The way I understand it the concept of determinism is the idea that all events have physical causes which determine them 100 percent. QM of course denies this, and claims that there is a genuinely random (in the sense of not 100 percent causally determined) element in physical events. The idea of indeterminism is that at "bottom" physical events are truly random (uncaused) but that due to their large-scale probabilistic nature they average out to produce macroscopic events which seem to us to be 100 percent causally determined, I am very much open to being corrected on this, since my understanding is by no means anything approaching expert level. — Janus

I don't want to get too far from the definitions I established in the OP. The substance of the position I have presented is that I don't think it is useful to apply the concept of determinism as defined there. I have presented reasons for taking that position. This seems to be consistent with the position you've described. I agree that the system you describe which is only statistically predictable does not meet the standards for determinism presented in the OP.

As I said in the post you quoted, it is not clear to me that "random" and "uncaused" mean the same thing. One way or the other, it is not particularly relevant to the substance of my position.

In the OP and subsequent posts, I laid out specific meanings for "determinism" and "predictability" and the kinds of situations to which I think they apply. You seem to be using different definitions than I did. — T Clark

I think the example of the light switch/light bulb system captures the definitions you gave in your opening posts. That is, determinism (or non-determinism) relates to the system itself while predictability relates to an agent's knowledge (or information about) the system.

How would you summarize your definitions if you understand them to be different to that?

I read "neither entity" as referring to position and momentum, not to the electron itself. — Janus

This nasty slight of hand is how one goes from science to Deepak Chopra woo shit.

Not so. That is contradicted by the wave equation which is precisely a distribution of probabilities. There is not an objectively-existing particle lurking undiscovered. — Wayfarer

I don't think the wave function tells you about one measurement. It tells you about multiple measurements.

A quick comment on some of the discussion here: a clean way to understand randomness is as equiprobability: if, given certain outcomes, the likeliness of each happening under repeated iterations is the same, then your system is random. There's no 'discrimination' as to the end result (no 'asymmetry that would favour some outcomes over others).

One thing that follows from this understanding is that randomness can only be spoken of in relation to a fixed system. Something is random insofar one cannot choose, in advance, between fixed outcomes. So a coin toss is random because the two outcomes, head and tails, are fixed in advance, and what makes the toss random is the equiprobability of outcome. Conceptual problems creep in when this relation to fixity is lost: if the coin turns into an elephant, that's not random, that's nonsense.

A further consequence of this is that randomness is an epistemic, and not ontological concept. If randomness is system-relative (defined only in relation to a fixed system), then no event 'in-itself' is either random or not-random. Instead, you need a distribution of (potential) events relative to a system in to qualify something or some event as random or not. But importantly, what counts and does not count as belonging to, or constituting a system, is itself relative to the kind of investigation one conducts.

That we take a series of random coin tosses to be our object of investigation already supposes artifice; that we count the repetition of coin tosses as constituting a series at all (rather than say, unconnected, singular coin tosses that happen to occur in a row), is the result of a decision, and does not follow from anything 'naturally occuring' in the world.

One thing that follows from this understanding is that randomness can only be spoken of in relation to a fixed system. — StreetlightX

This is important, randomness is only a property of an artificial system. It is something created. The randomness in QM and other microsystems, discussed in this thread, is a property of those systems which have been created by physicists. Randomness itself, because it only exists within the confines of a created system and therefore cannot be absolute, is necessarily determined in the sense of being created intentionally. That is why it is an epistemic, and not an ontological matter. It only takes on the appearance of an ontological issue, as an illusion, when misguided metaphysicians such as C.S. Peirce, posit randomness as a fundamental ontological principle.

This is important, randomness is only a property of an artificial system. — Metaphysician Undercover

I didn't say this. That a coin toss is random is entirely a real, and not artificial property of a series of coin tosses. In fact it might be fair to say that 'real' and 'artificial don't even come into it at all. A coin toss is random, no qualifications attached. But that our object of investigation is a coin toss it itself, follows from a choice made by an agent.

Moreover, Peirce did not posit "randomness as a fundamental ontological principle", but chance. The two are not interchangeable.

Not so. That is contradicted by the wave equation which is precisely a distribution of probabilities. — Wayfarer

Equations are derived from and exist only inside minds - just like probabilities.

There is not an objectively-existing particle lurking undiscovered. — Wayfarer

Then solipsism?

"Empirical" predictability - billiard balls.
Probabilistic predictability - coin flips — T Clark

I don't see a difference between an outcome between two billiard balls colliding and the outcome between your finger colliding with a side of a coin. They are both predictable in the same way - by knowing the motion and force applied to all particles involved.

Only in the sense everything only exists in the human mind as imaginings. — T Clark

Like I said before: you are arguing for solipsism.

I don't see a difference between an outcome between two billiard balls colliding and the outcome between your finger colliding with a side of a coin. They are both predictable in the same way - by knowing the motion and force applied to all particles involved. — Harry Hindu

As I discussed previously - I'm not talking about flipping a coin and trying to predict the outcome. I'm talking about flipping the coin numerous times and predicting the exact sequence of heads and tails.

Like I said before: you are arguing for solipsism. — Harry Hindu

Maybe it would be solipsism if I were to write "Only in the sense everything only exists in my mind as imaginings", but that's not what I wrote or meant.

The idea of randomness kind of snuck into this discussion. It's not something I've thought enough about to be comfortable with my understanding. Your post is really helpful. I'm going to keep it to use as a reference in the future. I'll quote it to pound other posters into submission.

Thanks.

I think the example of the light switch/light bulb system captures the definitions you gave in your opening posts. That is, determinism (or non-determinism) relates to the system itself while predictability relates to an agent's knowledge (or information about) the system. — Andrew M

I think I was too offhanded in my response to your post. Let me explain more.

Your post provides a good description of a simple system where it is reasonable to talk about what I have been calling "empirical determinism." My main point, however, is that as a system becomes more complex, it quickly becomes practically impossible to predict it's outcomes empirically. At that point, it no longer makes sense to talk about the system as determined in that sense.

By the way, I have been making the distinction between empirical and probabilistic determinism and predictability. I have a feeling those are not the right terms to use. Are they ok or are their others I should be using?h

Peirce did not posit "randomness as a fundamental ontological principle", but chance. The two are not interchangeable. — StreetlightX

Well, don't leave us hanging, tell us the difference.

A quick comment on some of the discussion here: a clean way to understand randomness is as equiprobability: if, given certain outcomes, the likeliness of each happening under repeated iterations is the same, then your system is random. There's no 'discrimination' as to the end result (no 'asymmetry that would favour some outcomes over others). — StreetlightX

That's one flavour of randomness, though a biased coin flip is still random.

One thing that follows from this understanding is that randomness can only be spoken of in relation to a fixed system. Something is random insofar one cannot choose, in advance, between fixed outcomes. So a coin toss is random because the two outcomes, head and tails, are fixed in advance, and what makes the toss random is the equiprobability of outcome. Conceptual problems creep in when this relation to fixity is lost: if the coin turns into an elephant, that's not random, that's nonsense. — StreetlightX

I agree that something has to be 'fixed' in the background for 'randomness' to make sense, but this 'fixing' isn't necessarily epistemic (though it can also be that as well). In the case of a biased coin flip. If we flipped a biased coin 1000 times, the differences in flipping strategy each time provide different initial conditions (forces, rotations, locations) which are carried through by the deterministic (or functionally so, anyway) dynamical laws of coin flipping to final head or tail states. In this case I bet that the fixed background which allows the distribution to emerge is precisely the presence of those dynamical laws, the space of initial conditions, and the geometry of the coin (this coin will be develop along these flipping trajectories with these initial conditions).

When we view this from the perspective of the outcome H-T-H or whatever, we can't retrofit back to the initial condition which generated the outcome, too much has been lost by the encoding. This encoding isn't merely epistemic though, the coin being able to land on either side and that it will get stuck in those states (through an impact or two with surfaces) is every bit as valid a property of coin flipping as the underlying deterministic laws which transform hand movements to head or tail.

The probabilities of attaining head or tails emerge from whatever biases the coin, those biases in the coin propagate through the dynamics of coin flipping to biases in the proportion of outcomes.

A further consequence of this is that randomness is an epistemic, and not ontological concept. If randomness is system-relative (defined only in relation to a fixed system), then no event 'in-itself' is either random or not-random. Instead, you need a distribution of (potential) events relative to a system in to qualify something or some event as random or not. But importantly, what counts and does not count as belonging to, or constituting a system, is itself relative to the kind of investigation one conducts. — StreetlightX

Though I do definitely agree with this. It's important not to reduce reality to models of it, or to hypostatise models to reality. Good models are always more than just models though!

Edit: if you want a Deleuze-inspired fuzz on it, randomness is a (there are others) virtual complement of actual outcomes and no less real for that. It's one way nature holds itself in suspense until it resolves (or realises) itself. Edit2: and this virtuality of randomness shows up in why it can be both a sensitivity to externality (unmodelled noise, disruptive perturbation) and a codification of immanent potentials (the distribution of coil flips, birth sex of babies etc)

As I discussed previously - I'm not talking about flipping a coin and trying to predict the outcome. I'm talking about flipping the coin numerous times and predicting the exact sequence of heads and tails. — T Clark

Again, there is no difference between predicting the outcome of 1000 coin flips or 1000 billiard collisions. We are still talking about predictions based on the forces involved with each event.

Maybe it would be solipsism if I were to write "Only in the sense everything only exists in my mind as imaginings", but that's not what I wrote or meant. — T Clark

Then you'd be inconsistent because other minds could be just as imaginary as everything else. You have just as much evidence for other minds as you do for everything else that you claim is imaginary. There is no coherent middle ground (ie idealism). It's either realism or solipsism.

Again, there is no difference between predicting the outcome of 1000 coin flips or 1000 billiard collisions. We are still talking about predictions based on the forces involved with each event. — Harry Hindu

You and I (and several others) have gone back and forth on this quite a few times in this thread. I think we've taken it as far as we're going to get.

It's either realism or solipsism. — Harry Hindu

Yeah...., well...., no.

You and I (and several others) have gone back and forth on this quite a few times in this thread. I think we've taken it as far as we're going to get. — T Clark

Sure, if you can't make a coherent distinction between the two causal events then I guess we are done here.

Yeah...., well...., no. — T Clark

Sure it is. You can't make a good argument as to why you believe other minds exist but not other things that arent minds when the only evidence you have for other minds is other things - like organisms.

That a coin toss is random is entirely a real, and not artificial property of a series of coin tosses. — StreetlightX

A coin is something natural?

What happened to you claim that "randomness can only be spoken of in relation to a fixed system"? A "fixed system" is an artificial system.

A further consequence of this is that randomness is an epistemic, and not ontological concept. — StreetlightX

This is the salient distinction I was trying to tease out with @fdrake. Putting it another way is to say that randomness is indeterminability. Ontological randomness would be ontological indeterminism, which is defined as microphysical events being not merely epistemically random, meaning they are not determined by anything at all, they simply happen without cause.

Peirce did not posit "randomness as a fundamental ontological principle", but chance. The two are not interchangeable. — StreetlightX

Perhaps we are speaking about different things then, because what I have been saying is based on thinking of randomness and chance as one and the same.

What happened to you claim that "randomness can only be spoken of in relation to a fixed system"? A "fixed system" is an artificial system. — Metaphysician Undercover

A fixed system can and does capture real phenomena. A great deal - if not all - of experiments in science involve fixing possible variables in order to isolate some dynamics of some system or another. That does not make scientific results artificial.

A fixed system can and does capture real phenomena. — StreetlightX

Sure, just like any artificial thing is real.

A great deal - if not all - of experiments in science involve fixing possible variables in order to isolate some dynamics of some system or another. That does not make scientific results artificial. — StreetlightX

What? Scientific results are not artificial? Artificial means produced by human beings. Are you suggesting that scientific results just pop into existence without being produced by human beings. You've degenerated to new levels of nonsense StreetlightX.

Oh that's right this is why I don't respond to you, ever. My mistake.

A pseudoscientific concept like clairvoyance could sort matters out.

Determinism, if true, would allow us to predict the future in complete detail.

Clairvoyance, knowledge of events, may not be deterministic in nature. It would allow us to make predictions too.

So determinism implies predictability but the converse isn't true.

I agree that something has to be 'fixed' in the background for 'randomness' to make sense, but this 'fixing' isn't necessarily epistemic (though it can also be that as well). — fdrake

Mm, I was not entirely comfortable with my use of the ontological/epistemic distinction. I suppose what I wanted to emphazise was the necessity of an intervention by an agent, or at least another system, the interaction between which would alone give sense to any measure of randomness. Any 'epistemic' investigation would of course, be a subclass of this type of intervention, but you're right that the former would not exhaust what fixes the background against which randomness would appear.

I guess that one could put it in terms you've been using recently too: you need a system with sensitivities to the potential distribution of events in order for randomness to make itself 'show'. When we investigate randomness, we set up such systems - we are, or make ourselves sensitive to such situations. Or in a non-epistemic manner, one example that springs to mind is using radioactive decay to generate cryptographic keys: such a process harnesses the randomness of atomic decay to generate unique, hard-to-hack keys for encryption purposes. Would this kind of thing jibe with what you had in mind?

Oh that's right this is why I don't respond to you, ever. My mistake. — StreetlightX

Transgression! How did you loose your will? Unpredictability seeps in, to even the most predictable things. Why?

T Clark has rejected a nonexistent form of determinism, fdrake is banging away about his pet worldview, nobody wants to talk to anybody else. This thread was doomed to end this way since the big bang.

This is the salient distinction I was trying to tease out with fdrake. Putting it another way is to say that randomness is indeterminability. Ontological randomness would be ontological indeterminism, which is defined as microphysical events being not merely epistemically random, meaning they are not determined by anything at all, they simply happen without cause. — Janus

Without wading too much into this, I deliberately avoided questions of 'in/determination' - indeed avoided the word(s) altogether - insofar as I think one can treat randomness - in the sense I outlined - without at all engaging in questions of determination and cause. I'll only say that I'm not convinced that one can make sense of the idea of indetermination or randomness ('ontological randomness'), and that what we need instead is a far richer conception of 'determination' than is usually presented, which is usually just fatalism evacuated of any causality whatsoever.

Remember, with time the boundaries of the fixed system will break down. Keep rolling the dice and after a while you won't be able to tell which side is which..

Keep hammering away

Your post provides a good description of a simple system where it is reasonable to talk about what I have been calling "empirical determinism." My main point, however, is that as a system becomes more complex, it quickly becomes practically impossible to predict it's outcomes empirically. At that point, it no longer makes sense to talk about the system as determined in that sense. — T Clark

OK, you're deflationary about determinism. Which is to say we either have equations and procedures to make predictions about a system, or we do not. There's no deeper story.

It's a pragmatic approach that similarly deflates/dissolves the issue of free-will and determinism. We can make predictions (she will drink tea rather than coffee) and give ordinary causal explanations without needing to posit metaphysical explanations.

By the way, I have been making the distinction between empirical and probabilistic determinism and predictability. I have a feeling those are not the right terms to use. Are they ok or are their others I should be using? — T Clark

Is that your billiard balls/coin flips distinction? That seems to be just an issue of precision. You can set up a robot to flip a coin to always land heads. Conversely if the billiard balls are small enough (or isolated enough) then probabilistic quantum effects will be observed.

The idea of randomness kind of snuck into this discussion. It's not something I've thought enough about to be comfortable with my understanding. Your post is really helpful. I'm going to keep it to use as a reference in the future. I'll quote it to pound other posters into submission. — T Clark

Mm, I was not entirely comfortable with my use of the ontological/epistemic distinction. I suppose what I wanted to emphazise was the necessity of an intervention by an agent, or at least another system, the interaction between which would alone give sense to any measure of randomness. Any 'epistemic' investigation would of course, be a subclass of this type of intervention, but you're right that the former would not exhaust what fixes the background against which randomness would appear. — StreetlightX

I think the example of the light switch/light bulb system captures the definitions you gave in your opening posts. That is, determinism (or non-determinism) relates to the system itself while predictability relates to an agent's knowledge (or information about) the system. — Andrew M

This is the salient distinction I was trying to tease out with fdrake. Putting it another way is to say that randomness is indeterminability. Ontological randomness would be ontological indeterminism, which is defined as microphysical events being not merely epistemically random, meaning they are not determined by anything at all, they simply happen without cause. — Janus

So, for @frank and to contextualise the connections between what I've posted and the rest of the discussion. The thread's determinism and predictability. As @Andrew M and @T Clark have shown, a system can be deterministic but not predictable; the light switch with external random source, predictable but not deterministic; any system with little random variation.

Then we have the subthread on epistemic vs ontological randomness. Epistemic randomness arises from epistemic uncertainty; how much do we know, how precise is our knowledge. This relates to degrees of predictability; how accurate and precise are our predictions using our knowledge. Whether a child is born with male or female sex is very unpredictable with no scans etc., whether the sun will rise tomorrow is very predictable.

We can be in a state of great uncertainty with regard to the future of a deterministic system, like a chaotic one, purely due to our epistemic uncertainty concerning it; measurement precision of input variables and initial conditions. Allegedly there cannot be a state of ontological uncertainty with regard to the future of deterministic systems because (their future is not random because {their future states are completely specified by any input state}). So the chain of entailment goes:

(1) No ontological uncertainty in deterministic systems because
(2) Their future is not random because
(3) Their future states are completely specified by any input state.

We can agree with all of these things and still try to locate randomness within deterministic systems, as measures of the probability of their future states given a range of initial conditions. The equations that update climate models are deterministic, nevertheless they're run lots of times to produce "probability of rain tomorrow" and so on. The input variables (initial conditions) are changed slightly to see what happens. In this case, assuming that the climate is a deterministic process completely modelled by its updating equations, the randomness of the future arises from measurement uncertainty.

The thread I was trying to pull on with my coin flipping example was to read the range of initial conditions back into the coin flipping process. With more detail there, we only have a finite degree of precision with how we apply force to the coin, what direction we send it in, and all the other dynamical variables required to completely specify its final state into Heads or Tails. Rather than this range of initial conditions arising from measurement uncertainty of a variable, it arises from bounds on the precision we can control our bodies with and the properties of the coin. The ratio of heads to tails produced in flipping a fixed coin repeated times relies upon the natural level of specification precision of its trajectory by our flipping actions, and how that is conditioned by the coin.

Such randomness isn't just a result of epistemic uncertainty; our knowledge of the coin and our bodies helps us little to change how coin flipping works; but nor is it a-causal ontological indeterminism - the system is fully deterministic; once a trajectory is fixed, the coin will land as it would land from the start. But when we come to flip the coin, it does form a distribution of heads and tails; this must therefore arise from variation in our set up; in which initial conditions we propagate forward along their trajectories. Where those initial conditions vary is due to the variability in the behaviour of our body material in a process held as equivalent (coin flipping, "fixed background"), not in states of knowledge regarding the coin.

Edit: I think it's more precise to say that there are features of the process (of coin flipping) which can be held as equivalent (heads or tails end states), from which we can calculate the set of initial conditions (a pre-image of heads and of tails) which yield each outcome. The proportion of the initial conditions which yield heads give its probability, the proportion which yield tails give its probability.

Clairvoyance, knowledge of events, may not be deterministic in nature. It would allow us to make predictions too.

So determinism implies predictability but the converse isn't true. — TheMadFool

If clairvoyance could give actual, verifiable predictions of future events, that would be good evidence for determinism, although perhaps not exactly in terms of the issue in this thread as I've laid it out and as it has developed.