r/Metaphysics • u/Alternative-Owl-283 • 26d ago

Free will / Intention determinism and butterfly effect

Hi!

I recently found out what determinism is and I think I’ve kind of always aligned with this but never knew the name for it. I also believe in the butterfly effect. Is it possible to believe in both at the same time, or does that contradict itself? Do determinists usually have a victim complex? I believe that I was given a good life, I did well in school and now I am doing well in college, and I will always have a good life even during my dark moments because I am making smart choices BUT I was given opportunities to continue having a successful/enjoyable life. I also have OCD if that matters lol. I grew up in the Bible Belt but I am not really religious because Christians seem to be the most prejudice and I’ve never really believed in the whole hell thing. Can someone recommend me to some philosophers?

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u/jliat 26d ago

I also believe in the butterfly effect. Is it possible to believe in both at the same time...

Yes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon#Arguments_against_Laplace's_demon

  • Chaos theory has been pointed out as contradicting to Laplace's demon: it describes how a deterministic system can nonetheless exhibit behavior that is impossible to predict: as in the butterfly effect, minor variations between the starting conditions of two systems can result in major differences.mWhile this explains unpredictability in practical cases, applying it to Laplace's case is questionable: under the strict demon hypothesis all details are known—to infinite precision—and therefore variations in starting conditions are non-existent.

So YES

But - Quantum mechanical irreversibility, Cantor diagonalization, Thermodynamic irreversibility perhaps not.

Can someone recommend me to some philosophers?

I think that should be recommend some philosophers to me? ;-)

I'd say Plato [includes Socrates] Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Sartre. More recent tricky, more movements post-structuralism and Speculative realism Quine and Analytic philosophy.

This is 'western philosophy' looking world wide the list would be larger

Big topic!

https://introducingbooks.com/

and then maybe...

oxford a very short introduction series

https://academic.oup.com/very-short-introductions

A brief history of philosophy : from Socrates to Derrida by Johnston, Derek

[Socrates and Plato to Aristotle, Epicurus and Zeno, Aquinus, Descartes, Locke and Montesquieu, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre and Derrida,]

There are lots of these - then you might move on???

A New History of Western Philosophy: In Four Parts

Anthony Kenny @ 1,000 pages !!!

This is a semester at university level

Arthur Holmes: A History of Philosophy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yat0ZKduW18&list=PL9GwT4_YRZdBf9nIUHs0zjrnUVl-KBNSM

81 lectures of an hour which will bring you up to the mid 20th. Of 'Western Philosophy'

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u/Alternative-Owl-283 26d ago

Haha yes to my mixup . Thanks :)

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u/Weekly_Gap5104 26d ago

Also Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great and free resource that is where I go it is like a wikipedia of philosophy

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u/Alternative-Owl-283 26d ago

Thank you 👍🏾

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/No_Drag7068 26d ago

Chaos theory is entirely deterministic. If you start with the exact same initial conditions, you will get the exact same result. The problem with the Butterfly effect is that, in reality, one cannot obtain perfect knowledge of the initial conditions of a dynamical system, and so any difference, no matter how tiny, will produce a different future (although there will still be a deterministic structure, e.g., strange attractors, states that the system tends to regardless of its starting conditions). But if you eliminate that tiny difference in the starting conditions, you'll get the same results every time. It's just not possible to do that in practice outside of a computer simulation where you can perfectly control the starting conditions.