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    Exploring determinism in physical theories is valuable ev... — Carmelics
    Home/Free Will & Foreknowledge
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    Exploring determinism in physical theories is valuable even if it does not tell us whether our world is governed by deterministic laws

    Free Will & Foreknowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Exploring determinism in physical theories enriches our understanding of the richness and complexity of determinism
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    • 2.Current best theories, including General Relativity and the Standard Model, are too flawed and ill-understood to be mistaken for a Final Theory
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Epistemically, theoretical exploration of determinism without ontological commitment risks producing sophisticated but practically idle metaphysics.
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    • 2.Reichenbach and later van Fraassen argued that scientific inquiry divorced from empirical adequacy criteria generates pseudo-knowledge about modal structure.
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    • 3.If determinism's truth-value in our world is inaccessible, systematizing its formal properties yields conceptual clarity without genuine philosophical progress on free will.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Earman's own work on Laplacian determinism demonstrates that even rigorous physical formalization fails to resolve the compatibilist-incompatibilist dispute.
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    • 2.If our best physical theories are too flawed to identify determinism's presence, they are equally too flawed to ground normatively significant conclusions about agency and responsibility.
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    Related

    Current best theories, including General Relativity and the Standard Model, are ...Earman's own work on Laplacian determinism demonstrates that even rigorous physi...Epistemically, theoretical exploration of determinism without ontological commit...Exploring determinism in physical theories enriches our understanding of the ric...
    +3 moreShow less
    If determinism's truth-value in our world is inaccessible, systematizing its for...If our best physical theories are too flawed to identify determinism's presence,...Reichenbach and later van Fraassen argued that scientific inquiry divorced from ...

    Similar

    Exploring determinism in physical theories enriches our understanding ...90%Not all laws of nature are deterministic80%Causal determinism applies only to outward phenomena, not to human age...79%Even if we had such a theory, it remains unclear whether it would be d...78%

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    John Earman’s Primer on Determinism (1986) remains the richest storehouse of information on the truth or falsity of determinism in various physical theories, from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics and general relativity. (See also his recent update on the subject, “Aspects of Determinism in Modern Physics” (2007)). Here I will give only a brief discussion of some key issues, referring the reader to Earman (1986) and other resources for more detail. Figuring out whether well-established th
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    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit