Thread: The Future is Determined...

Is it possible to make a true or false statement about something that does not exist?

I defiantly understand the point your Philosophy lecturing is making. It does flow logically. However, it does have fundamental logical fallacies as it ignores the very essence of the future.

How can you say the future is determined when at the same time you admit their are two possible futures? America might invade Iran, or America might not invade Iran. This is not determined yet. It is predictable because the possibilities are limited. It doesn't make it determined tho. The only thing that is determined is that there is a future. It is not determined which future it is going to be.. that is still a mystery. And a mystery is the exact opposite of something determined.

Fatalism and determinism are illusions btw. Some people think everything is determined because things are predictable. Some people claim we do not have free will, because if we would repeat an exact situation at the exact same time we would make the exact same choice. But the cause of this is because we use logic and free will. The cause is not fatalism.

If someone put a gun to your head and you could choose to die or not to die. What would you choose? Some people claim, because you would always choose the same thing, the future is deterministic. Maybe the future is just logic, not random and therefore predictable, making it seem like it is deterministic.

Your logic is sound up until the conclusion. The only conclusion you can really make is that one of two things will happen. That's not the same thing as saying the future is predetermined. For example, suppose the decision to invade Iran in 2010 depended entirely on the decay of a certain isotope. Since atomic decay is fundamentally probabilistic, as was proven by the Bell Experiment, there's no way anyone can even know in principle whether the war will happen. To say otherwise is to claim you can predict the timing of atomic decay, which would imply a hidden variable theory of some sort, which was disproven.

It must be determined--it just keeps coming and coming.

Your logic is sound up until the conclusion. The only conclusion you can really make is that one of two things will happen. That's not the same thing as saying the future is predetermined.

How can you say the future is determined when at the same time you admit their are two possible futures? America might invade Iran, or America might not invade Iran. This is not determined yet.

It's not a question of knowing whether something is true or false. This argument doesn't require that we know what does happen in the future. I would say that it's impossible to know which will happen. Determinism/fatalism, in this form, is a much weaker (narrower) argument than that. It simply says that whatever does happen must, or that future events, however they happen, were always going to happen that way. America might invade Iran in 2010 or it might not: there are indeed two possibilities. But it is the case that the statement "America will invade Iran in 2010" is currently either true or false. Whether we know the outcome or not does not matter.

This is also true of the atomic isotope case. Granted, we cannot know when it will decay, but the statement "isotope X will decay in 2010" is NOW either true or false, and it is so by referring to the event that will happen. Fatalism is often associated with predictability, but they are separate issues. This is very different from the determinism via the predictability of Newtonian physics argument.

Is it possible to make a true or false statement about something that does not exist?

I think this is probably the best way to attack the argument. It depends on one's conception of the nature of time: what kind of existence do future events have? On one view of time, Dimensionalism, future events do exist, and we simply proceed along the course of events. What do you guys think?

Originally Posted by Roller

This is also true of the atomic isotope case. Granted, we cannot know when it will decay, but the statement "isotope X will decay in 2010" is NOW either true or false, and it is so by referring to the event that will happen. Fatalism is often associated with predictability, but they are separate issues. This is very different from the determinism via the predictability of Newtonian physics argument.

I'm sorry, but I guess I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by "predetermined" then, because to me that would imply that it's possible in principle to know the future. Otherwise, you're basically talking about something outside of reality and is thus quite irrelevant.

If you say "the ball is black", but you don't have a ball, is this still true?

If you say "the ball is black", but you don't have a ball, is this still true?

A vacuous truth is a truth that is devoid of content because it asserts something about all members of a class that is empty or because it says "If A then B" when in fact A is false. For example, the statement "all cell phones in the room are turned off" may be true simply because there is no cell phone in the room.

Here is you're anwser.

Now this sentence, at this present moment, is either true or false. It is either true or false just in case America attacks Iran. If it is true now then a future event is already determined; if it is false now then a future event is already determined. According to the law of the excluded middle, there is no other way that the statement can be, thus the future is already determined.

This might seem to be a strange argument, but it is very compelling because of the fact that it is drawn from trivial but essential laws. There are only three ways to attack the argument: attack the law of the excluded middle, attack the correspondence view of truth, or attack that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. Have fun!

Actually it is flawed, highly flawed.

The first problem is assumption that the Law of the Excluded Middle is correct. Which, constructivism will argue no.

drawn from trivial but essential laws.

It is neither trivial or essential. Basically, if you get rid of the law then mathematics works fine. Hence, why its not essential.

To say otherwise is to claim you can predict the timing of atomic decay, which would imply a hidden variable theory of some sort, which was disproven.

Firstly, it hasen't been disproven. You can't disprove stuff using science, which has been made clear alot of times.

I think this is probably the best way to attack the argument.

If a set has only one member, which is the empty set it is said to be true or vacuously true.

Originally Posted by wendylove

Firstly, it hasen't been disproven. You can't disprove stuff using science, which has been made clear alot of times.

You can disprove a sufficiently detailed claim, but I stand corrected. Hidden variables have only been shown to not be within the first 240-odd standard deviations (1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)

Hidden variables have only been shown to not be within the first 240-odd standard deviations (1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)

I mean the non local ones, like Bohms interpretations.