Any argument against determinism?

Question

I'm a very logical person. I like mathematics, software engineering, physics... everything in that area. Also I'm an anti-theist.

My understanding of the universe:

If you would take every atom (as in the smallest particle) in our universe plus whatever there is beyond and all the movements of these particles in every dimension and copy & paste it somewhere else (like to an other dictionary on your computer) then in both universes the same actions will take place. The stars will make the same movements and humans will make the same thoughts.

If that is true, someone with unlimited mathematical power and knowledge could calculate what will happen in the future.

Is there any sound and logical argument against determinism? Any great philosophers who defended indeterminism?

Edit:

This (copying of the universe and calculating the future) is all hypothetical. It doesn't matter where you put the copy or how you would calculate it. It only shows that if you would do it, you could in fact predict the future --> determinism.

I take it that so called 'random' events (eg. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) are just not understood by human beings because we aren't capable of understanding it. I just wanted to demonstrate why I think we live in a deterministic word.

Answer 1

I would highly recommend learning QM (Quantum Mechanics). QM is science's strongest current theory for "how the universe works," and it has very interesting things to say about determinism. It will be very hard to debate determinism vs. indeterminism without catching up on several decades of QM.

(This is a ridiculously high level view of QM. I give this disclaimer because I am sure my natural English approach has technical inaccuracies. I recommend learning the math from a professional teacher to correct any misconceptions I may cause.)

QM models everything as a "waveform," which is nice and clean for individual particles, but gets messy quickly as the particles interact. It turns out that its very hard to measure the waveform; the mere act of measuring it changes its state. The fundamental limit of "classical" measurement is the uncertainty principle.

Consider this thought experiment: Pluck a string in a dark room. Take a flash picture of it, and develop that picture. You will see the string in some bent shape... whatever position it happened to be in when the flash went off. You cannot simultaneously measure its amplitude and its phase. It could be at a low amplitude, but at 90degrees, where the string is as outstretched as it will get. Or it could be a very high amplitude, but at a much lower phase angle, where the string has a velocity.

Now if we wanted to get more information, we could take a second picture, and do some math to determine how the string had to vibrate to satisfy both pictures. We could even take 4 or 5 pictures and get an even more confident answer, watching the string vibrate. We could eventually measure both the amplitude of the wave, and its phase. Then we could do all sorts of cool things. Radar is built on this principle.

At the quantum level, things get hairy. Consider photographing a string so tiny that the mere energy of the strobe disrupts its motion, like a gust of wind blowing out a candleflame. This is going to be harder. Each time we photograph the string, we disrupt it enough that the information in the photograph ceases to be very helpful. When we take multiple photos, we find each additional photo is not adding any more information! (As for why this happens, learn the real math. It's not just an empty claim; it is a well recognized effect of QM that frustrated many a deterministic scientist!)

What if we turned the strobe down? What if we made it weaker so that it doesn't knock the string around so much? What if we just had a quiet lamp generating light in the corner? Now we wouldn't disrupt the string, but we need a much larger exposure time to get some information. As a result, we can easily see the amplitude, but we lost track of the phase, as it blurred together.

This is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle there is a limit to how much you can know both the position and velocity of an object. The strobe version could give position, but not velocity. The bulb version could give velocity, but poor position information. There are an endless set of options in between, but none of them violate a fundamental limit. (This is not just abstract philosophy. These results have been observed many times, and are highly accredited).

So, back to our problem of determinism. QM does not actually defend nor refute determinism. However, it does have some harsh things to say about its limitations. These arguments are known as "interpretations," because none of them refute the other. They just look at the problem in different ways. We'll start with your least favorite, and move towards what I believe will be your favorite.

• Indeterminism One perfectly valid way to interpret the results of decades of QM experiments is to argue that there are, at a fundamental level, some events which are completely indeterminate. At each of these events, the universe rolls a statistically perfect die, and determines the outcome. This is not a mere "coin toss," where the physics suggest an outcome. In this case, the physics literally suggests there is no known way to predict the outcome. Nothing in QM refutes this position. In fact, in my opinion, it happens to be the easiest position from which to start to understand QM.

• Many Worlds Another perfectly valid way to interpret the results is to argue that, at each classical "event," two universes are created. In one, the event occurred. In another, the event did not. This brings in the determinism you are looking for, but at a cost: we cannot currently observe any of the nearby worlds that are on "almost identical" paths. There is simply no known physical or mathematical solution to "jump" between worlds.

• Unmeasurability QM does allow a single universe with determinism, as you desire. However, it comes with a catch worthy of a genie in a bottle: you can't measure it. In theory, for every particle which has a value we can measure, we can think of it as being a particle with two values: an amplitude and a phase. If we were to be able to know both amplitude and phase, we could build your computer and start predicting the future. The catch is: we can't. By the rules predicted by countless myriad experiments, there is simply no way to classically measure both amplitude and phase of a value simultaneously. There are these cool things called "weak measurements" and "entanglements" which do really neat things to measure both amplitude and phase simultaneously, but even they cannot truly break free of this limit. Those cool structures like "entangled photons" have an Achilles heel: while you can be confident that both particles have the same amplitude and phase, observing it does dirty things to the link, preventing you from actually getting classical readings.

So there are three views on QM. QM does not refute determinism, but it doesn't prove it either. It does state that any deterministic view of the universe must hold to very strict rules, or it will be inconsistent with the observed scientific results of QM.

And to think: that was just discussing the idea of whether an electron has "freewill." Now imagine how much fun the discussion is for freewill of a person. Like with QM, it is totally possible for determinism and indeterminism to be consistent. All it takes is a few careful shifts of definition.

Answer 2

Daniel Dennett has nicely provided answers to the question of determinism. He claims that determinism and inderterminism are not incompatible. Fundamentally, we cannot definitively answer the question, nor does it make a difference if things are determined or not. Either way, we are morally obligated.

Nevertheless, your logic for a deterministic universe is problematic. You say that a copy has the same rules as what it is copied from, therefore because the rules do not change the universe is determined. I don't see the logic? Football has the same rules copied from one game to the next, but each game is different and prior to the end, the outcome is unknown. The same rules mean that the constraints are the same, but it doesn't delineate all the opportunities or determine how the rules are used.

Is a mathematical function for social relations obtainable? The very probability that math is correct hinges on the fact that some things are impossible to prove (Gödel's incompletness theorem), thus an all knowing mathematical genius would be unable to predict the future with math. If she knew everything about math (the ability to prove it all), math would be a contradiction and not useful for prediction. If she didn't know everything in math (couldn't prove it all) she would also not be all knowing, and would again be unable to predict the future. There cannot be a being with predictive mathematical determinism. A paradox like you posed points out that such a being cannot exist (for other examples of paradoxes that illustrate that something is false see the village barber paradox).

Answer 3

Here is another argument against determinism which I have just stumbled upon in a youtube video by Derek Muller:

well let's assume for second that Laplace was right and that knowing the state of the Universe any one time means you also know its state at every other time as well; well, that would mean that the information in our universe would be constant; but if information is entropy that would mean the entropy of the universe is also constant, and that does not appear to be the universe that we live in; the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy in the universe increases with time.

The quote is from the 5m54s mark of the video, but the argument is built gradually from the beginning of the video, and I advise watching it before passing judgement.

In my opinion he goes off the rails when he starts talking about free will at the end of the video; so I would love to hear from commentators how accepted is the physical part of the video about theory of information, indeterminism, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics; in particular, since last I was aware of it, whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic was an open question, reason dictates that there is probably a problem in his argument.

Note that the video description lists several professors including Michio Kaku as having given advice in the making of the video.

Answer 4

Your assertion of predictability [which incidentally was also made by the mathematician/physicist Simon-Pierre Laplace] is now known to be incorrect. Other responders have pointed out that QM makes it impossible to know the current state of the universe exactly (since some measurements cannot be made simultaneously with infinite accuracy). Compounded on top of this is the phenomenon of chaos. Many physical systems have an underlying mathematical behavior for which the time evolution is highly sensitive to variations in the initial conditions, so that discrepancies between the measured state and the actual state grow so fast over time as to render prediction worthless (a good example of this is the mathematics of the weather, which is why they can't issue reliable forecasts past a few days in advance).

Answer 5

I rephrase your question.

I'm an atheist, but just suppose you have someone with the god-like power to copy and paste the universe. Then at least the godlike thing doing the copying and pasting could see that the universe is, in fact, deterministic. Aint I right?

The thing is, outside your thought experiment it does not matter all that much. Who cares if the universe is deterministic but complex enough that we just can't ever know what the weather will be like in three weeks or when an earthquake strikes, or if it's indeterministic and we thusly can't ever know what happens next.

Also, as other answers pointed out, QM seems to point out that there's always randomness. If my understaning is correct, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle not only says that you can't observe speed and momentum at the same time to arbitrary exactness, but that those two properties are never there in an arbitrarily exact way in the first place. So the copy of each your atoms would behave slightly differently. At least if I understood the uncertainty principle correctly, see also this on Physics SE.
But your thought experiment features god, so don't let Physics stop you.

Answer 6

It seems that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle contradicts your hypothesis. No one can know the position and speed of a particle at the same time. Trying to find one disturbs the other. That's why science is always probabilistic, not deterministic.

Answer 7

I think that one powerful argument against determinism is that it implies no human free will; and the logical implications of this are not practically livable.

For example, with no human free will, you are predetermined to think how you think, and to believe what you believe. You simply could not have believed otherwise, given the inputs into your brain. Thus you have no real way to know whether your beliefs are true, only that they are determined based on the inputs. A determinist might agree, "Yes, that's the way it is," but I'm not sure anyone actually lives consistently as though this is the case. I don't think this idea goes further than ink and paper.

Further, there would be no human responsibility. In our mind and emotions, we hold a murderer to an entirely different standard than a rock that falls and kills someone. We don't hold trial for the rock, but we hold trial for the murderer. Yet if determinism is true, both the murderer and the rock had absolutely no real choice in the matter; it's just that the murderer is a more complex "calculator" that takes more inputs, while in both cases, the output is determined. Yet we think of the murderer as choosing to do something wrong, when he could have chosen otherwise. Again, a determinist might say, "Agreed, the murderer had no choice"; but I doubt anyone lives consistently in day-to-day life as though this is really the case, especially when he is personally wronged.

And so determinists cannot consistently use phrases like, "He shouldn't have killed him"; or, "He should have known better"; or when someone says, "It's wrong to force your beliefs on other people"; or, "I choose to accept the facts and believe the truth". The plain meaning of all of these phrases assumes human free will, and by extension, indeterminism.

Answer 8

The concept that has been formulated by physicists to address your question is called Counterfactual Determinism. Essentially, if you could go back in time and do anything (or an experiment) all over again, i.e. everything was exactly the same, would you get the same results?

Amazingly, we believe we actually have an experiment and theory that can judge this in some way. The theory is called Bell's Theorem, after John Bell. On my last reading oclf this topic, the experimental results indicated that counterfactual determinism fails, that is, if you go back in time and do it all over again you will, barring coincidence, get different results.

This, to me, points to the inherent randomness of the universe, already witnessed in quantum mechanics' uncertainty principal.

One caveat on the results, I believe you can get around counterfactual determinism's failure by accepting non-locality, that somehow an electron is in more than one place at a time.

In summary, Bell's Theorem and the corresponding evidence indicate that the universe is either nonlocal in nature or counterfactually non-deterministic. Quite strange!

Answer 9

My argument against determinism - it is boring.

1. determinism is boring.
2. the universe ain't boring.
3. therefore, the universe ain't deterministic.

Given such unfathomable phenomena as existence, consciousness and time, crazy stuff such as the cosmological universe, non-locality, black holes, women, and all the stuff we cannot even begin to imagine, etc... determinism seems as exciting as a game of pool.

I mean, any child can understand determinism; given that the universe can be as crazy as it wishes, and so crazy that we cannot hope to comprehend, then why assume it is dully restricted to determinism?

Not to mention that we have evidence that it isn't.

Answer 10

Determinism relies on cause-and-effect. Cause-and-effect appears to be all around us, and yet it cannot be proven to exist. Hume's essay is important: http://www.iep.utm.edu/hume-cau/

Answer 11

Either something happens as a result of something else that happened earlier or something happens for no reason at all. I don't think that there is any inbetween situation. So if anything in the universe happens for no reason at all (except for its begining) then the universe would be eventually truely random, which is something I don't observe. I cannot think of any way that one could prove that something that happens does not have an underlying cause. You may call this determinism if you like but it doesn't mean that we can determine these things, just that there is an underlying cause. A great argument against determinism however is that it would follow that you cannot help what you think and what you perceive as being real or logical. So you simply cannot help in thinking we live in a deterministic universe. This then makes any kind of discussion totally irrelevant. Thus there is no need for people who are convinced in determinism to engage is any kind of serious argument about its existence - they should simply relax and watch the world go by - there is nothing they can do to change anything. This really does go against what nearly everyone experiences. Maybe there is some problem with our language and perhaps even the problem statement itself. The word 'cause' is a big problem for a start. The word 'cause' requires a clear description of what we mean by 'time' and what we mean by 'something happens'. It's all too complicated and way beyond my comprehension. Good luck!

Answer 12

There is no room for non-determinism in this world. And, I would argue nor even in a hypothetical world.

I admit, I don't know the mathematics of QM. But, when people ask us to accept that the nature is random at its fundamental level, that randomness is the universe's fundamental property, probably, haven't thought about randomness itself a lot.

Randomness - it's when you have a set of options and each time you make a choice 'absolutely' unpredictably. How does its mechanism even work, can you explain? Can you even hypothetically implement that mechanism? Is an 'absolute' unpredictability even possible?

Whatever your description of its mechanism will be (even if it's possible), be sure, it will be a complex one. Randomness isn't simple or rudimentary. So, people who urge us accept randomness as a universe's fundamental property, subject themselves to the same problem as religious people do, when they bring God into explanation. Thus, explaining complex things with even more complex one.

We have discovered 16 'elementary' particles (+higgs) and we think we are on the ground level. No, guys, we are still on top of an iceberg. More research is needed.

Answer 13

I'll give a short answer, C.S Lewis makes what I believe is a reasonable argument against radical determinism. To say radical determinism is true would be self refuting. The reason for this is that in a wholly purely deterministic sequence the statement of anything as true or untrue is contradictory if taken in any real sense. If our actions, including or thoughts and inferences are purely deterministic they cannot measure for truth. Any conclusion that one makes would simply be a sort the dynamo effect, even what we think about the laws of logic. Reason itself would be a futile exercise

Answer 14

It has been written that in the far distant future humans will be conditioned not to think all (all) things are determined and these same humans have also been conditioned to have amazing lifes. Life is truly enjoyed. Then a few wake up...

Answer 15

Aristotle, in passing, mentions that chance was thought by some philosophers as a cause. But he neglects to give a full account of this.

I expect this influenced to description of the clinamen (or swerve) in the description of the movement of atoms. This was an irreducible random motion in atoms. This predates the actual discovery of the random element in Quantum Mechanics by roughly 2500 years.

Answer 16

Another two cents.

Another kind of argument against (strict) determinism is a transcendental argument (that can be traced in some sense back to Kant) which, under various guises, has been used many times, yet has been addressed by determinists rather inadequately and rarely.

The argument roughly states that (belief in) strict determinism is inconsistent with (our beliefs in) other important areas of human endeavors, like knowledge and rationality, which we have important reasons to hold true, thus (strict) determinism must necessarily be false.

For example, THE TRANSCENDENTAL REFUTATION OF DETERMINISM argument, by William Hasker, goes along these lines.

[...] One of the most striking of these refutations [of determinism] claims to establish a logical incompatibility between determinism and such key epistemic notions as knowledge, rational inference, justified belief, and the like. This "transcendental" refutation of determinism has been known as least since Kant, yet in spite of its potentially decisive nature it has been somewhat neglected in the literature. Determinists have been less eager to meet it than one might think they ought to be, and on the other hand the argument has not always been presented as rigorously as might be wished. My contention is that, with two qualifications, the argument is conclusive.

Similarly, in A rationalist argument for libertarian free will by Stylianos Panagiotou it is argued against (strict) determinism (and for libertarian free will) but therein the transcendental argument results in an ontological result and claim.

In this thesis, I give an a priori argument in defense of libertarian free will. I conclude that given certain presuppositions, the ability to do otherwise is a necessary requirement for substantive rationality; the ability to think and act in light of reasons. ‘Transcendental’ arguments to the effect that determinism is inconsistent with rationality are predominantly forwarded in a Kantian manner. Their incorporation into the framework of critical philosophy renders the ontological status of their claims problematic; rather than being claims about how the world really is, they end up being claims about how the mind must conceive of it. To make their ontological status more secure, I provide a rationalist framework that turns them from claims about how the mind must view the world into claims about the ontology of rational agents. In the first chapter, I make some preliminary remarks about reason, reasons and rationality and argue that an agent’s access to alternative possibilities is a necessary condition for being under the scope of normative reasons. In the second chapter, I motivate rationalism about a priori justification. In the third chapter, I present the rationalist argument for libertarian free will and defend it against objections. Several objections rest on a compatibilist understanding of an agent’s abilities. To undercut them, I devote the fourth chapter, in which I give a new argument for incompatibilism between free will and determinism, which I call the situatedness argument for incompatibilism. If the presuppositions of the thesis are granted and the situatedness argument works, then we may be justified in thinking that to the extent that we are substantively rational, we are free in the libertarian sense.

PS: See a different argument on same post and one more different argument on same post as well

Answer 17

My three cents.

There is a specific sense in which determinism implies a form of predictability up to some finite time ahead.

In summary, one way to argue for this is that, in a deterministic universe the next state to happen, given the current state, is fixed and unique by definition. But our expectation of the future state necessarily also must be fixed and unique, by the same token, being part of the same deterministic universe and fixed state, at least for some finite time ahead. Thus determinism necessarily implies a form of predictability and lack of uncertainty.

This, from a different perspective, is also argued in On Separating Predictability and Determinism by Robert Bishop:

There has been a long-standing debate about the relationship of predictability and determinism. Some have maintained that determinism implies predictability while others have maintained that predictability implies determinism. Many have maintained that there are no implication relations between determinism and predictability. This summary is, of course, somewhat oversimplified and quick at least in the sense that there are various notions of determinism and predictability at work in the philosophical literature. In this essay I will focus on what I take to be the Laplacean vision for determinism and predictability. While many forms of predictability are inconsistent with this vision, I argue that a suitably restricted notion of predictability, consistent with the practice of physicists, is implied by the Laplacean notion of determinism.

So determinism implies a form of (complete) predictability and lack of uncertainty up to some finite time ahead, which demonstrably we lack. So we must live in an indeterministic/only partially deterministic universe. This is further corroborated by the irreducibly probabilistic and indeterministic nature of quantum mechanics (without hidden variables and/or many worlds interpretations being able to actually eliminate the probabilistic character of the theory and making it strictly deterministic).

PS: See a different argument on same post and one more different argument on same post as well

Answer 18

Two more cents.

An, sometimes unappreciated, argument against determinism is based on our direct introspective experience of freedom as related to acknowledging multiple potential courses of action (ie ability to do otherwise).

Like the Cartesian cogito, which is certain indubitable knowledge, based on our direct experience of thinking and what this entails; it has been argued, many times, that our direct experience of freedom, is of the same type of certain and indubitable knowledge, which cannot be separated from our experience of ourselves. Some other types (or times) of introspection, lacking such clear and distinct qualities as our sense of freedom, notwithstanding.

Existential/phenomenological arguments for freedom, as for example, in J.P. Sartre's nothingness and freedom in Being and Nothingness are along similar lines, in that our phenomenological inquiries reveal our freedom to us in the constant process of always (re-)creating ourselves through the nothingness that reflects a lack of fixed essence, an openness to options, and an absence of strict determinism, besides the facticity of the moment.

Furthermore, it is argued that in order to know that we have an ability to do something, it is not required to actually do it. In other words, an ability is like a property that it can be known, in principle, like other properties, independently of any realized action, associated to that ability.

For example, having jogged some kilometers in the past week, I know I have the ability to perform a jog now, I do not need to actually jog to know I have the ability. Or, in other words, the fact that I decided not to jog now, did not eliminate my ability to jog (possibly tomorrow).

This argument addresses the counterargument that an ability to do otherwise cannot ever be known since only one thing is eventually realized. It is pointed out that not only is there nothing in principle problematic in knowing to have an ability to do otherwise, regardless of what option is finally realized, but it is also the basic way our direct experience of freedom is made manifest.

Arguments along these lines are given, for example, in

a) LIBERTARIANISM AND AGENTIVE EXPERIENCE by Justin Capes:

Experiences of many kinds play a role in justifying our beliefs, and agentive experience is no exception. Just as we often treat sensory experience (perhaps in conjunction with other background beliefs and experiences) as providing pro tanto justification for beliefs about our physical environment, so too we often take agentive experience (again, perhaps in conjunction with other background beliefs and experiences) to provide pro tanto justification for beliefs about our own agency. Take, for example, my (presumably justified) belief that I’m currently typing this sentence. What justifies that belief? I’d be amazed if my experience as of typing the sentence didn’t figure in an answer to that question. Or consider our (presumably justified) belief that we often behave intentionally. What justifies that belief? Surely our experience as of doing things intentionally has a role to play here, too. At the very least, it provides, or plays a role in providing, some defeasible support for the claim that much of what we do is done intentionally. The agentive experiences just mentioned aren’t infallible, of course; even very basic experiences, including basic experiences of our own agency, can be non-veridical. But an experience needn’t be infallible to play a role in justifying the relevant beliefs, provided, of course, that we lack good reason to believe that the experience is non-veridical.

b) Can We Know That We Have Free Will by Introspection? by Keith Lehrer:

[I] shall attempt to prove that certain introspective data provide adequate evidence for believing that man has free will. The introspective datum that I shall argue supplies adequate evidence for the belief that we have free will is the fact that we deliberate about future actions. When we deliberate about whether or not we shall perform some future action, we must be convinced that the action in question is in our power, that is, we must be convinced that it is up to us whether or not we shall perform the action. In order to deliberate about whether or not we shall perform some future action we must be convinced that we can choose to perform the action and also that we can choose not to perform it, for we cannot seriously deliberate about whether or not we shall perform an action unless we believe that we can choose whether or not we shall perform it.

c) PERSONHOOD AND FREEWILL, Ockham’s Razor and a Revival of the Introspective Argument by Sharon Kaye:

I endeavour here to restore confidence in self-knowledge, and hence in personhood, by reviving the introspective argument. In so doing, I turn back to one of its earliest and most committed defenders, William of Ockham. The determinist relies on Ockham's razor to justify the elimination of free will, but I will argue that this constitutes an abuse of the 'razor' and that the determinists have misrepresented the introspective argument as an argument from feeling.

PS: See a different argument on same post and one more different argument on same post as well

Answer 19

The question of whether our universe is deterministic can IMHO be rephrased as “how much does the current state of this universe constrain the state in T units of time”?

If the constraint is absolute, if there is only one solution to the forward evolution of any state for T units of time, then the universe is deterministic in forward time. And conversely, if this universe is not deterministic, then the constraint in forward time can't be absolute for all states, and it's reasonable to guess not even for any single state. I will assume that.

Now, consider backward time. Usually we think of that as deterministic, that the past is fixed. Could there be more than one state evolution that had led to the current state, i.e., can state evolutions converge? Given the smoothness of ordinary classical measured state differences that seems almost unthinkable, but given the discrete nature of some quantum effects it's not so unthinkable any more (even though highly unlikely).

So while nobody's yet thought of any way to test this, our usual notion is that our universe is deterministic in backward time and in-deterministic in forward time. If that's correct then a copy of this universe would evolve just as this one, just that every infinitesimally short time interval yields an infinite number of slightly varying possible state evolutions.

Things get more complicated by the fact that current theory deals with two entirely different abstraction levels for physicality. In a thought experiment now known as the EPR paradox, in 1935, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen showed that two “entangled” fundamental particles were more correlated than the speed of light limit would allow. So assuming that the speed of light really is a limit at the abstraction level of particles and waves and such stuff, the inner lower level workings of our physicality can't be totally bound by that law. That stands to reason, e.g. the laws that a computer program operates under are not the laws for the hardware platform that it runs on; they're two totally different kinds of beasts, just slightly connected. And as far as I know nothing more is known about that, just a baffling inferred law-breaking in one particular context, almost like watching a professional illusionist and inferring that what's really going on can't be what appears to be going on.

Another area where there is a very large unknown, is that of dark matter and dark energy. That all started with some observations in the 1960's I think it was, if I remember correctly, that galaxies in general were rotating too fast to be compatible with reasonable assumptions about them (e.g. holding on to their outer stars). The upshot of that is that currently there is a scientific consensus that, according to Wikipedia, "dark energy plus dark matter constitute 95.1% of the total mass–energy content of the universe", which we know essentially nothing about.

So in addition to quantum mechanics being so complex and weird that it's tantamount to being unknowable, there is the hidden internal implementation of reality, that we know next to nothing about (except the EPR), and there is the hidden matter and energy, presumed to be absolutely most, more than nine tenths, of this universe, that we know next to nothing about. In short, two very large terra incognitas, and one big extremely-difficult-terrain. And I think that means that currently it's impossible to answer simply "yes" or "no" to the question of whether all this unknown, is deterministic.

Answer 20

The argument is reality itself. For there to be existence there needs to be, at the basic most level, components that lack reason. It's not that we don't know, it's not that we can't know, it's that there is nothing to know. If we're talking about layers "above" that, then yes reality is likely 100% deterministic, however if we're including these basic most components, reality is, by definition, not deterministic.

Answer 21

I am aware of at least two arguments:

1 . Argument of 'indeterministic intelligence':

It is arguable that our intelligence is 'physically indeterministic', and no one can make a true artificial intelligence. In another words, our intelligence does something that physical logic cannot do.

2 . Argument of 'indeterministic motion from intelligence':

If our intelligence is physically indeterministic, then we must be able of creating a physical 'motion or change' from nothing physical.

We eat food, but by our logic there cannot be any PHYSICAL relation between the food we eat and our motions, because when we move from intelligence, our motions are 'physically indeterministic' (since our intelligence is physically indeterministic).

Note I: while I am skeptical of the truth of 'theory of mass-energy conversion', even if it be true, I think does not change anything about this; that generally a pre-existing physical thing cannot be responsible for an indeterministic motion, regardless of it being motion or matter.

Note II: I think the argument of 'indeterministic motion from intelligence' violates 'conservation of energy'.

Note III: The argument 2 depends on the truth of the argument 1.

Answer 22

As far as I understand there are no arguments for or against determinism, because determinism is not a belief or a theory with a truth value.

In determinism there is no concept of alternative possibility. Everything happens with absolute accuracy and 100% certainty. In a deterministic universe there would be no concept of truth value.

Therefore it would be illogical to believe or claim that we live in a deterministic universe, as that would imply the existence of two possible truth values.

Determinism is by definition a state of affairs very different from reality.