A Debate on Superdeterminism
Another good debate coming up on YouTube. Bernardo Kastrup is going to debate with Sabine Hossenfelder about superdetermism. Sabine is pretty much a hard core physicist who believes we don't have free will. Bernardo wrote the book;
Why Materialism Is Baloney: How true skeptics know there is no death and fathom answers to life, the universe, and everything.
Bernardo Kastrup is a computer scientist (PhD) and a philosopher (PhD). He draws heavily on the works of Carl Jung.
Bernardo Kastrup has been asking Sam Harris for a debate for years, but Sam Harris has declined. Bernardo is prepared to debate anyone. He recently debated with Micheal Sherner, which was very amicable. Shermer is a hard core athiest who believes there is nothing more to this world than the physical matter we see. Bernardo Kastrup says he's only interested in scientific fact, but he believes consciousness plays a role in bringing the physical world into being, and this has led him down a spiritual path..
Bernardo Kastrup on the Nature of Reality: Materialism, Idealism, or Skepticism - with Michael Sherner
re: Laplace's demon
ReplyDeleteIn the history of science, Laplace's demon was a notable published articulation of causal determinism on a scientific basis by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone (the demon) knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon
A short definition of causal determinism:
Causal determinism, sometimes synonymous with historical determinism (a sort of path dependence), is "the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature."
That destroys free will. Then we have divine determinism, which does not, when you consider compatibilism.
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.
Compatibilism was championed by the ancient Stoics and some medieval scholastics (such as Thomas Aquinas). —Compatibilism
So, not just an Islamic idea. Here's Aquinas on free will and dual agency:
Free will
Aquinas argues that there is no contradiction between God's providence and human free will:
... just as by moving natural causes [God] does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.
— Summa, I., Q.83, art.1.
Thomism