Misplaced Pages

Physical determinism: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 04:02, 6 February 2013 editBrews ohare (talk | contribs)47,831 edits Undid revision 536808443 by Richardbrucebaxter (talk) This reversion is incorrect; please use the Talk page← Previous edit Latest revision as of 09:30, 3 February 2017 edit undoSandstein (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Administrators188,269 edits Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Physical determinism closed as redirect to Determinism#Varieties 
(75 intermediate revisions by 13 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
#REDIRECT ] {{R from related topic}}
'''Physical determinism''' is a position in ] that holds that all ''physical'' events occur as described by ''physical'' laws.<ref name=Bishop/> A narrower definition states that physical determinism holds that a complete description of the ''physical'' state of the world at any given time and a complete statement of the ''physical'' laws of nature together entail every truth as to what ''physical'' events happen after that time.<ref name=Ginet/> The emphasis upon a particular time in the last definition may be too specific to encompass all forms of physical determinism and, as is discussed below, a broader view requires only that events be logically connected by a physical theory.

Sometimes the restrictions to ''physical'' events and ''physical'' laws are ignored, and physical determinism is used as a synonym for ], that all future events are governed by the past or present according to all-encompassing deterministic laws.<ref name=Horst/> However, in this article this practice is avoided.

These definitions leave open just what "physical" might include. So, for example, one could limit the scope of ''physical determinism'' as:
{{quote|"Physical determinism might be a concept only relevant to the mathematical models of physics and other physical sciences, although its relevance to the world of everyday choice and action is questionable...if thoughts, feelings, and desires are not physical events, it is unlikely that physical theories are appropriate models for thinking about such nonphysical events."<ref name=Bishop/>|Robert C. Bishop |Chaos, indeterminism, and free will, p. 84}}

These limitations of physical determinism can be expressed in terms of its origin in a third-person perspective, from which "thoughts, feelings, and desires are not physical events":
{{quote|"Epistemically, the mind is determined by mental states, which are accessible in First-Person Perspective. In contrast, the brain, as characterized by neuronal states, can be accessed in Third-Person Perspective. The Third-Person Perspective focuses on other persons and thus on the neuronal states of others' brain while excluding the own brain. In contrast, the First-Person Perspective could potentially provide epistemic access to own brain...However, the First-Person Perspective provides access only to the own mental states but not to the own brain and its neuronal states."
<ref name=Northoff/>|Georg Northoff |''Philosophy of the Brain: The Brain Problem'', p. 5 }}

==Causal completeness==
{{See also|Causal closure}}
The scope of physical determinism is related to the question of the ''causal completeness'' of science, the idea that every real event has a scientific explanation, that science need not search for explanations beyond itself.<ref name=Sarkar/> If causal completeness does not apply to ''everything'' in the universe, then the door is open to events that are not subject to physical determinism.<ref name=Atmanspacher/> For example, a common view of mental events is that they are an ] only correlated with neurological activity, and without causal impact. For more detail, see the article on ]. However, a failure of physical determinism would allow room for their causal significance.

A more careful formulation of physical determinism skirts the issue of causal completeness. It is based upon connections between 'events' supplied by a theory:
{{quote| "a theory is deterministic if, and only if, given its state variables for some initial period, the theory logically determines a unique set of values for those variables for any other period."<ref name=Nagel/>|Ernest Nagel|''Alternative descriptions of physical state'' p. 292 }}
This quote replaces the idea of 'cause-and-effect' with that of 'logical implication' according to one or another theory that connects events. In addition, an 'event' is related by the theory itself to formalized ''states'' described using the parameters defined by that theory. Thus, the details of interpretation are placed where they belong, fitted to the context in which the chosen theory applies. Using the definition of physical determinism above, the limitations of a theory to some particular domain of experience also limits the associated definition of 'physical determinism' to that same domain. That limitation leaves open the question whether there is a physical "]" waiting to be invented.

==Popper's three worlds==
A much more general reservation about the scope of physical determinism stems from the formulation of ]. ] split the world into three categories:<ref name=Popper/>

* World 1: the world of physical ]s and ]s, including ] entities
* World 2: the mental or psychological world, the world of our feelings of pain and of pleasure, of our thoughts, of our decisions, of our perceptions and our observations; in other words, the world of mental or psychological states or processes, or of subjective experiences.
* World 3: the world of products of the human mind, including art, science, and religion.

World 3 includes physical theory as a particular case. But World 3 is a creation of the human imagination, and such acts of imagination are a part of World 2. Accordingly, one could argue that physical determinism is a child of the imagination, and although physical determinism has its successes in describing World 1, it may not apply to World 2 or World 3. The subjective aspects of theories contained in World 3 are not readily framed within the third-person perspective of science used to explain World 1. These subjective aspects, including those pointed out by ] and many others,<ref name=Kuhn/> are described in the article ].

==See also==
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]

==References==
{{reflist|refs=
<ref name=Atmanspacher>
{{cite book |author=Robert C Bishop, Harald Atmanspacher |chapter=Chapter 5: The causal closure of physics and free will |page=101 |title=The Oxford Handbook of Free Will: Second Edition |editor=Robert Kane, ed |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=4YUJhIiyMFoC&pg=PA101 |isbn=0195399692 |year=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |edition=2nd}}
</ref>

<ref name=Bishop>
{{cite book |author=Robert C Bishop |chapter=Chapter 4: Chaos, indeterminism, and free will |page=84 |title=The Oxford Handbook of Free Will: Second Edition |editor=Robert Kane, ed |isbn=0195399692 |year=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |edition=2nd |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=4YUJhIiyMFoC&pg=PA84}}
</ref>

<ref name=Ginet>
This definition is from {{cite book |title=On Action |author=Carl Ginet |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=mRns0NYdns0C&pg=PA92 |page=92 |isbn=052138818X |year=1990 |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
</ref>

<ref name=Horst>
{{cite book |title=Laws, Mind, and Free Will |author=Steven W Horst |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=B58sSJy0eN0C&pg=PA98 |page=98 |isbn= 0262015250 |year=2011 |publisher=MIT Press}}
</ref>

<ref name=Kuhn>
One of his discussions is reprinted in {{cite book |title=The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, |author=Thomas S Kuhn |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=sXufWLnPp94C&pg=PA208 |pages=208 ''ff'' |chapter=Chapter 9: Rationality and Theory Choice |editor=James Conant, John Haugeland, eds |edition=2nd |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=0226457990}}
</ref>

<ref name=Nagel>
{{cite book |title=The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation |author=Ernest Nagel |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=u6EycHgRfkQC&pg=PA285 |pages =285-292 |chapter=§V: Alternative descriptions of physical state |isbn=0915144719 |year=1999 |publisher=Hackett |edition=2nd }}
</ref>

<ref name=Northoff>
What Northoff calls the ''epistemic mind problem'' is described in {{cite book |title=Philosophy of the Brain: The Brain Problem |author=Georg Northoff |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=CJq4QDixIg0C&pg=PT11 |chapter=Chapter 1: The brain problem |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |isbn=1588114171 |year=2004 |edition=Volume 52 of Advances in Consciousness Research}}
</ref>

<ref name=Popper>
{{cite web |title=Three Worlds|author=Karl Popper |date=April 7, 1978 |work=The Tanner lectures on human values |url=http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/popper80.pdf |publisher=The University of Utah |accessdate=2013-01-24}} The list of lectures is found in the .
</ref>

<ref name=Sarkar>
See for example, {{cite book |title=The Philosophy of Science: N-Z, Index |author=Sahotra Sarkar, Jessica Pfeifer |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=b_ixzEzskwYC&pg=PA566 |chapter=Physicalism: The causal impact argument |page=566 |isbn=041597710X |year=2006 |publisher=Taylor & Francis}}
</ref>
}}

]
]
]
]
]

Latest revision as of 09:30, 3 February 2017

Redirect to:

  • To a related topic: This is a redirect to an article about a similar topic.
    • Redirects from related topics are different than redirects from related words, because a related topic is more likely to warrant a full and detailed description in the target article. If this redirect's subject is notable, then also tag it with {{R with possibilities}} and {{R printworthy}}.