Assignment of Determinism & Freewill

            There are two types of things in the Universe, which are living while the others are non-living. The non-living things are at rest or in their motion until they are disturbed by others body, these non-living things do not alter their own way of motion only if they are in motion. Hence, until some external forces or entities don't disturb the normal cycle of the non-living things till that moment the cycle of non-living things aren't getting diverted from their path. But when these non-living things have random motion then they don't come to stable path until external forces act on them. Hence, we can say that non-livings do not have their will to change their own cycle. Hence, these things aren't related to the concept of "FREEWILL", but these things can be determined.

 

            The past & present observations can help to make hypothesis & then by scientific method we make these hypothesis turn into law. These laws are capable of telling the probability of the non-living thing's existence & their future position or path. On the basis of these laws we can predetermine the world around us with firm basis, but the most important entities in these predetermine world will be non-living things.

 

            Animals & especially humans are the living organisms who can use their brain for thinking. The can decide upon things to be done by them in their near future, only if those things satisfy their materialistic or spiritualistic things. In case of humans, things they do depend mostly either on their thinking or on their emotions. One cannot say that things done by humans are determined because humans decide mostly when they face those kind of conditions. Until then they jus make assumptions about their own behavior. Normatively it is thought that people do not have their freewill because the have to undertake those activities that are forced by their society. But when it is thought rationally it can be concluded that this is a false image that has got fixed in everyone's perspective. People have their freewill as they are allowed to decide upon the things that are necessary for them. The society norms are for namesake as they don't directly affect the freewill of the individual person. In difficult & extreme situations people don't at all think about the norms of the society because in such conditions they are the real ones who face the conditions. Hence, the thinking & actions of the humans are not predetermined, but the same people have their freewill.

 

            The fact remains that world is made of both the things – he living as well as non-living tings. The qualities of both are included when we think about the world. But thinking comes into practice from the perspectives of humans. So the humans make their hypothesis & prove them to be right, rational & logical on he basis of their observations. This does not mean that they have observed all the phenomenon that have taken place. Some of the laws are just made by saying, "This would happen because of the rule of uniformitarianism". But this rule assumes that things happened in the past will again repeat them in present & in future. This rule may apply only when disturbances don't occur. People have their freewill so they can opt their own views and may change others thinking.

 

            Hence, science cannot always be deterministic in every case. Freewill of the people plays an important role in modifying science, as a result science cannot remain absolute I its way. It is always based on observations & experiments o some flaws in it may change the whole results. Things remain to be deterministic only when they won't be affected any external things & even people can't guess about the disturbances that may occur. People's freewill comes into practice when such disturbance changes the basic laws of science.

 

            At last I would conclude that things are deterministic only till they aren't affected by unknown things & freewill of people plays important role when these things are affected by external forces &  new concept or idea is needed to explain that phenomenon.

 

Prathamesh Kubal

Is determinism against free will?

Hi all,
(New assignment at the bottom)

We discussed the problem of induction in the scientific method and the conclusion seems to be as follows:
1. Most of the key hypothesis made in science are based on inductive thinking, which can be simply put as our ability to find patterns in different incidences of certain phenomena. We cannot always go to the cause of each phenomenon at the beginning. However, this alone cannot lead to scientific truth, but only notions, hypothesis or beliefs, which need to be either verified by experiments (usually this is the case) or reinforced by reason for them to be accepted as fact.
2. Ockham's razor is a means of differentiating between hypothesis, when they are not entirely deductive (and therefore are inconclusive) and thus allows us to select from between half-baked theories and a little more "baked" theories. Thus it is only helpful and not assuring.
3. Scientists are supposed to and so most, do follow the scientific method, wherein we understand that induction is a part of creating the hypothesis. However, due to personal limitations or prevailing peer-bias, they may be misled (usually while creating the hypothesis) and thus may unintentionally break away from the method. Only on rare occassions do scientiists intentionally comitt fraud by manipulating the evidence or ignoring some of it. And yet, science does not fail, since the inbuilt mechanism of peer review (i.e. scientists checking each others work before it is accepted by the rest of the community) ensures that frauds & mistakes come to light and scientific truth prevails.
So let us move further in our random walk through the philosophy of science, to take a look at another debate - Determinism Vs Free-Will.
Determinism simply put is the position that everything in the universe can be determined through certain computational steps once and if we know how to describe each phenomenon in the universe. In loose variants we could restrict this calculation to our immediate surroundings and to certain phenomena.
Free Will is about our abiliyt to choose what we want.
Q. If things are all pre-determined, then how can free will exist? If free will exists then the universe is unpredictable and un-calculable, then whats the point of doing science - an endeavour to explain the universe?
Use the following links to prepare your response -
http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43791 (a pedagogical view)
http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz/freewill1.htm (a parochial view)
http://blogs.salon.com/0001561/stories/2002/11/17/freeWillVsDeterminism.html (the theological view)
http://www.trinity.edu/cbrown/intro/free_will.html (a synopsis)

(I am exaggerating things a little bit but this is the extreme and mostly resolved part of the debate. the actual ongoing debate is rather subtle and somewhet difficult to comprehend at first sight)

About Scientific Method

Sir, i forgot to mention my name for it. - Prathamesh Kubal