Laws of Nature and Free Will

No... you see your personality directed you to not comment on it earlier for the reasons you gave, and then your personality directed you to comment later for the reason's you gave. Since your personality is governed by genetics and childhood environment, you had no control over that and thus you had no free will in the decision. (I will leave the debate of your values to where we left it)

Your personality apparently directs you. Mine is pretty laid back.

that is impossible. every action you take is directed by your personality.

That should have read, 'Free will....'

Interesting response, Mogmich. I am a statistician and must assume that random sampling limits the probability of error in scientific research. But the error is not directly related to the independent and dependent variables. It is an estimate of sampling bias when I claim I have a representative sample of a population. Type I and Type II errors are based on the assumption that there is an objective, absolute, deterministic reality. That's quite an assumption. When deciding to accept or reject the null hypothesis, the rules of probability theory are deterministic.

Thomas Pynchon's new novel Against the Day explores how close we can get to "objective" scientific knowledge.

So you're saying free will(or perhaps consciousness) is not necessarily explainable? The only way I can see for free will to be anything other then an illusion due to randomness and personal ignorance of all the factors of the process is if you are separating "conscious decision making" from everything we know about how the universe/world/body/brain work. Which is philosophically relevant I suppose, but goes against what we know (or at least seem to know at this point in time...as we learn more it may end up differently) about physics, down to chemical, and even the quantum levels.

The question of free will seems a lot more of a philosophical one..such as "is there a perceivable difference between true free will, and the illusion of free will?", which is a trickier really..but isn't science.

Rukh:

The question of free will seems a lot more of a philosophical one..such as "is there a perceivable difference between true free will, and the illusion of free will?", which is a trickier really..but isn't science.

Do you know of any scientific research pointing out that "free will is an illusion" other than what I have linked in Behind My Screen's article?

akwea,

We have found no scientific reason to think that conscious thought works on anything other then the same physical systems as the rest of our bodies (and the universe). So far it seems likely from quantum theory that there is a certain amount of randomness (or apparent randomness possibly due to something we have not been able to explain yet), in the quantum world. That randomness extends to much of the universe on the large scale as an influence at the base of not random systems and probability theory that help explain everything from how water forms to the size of a dog's tail to...well....just about everything in physics, biology, etc.

As such, unless there is a separation between what we currently know (or at least think we know for the moment) and conscious thought...the conscious thought would simply be a byproduct of those same systems. So far there is no reason to think there is such a separation by scientific or empirical means. Much like it is with micro and macro evolution. Many theists and philosophers separate the two....but scientifically there is no real separation other then scale.

A lack of free will wouldn't negate a need to be responsible for your actions in any way that I can see it.

I could say right now that I'm going out to kill a few people because that's who I am and I can't help it because I have free will....but since I know the consequences of that action (prison, and maybe death), the fact that I do it anyway with the justification of "well I don't have free will, so it's not my fault" is like saying "I know it's wrong, and I know I would be punished, but I'll do it anyway"....in which case the justification is less of a legal issue than in most cases of involuntary manslaughter were the killer may not have known the consequences of their actions.

The fact that we can't tell the difference on a conscious level between apparent free will (which we have either way from personal experience as it certainly SEEMS like I'm choosing to write these words on my own...whether I really have that choice or not) and true free will, is simply semantics with regards to cause and effect, and nothing to do with being responsible for your actions.

mogmich:

Thanks for your rebuttal article! : )

Let us say, that free will is actually not a reality, it doesn't exist in the strict sense. Therefore all humans start to act accordingly. And how would people then behave? Everybody could claim that they are not responsible for any of their actions, couldn't they? There is no argument against that, is there?

"Therefore all humans start to act accordingly."
How? By free will?

This argument is circular, it seems to me. If there is no free will, then it is irrelevant whether or not humans are aware of it. They will still react to their environment as they always have. It is already the case that humans are "acting accordingly", with no free will. And surfacing of awareness (of the lack of free will) would also be a reaction to the environment, like this discussion, for example.

Rukh:
OK, makes sense. Thanks.

I don't think the risk of punishment is the main reason why most people do not go around killing others.

Of course it's not. I was responding to a legal dilemma of how we can punish people for their actions if there is no true free-will...so I gave a legal reason. There are many moral and ethical reasons why people don't go around killing everyone in site that have nothing to do with punishment, but I didn't think it necessary when answering a question based on law, since there is large difference between law and morality and I didn't want to equate the two.

Most people wouldn't find it fair to punish anyone, if they didn't have a free will.

Why not? By all reasoning they would still function as though they did. They would still be making conscious decisions that they would consider to have an aspect of free-will, and knowing the consequences of those actions.....there is no difference in a need to punish that sort of behaviour that I can see. Whether or not free-will is REALLY free or not, doesn't matter morally or legally....since free-will and appearent free-will function in precisely the same way. If anything, someone using the "um, I don't have free-will, so you shouldn't punish me" defense is justifying an action they CONSCIOUSLY chose to do....whether there's a random element to some small aspect of their reasons or not doesn't change that, and in fact if they didn't want to deal with the consequences, it may well have happened differently because they would not have been inclined to do the crime.

The only time apparent free-will and true free-will would have a legal difference is if the inherent randomness was on a conscious level, and everyone on earth had a good chance to just doing random crap all the time. "today i'm going to go shopping, get a hair cut, eat the neighbour's mailbox, and mow the law" type stuff.....which of course is NOT the case most of the time, and for the small percentage that it IS the case, we have laws determining ability to understand the consequences of their actions, and possible mental issues....so it's not really the same issue.

mogmich:

I think this would have a profound effect on their behaviour.

Yes, yes. We agree with that. It does have an effect, as does everything else.

And the effect would still be a (new) reaction pattern.

If you add/remove an obstacle in a room where a rumba vacuum cleaner is operating, it will just change the cleaning pattern a bit, but it will still react to the environment as it was earlier.

Human beings are in principle just the same, even though so much more complex, to the point that they believe they have a self (I just added another dimension to the debate here) and that this self has free will. Both illusions.

In any case, to be more precise, a mere intellectual understanding that free will and self are illusions does not go a long way in changing someone's patterns. At least that is my personal experience. I am still here typing away, thinking that I am doing it, unless I observe it consciously and realize it is a reaction pattern and realize I am not really sure where I am as a boundary...

mogmich:

Maybe humans are not only so complex, that they are able to believe they have a self, but so complex, that they actually do have a self - that a real self is the product of this complexity? (The same for free-will).

A social-psychology course I took with "self" as the course subject, assumed a priori that the self is "real" and "actual", as you propose above. We studied probably 10 different sociology theories analyzing the self from their different perspectives. The prof (top in this field at his university) did not even mention the possibility that the self is an illusion.

It is the opposite (the self is an illusion) that is a controversial assertion which is not taught in universities, unless maybe mentioned in passing in philosophy courses.

The problem with sociology, however, is that it generally attempts to explain the big bulk of the bell curve of social phenomena and it generally does not pay any attention to the fringes.

The realization of the self being an illusion can be the result of much self-observation (or introspection, or meditation) that leads to the realization that thoughts are not part of "I" as well as the body is not part of "I". It is the complexity of the human organism that can allow it to paradoxically detach from the illusion of the self.

For some, like me at this time, the detachment is mostly intellectual. In some rare cases it is actual and complete (or so they report).

If I am able to observe my own body and my own thoughts (and rest assured that most people have no ability to observe their own thinking patterns, and even less people are able to stop their thoughts for a brief period), then "I" am not my thoughts, nor my body. And if I am aware of this ongoing observation, "I" am not even the observer, I am the awareness.

Simply put, the self is an extremely complex cluster of thoughts (memories, etc.) and emotions (feelings, etc.) "enclosed" in a body that reacts with the environment. So complex that it obscures the observer of the thinking process and so complex that it obscures the awareness.

It is so complex that most people have no idea how to stop thinking, or even how to control their thoughts. It is so complex that most people do not even realize they think, because they are identified with the thinking itself.

The person is the thinker and is the body. And the combination of them is the self (more or less, depending on the social theory at hand).

This is like the Earth: once you realize it is round, there ain't no argument that will make you change your mind.

Once you see the thinker within for what it is, there is no doubt that the self is an illusion. We are mere, extremely complex, organic robots. That is, until we realize we are the awareness (and my understanding stops here, to awareness).

Even if you are convinced that humans does not have a free will, I think you will still experience an apparent free will - you cannot simply make this apparent free will disappear from your consciousness.

Exactly why nothing would change on the moral or legal levels (or really any level other than philosophy, which would of course try to deal with it, as it should). Even if I know for a fact that I don't have "real" free-will or whatever you want to call it (and since I believe I don't, it's not much of a streach), I still understand the consequences of my actions, and can choose or not choose to do things appearently by my own will (even if it is based on determinism and all the variables I have knowledge of..and some I probably don't), doesn't change the fact that it seems to me that I am making the decision on a conscious level. So any justification based on a lack of free-will to commit crime is tossed out the window pretty quick......

It's not that I don't think it would make a difference knowing if it was real or not. But if somehow someone KNEW they didn't really have true free-will(again easy to think about since I don't believe in true free-will), they would still be making conscious decisions based on the information they have, and would still know the potential consequences of any action (illegal or otherwise) that they might do.....and despite their not having true free-will, if they know the consequences, and commit a crime...they should still be punished shouldn't they? By all practical accounts they are choosing their own actions, even if it's got a slightly deterministic element to it....so it doesn't change the dynamic of cause and effect or action and consequence. Does it?

Knotty nuf-Rumi:

Welcome to Newsvine.

Yes, I've noticed haselhurst's seeds in merit... it seemed like related material so I had sent him an invite to the Metaphysics group... (feel free to join)

By the way, it seems like most of haselhurst's seeds are not actual articles, but forum threads, plus they all link to his own websites (see CoH, last sentence of point 3.)

In fact, this comes up in one of his seeds:

Hi All, It would be great if everyone who uses this forum added this post to the social bookmarking websites (near bottom of page). Over time this will make a big difference to how Google treats this forum (at the moment it is ignored).

How about you all, instead, write some articles for Newsvine summarizing what's discussed in your forum? e.g.: consensus and debate thereof, conclusions, points still in question, etc...

Looking forward to more of your contributions!

Thank you.

K:

I don't think, from what I understand, that I disagree with anything you mentioned. It resonates, even though some concepts you mentioned are a bit obscure to me.

I look forward to some articles of yours that will expand on that... : )

So, to simplify, you are saying that everything atomic scale and above behaves deterministically and thus implies lack of free will and everything quantum scale and below behaves indeterministically and still implies lack of free will because of the randomness of events...

There needs to be more than quantum physics to imply that large objects do not behave in a deterministic manner.

Do you have anything in mind? Or that was just the conclusion?

If you wanted to put my argument in the simplest terms, it comes down to the fallacy of composition. A similar argument would be: atoms are light, lead weights are made of atoms, therefore lead weights are light. Honestly I am less arguing against free will than arguing against the argument presented here. My argument is to differentiate between "caused" and "free" decisions to conclude that, even if something has a cause, it can still be free. So even if things can be deterministic, it does not actually address free will.

Do you have anything in mind? Or that was just the conclusion?

It was my conclusion, but simple experiments would be enough. An easy one would be to drop marbles through a marble-sized opening (so they all move in the same direction) onto a barrier with two slits. If the marbles produce a diffraction pattern, then we have wave-particle duality. Alternatively, evidence that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle effects thought would be useful. You might notice that these experiments sound rather fantastic, and that is because quantum mechanics is contrary to our intuitive (a posteriori) sense of how things work. The reason quantum was not invented sooner is that nothing we encounter acts at all like an electron or a photon.

I am not saying this is directly applicable to free will, only that I find it relevant

Now I'm not saying I find this applicable to our discussion, only relevant, but here is what thesaurus.com has to say about applicable:

applicative, applicatory, apposite, apropos, apt, associable, befitting, felicitous, fit, fitting, germane, kosher, legit*, material, on target*, pertinent, relevant, right on*, suable, suitable, suited, useful

It is not possible to calculate the exact structure of the universe, based on knowledge of a past state. That goes for macro objects too: Stars, planets - and human beings.

False. Macro-scale mechanics are deterministic. Kepler's laws do not suddenly stop working. We can use them to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the exact location of an orbiting body at any time. It is true that additional factors could appear which would influence the model, but this distinction is fundamentally different because a more rigorous model that includes these factors would be accurate and deterministic (e.g motion of falling bodies with or without air resistance). It is also true that the problem of induction limits the inductive strength of these models when predicting the distant future. But again, this is due to the limitations of the model not the determinacy of the system. Even the most indeterministic interpretations of quantum physics do not contradict this because they give rise to indistinguishable macrostates (a full description of why this occurs would require, at minimum, a discussion of Boltzmann's principle and the meaning of entropy, but suffice to say that the wave-particle duality that is the foundation of the MWI is based upon the predictability of the path of many electrons).

The points above does not have a direct effect on an existing person. But it is still highly relevant, because it concerns exactly the question of existence of this person. Existence is a major question when you discuss free will.

Nope, never discussed existence when debating free will. Not once in years of debating philosophy. Perhaps that is because they are two different topics (although there is some dependence), both of which require a full debate on their own. You could argue that a discussion of free will is irrelevant until existence has been proven, but then quantum physics does not prove the existence of anything (there are many reasons for this, but it is extremely tangential so I won't deal with it unless you want me to).

Within a limited time-scale the state of macro-objects is predictable. The sun will burn out, and your body will turn to dust... And a lighter will hit the floor, when you drop it.

As I already indicated, the limitations of models derive primarily for the accuracy of their components. This limitation to accuracy does not contradict determinacy. Let's examine this (highly relevant) point in detail. Many models of the world, because of the uncertainty of their assumptions, are less than perfectly deterministic. Weather predictions come to mind, as on a large enough time scale (a few days), the flight of individual birds becomes significant to the accuracy. Now is this due to the model or to the nature of the weather? Consider an omniscient being, one who had every bit of knowable data about the weather and the factors that effect the weather. Given this knowledge predict the weather at any given time? It seems reasonable to say yes, because there are no factors that could throw off the accuracy of the prediction, every minute (non-quantum) effect has been accounted for. You could claim that there is a pertinent indeterminant factor that would throw off the entire prediction, but I would like to know 1) what that is, and 2) what guarantees its existence in every scenario. Without these facts, there is no proof that the deterministic models we have created are fundamentally unable to be improved and grow more accurate. Given the presumption that the deterministic models which have been rigorously tested, built upon and used with great success for centuries and the lack of a prima facie case to abandon them, it is quite reasonable to conclude that macro-scale reality is deterministic.

The way you compare statistical mechanics with quantum mechanics is directly misleading. The lack of knowledge of the exact state of a gas, is essentially different from quantum mechanical uncertainty

You are right that they are different, but the difference is not particularly relevant to the analogy. Both systems contain information that we cannot know which make them behave indeterminately. Both systems lose their indeterminacy at an appropriate scale. It is true that an omniscient observer should be able to predict the motion of individual gas molecules with perfect accuracy (an assumption that was built into my weather prediction analogy), but in terms of understanding how small-scale phenomena behave in unknowable ways which limit our ability to predict them with certainty, these distinctions make no material difference. Yes, the analogy might have compared apples to oranges, but who cares if we are talking about the nature of fruit?

Stop insisting that I didn't read your article. I already read it several times before I wrote my first comment. Nor have I assumed that you were an idiot, that happened to be a good example of determinism. Moreover, I notice no real focus upon the quantum mechanical origins of free will other than your dismissal of this point because "the temperature of the brain suggests it is irrelevant" (which is rather amusing, since Heisenberg's Principle is temperature invariant (it does not stop at either high or low temperatures) and so this seems a titch irrelevant.)

Then you have the opportunity here, don't you?

Yes I do. Here is a quick examination of why it is immaterial. Some existing things may have free will. Some existing things may have no free will. If something exists, then, it may or may not have free will (tautology). Given a form E-> f \/ ~f, we can see that the two valid forms of inference from the hypothetical form (modus ponens and modus tollens) make no specifications upon free will (f \/ ~f) even though existence may be specified. Moreover, by Mill's method, it is clear that existence is merely a necessary condition for the presence or absence of free will, additional factors are necessary. So even though existence is necessary for free will to exist, it itself is neither a guarantee of free will or even particularly useful in ascertaining whether something has free will or not. Basically, each of these issues is interesting on its own but offer little insight into each other. So for both a productive debate and the specificity of the proposition, the topics are normally kept separate.

Never heard of Soren Kierkegaard?

Yes. Now who's assuming ignorance? I've read a great deal of Kierkegaard. In fact, I recall the judge parable that you refer to not as about the necessity of free will, but about the impossibility of empirical proof of its existence. It essentially claims that, whether or not free will exists, people act the same (f\/~f->a, a implies neither f or ~f). As for your objection that, if people thought they didn't have free will, this is not entirely useful. It does have some bearing, because we are talking about how decisions are made but not much. I would refer you to Dosteovsky's Notes From the Underground (chapter IV of the introduction if I remember correctly), where he claims that people will still try to assert their free will even if it has been scientifically proven that they don't have it. The real problem with these objections (both yours and Dosteovsky's) is that make human behavior predictable. If people have free will, by the terms under which this debate began (Behind My Screen's "free" vs "caused."), they should not behave in a perfectly predictable manner. That would be deterministic.

Yes it is! It is essential.

Why? My examples in statistical and classical mechanics demonstrate that determinacy is a property of scale. Regardless of the nature of the indeterminacy, it ceases upon reaching some size limit. This is seen even more dramatically in the case of quantum phenomena, such as De Broglie's formula h/mv, where practical values of m and v give a wavelength that is purely negligible (less than 10^-34) or Heisenberg, where the constrant dxdp>=h-bar/2 is negligible when both dx and dp are much greater than half h-bar. (For what it's worth, I would also thank you to not impugn my knowledge of quantum physics. Considering that I am doing research in the effects quantum and near-quantum phenomena, this criticism makes no sense. For that matter, I have not consciously insulted your abilities. Why do you need to?). So what I was doing with my statistical example is showing how the scale-dependence of quantum phenomena is a perfectly familiar and has strong precedence. I was not saying anything about the source of the indeterminacy in either one.

Never said that!

Never said that you did. I was answering an anticipated objection so as to better explain my point. Note difference.

It is your talk about weather that is not particularly relevant.

Actually, that was my singly most relevant point. Again, weather prediction was an analogy to any maximally-complex system. Essentially, I was grounding the question "is there some fundamental limit to the accuracy of deterministic models of reality?" in terms of a much more mundane and familiar situation. There is nothing wrong with using analogies, they detract not one whit from relevance.

"Even in a 100 pct. determined universe, it is not possible to predict the weather here on Earth, starting with the state of the universe immediately after Big Bang".

even if the universe is 100 pct. determined, it is not possible to predict its development totally. Not only because our methods of measurement is imperfect, but because nature itself makes it even theoretically impossible.

First, if the universe is 100% determined, then it is 100% percent determined and because it is determined, it is perfectly predictable. That is the meaning of determinism. You need to establish that, even with perfect knowledge of the initial conditions of the universe, one cannot predict its macrostate (I'm being nice and ignoring microstates and entropic limits on knowledge since we are assuming perfect knowledge). You can do this either through quantum physics or not. If you choose to use quantum physics, you must establish that quantum physics is relevant to the description of a macrostate (essentially wrecking the law of universal gravitation et al, but I'm willing to consider an argument). If you choose something else, you must explain what it is and how it does the same on a macro-scale as quantum physics does on a subatomic scale. Alternatively, you could attack the premises of this Dilemma and argue for a relevant limit to our knowledge. This, again, can be accomplished either through quantum physics or not. If you pick quantum, again, you are faced with the problem of proving relevance. Similar problems occur upon the other horn of this second Dilemma. Pick the bull, pick the horn to gore yourself on or escape from the Dilemmas.

Me? I define free will in terms of the ability to make decisions. It is the process, not the outcome. Even if something behaves in a completely deterministic manner (caused with perfect predictability), so long as conscious thought is involved in producing the outcome it still counts as a product of free will. From my perspective, free will does not require a lack of determinism simply because it is a description of what factors produced the outcome. I find this to be a particularly useful definition because trying to argue that free will is contrary to cause and effect is rarely productive.

Now in the debate I was having with mogmich, I was trying to engage him on the terms used by both him and Behind My Screen where they make a dichotomy between caused and free. Essentially, this says that if the decision is out of a person's control, it is not free. I can agree with this, but formulated in this way free will has the corollary: if it can be predicted it is not free. Basically, this says that if you know an outcome with certainty there can be no free will involved. By this definition, ignoring such arguments as supercausality (retrocausality) or non-linear time, it is very easy to establish that free will does not exist. So even though I agree with mogmich on the existence of free will, I think that the manner in which he is arguing is unable to prove his conclusions.

PS - thanks for stepping in.

I'm not sure how you differentiate "deterministic" and "predictable." The definition of determinism that I have been using is "following natural laws" or that every effect is an inevitable result of its sufficient cause. Now if something is inevitable and we know that its cause has occurred, then we can predict with utter certainty the presence of the effect. If this effect is the sufficient cause of a new, inevitable effect, then we can predict this too. Carrying out this logic for each event (so long as each event is deterministic), the inevitable result is that every step is predictable. By predictable, I do not mean that an intelligent being must be the observer, or even that there needs to be an observer. Computers model deterministic phenomena and extrapolate the results. Objects behave exactly the same whether these predictions have been made or not. The key here is logical necessity, because every instance of a deterministic event has the same outcome, there is no doubt. Everything is known with utter certainty.

Your principle argument against determinism is quantum mechanics. My argument here is that quantum mechanics is not directly applicable to everyday phenomena, the sorts of situations and events that human decisions (and therefore free will) are normally concerned with. This is principally because of the fallacy of composition; the properties of a part are not necessarily the properties of the whole. Consider some analogies: It is cheap to buy one screw, but expensive to buy every screw in the universe. A single person is easy to observe, a million people are more difficult. A single lead atom is quite light, a lead weight hurts when it crushes your hand. Everything I know about quantum physics suggests this interpretation is correct, that quantum phenomena are not observed on a large enough scale. If you get enough atoms in one place, you still cannot predict the location of any electron, but you certainly know the location of the atoms. Or consider a spaceship. It moves quite quickly, but we consider Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to be negligible when we predict its location. Nor does its wave function become important. Even light (upon which wave-particle duality was founded) exhibits scale-dependent properties. Light does not act like a particle when there are sufficient numbers of photons, it acts like a wave. That is why light was considered to be a wave by most scientists until fairly recently. I am currently unaware of any evidence to suggest the behavior of small numbers of particles has a significant impact upon the behavior of the whole. Quantum physics just deals with different problems than the ones people normally encounter in (say) sitting down for a nice cup of tea.

If we define natural laws according to the classical definition, then yes there is a connotation of determinism. Quantum mechanics is recognized as a major departure from those laws and is widely hailed as indeterminate.

Although this randomness does not appear in the macro-world, it has an effect on it, over time.

Let's look at a very famous experiment that established quantum mechanics. In this experiment, the intensity of a light source was continuously decreased. As it did so, the individual photons became visible. Among other things, this experiment established that enough photons, acting according to wave-particle duality and all the other quantum effects, produce an overall effect that is completely identical to classical physics. If the effects of quantum mechanics were enough to change the behavior of macro-scale events, then they would have been observed a whole lot earlier. Classical physics was built up the way it is because the properties of quantum mechanics did not seem to play a part. By the anthropic principle, then, it is clear that the effect negligible to nonexistent.

Most of the rest your argument I have no problems with. Quantum physics really does keep us from predicting things accurately upon a quantum-scale. Even the MWI is not enough to overcome this (although yar posted an interesting article about that a little while ago). My point, though, is that this inability to predict things upon a quantum level has no bearing upon our ability to predict things upon a macro-scale. The line between quantum physics and classical physics controlled phenomena can become slightly blurred at times, but the parts of the universe that we encounter are quite clearly on the other side of line than neutrinos are. For example, a large number of geologists and meteorologists are currently employed to determine how the planet and its atmosphere developed as a result of the initial conditions involved in the formation of the Earth. This work is being done (and has been for a few centuries) as a deterministic model. They can do this because the motion of any individual sub-atomic particle is irrelevant to the study. Another good example is Wolfram's Theory of Everything (still a work in progress), which is designed to predict everything deterministically. He has already done some impressive computer simulations of deterministic phenomena that lend credence to his theory. He even has some controversial theories about quantum mechanical effects and relativity being a product of the construction of logical rules of the universe simulation program (allowing curved space-time graphs, twisted nodes, etc). I will refrain from going off on this tangent, but would like to point out how his program follows the classical physics-deterministic-macro and quantum physics-indeterministic-sub atomic gestalt.

The research I have seen on the Big Bang indicates that matter behaved as a perfect fluid within the early moments, a material whose properties are determined by continuum physics, which is basically deterministic. Nor am I familiar with any part of Relativity that is indeterminate. There are many phenomena at the astronomical scale which are difficult to explain, but this speaks more to their insufficiency of current theories than it does to indeterminacy. I think, though, that we have reached some consensus upon the universe behaving deterministically within a certain scale. If this is the case, then my argument is complete.