Steve said:
I think whether the issue with regard to causation or determinism comes up as
problematic is whether one thinks of causation as an epistemological issue
(certainty/uncertainty) or as somehow ontological/metaphysical (things actually
follow laws that can be spelled out or are otherwise written into the fabric of
the cosmos). When the "law-like" issue comes up it is because someone is
thinking of causation as a universal obligation rather than a causal law being
merely descriptive and therefore innocuous as far as stealing our humanity in
some metaphysical way. In the MOQ, causality is an intellectual pattern
concerned with predicting and controlling our world. It has epistemological
rather than ontological standing. How could getting better at predicting and
controlling the world make us less human? But if causality is thought to be a
metaphysical reality then we may worry about really being nothing but meat
puppets.
dmb says:
Right, leaving the theistic versions aside, determinism rests on the notion
that everything is determined by causes. It says that ll events flow
mechanically from previous events and even the dictionary makes note of the
implications of this for morality. "Meat puppets". Yep. If all events are
determined by causes beyond our will, including our own actions, then of course
there can be no moral responsibility. Having free will means your actions were
not the result of external causes and you could have done otherwise.
determinism |diˈtərməˌnizəm|noun Philosophythe doctrine that all events,
including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the
will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human
beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their
actions.
That's what I meant by saying that determinism RESTS on the notion of causality
and that's what it means to say causality precludes moral responsibility.
Wouldn't you have to be a scientific reductionist of the worst kind to believe
that casual chains obtain in the sphere of human action? Wouldn't we say such a
determinist was guilty of scientism on a very grand scale? You'd have to
subscribe to a metaphysical naturalism wherein nothing is real except physical
objects and processes. You'd have be to a hard-core materialist on steroids to
believe in reality as a perfect chain of causality.
In the MOQ, causality is just a pretty good idea when you're doing physics or
building a sand castle. It's not the fabric of the cosmos.
The problem of induction:
How can we know that the past is any guide to the future? In the past it has
been, but to use that as justification for expecting it to be in the future is
begging the question.
dmb says:
I guess this is one of the classics that I never heard.
Seems to me that the question demands an unreasonable level of certainty. If we
use the past as a guide to the future and it's been working effectively then
this knowledge is justified empirically, as a practical matter, and that's
about all we can ever squeeze out of the word "know".
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