Causality and Acausality

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Dave Toast
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Re: Religious language

Post by Dave Toast »

DT: Speaking philosophically, the truth of the matter is the more appropriate. And the truth of the matter is that human will and universal will are identical.

dejavu: No, the truth of the matter is we know no universal will, only our own.
The will that 'we' commonly know as our own is an illusion. It is every bit as caused as the billiard ball that wills itself into the pocket via our striking the cue ball towards it at the correct pace and angle. Likewise, it is every bit as determined and dependent as our understanding of nothing is by our understanding of something.

This is the truth of human will and therefore, to speak of human will in the commonly understood sense (free) is to speak figuratively about what we see as an isolated subset of causation. Yet, ultimately, there are no isolated subsets of causation, just the one irrevocably interconnected and interdependent 'process'. Thus if we can justifiably speak figuratively of human will, we can just as justifiably speak figuratively of universal will or even God's will. When the terms are investigated in a logically thoghroughgoing manner and thereby defined precisely, the apparent misapprehended differences dissolve.
dejavu: Wise people use the words cause and effect when speaking of cause and effect.

DT: Wise people use whatever tools are appropriate for the task.

dejavu: Yes, and the words in question---- in what way can you see them being appropriate for this particular task?
I've already answered that in the parts of my last post that were snipped here:
dejavu: What misappropriation of the word will!

DT: That depends on what meaning of the word 'will' you think is more appropriate, the common useage or the truth of the matter. One might even argue that the truth of the matter is always appropriate, rendering the common useage the misappropriation.

Pushing the common useage towards the truth of the matter facilitates understanding. Reappropriation of common misappropriations, or exploiting the concepts behind common misappropriations, are valid and powerful faclitators of understanding.
And here:
dejavu: Wise people use the words cause and effect when speaking of cause and effect.

DT: Not necessarily. Not if they're talking to someone who doesn't truly understand cause and effect, and its greater ramifications, for example. To do so would not be to express what they mean but to express what the other person understands - an exercise in futility.
To be specific, exploiting the concepts behind misappropriations and/or reappropriating the meaning of words such as God, will and cause & effect, in conjunction are appropriate to the task of conveying an holistic understanding of the relationship between them to someone who otherwise might not make those connections, thereby fully justifying this method in the task of conveying greater understanding.
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David Quinn
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

Ataraxia wrote:
David Quinn wrote:Apart from any other consideration, the severe allergic reaction that people have towards religious words and poetic expression, and the rigidity of mind that this allergy engenders (as exhibited by some of the posters above), is sufficient reason for wise people to keep using them.

You can't hope to be free-thinkers if you keep creating barriers for yourselves.
*shrug*

Philosophy is just another craft;language the tool of the trade. It seems to me if one would really strive to achieve the level of artisan then better to use the right tool for the right job.I think that was Nietzsche's real strength.

Nietzsche left himself open to being misinterpreted as a postmodernist, so he wasn't as wise as he could have been. Not from his use of poetic expression, which was extensive, but from his attachment to being an iconoclast in the world.

In my opinion, religious concepts can be very effective in conveying what is ultimately true, if for no other reason that they can help break people out of the mundane mentality of scientific materialism.

If one wants to convey the idea that the All is deterministic,then say that. Talk of "God's will" just muddies the waters.
It doesn't muddy the waters for those who don't have an allergy to the word "God", or to any other spiritual concept. Quite the contrary, such concepts can effectively shed light on different aspects of reality.

Reality can be approached and understood in thousands of different ways. As such, it is good to mix one's language up so as to help people avoid settling into limited habits of thought. If your only message was, "All is deterministic", then you would only encourage people to settle down into materialistic, scientific modes of thought - which would be a shame, given that Nature is so much more than this.

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maestro
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Re: Religious language

Post by maestro »

David Quinn wrote:Reality can be approached and understood in thousands of different ways. As such, it is good to mix one's language up so as to help people avoid settling into limited habits of thought. If your only message was, "All is deterministic", then you would only encourage people to settle down into materialistic, scientific modes of thought - which would be a shame, given that Nature is so much more than this.
Does not causality entail determinism, at least in the sense that the future is fully fixed by the present (even though may not be predictable).
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David Quinn
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

If determinism means "all things are caused", then it is the same as causality.

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maestro
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Re: Religious language

Post by maestro »

David Quinn wrote:If determinism means "all things are caused", then it is the same as causality.
All things are caused implies that the future is fully determined by the past?
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

Yes.

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Re: Religious language

Post by maestro »

Causality is an article of faith is it not? The universe may not be causal. How do you establish that the past fully fixes the future? Could it not happen that with sufficient complexity in a system, many possible futures are possible given an initial configuration.
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

maestro wrote:Causality is an article of faith is it not? The universe may not be causal. How do you establish that the past fully fixes the future?

What else could fix the future?

Could it not happen that with sufficient complexity in a system, many possible futures are possible given an initial configuration.
From our perspective as finite beings with no definite knowledge of how the future will pan out, we can entertain the idea of "many possible futures". But the future that actually occurs is the one that actually occurs, and is always a product of causation.

Complexity doesn't escape this basic truth. Even in the most complex systems, which seemingly offer many different possibilities, strict causal processes are always happening. It might only be the slightest of factors which triggers one chain of events instead of another, but that is enough.

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maestro
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Re: Religious language

Post by maestro »

David Quinn wrote: What else could fix the future?
Maybe the future is not fixed but open.
David Quinn wrote:From our perspective as finite beings with no definite knowledge of how the future will pan out, we can entertain the idea of "many possible futures". But the future that actually occurs is the one that actually occurs, and is always a product of causation.
How about the new and fancy "many worlds" theory in which the future is random, and what we see is one branch of it.
Complexity doesn't escape this basic truth. Even in the most complex systems, which seemingly offer many different possibilities, strict causal processes are always happening. It might only be the slightest of factors which triggers one chain of events instead of another, but that is enough.
Could there be something in the universe out of causality, a creative force? How to prove it does not exist?
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Re: Religious language

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maestro wrote:How about the new and fancy "many worlds" theory in which the future is random, and what we see is one branch of it.
How about quantum immortality?
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

maestro wrote:
David Quinn wrote: What else could fix the future?
Maybe the future is not fixed but open.

From our perspective as finite beings the future is always open. But once it occurs it is fixed.

maestro wrote:
David Quinn wrote:From our perspective as finite beings with no definite knowledge of how the future will pan out, we can entertain the idea of "many possible futures". But the future that actually occurs is the one that actually occurs, and is always a product of causation.
How about the new and fancy "many worlds" theory in which the future is random, and what we see is one branch of it.

Our experience of this one branch would be caused.

maestro wrote:
Complexity doesn't escape this basic truth. Even in the most complex systems, which seemingly offer many different possibilities, strict causal processes are always happening. It might only be the slightest of factors which triggers one chain of events instead of another, but that is enough.
Could there be something in the universe out of causality, a creative force? How to prove it does not exist?
If a force was truly outside causality, then it would be powerless to cause anything. Its creation would be random and its effects would be nil.

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maestro
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Re: Religious language

Post by maestro »

David Quinn wrote:
How about the new and fancy "many worlds" theory in which the future is random, and what we see is one branch of it.

Our experience of this one branch would be caused.
But "us" exist in all the possible branches. The point was that causality may not be the only consistent model of the world, a random model would also do well.
maestro wrote: If a force was truly outside causality, then it would be powerless to cause anything. Its creation would be random and its effects would be nil.
Consider the following system, an intelligent system with a random process, outside of the causal universe. The intelligent system gets various configurations from the random process and selects those which seem interesting to it. In the absence of the random process, the intelligent system cannot create anything outside of what the causal universe has predetermined.
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David Quinn
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

maestro wrote:
David Quinn wrote:
How about the new and fancy "many worlds" theory in which the future is random, and what we see is one branch of it.

Our experience of this one branch would be caused.
But "us" exist in all the possible branches. The point was that causality may not be the only consistent model of the world, a random model would also do well.

We can't really speak of "us" existing in all those branches. The only branch I know is this one. If there are other David Quinns in other branches, they no longer have anything to do with me. They are different people.

maestro wrote:
If a force was truly outside causality, then it would be powerless to cause anything. Its creation would be random and its effects would be nil.
Consider the following system, an intelligent system with a random process, outside of the causal universe. The intelligent system gets various configurations from the random process and selects those which seem interesting to it. In the absence of the random process, the intelligent system cannot create anything outside of what the causal universe has predetermined.
You make it sound as though a causal universe is a prison of some kind.

I also don't understand the distinction you make between "random" and "causal". A random event is just as causal in nature as a non-random event is.

If by random you mean, "springing into existence out of nothing", then there is the further problem of improbability. What are the odds that a completely uncaused event can throw up a configuration that is even remotely meaningful to one's personal situation in life? Incredibly low, I would have thought. For every meaningful configuration there would countless useless ones, which would make mental functioning all but impossible.

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Re: Religious language

Post by maestro »

David Quinn wrote:If by random you mean, "springing into existence out of nothing", then there is the further problem of improbability. What are the odds that a completely uncaused event can throw up a configuration that is even remotely meaningful to one's personal situation in life? Incredibly low, I would have thought. For every meaningful configuration there would countless useless ones, which would make mental functioning all but impossible.
Of course most random ideas generated by the random process would be useless, but once in a while there would be something extraordinary, which would be creativity. This creativity cannot arise from a causal universe, which is essentially fixed in time too.
David Quinn wrote: I also don't understand the distinction you make between "random" and "causal". A random event is just as causal in nature as a non-random event is.
It is non-causal in the sense that the present state of the universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random process. The outcome cannot be known until it is revealed.
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Re: Religious language

Post by Kevin Solway »

maestro wrote:How about the new and fancy "many worlds" theory in which the future is random, and what we see is one branch of it.
"Random" only means upredictable. It doesn't mean that countless futures are spawned out of nowhere.

What you are talking about is a story, like a myth, to try and make some progress with some particular issue. It's not meant to be taken literally. It is just like some types of religious stories.
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

maestro wrote:
David Quinn wrote:If by random you mean, "springing into existence out of nothing", then there is the further problem of improbability. What are the odds that a completely uncaused event can throw up a configuration that is even remotely meaningful to one's personal situation in life? Incredibly low, I would have thought. For every meaningful configuration there would countless useless ones, which would make mental functioning all but impossible.
Of course most random ideas generated by the random process would be useless, but once in a while there would be something extraordinary, which would be creativity. This creativity cannot arise from a causal universe, which is essentially fixed in time too.

Why not?

I see creativity as the making of new mental connections, and the ability to do this comes from a fluidity of mind that it isn't trapped in old ways of thinking. It is a mental ability that is fully causal.

A mind cluttered with useless random configurations would more likely to be far less creative.

maestro wrote:
David Quinn wrote: I also don't understand the distinction you make between "random" and "causal". A random event is just as causal in nature as a non-random event is.
It is non-causal in the sense that the present state of the universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random process. The outcome cannot be known until it is revealed.
Are you equating determinism with predictability here? Unpredictable events are simply events that we, as finite beings, cannot predict. Their unpredictability doesn't constitute evidence that the events are non-causal.

The roll of a dice is fully causal and yet it is impossible for us to predict its outcome. For convenience, we say the outcome is "random". But that doesn't mean non-causal.

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Re: Religious language

Post by Kevin Solway »

maestro wrote:It is non-causal in the sense that the present state of the universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random process. The outcome cannot be known until it is revealed.
The fact that something cannot be known until it is revealed doesn't mean that it isn't fully caused.
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Re: Religious language

Post by maestro »

David Quinn wrote: Are you equating determinism with predictability here? Unpredictable events are simply events that we, as finite beings, cannot predict. Their unpredictability doesn't constitute evidence that the events are non-causal.

The roll of a dice is fully causal and yet it is impossible for us to predict its outcome. For convenience, we say the outcome is "random". But that doesn't mean non-causal.
But why should everything be fully causal, there could be events which are uncaused, that is the current state of the universe is not sufficient to fix their outcome, regardless of determinism or predictability.
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Causality and Acausality

Post by maestro »

Kevin Solway wrote:The fact that something cannot be known until it is revealed doesn't mean that it isn't fully caused.
True enough, but logically there could be events which are not fixed by the current state of the universe, how will you refute the existence of such events, you can only assume it apriori.
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

maestro wrote:
David Quinn wrote: Are you equating determinism with predictability here? Unpredictable events are simply events that we, as finite beings, cannot predict. Their unpredictability doesn't constitute evidence that the events are non-causal.

The roll of a dice is fully causal and yet it is impossible for us to predict its outcome. For convenience, we say the outcome is "random". But that doesn't mean non-causal.
But why should everything be fully causal, there could be events which are uncaused, that is the current state of the universe is not sufficient to fix their outcome, regardless of determinism or predictability.
Apart from any other consideration, we don't experience a world in which things appear suddenly, willy-nilly and out of context, which would be the case if non-causal events were possible. For example, a physical mouse suddenly appearing inside one's brain, or a giant electron suddenly appearing in the corner of one's living room. The world would be awash with these sorts of freak events if non-causality was a reality.

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Re: Religious language

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maestro wrote:Causality is an article of faith is it not?
Indeed it is.
maestro: How do you establish that the past fully fixes the future?

David: What else could fix the future?
For a start there's the problem that we can never know definitively that the past and future actually existed and will exist, respectively. For all we know, the past is but a false memory and the future is but a vain dream, and there is only this single moment. Alternatively: for all we know, in each successive moment we inhabit an entirely, distinct, and causally-unrelated-to-the-previous-moment new universe of memories and physical configuration - in one moment you are writing a post in to GF, with memories of having grown up in Australia and becoming a male sage; in the next moment you are a woman of an alien species on a shopping spree on another planet, with memories of being literally put together by your community of parents, and the universe has an entirely different topography to that of the previous moment.

Assuming, however, that neither of these possibilities is true, one answer to your question is "some form of constrained true randomness".
David Quinn wrote:But the future that actually occurs is the one that actually occurs, and is always a product of causation.
Such is your faith. It's interesting then to observe how fond you are of deriding the faith of others, particularly of those who believe in God.
maestro wrote:Consider the following system, an intelligent system with a random process, outside of the causal universe. The intelligent system gets various configurations from the random process and selects those which seem interesting to it.
That's a reasonable possibility. Proof that causality is a faith, albeit that it is potentially true (just like God is a faith, albeit that He is potentially true).
David: I also don't understand the distinction you make between "random" and "causal". A random event is just as causal in nature as a non-random event is.

maestro: It is non-causal in the sense that the present state of the universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random process. The outcome cannot be known until it is revealed.
Great explanation, maestro, and one that can't really be refuted (at least it hasn't been in this thread).

The responses of David and Kevin seem to be to something that they anticipated that maestro would write, or to a selective reading of his words, rather than what he actually did write. First, David's:
Are you equating determinism with predictability here? Unpredictable events are simply events that we, as finite beings, cannot predict. Their unpredictability doesn't constitute evidence that the events are non-causal.
David asks a question out of the blue that reveals what he expected, rather than what maestro actually wrote. David seems to have expected maestro to have written something like "Determinism means that everything is theoretically predictable; randomness means that some things are unpredictable", to which David responds that even in theory, deterministic events are not predictable, and thus that randomness (assuming that it is defined as unpredictability) doesn't contradict determinism. It seems to me that this is in effect a non-response, because maestro is not - as far as I can tell - equating determinism with predictability: he seems to be approaching it from a more nuts-and-bolts perspective, explaining how true randomness is in opposition to fully deterministic causality.

Next, Kevin responds only to the final sentence ("The outcome cannot be known until it is revealed."), ignoring the rest of maestro's explanation:
The fact that something cannot be known until it is revealed doesn't mean that it isn't fully caused.
If Kevin had thought carefully about what maestro had explained, then he would have recognised that under maestro's scheme, the thing is definitively not fully caused, by virtue of the fact that "the present state of the universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random process". The thing happens, but it is not fully caused. There is a truly random aspect to it. Like David's response, Kevin's response is a non-event, ignoring the actual point that maestro is making.

Both David and Kevin have failed to disprove the possibility of maestro's scenario, and hence the answer to his original question is of a certainty "Yes, causality is an article of faith". Well might David and Kevin be referred to as Defenders of the Faith.
David Quinn wrote:If by random you mean, "springing into existence out of nothing", then there is the further problem of improbability. What are the odds that a completely uncaused event can throw up a configuration that is even remotely meaningful to one's personal situation in life?
What if it were not "completely uncaused", but were rather random within a set of (meaningful) parameters?
Kevin Solway wrote:"Random" only means upredictable [sic].
I disagree with the word "only". Random can also mean non-deterministic, in the sense that maestro wrote above: the present state of the [system] is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random [event].
maestro: But why should everything be fully causal, there could be events which are uncaused, that is the current state of the universe is not sufficient to fix their outcome, regardless of determinism or predictability.

David: Apart from any other consideration, we don't experience a world in which things appear suddenly, willy-nilly and out of context, which would be the case if non-causal events were possible. For example, a physical mouse suddenly appearing inside one's brain, or a giant electron suddenly appearing in the corner of one's living room. The world would be awash with these sorts of freak events if non-causality was a reality.
This would only be the case if the random events were completely unconstrained, in which case we most likely would not have a universe suitable for the inhabitation of consciousness, given that freak events would be constantly occurring to destroy and injure that consciousness. It would not be the case if, as I suggested above, those random events were constrained in some way.
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Re: Religious language

Post by maestro »

Thanks guest_of_logic, you have perfectly well understood what I was talking about, which seems to have escaped Quinn and Solway completely.
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Re: Religious language

Post by Kevin Solway »

guest_of_logic wrote:maestro: It is non-causal in the sense that the present state of the universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random process. The outcome cannot be known until it is revealed.

Great explanation, maestro, and one that can't really be refuted (at least it hasn't been in this thread).
It can very easily be refuted. Maestro is making the assumption that the present state of the Universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of a particular process. This is a false assumption.

Of course we, as finite beings, cannot know the outcome until it is revealed. But the outcome is still determined (by the present state of the Universe).
Kevin Solway wrote:"Random" only means unpredictable.
I disagree with the word "only". Random can also mean non-deterministic, in the sense that maestro wrote above: the present state of the [system] is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random [event].
Since you can never know the present state of the system, you can't know that it is not sufficient to determine the outcome of an event.
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Re: Religious language

Post by guest_of_logic »

Kevin Solway wrote:
guest_of_logic wrote:maestro: It is non-causal in the sense that the present state of the universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random process. The outcome cannot be known until it is revealed.

Great explanation, maestro, and one that can't really be refuted (at least it hasn't been in this thread).
It can very easily be refuted. Maestro is making the assumption that the present state of the Universe is not sufficient to determine the outcome of a particular process. This is a false assumption.

Of course we, as finite beings, cannot know the outcome until it is revealed. But the outcome is still determined (by the present state of the Universe).
Oh deary, deary me. What a pitiful, faith-soaked reply.

Kevin, you start off by saying that maestro's explanation can be easily refuted, and then completely and utterly fail to do so, replacing refutation with a series of assertions: "This is a false assumption" - but why is it false? - and "But the outcome is still determined (by the present state of the Universe)" - but why is this necessarily the case given that maestro has identified an alternative?
Kevin: "Random" only means unpredictable.

guest_of_logic: I disagree with the word "only". Random can also mean non-deterministic, in the sense that maestro wrote above: the present state of the [system] is not sufficient to determine the outcome of the random [event].

Kevin: Since you can never know the present state of the system, you can't know that it is not sufficient to determine the outcome of an event.
It's got nothing to do with what anyone knows, but with what is true. The very point that maestro and I are making is that these things are impossible to know, which is why they are a matter of faith.
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Re: Religious language

Post by David Quinn »

guest_of_logic wrote:
maestro wrote:Causality is an article of faith is it not?
Indeed it is.

Not at all.

guest_of_logic wrote:
maestro: How do you establish that the past fully fixes the future?

David: What else could fix the future?
For a start there's the problem that we can never know definitively that the past and future actually existed and will exist, respectively. For all we know, the past is but a false memory and the future is but a vain dream, and there is only this single moment.

In which case, the issue becomes non-existent. Neither maestro's views nor mine are refuted by this.

However, it still remains the case that, logically, the only possible cause of the future is the past.

Alternatively: for all we know, in each successive moment we inhabit an entirely, distinct, and causally-unrelated-to-the-previous-moment new universe of memories and physical configuration - in one moment you are writing a post in to GF, with memories of having grown up in Australia and becoming a male sage; in the next moment you are a woman of an alien species on a shopping spree on another planet, with memories of being literally put together by your community of parents, and the universe has an entirely different topography to that of the previous moment.

Even all that would be causally-created. At the very least, the present reality would depend on the previous reality not hindering or undermining its coming into existence, so right away there is a causal relationship between them.

David asks a question out of the blue that reveals what he expected, rather than what maestro actually wrote. David seems to have expected maestro to have written something like "Determinism means that everything is theoretically predictable; randomness means that some things are unpredictable", to which David responds that even in theory, deterministic events are not predictable, and thus that randomness (assuming that it is defined as unpredictability) doesn't contradict determinism. It seems to me that this is in effect a non-response, because maestro is not - as far as I can tell - equating determinism with predictability: he seems to be approaching it from a more nuts-and-bolts perspective, explaining how true randomness is in opposition to fully deterministic causality.

Maestro hasn't demonstrated how random events, or creativity for that matter, are at odds with a causal universe. Until he does, his pointing to them has no meaning.

guest_of_logic wrote:
David Quinn wrote:If by random you mean, "springing into existence out of nothing", then there is the further problem of improbability. What are the odds that a completely uncaused event can throw up a configuration that is even remotely meaningful to one's personal situation in life?
What if it were not "completely uncaused", but were rather random within a set of (meaningful) parameters?

What does that mean exactly? What does it mean to say that something is partially caused? Does it mean that those areas where causality isn't happening, non-causality reigns?

"Constraining random events" sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. Rather like "caused uncaused events".

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