Q&A: Determinism and Atheism
Determinism and Atheism
Question
Hello.
Isn’t determinism a paradoxical position? After all, those who support it on the one hand think it is true, but on the other hand, according to determinism itself, human thought and its conclusions are nothing more than a product of psychological, social, and other influences. The circumstances dictated the result in a חד משמעי way — that is, the deterministic position. And if so, how can one claim it is true? After all, even in principle they could not have held any other position.
Answer
This does need discussion. Suppose I arrived at a deterministic conclusion. Now either way: if I am mistaken, then my conclusions are incorrect, meaning I am not a determinist. But then there is no reason to cast doubt on my conclusions. And if I am right—then determinism is indeed true. There is, however, a way out of this: I am mistaken, but not because I am a determinist. Just an ordinary error in judgment.
As a rule, determinists argue that our judgment is computation, but that does not mean the computation is wrong. On the contrary, the computation is correct because we are built correctly (evolution). Take AI, which reaches correct conclusions despite being a deterministic machine. It simply performs the computation correctly. The question is how you can claim at all that your computation is correct, given that you have no access to any alternative. You did not consider it and decide to reject it, because you have no judgment. The second-order statement that my computation is correct is a statement about the computation. Is that itself also the result of a computation? If not—then that proves the point. If yes—then the question just recedes another step back.
Consistent determinists will tell you that they are not dealing with the question of what is true (in the sense of what exists in the world), but rather in the sense of what I ought to think. See the column on deterministic illusions.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t see anything here that I didn’t already answer.
The same objection applies to the libertarian at the level of third-order judgment—that is, who says my judgment is correct?
Just as there you are not worried about error (skepticism),
so too the determinist stops at the second-order question.
Why does the Rabbi prefer stopping at the third order rather than the second? The skeptical claim undercuts both of them, and if you’re not a skeptic, then good for you 😉
That is really not the same objection. It reflects a failure to understand the difference between an objection and a question. About the libertarian I can raise a question: how do you know you are right? About the determinist, this is an objection: you have no way whatsoever of knowing that you are right, because you are compelled into a mechanical computation. On his view, that is not reasonable. On the libertarian view there is no objection, because I think I’m right, and that’s that. At most, you can raise a skeptical doubt whether it is in fact correct.
On his view it is very reasonable, because there is evolution. It’s like a programmer who programmed ChatGPT—just because it’s a mechanical computation, does that mean its answer is probably mistaken??? Is a calculator’s answer probably incorrect?
And what if he is a determinist who believes in God?
The libertarian is in the exact same situation: the output of judgment says the thought is probably correct, but that is only from within the thinking itself.
Likewise, according to your view, a libertarian atheist could refuse to accept the epistemological proof for God—it’s true that most worlds would produce people with faulty judgment, but I happen to be in the “correct” world.
But you do not accept that rejection of the epistemological proof.
There is no evolution. That is a hallucination of his mind. I explained the difference from the libertarian.
I don’t know what proof you are talking about, nor how you know what I think about it.
I didn’t quite understand. I’m talking about the very epistemological justification for believing in the truth of determinism. Because even if determinism is true ontologically, there is no epistemological justification for believing in it, since that belief itself is not the product of judgment. Are you arguing that such a justification exists in a situation where the deterministic conclusion is false?