File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-03-08.181, message 17


Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 09:05:31 -0500
From: porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu (Doug Porpora)
Subject: BHA: Types of determinism


        Here's my two cents on the Bhaskar passage Howard and Tobin find murky.

First fn. 11 and the accomanying text:

>For every event y there is an event x or set of
>events x_1 . . . x_n such that x or x_1 . . . x_n and y
>are regularly conjoined under some set of descriptions.11

> 11 The concept `event' functions here
>syncategorematically.  Its purpose is, in context, to
>generate the appropriate redescriptions of the events
>concerned.

        Since the text seems clear to me, I'm not sure the footnote is
needed.  In fact, as Howard and Tobin note, the footnote serves only to
make what seemed clear obscure.  To me, the fn seems to suggest that
"event" is being used loosely to fit into the normal Humean language.  In
the text's frame, an event can also be, for example, a state of affairs.
Bhaskar wants us to understand by event anything that can be redescribed to
fit under one or another covering law.

About fn 13 and computational determinism, etc., again, first the text and
the fn:

>Regularity determinism must be straightaway
>distinguished from two other forms of determinism: which
>may be called `ubiquity' and `intelligibility' determinism.
>Ubiquity determinism asserts that every event has a real
>cause; intelligibility determinism that every event has
>an intelligible cause; regularity determinism that the
>same (type of) event has the same (type of) cause.  The
>concepts of `cause' involved in the three determinisms
>are of course distinct.  For the ubiquity determinist the
>cause is that thing, material or agent which is
>productive of an effect; for the intelligibility
>determinist it is simply that which renders an event
>intelligible to men;12 for the regularity determinist it
>is the total set of conditions that regularly proceeds or
>accompanies an event.13
>
> 13 See e.g. J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, Vol. I,
>Bk. III, Chap. 3, Sect. 3, or A. J. Ayer, Foundations of
>Empirical Knowledge, Chap. 4, Sect. 17.  As has been
>frequently pointed out, by Mill and Ayer among others,
>this concept does not accord well with our normal usage;
>so in practice the Humean tends to modify it in the
>direction of the intelligibility concept by making the
>cause an individually critical factor in a jointly
>sufficient set.  On the other hand, to the extent that
>the intelligibility theorist is committed to the doctrine
>of empirical realism he must rely on a background of
>empirical generalizations to justify his citation of the
>cause.
>

        First, the footnote.  I think Bhaskar is referring to the INJS
concept of causality, associated, for example, with Mackie.  According to
this formulation, what causes any event y is a set S of conditions,
x1,x2,x3. . .xn. S may not be _necessary_ to produce y since some other set
S' could also produce y.  There are many ways, they tell us, for example,
to skin a cat.  Yet the conditions comprising S are jointly _sufficient_ to
produce y.  Collect them all together and you get y.

        On the other hand, any single cause of y in S, i.e., xi, is
_individually necessary_ (but individually insufficient) if S as a whole is
to be jointly sufficient to produce y.

        Now, the text:

        Ubiquity determinism seems to be a weaker version of the rule of
sufficient reason.  According to the rule of sufficient reason, every event
B is caused by a prior event A (simple or compound) sufficient to make B
happen.  Ubiquity determinism affirms that every event is caused but not
necessarily caused sufficiently.

        According to ubiquity determinism, for example, all human actions,
however inexplicable to observers, are caused.  They are caused by, among
other things, agents' reasons.  Yet, I do not think ubiquity determinism
necessarily implies that those reasons must have been sufficient to have
caused the actions in question.  As in quantum mechanics, some events are
caused but, depending on the causal mechanism, not necessarily
sufficiently.

        Intelligibility determinism, I think, is a stronger claim than
ubiquity determinism.  According to intelligibility determinism, not only
do all events have prior causes.  Those prior causes are always in
principle capable of becoming intelligible to the human mind.

        Intelligibility determinism is, perhaps, not a trivial addition to
ubiquity determinism.  I just read a philosophical article on, of all
things, the Shroud of Turin that addressed this point.  The shroud was
carbon-dated to the 13th century, so we may presume it is not "the" shroud.
The article argued that this only deepens the shroud's mystery. So far,
the evidence suggests that the image on the shroud was not produced by any
normal (non-deliberate) mechanism we know of.  And, not only do we lack the
knowledge to (deliberately) duplicate the image today, it is, therefore,
even harder to imagine someone knowing how to do it in the 13th century.

        I introduce this example not to engage in theological debate but
only to make one point.  Presumably something caused the image on the
shroud to appear (ubiquity determinism).  Could the image have been created
by a cause that forever will remain, even in principle, unintelligible to
us?  Intelligibility determinism says no.

        Computational determinism is another, stronger claim than ubiquity
determinism that, I think, does not completely coincide with
intelligibility determinism.  According to computational determinism as I
understand it, all events are not only caused.  They are caused by prior
causes sufficient to make them happen (the rule of sufficient reason).
Further, in principle, all events could have been computed or predicted in
advance from a knowledge of those prior causes.  Computational determinsim
is LaPlacean determinism.

        It does not follow from the rule of sufficient reason that all
events are necessarily computable.  Non-computability is one interpretation
drawn from chaos theory.  According to some interpretations of chaos
theory, although chaotic events may be caused by sufficient reason, we in
principle could never have accurate enough measurement of those prior
causes to compute the occurrence of the chaotic event.

        The question for chaos theory is whether this non-computability of
chaotic events is ontological or epistemological.  Epistemologically,
chaotic events will always be non-computable for us.  If we had, however,
what Putnam refers to as a "God's eye view," would the chaotic events still
be non-computable ontologically?

        Although it has always seemed to me that ontologically even chaotic
events may remain computable, I still think that quantum events are not
computable even in principle.  (I think this is Roger Penrose's position as
well.)  If so, then at least some events in the world escape computational
determinism.

        Bhaskar claims that computational determinism is a truism. I think
what Bhaskar means is that we can always post hoc devise a set of prior
events or conditions from which any event could have been deduced.  I think
Bhaskar's position on this conflates validity and soundness. Yes, we might
always be able to validly deduce or compute any event from prior causes
post hoc, but the deduction may not be sound.  The premisses might be false
because the mechanism they presume non-existent.  Thus, I don't think we
can soundly compute quantum events from any prior causes.

        Bhaskar dismisses computational determinism as a truism.  I tend to
think it is not a truism but, rather, nontrivially false.  In either case,
I would agree with Bhaskar that computational determinism is a position to
be rejected.

        Well, I hope these comments are useful to somebody. I welcome any
corrections or objections.

doug

p.s. Although i tend toward intelligibility determinism myself, I must
admit that the nature of light and quantum mechanics at least strain
intelligibility.  I think instead of their becoming more intelligible, we
have just grown comfortable with their unintelligibility.  That raises an
interesting question about the conventional nature of intelligibility.





doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu




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