The current state of what?
Not the current state of the entity about to make a decision.
The current state of the closed system in question.
No, it isn't. Information only becomes information when it is perceived ("information" exists within a relationship between systems, a "difference that makes a difference") and many of the things that are going to be (possibly) perceived do not yet exist - such as the future state of the traffic light.
And even using this notion of what information is, in a strictly deterministic universe if we know the input to the system then we can know the output. And if we know that output then we know the next output.
E.g. If we set up a deterministic system of adding 1 to the input, and the output being the next input, we know that if we start with an input of 1 then we know exactly what the output is after a certain number of iterations. We don't need to perceive the occurrence of 99 becoming 100 to know that this will transpire within such a system. The information that it will is inhernt in the system itself.
So in a strictly deterministic system, the changing of the state of the traffic lights is established already, by any previous state. Everything is already inherent within the system. It just needs time to play out for it to actually occur.
Yep. So you can't wave your hands at the state of the universe, and deny attributes of that entity within it.
Theres no denying anything. If the universe is strictly deterministic then there is no freedom other than the appearance or feeling of it. If we wish to define "free" so that it starts with that feeling as being what "free" means then great, we have a different notion of what "free" means and we will reach different conclusions.
They have made the observation that they can, they have the ability, to either stop or not stop for the light, depending on what they will perceive to be its color in the future. We can, and have, verified in the laboratory that they have both abilities - to stop, and go - and that they do in fact choose between them based on the color of the light. Their observation is accurate, in other words.
Are you denying the findings of careful research and solid data analysis?
Not at all. But the findings are actually irrelevant to the question of whether our free will is genuinely free or not. All it does is highlight the proecess of the will in action, and no one is denying the existence of such a process. The question is whether it is actually free or not.
Let's say that a choice (X or Y) is made based on the value of three variables, A, B and C, but you are only aware of two (A and B). You then proceed to demonstrate that no matter what the variables A and B are, the output can be either X or Y. And this can be evidenced and demonstrated in lab conditions.
But what if the actual result, that you think is freely chosen, has been determined precisely by the relationship between A, B, and C? Because you aren't aware of C you can at best say that the choice appears free with respect to A and B. With C in the mix there is no actual choice.
So it is with the traffic light. This is one input you are aware of, and with regard that input you can appear to act with freedom, either stopping or not. But you simply aren't aware of the other inputs that, in a deterministic universe, have determined your output.
Any time you want to attempt a resolution of your basic confusions in that matter would be none too soon.
I have no confusions, iceaura.
Now you are claiming any input is a cause.
If anything I am saying, and have said previously, that all inputs to the system are the cause. In a simplistic system you will have a single input. In a complex one you have far more, exponentially so. With regard something as complex as the human brain, it is uncountably vast. Yet we would only be consciously aware of a few.
And the vague concept of "cause" is the bedrock concept of this version of your determinism (something you denied, earlier, when I pointed out your list of "causes" was consistently missing significant causes directly at issue).
No, it is not the bedrock at all. The bedrock is the relationship between input and output of a system. I'm sure you want to think it is something else, but that is clearly leading to your own confusion in the matter. I'm happy not to use the word "cause" at all if it resolves your confusion.
Wow, there's another rabbit hole. But yes, time exists. That doesn't stop something being already determined, though.
Or is it that people and decisions do not exist - that all the entities we are discussing are illusions, including the illusions.
Either that, or you are denying we live in a physically deterministic universe (due to quantum theory, chaos, etc
People exist. What we call decisions are manifestations of processes that exist as much as any process can be said to exist. And I am focussing here one the strictly deterministic universe, where future actions are already determined, even if we aren't, or can't be, consciously aware of that.
No, I won't. I will end up with exactly your version 2 of determinism - identical inputs yielding identical outputs, just as stipulated in all my posts.
No you won't. For example, in the simple system of traffic light (input) and stop/not stop (output) this is indeterministic: regardless of the colour of the signal from the traffic light we can either stop or not stop.
Yes, I know the traffic light is not the only input to the system that leads to the output, but this simplistic system shows how if we only consider such simple scenarios we can get apparent indeterminism. But that is because we are not considering a closed system. Once you do, the output of that system is, in a strictly deterministic system, known by the inputs alone, even before you go through the actual process. If you know what the inputs are going to be then you know what the output will be.
But if you only consider elements of an open system then you can get the appearance of an indeterminism.
And that error illustrates this:
To reword, from a different angle: My point is that your attempted classification of causes into categories such as "fundamental" and "meta-scale" and so forth is arbitrary and unjustified. There's nothing "fundamental" about a damn electron - it's a high level mental abstraction, on the one hand, and just another pattern within the big universe, on the other. Likewise with atoms, and molecules - they are patterns in substrates themselves, and constituents of substrates for higher level patterns in a fifteen billion year stacking of emergent logical levels: that's all. The very real and very influential patterns we call "dreams" kick them around like dry leaves on the grass.
I'm not really calling even atoms as fundamental, but they are at least on the path there from the otherwise meta-scale. It's why I don't really talk about causes but rather inputs, and I look at the state of the system as being the input, with the next state as being the output, as previously explained.
But we are only consciously aware of a few isolated inputs to a complex system, and as a result we become consciously aware of the system behaving in an indeterministic manner (same input can lead to different outputs). We refer to this apparent ability to make alternative choices from those few inputs as our will being "free". But it is only "free" with respect to those inputs that we are aware of.
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