[MD] What is determinism?

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Mark:

...He [James] 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 repled:
People's idea of determinism fits what James is saying about indeterminism? Dude, that is pure nonsense, a blatant contradiction. ... 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".


Steve repled:
I understand that, but the point is that (as I am sure you'll agree) the absence of random chance is not what people today mean by free will. The idea that the universe is not entirely determined because it has an inescapable element of randomness does nothing to support free will. "Indeterminism" of that sort is just a version of determinism as a particular sort of doctrine that opposes free will. Random events don't fit the concept of free will any more than lawful ones do.



dmb says:

You seem to have missed the simple point that, for James, indeterminism is the opposite of determinism. You have equated opposed ideas once again, this time sending James right back into the quagmire of evasion from which he sought to escape in the first place. James is very clearly making a case against determinism, not least of all I might add, because of it's horrific moral implications.

On top of that hot, steamy mess, you have used quantum mechanics as some kind of premise for drawing conclusions about human freedom. This is just an updated version of the same upward extrapolation that Pirsig reverses and rejects in his reformulation. It hardly matter if we are talking about Newtonian mechanics or quantum mechanics. Either way, you are reducing humans to their physical components and otherwise inferring our capabilities from the behavior of atoms and particles. That's a unsubtle slip back into scientific objectivity and it makes no sense to look at James or the MOQ in those terms.