The problem determinism can’t escape
*This article does not attempt to disprove determinism, but explore it.*
Determinism: the philosophical and scientific belief that all events—including human actions and decisions—are the inevitable result of preceding causes and natural laws.
The problem
Determinism relies on the idea of a preceding cause for every occurrence, but what caused the first occurrence?
Every cause is in itself an occurence. If we go to the beginning of time, we are able to find a first event. Since this is the first thing to exist, it seems reasonable to state that nothing came before it. If nothing came before the first event,then there could be no cause. Meaning that should there be a beginning of time, there is also at least one event that has occurred without a cause. This falls outside the rules of determinism and seems to challenge the idea that every occurence has followed determinism’s laws.
Most responses to this problem tend to rely on one key assumption;
Time has no beginning/ first event
Why time must have a beginning/first event
There are two key arguments against this;
-Time is cyclical and looped
-this existence has always existed so there is not a first event
Cyclical time
The argument tends to go as follows;
-Time is a loop
-Events are tied to time in some way
-So if time is cyclical, so are events.
In which case there will be a seemingly infinite number of “realities” (times around the same loop) where we are just following the events of the ones prior
Meaning our decisions are determined by what happens within the loop, rather than what we “decide”,there are no real “decisions” or spontaneity since we follow what is set out to happen within the loop with a 100% guarantee (determinism).Despite the seeming abundance of options in our existence , the same one is picked 100% of the time,with a 100% guarantee, so are there actually any other “options”?.
We are following a sequence of predetermined states decided entirely by the previous iterations of the time loop.
Why cyclical time may not inhibit free will
This existence that you and I occupy may be the first iteration of the “ time loop”.
In which case time within this existence can be viewed linearly as nothing is looping back on itself yet. This linear nature of time means that there is a beginning to this first iteration, and we run into the same problem of regression, which inhibits determinism as it is defined-due to the first occurrence problem.
In addition, it may not even be necessary for this to be the first iteration. If we think of time being looped, it is still passing at a constant rate,and progressing, returning to the start of the loop does not set the time of total existence back to zero,it sets the time of the loop and the events back to zero.
It may help to imagine this on a graph,with time along the x axis and events along the y axis. Time passes at a constant rate,linearly-regardless of if the events loop back on themselves. As total time passes along the x axis, it is actually the events along the y-axis that repeat themselves every set distance along the x-axis (iteration of the “time/event loop).
With time progression working this way we no longer need to be in the first iteration, we just need to track back to it to find the regression problem. We would simply do so by going back to 0 on our x axis, at which point we still run into the first cause problem-despite the fact that time is “looped”.
In addition, the cyclical time argument relies on the idea of events being related to time and looping with them,which is seemingly weak
This existence has always existed
Relative to our own existence, this is obviously true. However using the timeframe of our own existence as the only timeframe within the grand -scheme of things is seemingly limited.
Think of a computer program made within our world, once launched,the only time that has ever existed for that program is what has passed during its existence. Relative to itself, it has always existed.
However in our world, it has not, there was a time before it existed.
Now think of our world in a similar way to the computer world, if our reality originates from a different existence-perhaps a more “true” or “real” one, then time has likely existed before us.
If this parent reality was to “create” ours, then that creation would be the original cause, with our realities “laws” assigned during the process.
Effectively removing the need for the original cause to stem from our reality,whilst still existing. Meaning the time regression problem would no longer exist.
For us to exist, that was always going to happen, so the predetermination of the first cause (creation) is valid, it just stems from an existence beyond our own.
This means that determinism would be possible, with the caveat of accepting that this reality we occupy stems from another which is responsible for creating ours, and assigning its laws.
The issue with this is that it seems to only serve to move the “first cause” problem back into the parent existence. However this “problem” relies on the parent existence following the same laws as our own, and is also irrelevant when discussing the laws of our own universe as a closed system.
Conclusion
Determinism survives the first-cause problem,but only if we accept that it works only in a closed system-not across all realities.
Within our own existence,determinism is possible if we accept that a parent reality is responsible for the creation of ours and its laws.
For our reality, the regression stops there. We do not need to explain the parent realities origin in order to explain our own.
That being said, determinism still falls to the regression problem in the grand-scheme of things if parent realities assume the same laws as our own.
Determinism may work for us, but maybe not for everything.
I don't like free will, because it's been used to make people pay in socialized ways for non-socialized behavior as if the natural-for-sociality-particularism preceded the natural-at-large category, as if freedom was to be confined to the coherence boundaries of others.
In this sense, to say they had to do it, and really don't know better sounds good, but it still begs the question, why would being need this kind of theodicy of kenosis, emptied to not be full with itself as such already. They have those feelings, they operate on them, being has those feelings, it did not do more to make it less ignorant as rampant-particularity. In this sense the room to do what is not imminantly most ideal, implies of least action, taking detours through the wrong, in order to have the higher right at the end, unless it only keeps blending things finer and having them recongeal into a more particular finitudes that fall apart, sense of what has been integral is such a long chain causality that extinction can happen, and the planned-for in some sense isn't, in this sense being anticipates itself poorly, and has its excess within itself as a use that less has for more, in what is beyond integral-reason as self-evidently-necessary in every-instance.
if one speaks of an infinite loop or first cause, then from telos it's like a substraction from infinitity, and it negates the form of our valueing more than it contradicts itself, since as itself, it availability to absoluteness from seeming contradiction is never denied, yet morality is an accretion of intelligence that makes foreclosures on being's self-behavior as the regulation of parts by other parts as representative of the action of the whole for itself at locality.
one assumes non-locality is like mind, but that reimports particularity as a logic of relative contrasts standing above a budget for coherence. Yet being as such cannot be budgeted for or allocated more or less. One assumes a psychology of regard before the reification for its conditions, yet as extended in these conditions also, that very totality has these questions, and this relation exactly, since the concept of the will and the freedom and the feelings associated inspire further motion of themselves, as necessary to be considered for necessary reasons, which means even if there is no free will, the being has need of considering those categories from these particularities as in a sense, having the room for irony, in doubled way.
if being can change, then it can change such that thing that are not possible can become possible and things that were possible can become impossible as a form of keynsianism on possibility, removed of particular effects for what is otherwize. being does change, or at least, in frames it spills over itself like many videos at once all related. the form of the absolute could be in this sense like meillasoux thinks so contingent that god can happen. In this sense, it may be a making more of a moment, in what as radicality that isn't even nihilist since positie about itself in itself without limit to its scope of self-mutation. Yet what happens cannot unhappen, even if the statespace is manipulated to again resemble a previous time, it would not be the previous time, in this sense there are things that happen that being cannot make be different, it has saturation, and in a way that lasts beyond all its features, it cannot cancel its own past effects from having been effectful, in this sense justice precedes being and not from a moral capacity, like ressemblance precedes form, in the ability to find a photo of something before it has come to be looking like it does in the photo, like a program of code that contains its own hash, inside of itself, requiring from linear analysis the need to have predicted itself fully, and from combinatorics, having only to have been found apart from what "produced it", this fractionation of a logic of production from a logic of finding without canceled effect, implies that being can distribute itself over pure-possibility and fail to encompas all what semantics has realism for. thus being is determined even before time.
https://saulvdw.substack.com/p/of-determination-and-holography?r=70rnc&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web