From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Thu Feb 20 15:21:01 EST 1992
Article 3758 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Determinism precludes truth?
Message-ID: <417@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 14 Feb 92 20:49:46 GMT
References: <1992Feb3.145332.21683@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com> <6554@pkmab.se> <407@tdatirv.UUCP> <1992Feb12.205814.75156@spss.com>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 41

In article <1992Feb12.205814.75156@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
|In article <407@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
|>Now, given that my 'knowledge' is thus predetermined, why should it have
|>any meaningful relationship to truth or falsity?  Why whould I believe that
|>my predetermined 'knowledge' has any meaning at all?
|
|>I suspect that either the teleonomic aspect of evolved organisms guarentees
|>a relationship between internal mental states and the external world, 
|
|But what kind of relationship, that's the problem.  I could see that
|evolution or the environment favor useful beliefs; but how could they
|favor true beliefs?  (I trust you appreciate the distinction.)  But in
|that case, is a belief in determinism true or merely useful?

Indeed I do see the distinction, that is why I said I have a hard time
finding a conclusive argument against C.S. Lewis' dualism.

However, what I was suggesting, very tentatively, was that real-world
ecosystems ae so complex, and contingent, and changeable that by and
large only true beliefs are actually useful (to the extent that they
contribute to reproductive success).

|>or the universe is not indeed fully deterministic.  I am not sure which.
|
|Of course, the universe _isn't_ fully deterministic, according to the less
|off-the-wall interpretations of quantum mechanics.  I'm not sure what this
|does to Lewis's argument.

As near as I can tell, it blows it completely out of the water,
since now beliefs and knowledge are *not* determined by the configuration
of the origin of the Universe.


The problem is that relying on the current formulation of QM for the answer
to such a fundamental question is premature.  It is not yet clear that
the probabilistic interpretations are indeed the last word in particle physics.
[Of course no one yet has any good alternative - but that was true of Newton
before Einstein].
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


