It is another great video and argument. I love this channel. With all of the nonsense out there it is great that there is some people like yourself and a few others who can actually speak for truth and logic. Great stuff. We need more people like you in this world.
I was halfway into this video when Schrodinger's cat jumped into my lap. Or came to mind, same difference. I would argue that the truth of any future claim is in a state of _indeterminacy_ until probabilities collapse sufficiently to resolve the truth claim. The cat is neither alive nor dead until you open the box. Aristotle was on the right track.
Nice video! Saying we cannot ever say something true about the future unless present states determine it to be so might sound strange, but even stranger does it sound to think a proposition can be true without ANYTHING WHATSOEVER in the world *making* it true. If you reject Aristotle's solution for this reason, then you not only give up truthmaker theory, but even the "truth supervenes upon being" thesis... which is endorsed even by most who reject truthmaker theory. It strikes me as an incredibly radical proposal! love your channel btw.
thanks for the comment. I'm pasting a comment I made elsewhere as it seems relevant to your comment: Statements about the past are made true/false by events in the past. Statements about the future are made true/false by events in the future. This argument involves no denial of truthmaker theory (although I don't actually subscribe to that theory as I take truth to be primitive). Logical truths are atemporal in nature. They are eternally true, not true at given moments in time. The eternal nature of their truth falls out of the eternal nature of logic, in which temporal indexing of events is part of the _content_ of the proposition, not a temporal indexing of the _truth_ of the content.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I don't think that's a satisfactory response to be honest. OK, so let's say we endorse eternalism about propositions, then me uttering "This video is cool" is equivalent to "This video has the property of coolness at 7:12pm on 18th July 2024" or something roughly like that. Similarly, "This channel will upload videos in the future" is equivalent to "There is a time t such that t is later than 7:12pm on 18th July 2024 and at t this channel uploads a video". Now assume that the present state of the universe doesn't determine whether this is your final video or not. What could possibly make it true that ""There is a time t such that t is later than 7:12pm on 18th July 2024 and at t this channel uploads a video", unless we assume eternalism about time? After all, there IS no time that is later than 18th July 2024, unless eternalism about time is true!
@@dominiks5068 There some good thinking here. You are correct to say it assumes eternalism, but I think a reasonable logic does, at least it must do if you hold bivalance applied to future oriented claims. (I realise this may be seen to commit the cardinal sin of assuming logic has metaphysical implications, but there you go, I think it does). If you don't accept eternalism (at least as a logical assumption), then you would seem to have all statements about the future false if understood as: there exists some future time etc., some of which _become_ true. Which I find to be an odd idea. And it would mean all claims about the future, even mundane ones, would be false. e.g. the sun will rise tomorrow.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I think the problem here is that you are treating claims about trivial facts as logical truth claims. The claim "the table is brown." is not the same kind of claim as "1 + 1 = 2." The claim "the table is brown" is true dependent on the facts in a context, while the claim "1 + 1 = 2" is true in all circumstances. The claim "You will drown." seems much more like "the table is brown" than "1 + 1 = 2." That would mean it is context and fact dependent, however because it is a statement about the future it must necessarily be indeterminate until the context and facts collapse to a state where the claim can be determined to be true or false. We can at best say that, context dependent, the statement is _probabilistically_ true or false. For example, if I were to turn to you and say "You will drown." but we are both in a plummeting elevator falling from the 50th floor of a skyscraper, I am _probably_ wrong.
I think I agree with Aristotle's rejection of bivalence. In fact, there are other statements that cannot be labelled as true or false, such as the famous "this statement is false". You don't have to through logic or maths out of the window, or even to accept non-binary logics. You just have to apply bivalence to a smaller set of propositions.
That is just nonsense word play. A statement is a definite or clear expression of something in speech or writing. "this statement is false" is NOT a clear expression of something, since it does not specify which statement is false. The moment the statement stated which statement is false, you can indeed apply bivalence and show whether the statement is true or false.
@@ProgressIsTheOnlyEvolution The statement you are reading now is false. That statement clearly referred to itself and so it did specify which statement was declared to be false. The two former statements refer to the same statement, i.e. the first statement in this comment. The fact that this identity of reference is intelligible further demonstrates that the first self-referential statement had a clearly specified object it referred to, i.e. itself.
In fiction, the case for fatalism is often made through prophesizing an event and then showing how in every different scenario that leads upto it, it always finds a way to happen, so nothing can be done to prevent it. For example, if we could go back in time and change things, it still wouldn’t help if I had a life jacket because I would still find a way to drown. Perhaps someone would drown me then, so next time I’d travel alone and get caught in a storm, get carried away so far away with no hopes of returning, I’d end up just letting go of the life jacket and let myself drown. Yada yada yada… So, each time I try to prevent the causes in order to prevent the resulting event, there appears new causes to make it happen. But can we really determine that simple truths are not causally related to events? Of course, you won’t suddenly find yourself drowning when you were in a desert where no water resource was in sight just a minute ago simply because a simple truth says you will drown, but it can cause you not to go to the desert in the first place or give you a reason to leave the desert anyways. Can’t simple truths be causally related to events, albeit indirectly? Also, how can we even identify a certain event as a simple truth without doing the same for all the other events that lead up to this ultimate event? If the occasion of me drowning is a simple truth, then should be the fact that I don’t bring a life jacket. Why is it that the events that lead up to me drowning are not certain but the case of me drowning is? I don’t know if these are valid arguments though since we can never be aware of these truths and thus, find ways to prevent it. Still, determinism makes more sense to me than fatalism. Another thing, doesn’t Aristotle’s argument align with the Copenhagen interpretation? Not that the interpretation is certainly true, just checking my understanding of both
I never bought the time travel "fate" thing, simply because it implies that there's a force that goes beyond physics that ensures that the timeline stays preserved. The idea that it just so happens you fail every time never made any sense to me. It would require some kind of magical hand of fate that constantly twists and designs the timeline to thwart you. If you go back in time and kill Julius Caesar as a baby, you would ensure that he never rises to power and wouldn't be remembered. Sure another guy might do something similar, but you made a change, you still replaced Caesar with someone else.
Nice! I very much appreciate how you approach philosophy. I also like the fact that you mentioned how Aristotle rejects principle of bivalence here. But I would say that this approach is also quite clear way to refute the fatalism. It does not have to get very technical (getting into three value logic etc.) it might simply show us that there is something odd about claims about future. It should be really intuitive for anyone rejecting determinism to buy into this kind of reason and suspend the principle of bivalence for the sentences about future as indeed the state of affairs might not yet be determined at all right now and so the sentence itself really is neither true or false (now). Perhaps sentences about future should not be used as values for propositional calculus's variables just like it is the case for questions?
Thanks for the comment. You can go this route, but I think you get a cleaner logic by avoiding it. And since I see no reason why logic infringes on free will, you should keep it simple. For a deeper analysis of how I think free will is untouched by applied logic and mathematics, you can see my critique of Alex O'Connor (if you haven't already). Basically, I think atemporal and temporal reasoning are different things, and the supposed clash only arises when we mix and match the modes of reasoning and analysis.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Yes, I saw it. And I think it is great that you stand up against what looks like a massive attack on free will. I guess that a lot of people do not realize how fundamental free will is to our understanding of ourselves as human beings. Even our legal systems are based on the assumption of existence of free will. I especially appreciate you laying out Alex O'Connor's assumptions and moments when he tries too "slip through" like: when he claims dichotomy of "determined" and "random". I mean, even without elaborate free will theory it should be immediately pointed out that there is also "probabilistic" somewhere in between, which you do.
The fact is that there will be an outcome doesn't imply that outcome is fated or deterministic. It's only fated if it's predicted beforehand, if you don't predict it, it's just one of many possible outcomes that you retroactively dubbed the destined path after it happened. How that path comes about could involve randomness, or, under the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, all outcomes could exist in constant superposition, leading to many different universes. Also not all statements about the future are true or false. For instance, assume you have a future predictor machine/oracle/whatever that reads fate and knows the outcome of any event in advance with either true or false. You set up a situation where whatever answer that machine outputs is automatically fed to a negator, a simple electronic not-gate. If the negator receives true, it answers false, and vice versa. Now ask the future predictor machine: "what will be the next reply of the negator be?" It's impossible for the predictor to answer correctly with true or false, because the future changes based on what it says.
One of the surprise stand out things here was how you pronounced “bivalence”. Coming from a comp-sci background, this was surprising :) valence and arity having somewhat frequent use there
Yes, the American pronunciation makes more sense I suppose. But it is typical in the UK to pronounce it as I have. After your comment, I even looked it up to make sure I wasn't saying it wrong: www.oed.com/dictionary/bivalence_n?tab=factsheet#19313173
Great job, current Idealists, and those whose philosophy can be deduced and isl elaborated sufficient 6:21 . CG Jung, John Archibald Wheeler Quantum Physicist, Bernardo Kastrup, Philosopher and Scientist. Idealism is in the middle of a vigorous resurgence.
If we assume that a statement about the future can be true but also accept that we can change it with our actions, then that statement is only true depending on our actions in the future. But if we were to call statements that depend on our actions in the future "true", then many contradictory statements would also be true. For example, the statements "you will get married next year" and "you will not get married next year", despite being contradictory, would equally be true, since both are true depending on what you do in the future.
why would both be true? the future either already exists, or not. if it does, one of those is false. if it doesn't, there's just no matter of fact, since propositions don't refer to non-existence; they're just not even wrong gibberish.
@@real_pattern You may be right, but if you are right then his solution to the fatalist argument still doesn't work. If you are rigth then either fatalism is true or propositions about the future can't be true, at least not in the moment that they are made.
Thanks for the comment, perhaps this will help: Statements about the past are made true/false by events in the past. Statements about the future are made true/false by events in the future. Where's the logical issue? And yes, statements are not true 'in the moment they are made', because, as I argue, logical truths are atemporal in nature. They are eternally true, not true at given moments in time. The eternal nature of their truth falls out of the eternal nature of logic, in which temporal indexing of events is part of the _content_ of the proposition, not a temporal indexing of the _truth_ of the content.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy If statements about the future are made true or false by events in the future how can we categorize them as true or false before those events happen? And how can they be "eternally true, not true at given moments in time" but also be "made true by events in the future"? The statement that they are "made true" implies that at a given time they are made true, since it implies that the statement was not true before it was made true.
Trurh ultimately depends on probability because fate depends on probability. We simply can't say something will happen only that it probably will or will not happen.
The idea of making a claim which is unconnected to what is known at least from the standpoint of the evaluator is the fact of such being an unknown and/or otherwise baseless claim. So, from the standpoint of the evaluator, the statement is neither true nor false given that there is no means to evaluate the claim; and thus making the claim indeterminate.
So, if the claim "You will drown" is eternally true, and such truth depends on the event of you drowning, doesn't it follow that you are eternally drowning? What am I missing?
Good question, but no. The drowning event occurs at some point in time, while the truth of the claim is timeless. Why? Because the 'you drowning' is an event of you drowning on, say, 12th January 2027. But the claim includes a temporal content within itself, rather than as an occurrence within time, say, if uttered today, that 'at some point of time after the 19th of July 2024 there is an event of you drowning'. And this claim is eternally true.
I’m not sure what you mean by “eternally true.” Maybe I’m missing something here, but if something is ‘eternally true,’ wouldn’t that mean it’s _forever_ true? It seems to me that it would. If that’s the case, then instead of refuting the fatalistic argument, wouldn’t that actually lend it credence, since it’s _always/eternally_ been true?
There is a distinction between 'always (or all times)', i.e. at every point in time, and 'eternal (or time independent)', i.e. in a way that does not relate to time. I see no reason why the latter supports fatalism. (I could say more here but it would relate to other positions I have in metaphysics).
Good luck with this channel! It’s an educational breath of fresh air, esp. compared with the ghoulish Alex O’Connor and whatever Ben Shapiro thinks he’s doing.
the thing i find always fascinating about these discussions, as philisoptically interesting as they are, is that the answer, either way, changes nothing whatsoever, you can't actually "do" anything with the answer, at least for the most of humans who are more concerned with how they will be able to get their childice fed tomorrow i personally believe there is no such thing as "free will", (i am a logician by trade), but i also believe that the illusion that it does exist is absolutely crucial to society being able to persist in a cohesive state. imagine what would happen if every human suddenly, all at once, understood there is actually nothing they can do to affect how their life proceeds... i am glad this non-possibility will forever remain firmly in the realm of "thought experiment" mental masturbation is indeed very enjoyable staring too long into the abyss, however.... somewhat less?
Thanks for the comment. I am also a logician, I teach it at Cambridge, and I have a maths degree too. But I think these questions have a lot to tell us about the world in which we live and our human experience. Why think it is intellectual masterbation? I will soon be interviewing another philosopher who thinks these issues are some of the most important of our age.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy hi there. first, let me make clear that my comment was not an insult, in any way shape or form, i enjoy it much myself, my apologies if it was perceived as such. what i'm getting at is that, after contemplating on this myself for a very long time, i can't find any application in how *any* conclusion drawn from the "free will conjecture" is able to be applied to daily life, either mine (i'm so, so privileged) or all the mothers in every country in the world who are burdened with nothing more than figuring out how they will feed their children the next day, hence my comment. i have personally come to the point in thinking that if knowledge and ideas are useful only as a way of having fun when being really really smart, then its utility in contributing to making the world a better place is in question. that said, it's also entirely possible that the paths of thought which are traversed along the way to an inutile conclusion may very well be useful in the sense of how understandings of things evolve: perhaps this conclusion has no practical application itself, but it's entirely possible some future conclusion could, which could only have been arrived at via the previous discussion. and what i forgot to add in my original post: even though i "think" there is no such thing as "free will", this means nothing: - i can't prove it (the question itself is a solipsism, no? and what about perception? it's relative, so how can this variable be handled such that any conclusive statement on this subject is able to be generalized to all persons?) - i can't use it, and - whatever conclusion i would happen to come to changes nothing. - not to mention, assume i'm wrong, and still nothing changes. and let's not forget the possibility that i'm also completely wrong about any conclusion's utility or worthwhile application to daily life, i know nothing, after all. in the meantime, i will be eternally grateful that i have been blessed with a life so rich in content that i can conclude only that i'm the luckiest and most fortunate person to have ever been born. and because i "think" there is no free will, i will take absolutely zero credit for all the wonderful things that happen in it as a result of each and every action i carry out, made by choice or not. thanks for reading, richard
@@ivor000 Thanks for the comment Ivor. No offence was taken. But I do think these questions are relevant to every day life. How we understand our experience and its relationship to the world in which we live colours how we see our place in the world, and then how we act within it. If we think of ourselves as automata, especially once that thinking becomes mainstream, it will affect everything.
Well you could do something with the decision, but it wouldn't really be a good thing. For instance, if you decide free will doesn't exist and humanity is effectively no different than a meteor in space, then the value of human life from a philosophical point of view drops immensely. The concept of a justice system would be heavily revised as well. After all, we don't launch nukes in retribution for a hurricane or lightning strike. If human action was just seen as another phenomenon of physics, then the concept of crime and punishment wouldn't make a ton of sense either. A society that truly didn't believe in free will would be vastly different. But I'd argue that even those that claim not to believe in free will still do believe in it. They do fundamentally think that human and animal decisions aren't set guarantees. They wouldn't try to intimidate a forest fire by yelling at it, but they might yell at a human or a black bear to try to deter them from attacking. If a person destroyed their car maliciously, they'd still want revenge; It's just not the same as a falling tree crushing their car. Most of the free will denial usually comes from choosing a poor definition of free will that just isn't useful in any way.
What's wrong with saying that just because it is true doesn't mean that it had to be true? Isn't it begging the question to assume that because something is true it had to be true?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy But now we're starting to carry some metaphysical baggage. If I say, "tomorrow it will rain in Boston," and it does in fact rain in Boston tomorrow, can't I argue that my statement had an indeterminate truth value until it actually rained in Boston the next day? It wasn't true when I said it, it only became true when it actually rained the next day in Boston, and then it was contingently true because it didn't have to rain in Boston the next day.
You are not a philosopher. "But whether you will drown depends on your choice ... ergo .. you can ignore fatalist argument". Yeah guys, just choose not to drown. It's that simple.
Does this not presupposes that there are exact facts about the future? This can only be the case if either future events and entities exist in the same way as present ones exist or future events are predetermined by the present. In that case fatalism is true, ergo the future is settled and unchangeable. Otherwise if the future doesn’t exist and is not fully predetermined by the present, then we end up with only probabilistic facts about the future, and only statements like „it is more likely then 50% that you will drown“ are true.
Thanks for the comment. Yes, it does presuppose there are facts (i.e. true claims) about the future, as this falls out of the application of logical laws to claims about the future. But it does not follow from this that those facts were determined by the present state of things. Logic is not causal in nature (same with mathematics, see my video critiquing O'Connor for more on this) nor is there a logical relation of determinism between facts. Logic is merely _truth functional_ , i.e. it tells you what truths can be inferred from others according to laws of inference. So there are no implications from logic regarding what is the cause or determinant of anything.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Yes, I have similar views about logic, I think of it more like a instrument of inference rather then a set of principles that govern the universe. What I suggest is that exact talk about the future might be like talk about the present king of France. And this can then be solved by Russell’s theory of descriptions. And that even if fatalism is false, that we can still save probabilistic propositions about the future so that we can make true probabilistic predictions.
The most obvious rebuttal to Predeterminism is that it takes a mind to determine something... Therefore, the Atheist/Materialist axiomatically contradicts him or herself by just proposing a determination... They are, at least, promoting Subjective Idealism by the proposition itself... If it has been determined that the universe begin and end... there has been a content filled determination made & matter itself cannot conceptualize nor make decisions based on conceptions... That is, neither the vacuum of space nor the particles within it/that it is made of... are able to conceptualize... nor, therefore, make decisions/determinations. So, again, axiomatically... by Reason & Science... Predeterminism is inherently a contradiction... and, then, isn't logically consistent. It is idiotic to claim a determination without the entailment of there being a thing that determines. " No subject no object, " OBVIOUSLY!
@@real_pattern Since you can't reasonably answer the question, I'll give you your answer. You can only show reasonably, which means to me Synthetically, that minds make determinations. You can only speculate that matter per se makes determinations. This is no different than making the determination that God exists and determines matters. That is to say... both are speculations of Pure Reason. I am willing to say that one can make valid arguments for God and Panpsychism ( Though I'd probably object to some propositions not being factual in both cases, but taken on their own terms ( analytically, ) one could grant validity to the arguments ) - as well as other theories of Particle Consciousness - but you can't Synthetically show that these things actually exist - God or Conscious Particles. I can reasonably and scientifically show that only things with minds make determinations, but you can't show that other than mind makes determinations. The Materialist and the Theist are two sides of the same coin...
@@real_pattern Mind may simply exist without ever having been made, then. And... theists argue the same: God simply exists. His essence is His existence, is existence per se. I answered you before seeing this reply by you... That answer still stands... One arbitrary assertion is as good as the next... Pure Reason speculation that you may be able to make valid arguments for, but cannot show to be true...
Can't we just say: surely, the prophecy "You will drown." is either true or false, but we have no way of knowing (yet) what it is? Where's the problem? Even in math we have conjectures that are believed to be true, but there's no proof (yet). And it could nevertheless be useful, like in "If the Goldbach conjecture holds, then …"
Yes. The problem for free will only comes in when you think it's truth now somehow means you lack free will. But I argue it isn't true "now", it's just true. And its truth depends on the future. Since knowledge is temporally restricted, we lack knowledge of future events.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Right. But just for completeness: there are also countless statements regarding the past where we will never know whether they're true or not. Ask any historian, but here is an example: "The evangelist Mark drowned."
I haven't read any of their atheist books, but I've read some of Dennett's papers, and watched them in debates etc. Dawkins and Hitchens seem philosophically lightweight. Harris seems marginally better, but too in thrall to science from what I can tell. Dennett is worth reading. But mostly because he carries the materialist metaphysics to its end point of dismissing the reality of consciousness. Which, to me, provides an argument from absurdity against materialism.
It is another great video and argument. I love this channel. With all of the nonsense out there it is great that there is some people like yourself and a few others who can actually speak for truth and logic. Great stuff. We need more people like you in this world.
Thanks for the high praise!
I was halfway into this video when Schrodinger's cat jumped into my lap. Or came to mind, same difference. I would argue that the truth of any future claim is in a state of _indeterminacy_ until probabilities collapse sufficiently to resolve the truth claim. The cat is neither alive nor dead until you open the box. Aristotle was on the right track.
Another banger of a video sir!! Can't wait to expand my knowledge!
Nice video! Saying we cannot ever say something true about the future unless present states determine it to be so might sound strange, but even stranger does it sound to think a proposition can be true without ANYTHING WHATSOEVER in the world *making* it true. If you reject Aristotle's solution for this reason, then you not only give up truthmaker theory, but even the "truth supervenes upon being" thesis... which is endorsed even by most who reject truthmaker theory. It strikes me as an incredibly radical proposal!
love your channel btw.
thanks for the comment. I'm pasting a comment I made elsewhere as it seems relevant to your comment:
Statements about the past are made true/false by events in the past. Statements about the future are made true/false by events in the future. This argument involves no denial of truthmaker theory (although I don't actually subscribe to that theory as I take truth to be primitive).
Logical truths are atemporal in nature. They are eternally true, not true at given moments in time. The eternal nature of their truth falls out of the eternal nature of logic, in which temporal indexing of events is part of the _content_ of the proposition, not a temporal indexing of the _truth_ of the content.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I don't think that's a satisfactory response to be honest. OK, so let's say we endorse eternalism about propositions, then me uttering "This video is cool" is equivalent to "This video has the property of coolness at 7:12pm on 18th July 2024" or something roughly like that. Similarly, "This channel will upload videos in the future" is equivalent to "There is a time t such that t is later than 7:12pm on 18th July 2024 and at t this channel uploads a video". Now assume that the present state of the universe doesn't determine whether this is your final video or not. What could possibly make it true that ""There is a time t such that t is later than 7:12pm on 18th July 2024 and at t this channel uploads a video", unless we assume eternalism about time? After all, there IS no time that is later than 18th July 2024, unless eternalism about time is true!
@@dominiks5068 There some good thinking here. You are correct to say it assumes eternalism, but I think a reasonable logic does, at least it must do if you hold bivalance applied to future oriented claims. (I realise this may be seen to commit the cardinal sin of assuming logic has metaphysical implications, but there you go, I think it does). If you don't accept eternalism (at least as a logical assumption), then you would seem to have all statements about the future false if understood as: there exists some future time etc., some of which _become_ true. Which I find to be an odd idea. And it would mean all claims about the future, even mundane ones, would be false. e.g. the sun will rise tomorrow.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I think the problem here is that you are treating claims about trivial facts as logical truth claims. The claim "the table is brown." is not the same kind of claim as "1 + 1 = 2." The claim "the table is brown" is true dependent on the facts in a context, while the claim "1 + 1 = 2" is true in all circumstances.
The claim "You will drown." seems much more like "the table is brown" than "1 + 1 = 2." That would mean it is context and fact dependent, however because it is a statement about the future it must necessarily be indeterminate until the context and facts collapse to a state where the claim can be determined to be true or false. We can at best say that, context dependent, the statement is _probabilistically_ true or false. For example, if I were to turn to you and say "You will drown." but we are both in a plummeting elevator falling from the 50th floor of a skyscraper, I am _probably_ wrong.
I think I agree with Aristotle's rejection of bivalence. In fact, there are other statements that cannot be labelled as true or false, such as the famous "this statement is false". You don't have to through logic or maths out of the window, or even to accept non-binary logics. You just have to apply bivalence to a smaller set of propositions.
That is just nonsense word play.
A statement is a definite or clear expression of something in speech or writing.
"this statement is false" is NOT a clear expression of something, since it does not specify which statement is false. The moment the statement stated which statement is false, you can indeed apply bivalence and show whether the statement is true or false.
@@ProgressIsTheOnlyEvolution The statement you are reading now is false.
That statement clearly referred to itself and so it did specify which statement was declared to be false.
The two former statements refer to the same statement, i.e. the first statement in this comment. The fact that this identity of reference is intelligible further demonstrates that the first self-referential statement had a clearly specified object it referred to, i.e. itself.
In fiction, the case for fatalism is often made through prophesizing an event and then showing how in every different scenario that leads upto it, it always finds a way to happen, so nothing can be done to prevent it.
For example, if we could go back in time and change things, it still wouldn’t help if I had a life jacket because I would still find a way to drown. Perhaps someone would drown me then, so next time I’d travel alone and get caught in a storm, get carried away so far away with no hopes of returning, I’d end up just letting go of the life jacket and let myself drown. Yada yada yada… So, each time I try to prevent the causes in order to prevent the resulting event, there appears new causes to make it happen. But can we really determine that simple truths are not causally related to events? Of course, you won’t suddenly find yourself drowning when you were in a desert where no water resource was in sight just a minute ago simply because a simple truth says you will drown, but it can cause you not to go to the desert in the first place or give you a reason to leave the desert anyways. Can’t simple truths be causally related to events, albeit indirectly?
Also, how can we even identify a certain event as a simple truth without doing the same for all the other events that lead up to this ultimate event? If the occasion of me drowning is a simple truth, then should be the fact that I don’t bring a life jacket. Why is it that the events that lead up to me drowning are not certain but the case of me drowning is?
I don’t know if these are valid arguments though since we can never be aware of these truths and thus, find ways to prevent it. Still, determinism makes more sense to me than fatalism.
Another thing, doesn’t Aristotle’s argument align with the Copenhagen interpretation? Not that the interpretation is certainly true, just checking my understanding of both
Also, I’ve just watched a couple of your videos back to back! Subbed!!!!
I never bought the time travel "fate" thing, simply because it implies that there's a force that goes beyond physics that ensures that the timeline stays preserved. The idea that it just so happens you fail every time never made any sense to me. It would require some kind of magical hand of fate that constantly twists and designs the timeline to thwart you.
If you go back in time and kill Julius Caesar as a baby, you would ensure that he never rises to power and wouldn't be remembered. Sure another guy might do something similar, but you made a change, you still replaced Caesar with someone else.
bivalence is useful only in some formal systems, and since reality is not a formal system only a philosopher could arrive at your conclusion
Nice! I very much appreciate how you approach philosophy. I also like the fact that you mentioned how Aristotle rejects principle of bivalence here. But I would say that this approach is also quite clear way to refute the fatalism. It does not have to get very technical (getting into three value logic etc.) it might simply show us that there is something odd about claims about future. It should be really intuitive for anyone rejecting determinism to buy into this kind of reason and suspend the principle of bivalence for the sentences about future as indeed the state of affairs might not yet be determined at all right now and so the sentence itself really is neither true or false (now). Perhaps sentences about future should not be used as values for propositional calculus's variables just like it is the case for questions?
Thanks for the comment.
You can go this route, but I think you get a cleaner logic by avoiding it. And since I see no reason why logic infringes on free will, you should keep it simple. For a deeper analysis of how I think free will is untouched by applied logic and mathematics, you can see my critique of Alex O'Connor (if you haven't already). Basically, I think atemporal and temporal reasoning are different things, and the supposed clash only arises when we mix and match the modes of reasoning and analysis.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Yes, I saw it. And I think it is great that you stand up against what looks like a massive attack on free will. I guess that a lot of people do not realize how fundamental free will is to our understanding of ourselves as human beings. Even our legal systems are based on the assumption of existence of free will. I especially appreciate you laying out Alex O'Connor's assumptions and moments when he tries too "slip through" like: when he claims dichotomy of "determined" and "random". I mean, even without elaborate free will theory it should be immediately pointed out that there is also "probabilistic" somewhere in between, which you do.
The fact is that there will be an outcome doesn't imply that outcome is fated or deterministic. It's only fated if it's predicted beforehand, if you don't predict it, it's just one of many possible outcomes that you retroactively dubbed the destined path after it happened. How that path comes about could involve randomness, or, under the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, all outcomes could exist in constant superposition, leading to many different universes.
Also not all statements about the future are true or false. For instance, assume you have a future predictor machine/oracle/whatever that reads fate and knows the outcome of any event in advance with either true or false. You set up a situation where whatever answer that machine outputs is automatically fed to a negator, a simple electronic not-gate. If the negator receives true, it answers false, and vice versa.
Now ask the future predictor machine: "what will be the next reply of the negator be?"
It's impossible for the predictor to answer correctly with true or false, because the future changes based on what it says.
One of the surprise stand out things here was how you pronounced “bivalence”. Coming from a comp-sci background, this was surprising :) valence and arity having somewhat frequent use there
Yes, the American pronunciation makes more sense I suppose. But it is typical in the UK to pronounce it as I have. After your comment, I even looked it up to make sure I wasn't saying it wrong: www.oed.com/dictionary/bivalence_n?tab=factsheet#19313173
Great job, current Idealists, and those whose philosophy can be deduced and isl elaborated sufficient 6:21 . CG Jung, John Archibald Wheeler Quantum Physicist, Bernardo Kastrup, Philosopher and Scientist. Idealism is in the middle of a vigorous resurgence.
I think you are right. Soon I'll be interviewing a very serious current idealist: Howard Robinson. Watch out for that one :).
If we assume that a statement about the future can be true but also accept that we can change it with our actions, then that statement is only true depending on our actions in the future.
But if we were to call statements that depend on our actions in the future "true", then many contradictory statements would also be true. For example, the statements "you will get married next year" and "you will not get married next year", despite being contradictory, would equally be true, since both are true depending on what you do in the future.
why would both be true? the future either already exists, or not. if it does, one of those is false. if it doesn't, there's just no matter of fact, since propositions don't refer to non-existence; they're just not even wrong gibberish.
@@real_pattern You may be right, but if you are right then his solution to the fatalist argument still doesn't work.
If you are rigth then either fatalism is true or propositions about the future can't be true, at least not in the moment that they are made.
Thanks for the comment, perhaps this will help:
Statements about the past are made true/false by events in the past. Statements about the future are made true/false by events in the future. Where's the logical issue?
And yes, statements are not true 'in the moment they are made', because, as I argue, logical truths are atemporal in nature. They are eternally true, not true at given moments in time. The eternal nature of their truth falls out of the eternal nature of logic, in which temporal indexing of events is part of the _content_ of the proposition, not a temporal indexing of the _truth_ of the content.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy If statements about the future are made true or false by events in the future how can we categorize them as true or false before those events happen?
And how can they be "eternally true, not true at given moments in time" but also be "made true by events in the future"? The statement that they are "made true" implies that at a given time they are made true, since it implies that the statement was not true before it was made true.
Trurh ultimately depends on probability because fate depends on probability. We simply can't say something will happen only that it probably will or will not happen.
The idea of making a claim which is unconnected to what is known at least from the standpoint of the evaluator is the fact of such being an unknown and/or otherwise baseless claim. So, from the standpoint of the evaluator, the statement is neither true nor false given that there is no means to evaluate the claim; and thus making the claim indeterminate.
So, if the claim "You will drown" is eternally true, and such truth depends on the event of you drowning, doesn't it follow that you are eternally drowning? What am I missing?
Good question, but no. The drowning event occurs at some point in time, while the truth of the claim is timeless. Why? Because the 'you drowning' is an event of you drowning on, say, 12th January 2027. But the claim includes a temporal content within itself, rather than as an occurrence within time, say, if uttered today, that 'at some point of time after the 19th of July 2024 there is an event of you drowning'. And this claim is eternally true.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy thank you
I’m not sure what you mean by “eternally true.” Maybe I’m missing something here, but if something is ‘eternally true,’ wouldn’t that mean it’s _forever_ true? It seems to me that it would. If that’s the case, then instead of refuting the fatalistic argument, wouldn’t that actually lend it credence, since it’s _always/eternally_ been true?
There is a distinction between 'always (or all times)', i.e. at every point in time, and 'eternal (or time independent)', i.e. in a way that does not relate to time. I see no reason why the latter supports fatalism. (I could say more here but it would relate to other positions I have in metaphysics).
Good luck with this channel! It’s an educational breath of fresh air, esp. compared with the ghoulish Alex O’Connor and whatever Ben Shapiro thinks he’s doing.
the thing i find always fascinating about these discussions, as philisoptically interesting as they are, is that the answer, either way, changes nothing whatsoever, you can't actually "do" anything with the answer, at least for the most of humans who are more concerned with how they will be able to get their childice fed tomorrow
i personally believe there is no such thing as "free will", (i am a logician by trade), but i also believe that the illusion that it does exist is absolutely crucial to society being able to persist in a cohesive state. imagine what would happen if every human suddenly, all at once, understood there is actually nothing they can do to affect how their life proceeds... i am glad this non-possibility will forever remain firmly in the realm of "thought experiment"
mental masturbation is indeed very enjoyable
staring too long into the abyss, however.... somewhat less?
Thanks for the comment.
I am also a logician, I teach it at Cambridge, and I have a maths degree too. But I think these questions have a lot to tell us about the world in which we live and our human experience. Why think it is intellectual masterbation?
I will soon be interviewing another philosopher who thinks these issues are some of the most important of our age.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy
hi there. first, let me make clear that my comment was not an insult, in any way shape or form, i enjoy it much myself, my apologies if it was perceived as such.
what i'm getting at is that, after contemplating on this myself for a very long time, i can't find any application in how *any* conclusion drawn from the "free will conjecture" is able to be applied to daily life, either mine (i'm so, so privileged) or all the mothers in every country in the world who are burdened with nothing more than figuring out how they will feed their children the next day, hence my comment.
i have personally come to the point in thinking that if knowledge and ideas are useful only as a way of having fun when being really really smart, then its utility in contributing to making the world a better place is in question. that said, it's also entirely possible that the paths of thought which are traversed along the way to an inutile conclusion may very well be useful in the sense of how understandings of things evolve: perhaps this conclusion has no practical application itself, but it's entirely possible some future conclusion could, which could only have been arrived at via the previous discussion.
and what i forgot to add in my original post: even though i "think" there is no such thing as "free will", this means nothing:
- i can't prove it (the question itself is a solipsism, no? and what about perception? it's relative, so how can this variable be handled such that any conclusive statement on this subject is able to be generalized to all persons?)
- i can't use it, and
- whatever conclusion i would happen to come to changes nothing.
- not to mention, assume i'm wrong, and still nothing changes.
and let's not forget the possibility that i'm also completely wrong about any conclusion's utility or worthwhile application to daily life, i know nothing, after all.
in the meantime, i will be eternally grateful that i have been blessed with a life so rich in content that i can conclude only that i'm the luckiest and most fortunate person to have ever been born. and because i "think" there is no free will, i will take absolutely zero credit for all the wonderful things that happen in it as a result of each and every action i carry out, made by choice or not.
thanks for reading,
richard
@@ivor000 Thanks for the comment Ivor. No offence was taken. But I do think these questions are relevant to every day life. How we understand our experience and its relationship to the world in which we live colours how we see our place in the world, and then how we act within it. If we think of ourselves as automata, especially once that thinking becomes mainstream, it will affect everything.
Well you could do something with the decision, but it wouldn't really be a good thing. For instance, if you decide free will doesn't exist and humanity is effectively no different than a meteor in space, then the value of human life from a philosophical point of view drops immensely. The concept of a justice system would be heavily revised as well. After all, we don't launch nukes in retribution for a hurricane or lightning strike. If human action was just seen as another phenomenon of physics, then the concept of crime and punishment wouldn't make a ton of sense either. A society that truly didn't believe in free will would be vastly different.
But I'd argue that even those that claim not to believe in free will still do believe in it. They do fundamentally think that human and animal decisions aren't set guarantees. They wouldn't try to intimidate a forest fire by yelling at it, but they might yell at a human or a black bear to try to deter them from attacking. If a person destroyed their car maliciously, they'd still want revenge; It's just not the same as a falling tree crushing their car.
Most of the free will denial usually comes from choosing a poor definition of free will that just isn't useful in any way.
What's wrong with saying that just because it is true doesn't mean that it had to be true? Isn't it begging the question to assume that because something is true it had to be true?
You can say that. But the issue is that if it is true, it seems to be true before it happened, in which case the argument for fate still has bite.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy But now we're starting to carry some metaphysical baggage. If I say, "tomorrow it will rain in Boston," and it does in fact rain in Boston tomorrow, can't I argue that my statement had an indeterminate truth value until it actually rained in Boston the next day? It wasn't true when I said it, it only became true when it actually rained the next day in Boston, and then it was contingently true because it didn't have to rain in Boston the next day.
You are not a philosopher. "But whether you will drown depends on your choice ... ergo .. you can ignore fatalist argument". Yeah guys, just choose not to drown. It's that simple.
Does this not presupposes that there are exact facts about the future?
This can only be the case if either future events and entities exist in the same way as present ones exist or future events are predetermined by the present.
In that case fatalism is true, ergo the future is settled and unchangeable.
Otherwise if the future doesn’t exist and is not fully predetermined by the present, then we end up with only probabilistic facts about the future, and only statements like „it is more likely then 50% that you will drown“ are true.
Thanks for the comment.
Yes, it does presuppose there are facts (i.e. true claims) about the future, as this falls out of the application of logical laws to claims about the future. But it does not follow from this that those facts were determined by the present state of things. Logic is not causal in nature (same with mathematics, see my video critiquing O'Connor for more on this) nor is there a logical relation of determinism between facts. Logic is merely _truth functional_ , i.e. it tells you what truths can be inferred from others according to laws of inference. So there are no implications from logic regarding what is the cause or determinant of anything.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy
Yes, I have similar views about logic, I think of it more like a instrument of inference rather then a set of principles that govern the universe.
What I suggest is that exact talk about the future might be like talk about the present king of France.
And this can then be solved by Russell’s theory of descriptions.
And that even if fatalism is false, that we can still save probabilistic propositions about the future so that we can make true probabilistic predictions.
The most obvious rebuttal to Predeterminism is that it takes a mind to determine something...
Therefore, the Atheist/Materialist axiomatically contradicts him or herself by just proposing a determination...
They are, at least, promoting Subjective Idealism by the proposition itself...
If it has been determined that the universe begin and end... there has been a content filled determination made & matter itself cannot conceptualize nor make decisions based on conceptions...
That is, neither the vacuum of space nor the particles within it/that it is made of... are able to conceptualize... nor, therefore, make decisions/determinations.
So, again, axiomatically... by Reason & Science... Predeterminism is inherently a contradiction... and, then, isn't logically consistent.
It is idiotic to claim a determination without the entailment of there being a thing that determines.
" No subject no object, " OBVIOUSLY!
why accept that determination necessitates mind? that's just begging the question, not a rebuttal. it's like presuppositionalist apologism.
@@real_pattern What makes determinations?
@@timottes334 reality's stance-independently patterned discrete structure may simply exist without having been ever 'made'.
@@real_pattern Since you can't reasonably answer the question, I'll give you your answer.
You can only show reasonably, which means to me Synthetically, that minds make determinations.
You can only speculate that matter per se makes determinations.
This is no different than making the determination that God exists and determines matters.
That is to say... both are speculations of Pure Reason.
I am willing to say that one can make valid arguments for God and Panpsychism ( Though I'd probably object to some propositions not being factual in both cases, but taken on their own terms ( analytically, ) one could grant validity to the arguments ) - as well as other theories of Particle Consciousness - but you can't Synthetically show that these things actually exist - God or Conscious Particles.
I can reasonably and scientifically show that only things with minds make determinations, but you can't show that other than mind makes determinations.
The Materialist and the Theist are two sides of the same coin...
@@real_pattern Mind may simply exist without ever having been made, then.
And... theists argue the same: God simply exists. His essence is His existence, is existence per se.
I answered you before seeing this reply by you...
That answer still stands... One arbitrary assertion is as good as the next...
Pure Reason speculation that you may be able to make valid arguments for, but cannot show to be true...
Can't we just say: surely, the prophecy "You will drown." is either true or false, but we have no way of knowing (yet) what it is? Where's the problem? Even in math we have conjectures that are believed to be true, but there's no proof (yet). And it could nevertheless be useful, like in "If the Goldbach conjecture holds, then …"
Yes. The problem for free will only comes in when you think it's truth now somehow means you lack free will. But I argue it isn't true "now", it's just true. And its truth depends on the future. Since knowledge is temporally restricted, we lack knowledge of future events.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Right. But just for completeness: there are also countless statements regarding the past where we will never know whether they're true or not. Ask any historian, but here is an example: "The evangelist Mark drowned."
What do you think of the new atheists, Dr. Hawkins?
The alter ego of dawkins
Are they still new at this point?
I haven't read any of their atheist books, but I've read some of Dennett's papers, and watched them in debates etc. Dawkins and Hitchens seem philosophically lightweight. Harris seems marginally better, but too in thrall to science from what I can tell. Dennett is worth reading. But mostly because he carries the materialist metaphysics to its end point of dismissing the reality of consciousness. Which, to me, provides an argument from absurdity against materialism.
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