Inevitabilism Vs. Compatabilism

Yay, it’s all over bar the shouting.

So how we gonna do this Pav…? Shall I just stick a poll at the top of the thread…? Do we want just votes with no reasons necessary, or a ‘post your vote below with supporting reasons’ approach…?

Knowing the sometimes completely unmassive response these debates can spur amongst our members :laughing: perhaps we could create a ‘self-bumping’ thread in which to vote that would appear at the top of the boards for a fixed period - 5-10 days or something…?

Your last suggestion is exactly what I’m going to do a little later. I’m going to abuse my Moderator powers and make a ten-day Sticky announcement informing individuals of where to vote, how to vote, and the criteria they must meet to vote.

It’s not really an abuse, because I’d do it for anyone else having a Debate in the Chamber.

Don’t trouble your conscious overly. What is power for, if not a little abuse in the pursuit of a good cause…?

I vote tie
Both are well read, both understood their opponent as well as their own. Both a tad windy for my tastes but, they were very good. Oh and both were top notch classy gentlemen debaters

I appreciate the compliments as well as that vote!

I read both of your arguments and it took me a while to pick a winner. I believe I’m going to have to side with Pav by just a hair. I can definitely agree with what Pav was saying, but to really get his point across I think he just needed a slightly different perspective. Tab’s argument was really good, and if he looks at the World with those eyes he will deffinitely get far, because as he says, pav’s point isn’t worth considering because it would be an unpredictible event. But I don’t think you got Pav’s point. It’s not that it hasn’t changed the outcome to two completely different ends, it’s about whether it ever could. To help Tab figure out why I picked Pav over him i’ll give my own example.

Our actions can be changed by information. there is an infinite number of potential information. (e.g. 0,1,2,3…infinity) and information can be used to create more information. Your theory holds true in the beginning, When your dealing with just evolution and a small amount of information and early human civilization. As information icnreases and becomes more available, so does the way it effects our actions. It’s possible that a peice of information be created much later than another peice of information. (e.g. you gave an example of two books written far apart from each other that were pretty much exactly the same.)

When a small action leads to some giant event it’s not that the trigger must eventually happen, what if another action existed which had the opposite effect. Or that the same trigger not triggering had the opposite effect? Lets hypothetically pause our universe. We’re going to make an exact duplicate of this universe and set it right next to this other one. I think that if you hit play, if there where really probability differences between the two I believe you would eventually see a big difference between the two worlds.

So basically what i’m saying is that the timing of the trigger is also extremely important. In one of these universes, this famous scientist who is studying the power of lasers is left hanging off of a cliff. In one universe the scientist’s friend saves him while in another one he doesn’t and the scientist ends up falling to his death. In the universe where he survives he goes to create extremely powerful lasers while in the other World the technology has yet to exist. Now both of these universes are in trouble because there is a giant asteroid heading for Earth. In the universe with the powerful lasers they are not worried because they have the technology to destroy the asteroid. In the other universe they are struggling to figure out a way to stop the asteroid. they end up not figuring out anything and end up being destroyed by the asteroid. This of course assumes that the only solution was a powerful laser. That’s not to bad of an assumption even if their where other methods maybe they weren’t thought of yet, or maybe they couldn’t be executed. That’s all irrelevant because here are two different ends to the same equation. Life on Earth didn’t create Nature as we know it. The World used to be ruled by dinosaurs. If the dinosaurs never went extinct they would still be here and we wouldn’t. it wasn’t until the asteroid destroyed the dinosaurs that allowed the chance for human life. That was an occurence that changed the outcome of the this World, whether the change was determined or not is irrelevant. As long as you accept the possibility.

to avoid from veering to far off from pav’s point I won’t say much more. But Tab, I agree when you say we are limited by our biological functions. But to say that these limits cause an inevitable future is a little much. I can easily see how a certain action can diverge to different path which will lead to a diferent outcome. these differences in outcomes will eventually cause a dramatic change between the Worlds. The stage that you are trying to get a feel for is caused by these smaller actions adding themselves together. I hope that makes you understand why I chose Pav over you. I think Pav was pretty much making this point but your argument was attacking something different other than this point.

One last thing, I don’t quite have 100 posts so I won’t mind if you don’t count this vote, thought I might as well give it a try since I was interested…

I think that is a very well-reasoned Judgment.

Of course, had you simply said, “Pav wins,” I’d have still concluded that you made a well-reasoned judgment. (Just Kidding)

I’m going to leave it up to Tab whether or not your vote counts because he is the adverse party in this matter.

TheBerto,

I made a few comments regarding the example in your post. I cannot post them here because they could influence the outcome, so I have PM’ed them to you.

The Berto - Thanks for the time you took to read, and to post. The first considered vote of the judging.

Good enough for me - Your vote stands. Damn your eyes. :wink:

EDIT - deleted what would have been a furtherence of my argument.

  • Hey Pav - sorry you posted while I was editing. I deleted my continued argument. The debates over, better not muddy the waters till the voting is done.

Can you delete your counter arguments until the time limit’s up…?

I straight-up deleted the post altogether. I’m sorry about that, I should have thought of that.

EDIT: Sorry, missed that by an inch, deleted this post as well.

tab is right and the compatiblism contradicts itself
there is a cause which produces an effect- which then becomes a cause to another effect. the original cause was the overall cause of the whole thing

I’m really not gunna read the rest of this novel though

After reading and re-reading both arguments, I have to say that I’m struggling with the idea that the two sides are mutually exclusive. Seems to me there is a distinction to be made between the two, but it is a fine distinction, almost like comparing apples to oranges.

Tab concedes that on an individual level, we certainly feel like we’re able to make autonomous choices. Even while refuting Pav’s cereal guy argument, he brings in quantum indeterminacy and the butterfly effect. Which seems to support Pav’s cereal guy argument. But Tab’s main argument relies on a grander scale, anthropologically, demographically, and temporally. And although he posits that the optimal solutions exist outside of time, that doesn’t seem like an especially useful axiom, because we don’t exist outside of time. We can only judge those solutions as optimal after the fact, and hindsight is 20/20.

If I understood correctly, Tab’s position can be summarized in this sentence:

Pav points out that one must consider the role irrationality plays, introducing a somewhat random factor which results in our inability to predict future events with a high degree of accuracy. He agrees that probability enables us to make fairly reliable predictions, but the door is left open for deviations from those predictions. Whereas Tab’s argument analyzes the past to reveal inevitability, Pav’s seems to focus more on the unfolding of the future and our inability to predict developing events.

I’d sum up Pav’s argument with this:

You both did a great job in illustrating your points and making your case. The fact that you each came at this debate from differing vantage points makes it difficult to judge; and as I said earlier, the positions themselves are not so far apart. It would’ve been easier if one of the positions was for strict determinism.

But since that was not the case, I’ll have to give a slight, very slight edge to Pav. You two are both excellent in your rhetorical skills, both were eloquent and compelling, and actually both arguments were convincing. If Tab would’ve talked a little more about how inevitabilism can help us view the future as well as the past, I probably would’ve given him the edge.

Well done, both of you.

A fine and reasoned decision.

What, me, disappointed…? No [size=60][sob][/size] not at all.

I agree that Anita came to a well-reasoned Judgment. Thank you Anita for all of the compliments that you paid to both myself and Tab!