof of Free Will

This particular piece of "muck" is by a professional philosopher, as was the previous link I offered you. If you think these arguments are unsupportable you will need to offer a reasonable objection, your response in post 57 was pathetic.

 

I decided to look at this link to see what kinds of arguments you had for believing in free will. What I found amused me because it seems to assume directly that the philosophical interest in determinism is false.

 

"Should have" implies the person making the statement wanted you to

 

The paper makes the assumption that "ought implies can". I do not see how any determinist could agree to this because it gets at the very heart of what drives belief in determinism for alot of determinists.

 

For the rest of you, this "ought implies can" assumption basically states that if you tell the professor that your car broke down, and the professor retorts that you should have taken the bus, it must mean that you were capable of taking the bus since it would make no sense to tell the person that they should have taken the bus if they actually could not have done it. Well, that would certainly be convienient for people who like to tell others what they should have done...

 

 

Since when do people do things that make sense? I do not agree that a person making a statement is hardly proof that the statement makes sense. The statement actually can have a use without proving this "ought implies can" theory or perhaps without even making sense. The statement simply is a means to an end of altering future events. If the professor only said "next time take the bus" (which they often do) then what would the student expect to happen the next time he was late to class because his car broke down? Perhaps he would expect to simply hear "next time take the bus" all over again and not really be motivated to take the bus. If the professor says "You should have taken the bus" then he creates this idea that the student has already screwed up, but he might get a second chance as long as the student doesn't screw up again. The most intelligent, objective and mature option for the professor is of course to do neither of these, but rather to make a statment such as "ok, but next time take the bus and if you don't I will not excuse it" and then follow through. Or to make a preemptive statement at the beginning of the class that if your car doesn't start then you must take the bus here or it will be unexcused.

 

Why he REALLY COULDN'T figure that out himself

 

Those who like to tell people what they should have done (the ones many determinists believe are probably responsible for a large degree of the world's violence, laziness, stress etc) might ask why the person wasn't capable of figuring out that he should take the bus himself. Well, what if you were in tahiti the week before class and your flight got pushed back do to weather concerns. Should you charter a special flight with an experienced pilot in order to get back in time spending a fortune and risking your life flying through bad weather? If not, then where do you draw the line designating the amount of effort you should or should not put forth to get to class? It really depends on the professor doesn't it? One may not care if you come to class at all and not expect you to come if your car doesn't start. Another (particuarly sensitive and insecure professor) might consider it insulting if you are not in your seat every single day. So of course "I didn't know" is quite an accurate response. Maybe taking the bus is not a big deal BUT the car driver has never done it before so he doesn't know its not a big deal. etc etc.

[ughaibu]

You haven't shown a situation in which it's sensible to use the word "ought" with respect to an impossibilty, so you haven't presented a challenge to the use of the "ought implies can" principle as used, as a premise, in that argument. How do you show that a person who ought to believe in determism can not believe in it, without assuming a determinist world?

[Kriminal99]

You haven't shown a situation in which it's sensible to use the word "ought" with respect to an impossibilty, so you haven't presented a challenge to the use of the "ought implies can" principle as used, as a premise, in that argument. How do you show that a person who ought to believe in determism can not believe in it, without assuming a determinist world?

 

I believe I did show such a situation - The student was told that he "ought" to have come to class when he couldn't have because he didn't know he should and therefore had no motivation to. And yet the statement made sense, since it was being used to motivate him to do it next time.

 

However you can still use the same idea with regards to an obvious physical impossibility. I was given the example that the student's house is buried in 12 feet of snow, he had 2 broken legs, and there are no vehicles around. In this case the statement is used to motivate the person to always try in case it was not as impossible as it first seemed and an innovative solution could be created, or because the person making the statement believes a strong effort (even if the task WAS impossible) is a display of respect to him.

 

Regarding the second challenge, the person who does not believe in determinism has not had the experiences which would either motivate him to believe in it, and/or has not had the experiences which seem to point towards it. Stating that he should believe in determinism is an attempt to give the person motivation to seek out new information or experiences that might change his mind. It may not imply that with his given experiences and motivations it is possible for him to believe in determinism at the time the statement is made.

[ughaibu]

Could you try to make your posts short and to the point please. It seems to me that you're now accepting the "ought implies can" principle. All this principle states is that it is meaningless to suggest that a person ought to do or have done a thing that they could not do or have done.

I dont understand how your third paragraph illustrates the case of a person who ought to believe in determinism being incapable of doing so. The final sentence appears to rely on a determinist viewpoint.

[Sacri Sankt]

[Kriminal99]

Could you try to make your posts short and to the point please. It seems to me that you're now accepting the "ought implies can" principle. All this principle states is that it is meaningless to suggest that a person ought to do or have done a thing that they could not do or have done.

I dont understand how your third paragraph illustrates the case of a person who ought to believe in determinism being incapable of doing so. The final sentence appears to rely on a determinist viewpoint.

 

um. I make my posts to answer questions not to adhere to some arbitrary length requirement. Considering that people who disagree often gloss over their opponents arguments it is necessary to find different ways to say the same thing, so that you hit on at least one the opponent will actually think about.

 

No I did not accept "ought implies can". I showed that "ought" does not imply "can". You can say someone ought to have done something, when they couldn't have done it, with the sole purpose of motivating them to do it next time. That is what every above example shows. Is that simple enough for you?

 

The person in the third paragraph is incapable of believing in determinism because he does not have the motivation to believe in it, nor the understanding of the determinist viewpoint that is necessary to believe it. He ought to seek out more information that might allow him to be able to understand and believe in the determinist viewpoint. Any statement that he "ought to believe in determinism" should be interpreted as such - as opposed to that he should already believe it without understanding it. That makes no sense.

[ughaibu]

The "ought implies can" principle is not concerned with concepts other than ought, implies and can. Motivation is irrelevant, it is a red herring, also advice to teachers on how to communicate with students is irrelevant.

[ughaibu]

Here's a thorough defense of "ought implies can": http://www.public.iastate.edu/~vranas/Homesite/papers/OIC.pdf If you read it, I suspect you'll find it interesting. The author considers a determinist argument in section 5.2 In any case, if you persist in rejecting "ought implies can", I'm not getting further involved in that, I'll leave defense of that premise to others.

You now need objections for Erasmus00, Buffy, NP-completeness, the default status of non-determinism in any theory of truth and the infinite regress (post 42).

Have fun, as DoctorDick puts it.

[Kriminal99]

The "ought implies can" principle is not concerned with concepts other than ought, implies and can. Motivation is irrelevant, it is a red herring, also advice to teachers on how to communicate with students is irrelevant.

 

It is not a concept other than "ought implies can" it is a direct counter example to "ought implies can". Motivation is not irrelevant, rather you are not understanding the deterministic viewpoint of HOW it is the case that a student in fact COULD NOT have done what one may have stated he "should" have done. If you did understand it then we wouldn't be here.

 

He COULD NOT have done it, because there is no reason he would have done it because he had no reason to believe he should do it. A person does not do things for no reason. Do you just drive to mexico on a random wednesday for no apparent reason? If someone asked you why you did something don't you always have a reason why you thought what you did was a good idea at the time?

 

The point of bringing up that the correct type of statement to make in this case is to say "Ok, but if your car breaks down again make sure you take the bus to school or it will be unexcused" was to make a connection between the most advanced way of dealing with the situation (Which is known to be such apart from arguments related to determinism - set a clear line as well as the penalties for crossing it rather than punishing after the fact) and a determinist belief set which clearly shows WHY it is the correct way to deal with the situation.

[ughaibu]

Not at all. In your situation the "ought" doesn't apply to an impossible action, it amounts to 'in future you ought to make sure it's possible for you to do as you ought'.