elemenohpee said:
That's not what I said at all, please don;t put words in my mouth.
I'm no expert by any means so take my opinions on this with a grain of salt. But its my understanding that the probabilities are not an actual description of what is happening in the system, but an abstract observation of the system in general. That is,l if we do an actual experiment, we find the particle at a particular place. Doing the experiment multiple times may allow us to form some probability funtion which will tell us how likely we are to find a praticle at a particular point. But this is just our observation of the universe, in reality things are happening a specific way. In any case, quantum theories have little to do with free-will.
Are you basing this on anything?
No
it doesn't have to do with finding an electron in orbit with a certain probability. my point is that if you can't know everything, you can't PREDICT ANYTHING. predicting something means you make a prediction and it happens, otherwise its a prophocey. now assuming something will happen, and it happening is different.
the fact is still that you would either have to know everything, or not make a prediction.
i understand that you say that IF we could understand everything, that we could predict something.
and my point still stands, you would have to be ALL KNOWING to be able to do this. so what is the point of this theory?
again, i realize that the point of determinism doesn't rely on a human knowing everything. just that if everything is what it is, then it COULD be predicted by SOMETHING.
however determinism doesn't put a dent on free will because unless HUMANS could understand these factors that we can never understand, then we DO have free will. if our decisions to use can never be proven as just an act of force, then it IS free will.
now you can dispute what free will is, and thats getting far out there. however you can't go far enough out there to PROVE that EVERYTHING is able to be PROVED.
so where does detereminism lay in the face of human capabilities in direct relation to the fact that IF you could know enough to predict human actions (which humans can't), why would you need to predict things (you would already know everything, past and future?)