[MD] What is determinism?

[david buchanan]

 Steve said to Mark:
What he [James] is describing as determinism is what I think people today would call fatalism. He endorses indeterminism over determinism in that essay which equates with chance. Post quantum mechanics, people's idea of determinism includes chance and fits what James is saying about indeterminism (that if you could somehow rewind history and play it again it would come out differently.)

dmb says:

People's idea of determinism fits what James is saying about indeterminism? Dude, that is pure nonsense, a blatant contradiction. Do you ever listen to yourself? 
And if that's not enough, James explains that he is only making a case for "chance" and indeterminism rather than "freedom" precisely because his determinist opponents have warped and distorted the meaning of ""freedom" in what had become a "quagmire of evasion". They were calling themselves "free-will determinists" and saying that freedom is "necessity understood" and "true freedom" is bondage. Do James talks about chance rather than freedom simply to avoid all this contradictory drivel. And what is your response? You use it as a basis for asserting more of that same contradictory drivel. It's hard to see how someone could misread James so badly. It's like you're actually trying to get it wrong, as if your aim is to make it into the opposite of what it is.


Steve said:
I don't accept it as an axiom that determinism is incomptible with ethics. 



dmb says:

In that case, there are several possibilities. You don't know what "determinism" is. You don't know what 'incompatible" means. You don't understand what the study of "ethics" is about. Your position is really quite implausible and even worthy of ridicule and yet you have no apparent reason for taking it. It's just a naked, unexplained, unjustified refusal of the obvious. It defies logic and the english language. It's worse than worthless.