Then Again, Maybe Determinism is Why I Wrote This Post and I am Wrong Thinking I Freely Willed to Do So
A few days ago over at the Groping the Elephant blog, Doug B brought up the subject of predictability , specifically of causal determinism. I get the impression from this and other of his previous posts that Doug is a dead set believer of determinism (as far as I can tell). Anyway, so he ended the post inviting his readers to think about that. And I accepted the invitation, since although I knew where I stood on the subject, I really had never thought out the reasons why and figured I probably should. Determinism is the philosophy that every event, including human decision and action, is absolutely predetermined and the result of earlier causes. The presumption here is that there is no such thing as free will or choice, that events which seem happenstance are actually foreordained and could be fully understood and explained (the future could be predicted even) if only an avant-garde smartest someone was able to figure out how things work. Of course I have no issue with believing in th...