Sorry McDevy . I was just excited about learning stuff in intro to philosophy at school. Didn't mean to offend.

@KSP, I'm in his metaphysics class

Originally Posted by bjorn_248

Also as far as the mind body argument, I don't really think that's relevant. Even if your consciousness was a floaty ball of dust in the heavens your decisions still have to be explicable, I think. Explicable decisions require causation, otherwise are they random?

That's another argument cited by determinists a lot. "What explains our choices? Our beliefs, desires, and character. None of those are determined by your consciousness." I don't completely buy that.

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If we were to duplicate this universe and go back 10 years ago in this alternate but absolutely identical universe up to this point in time, could my future in both universes be different?

I don't think so.

Originally Posted by KSP89

Given the way the discussion is going, I thought it might be interesting to post how current philosophers view this issue. This is from a survey given to professional philosophers in 2009 and was taken by 3226 respondents, including 1803 philosophy faculty members and/or PhDs and 829 philosophy graduate students.


Check out the other philosophical questions they surveyed if you're interested: http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

And Bjorn, who's teaching your philosophy class?

Interesting statistics.

Originally Posted by KSP89

Just to stay on topic, I'm hoping to make a thread this weekend covering some philosophy issues that haven't been done to death here yet. This section needs to come back to life.

Ya that would be fun, do it.

Originally Posted by FraGTaLiTy

If we were to duplicate this universe and go back 10 years ago in this alternate but absolutely identical universe up to this point in time, could my future in both universes be different?

I don't think so.

Lol, I said that earlier, but I'm not sure how it plays into what you quoted . The universe wouldn't be identical if things played out differently right, by definition? Unless the universe DID have some sort of randomness to it as an inherent part of the system? Quantum fluctuations? If that's true, I'm not sure you can say that. That doesn't mean the universe isn't predictable by god/determined, it just means that the god would completely understand the system, and that part of the system's causal nature has to do with the randomness as well. I see a paradox arising. Randomness shouldn't be predictable...

Another thing I took issue with was Ayer's lack of a definition for constraint. What is a constraint? What has to be missing for a decision to be unconstrained? I need to read his paper again, then I'll post again.

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Originally Posted by bjorn_248

Lol, I said that earlier, but I'm not sure how it plays into what you quoted . The universe wouldn't be identical if things played out differently right, by definition? Unless the universe DID have some sort of randomness to it as an inherent part of the system? Quantum fluctuations? If that's true, I'm not sure you can say that. That doesn't mean the universe isn't predictable by god/determined, it just means that the god would completely understand the system, and that part of the system's causal nature has to do with the randomness as well. I see a paradox arising. Randomness shouldn't be predictable...

Ever take a statistics or physics class? If not, let me give you the low down. Individual random events aren't predictable, at all. Groups or populations of random events are extremely predictable.

This nigga.

Originally Posted by TooMuchButtHair

Ever take a statistics or physics class? If not, let me give you the low down. Individual random events aren't predictable, at all. Groups or populations of random events are extremely predictable.

Cool. I've never learned about randomness, in any setting. So we can basically ignore any potential paradox there then. I'll have to do some research on my own to figure out why what you said is true though.

Originally Posted by bjorn_248

Cool. I've never learned about randomness, in any setting. So we can basically ignore any potential paradox there then. I'll have to do some research on my own to figure out why what you said is true though.

The best place to start is to find out what probability really means and how it apply to randomness.