The concept of "choice" contradicts determinism and causality

I'd like to remind those judging of the original thesis statement: The concept of "choice" contradicts determinism and causality explicated in the intro: In this debate, my opponent will argue that choice is a possible concept within a deterministic and causal universe. I will argue that "choice" is impossible. I think the round 3 response has proven my point. That determinism and causality do not contradict choice, additional assumptions are needed. One can hold to determinism and causality and just use empiricist definitions and there is no contradiction with choice. I think that wins the debate. This debate has had sort of a conversational tone so from here on out I'll switch to even more of a discussion tone. I'll be defending the points and disagreeing but these will be tangents to the main argument above, which I think is now proven. Essentially working through why I don't believe there is a contradiction at a deeper level and exploring where I believe the real additional axioms you needed were. This has been a terrific debate and quite challenging as well. I'd love to do another! _____ To start with I actually am not following how Pyrrhonism allows for the kinds of categorical assertion you are making with respect to choice. Critical rationalism, which is a modern form of Pyrrhonism, uses the same definition of falsifiability I am using. I'm not sure how you don't see a contradiction there. As far as me using JTB , primarily I'd say we are actually disagreeing about the definition of truth not the definition of knowledge. JTB is a theory of knowledge not a theory of truth. I think this is really key. To say that a synthetic proposition p is true means there exists an observation / measure o such that:1) o assuming p (o|p) is true and o assuming ~p is false 2) after o is performed o = True. That's the same as the definition in the analytic realm, a proposition p is decidable if there exists a function o such that 1) o(true) = 1, o(false) = 0 2) o(p) is computable and equal to 1. If p is not a decidable proposition it isn't true or false. It is meaningless, a catagorical error, to talk about who shaves the Barber of Seville (http://en.wikipedia.org...). And that's my response to your point, "Belief has no bearing on the matter, justified or not. What we learn, or fail to learn, about the universe does not change what the universe is actually doing." The issue isn't over justified belief, but rather if there is not a single experiment that allows me to determine the universe is doing something, then it is meaningless to talk about the universe "doing it". Yes I am taking a positivist stance. a) There are observation consistent with Xb) There are no possible observations inconsistent with X is as close as you can get to an absolute truth. a) There are observation consistent with Jim making choicesb) There are no observations inconsistent with Jim making choices is a list that doesn't merely indicate that I believe Jim to be making choices, that is what I am asserting is the very definition of of Jim making choices, in every possible sense. A synthetic statement is absolutely true, if every possible observation is in accord with it. The alternative is to have one or both of true statements that contradict observations, or false statements consistent with every possible observation. Which essentially breaks all connection between reason and reality. There is no "what the universe is actually doing" apart from all finite observers. In our logic it is well known that even one contradictory statement implies all statements are true. For that reason I have to reject the notion of a statement consistent consistent with all finite observers yet false. And I will pose you a question in turn: regardless of whether or not there are observers, how can a completely determined system arrive at an un-determined event through complexity? My answer to that was chaining. The fact that A determines B determines C determines D does not mean that A determines D. This is one of the distinctions between synthetic and analytic propositions which cause rationalistic models to collapse. "Determines" as a sythetic property, its also poorly defined. Assume that we do give it a hard synthetic definition, lets use "determines" to mean "causes to occur with 99% or greater probability". For arguments sake we allow each step to be occurring with 99.5% probability. Then the total probability for A -> D is 98% which is not under the definition "determined". And obviously I can do the same thing with a longer chain and events that require 99.9999999999999999999% probability. That is, increase the length of the chain and the same thing happens with unbelievable probable events. The odds that any particular sperm will die without meeting an egg are astronomical, but that doesn't mean that pregnancy does not happen. Any test performed often enough regardless of how unlikely will eventually happen. And the same thing can happen if your definition of determined is computationally oriented. That is Y is determined by X if the function generating y is f and f(X) = Y. If the A -> B computation is difficult and the B -> C computation is difficult the A -> C computation can be the square of the difficulty. And that level of difficulty can kick you from difficult to impossible. And once it becomes an impossible computation there is no "f" in your definition of determined anymore. This can even happen in a purely analytic realm. There are functions that are analytic and be computed for each element of a set but can't be computed on the set.That is r(A) = B, and s(b) = c, for b in B with c being in C. But s(r(A)) cannot be directly computed. The chess analogy I a gave is a good example of this. The fact that I can perfectly understand the final moves in a chess game, and given a board I can with perfect accuracy determine which boards are derivable in one move (easily infect) does not mean I can compute a complete understanding of chess. In some sort of theoretical sense I might choose to burn up ½ the energy in the universe to complete a computation. I can't choose to burn up 1000x the energy in the universe to complete a computation. Any formula that requires 1000x the energy in the universe to be computed has no answer. And this follows from what we discussed above in terms of testability. Choose a synthetic definition of determined and complexity and chaining in combination destroy finite knowability. And that summary is where we have to leave it. I actually wish we were going another round or so. I think round 3 was our best round. Far from summarizing an existing argument we actually found the root of the argument in rounds 1 and 2.