Blame is a Prejudice (Free-Will & Determinism)

Thanks to Pro for a very robust response to my rebuttal. The self-defeating character of determinism is that for Pro to accept it as true, he must believe that he believes in it because he was predetermined to do so. He hasn't been able to weigh the pros and cons rationally and make up his mind freely based on that, but was determined by outside forces. So in his world-view, his very belief in determinism is determined, and so are the thoughts he is having right now; so that even if determinism were true, its impossible for him to rationally affirm it, for its very affirmation undermines the rationality of its affirmation. Empirical evidence does not support the cause-and-effect nature of human actions that Pro proposes. For example; X is the cause and Y is the effect, so that X always precedes Y; but the problem is that every instance of X (a set of initial conditions/circumstances) is different from every other X, so that there cannot be two or more documented cases of X leading to Y. No two human beings will have the exact same set of circumstances, beliefs, life experiences, and so forth, so as to test the theory that given these conditions (X), that Y must always occur. Pro must therefore make the assumption that X leads to Y in his domino effect illustration without being able to falsify his theory. Without a duplicate of X the observation will not be repeatable, and is an assumption of determinism at best, not an actual proof. So my question to Pro, is, how does he know that were subject A who does not steal when homeless and hungry, to have had the same experiences in life as subject B who does steal when homeless and hungry, would not still choose to refrain from stealing? It's not like he can reproduce the exact same set uf circumstances for multiple subjects to observe that they all steal when in such a situation. Since the variables of X are not even be fully defined, the correlation between X and Y is spurious. I challenge Pro to give us conforming examples that X leads to Y in the behavior of humans. Illustration: If I measure the force of the earth's gravity on an object, I see the relation F=gm. However, magnets and gases exhibit a different relation with respect to the earth. Is gravity deterministic? F=gm contains no term regarding the make-up of the object, so the only way to explain the exception is to say that gravity obeys the relation F=gm unless something else causes it not to. We have bounded our causal law so that our hypothesis stands, but we now must postulate the existence of new phenomena to describe the other "causal" forces which are at work; and so on. How can this program be falsified? If it cannot be falsified (since we can always postulate additional "unknown" causes), isn't the conclusion questionable? Pro cannot affirm that people bear moral responsibility under his deterministic view, so that Hitler wasn't really to blame for his treatment of the Jew during the Holocaust. Nor were slave traders to blame during the years of Trans-Atlantic slavery; they could do no better. I will simply ask the readers of this debate to carry out a simple experiment. Put two items before you for breakfast; pick one tomorrow, and use the next one the following day. Now, did you have to use "first" the one you did use "first"? Could you not have chosen the other one? If not, why not? Pro's argument is that some past experiences and circumstances caused you to choose the one you did chose as opposed to the other, but if so, please try to identify what those causes X, were. Ask yourself what is the relationship between those variables (X) and the meal you chose for breakfast; would (or do) other individuals with similar (if not the same) specific number of circumstances/experiences always choose that breakfast which you did chose "first" given that they have the same two options? ‘Determinism does not require us to give up choice altogether, but to realize that what we want to do has already been determined. " The problem I have here is that people don't always do what they "want," but at times they put other things even above their wants. Someone pushes me, I "want" to push him back, but I "choose" to walk away. My desire to fight might be more intense than the small voice of conscience telling me to do the right thing. The external factors which allowed me to have these options do not decide which one I will choose. For a twin raised in the same home, we may have similar external factors, having been raised with the same values, exposed to the same influences, etc, yet, one pushes back, the other chooses not to. When I ask what's the point of trying to convince anyone of anything, Pro says: "Because it may be determined that they change their minds. " So if a woman sits in a chair, Pro's claim would be that she was determined to do so, and could not have remained standing. Yet, if she were to keep standing, he would argue that she could not have sat down; even though in both scenarios she had the same prior set of circumstances and experiences, which would show that X doesn't necessarily lead to Y, but she had free-will to chose. "In a cause-and-effect universe the only way for un-predictability to exist is if it existed at the start. " Randomness does exist in this universe: When quantum theory was introduced in the late 1920's, a surprising discovery was made: the success of the theory is dependent on the existence of statistical, non-causal forces. The behavior of individual atomic particles is completely indeterministic. Detailed analysis has demonstrated that all fundamental particles display completely random behavior at the atomic level. They appear, in some sense, to have "free will" when observed individually; their behavior is not "caused" by anything. These quantum vacuum fluctuations or virtual particles are particle-antiparticle pairs that come into existence in otherwise empty space for very brief periods of time, in agreement with the Heisenberg uncertainty relations. (Paul Davies, 1983, God and the New Physics, p.162; Richard Morris, 1990, The Edges of Science, p.24) Pro says he can't control the effects his conscience has on him, but the conscience will only condemn us for that which we truly believe we are wrong; so if Pro truly believes he has no choice but to commit wrongs, then why should his conscience condemn him? It seems to me that deep inside, Pro might believe he could have done better at times. Con argues that our prior beliefs determine why we react differently to the same set of evidence, and yet, they are atheists who had such extreme education in defense of atheism and attack of Christianity, that given that background, and given their views, should not have been convinced by the evidence for God, yet, they were. This argument works both ways. "I am an atheist when I begin reading the arguments for Gods existence, and more than likely I'll remain an atheist when I finish reading. If, however, I was undecided and I read the arguments, had a different set of ideas about philosophy, then I may have been determined to become a theist. " I've studied with folks who were hard atheists and others who were simply undecided. The undecided ones remained undecided, while the atheists were convinced to become theists, on the same evidence which was shown to both groups. This is one of the things that convinces me free-will is real.