I don’t deny choice, or the elements that define it, I just use a more objective description of it. Choice is human action motivated by imagined alternatives, those imagined alternatives are analogous to the elemental forces that act on a brick.
To me choice is the process we go through that involves imagining possibilities as if there is not one mandated outcome.
E.g. Outcome A is mandated by the previous state of the system.
We choose between imagined possibilities, or imagined capabilities of A, B, C, and D, lacking the knowledge that A is the mandated outcome, and believing we can genuinely select from among them.
The process of the choice results in outcome A.
The outcome, while we believe it was arrived at freely, and the outcome selected from what we believe are genuine alternatives, was predetermined from the outset.
Every step of the process by which we conclude on A is similarly scripted.
That isn’t reverse causality, it’s the inherent connection of all moments in a deterministic system.
Exactly.
The view iceaura has here is like if you roll a die but cover the outcome with your hand, then the die still has the capability of being any number from 1 to 6.
No, the result of that die roll is already determined, with no capability of being anything other than what it is already determined to be.
There is no capability of being anything else.
The removal of the hand to reveal the output does not determine through “backwards causation” what the capability was (e.g. only capable of being the 4 it landed on).
And in a deterministic system, every event, every output of every interaction, has already been determined from the moment of the initial state.
As humans, we just have our hands covering the result, until such time as the event actually transpires.
And only when we remove our hands can we recognise what the capability was.
But we don’t need to know what it was to be able to say that it was already determined and couldn’t be anything else.
Of course all futures in a determined system have definite pasts. Now who’s suggesting backwards causality?
But perhaps a given moment could have had more than one possible past?
I.e. while a deterministic system is such that every output is completely determined by its causes, it might be true that this does not hold in reverse.
E.g. a simple system that adds one to each state would be deterministic in reverse.
But a system that is the square of the previous state would not be... e.g. If one state is 5 then the next is 25, but in reverse the state of 25 could be reached by either +5 or -5.
It would be indeterministic in reverse.
But while iceaura said “there is no state with only one possible past”, this depends entirely on the nature of the system, and is not, afaik, a truism of a deterministic system per se.
