Taffy Lewis

JB01:

If determinism is true then there are literally no alternatives to what actually happens. However, in our experiences of our actions it does seem to many of us that we are faced with real alternatives.

Liquidrage

Taffy you continue to twist your view of deterministic consequences into your personal definition of determinism that hardly anyone accepts.

The foundation on which you base your absurd claims on is false.
Determinism means that all events are the consequence of antecedent states of affairs.

Humans (and all of the macroscopic world for that matter) do not posses the capability to make predictions with 100% accuracy.
All of your arguments, whether you realize it or not, require that humans do posses the knowledge required to make 100% accurate predictions.

The universe can be 100% super-deterministic and humans can still produce alternatives simply because to humans the outcome is not known even if the outcome was predetermined.

I write computer code 40 hours a week (ok ok, 30 hours a week with 10 hours spent wasting time or doing documentation ) and in that code exist many alternatives path and outcomes. However, the system itself is 100% deterministic.

Taffy Lewis

Liquidrage:

The definition of 'determinism' which I use is the most common usage among philosophers. Here are a few references:

From Free Will ed. Gary Watson:

"Free will is problematic to many philosophers because of its controversial relation to determinism: the view, roughly, that every event and state of affairs is 'causally necessitated' by preceding events and states of affairs." (p.2)

From Free Will ed. Robert Kane:

"Determinist or necessitarian threats to free will have taken many historical forms - fatalistic, logical, theological, physical, biological, psychological, social - but there is a core idea running through all doctrines of determinism which shows why they pose a threat to free will. Any event is determined, according to this core notion, just in case it must be the case, that given the determining conditions (e.g.,the decrees of fate, the foreordaining acts of God, antecedent physical causes plus laws of nature), the (determined) event will occur. In more familiar terms, the occurrence of the determined event is inevitable or necessary, given the determining conditions. Historical doctrines of determinism refer to different kinds of determining conditions, but they all imply that every event (or at least every human choice and action) is determined in this sense." (p.5)

From Colin McGinn's Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry:

"The trouble is that there seems to be a simple argument that shows that our prized freedom must be an illusion. The argument is exceedingly familiar, and runs as follows. Either determinism is true or it is not. If it is true, then all our chosen actions are uniquely necessitated by prior states of the world, just like every other event. But then it cannot be the case that we could have acted otherwise, since this would require a possibility determinism rules out. Once the initial conditions are set and the laws fixed, causality excludes genuine freedom. On the other hand, if indeterminism is true, then, though things could have happened otherwise, it is not the case that we could have chosen otherwise, since a merely random event is no kind of free choice. That some events occur, causelessly, or are not subject to law, or only to probabilistic law, is not sufficient for those events to be free choices." (p.80)

Major dictionaries of philosophy yield the same definitions.

Actually, most philosophers use the term "causation" to refer to the notion that all events are the consequence of antecedent states of affairs.

That's simply not true. In his What Does It All Mean: a very short introduction to philosophy, after discussing determinism, Thomas Nagel writes:

"The idea is not that we can know all the laws of the universe and use them to predict what will happen. First of all, we can't know all the complex circumstances that affect a human choice. Secondly, even when we do learn something about the cicumstances, and try to make a prediction, that is itself a change in the circumstances, which may change the predicted result. But predictability isn't the point. The hypothesis is that there are laws of nature, like those that govern the movement of the planets, which govern everything that happens in the world--and that in accordance with those laws, the circumstances before an action determine that it will happen, and rule out any other possibility."

I agree with Nagel.

Liquidrage

Actually, most philosophers use the term "causation" to refer to the notion that all events are the consequence of antecedent states of affairs.

That does not change the definition of determinism.

Do you know why causation is commonly used?
Because the word "determinism" has had too many red herrings attached to it. Such as what you are doing.

Show me where in your quotes you've proven what you said.

If determinism is true then there are literally no alternatives to what actually happens

You can't unless talking in the past tense, in which case you would have to show that past events can be altered.

Are you trying to state you agree with causality yet dismiss determinism?

In reality they are the same thing.