Don't fall into the determinism trap. Everything is, in fact, random | Lee Cronin
August 20th, 2024 at 1:55PMLooking backwards. No. Every effect has a cause. Looking forwards. Yes. No one can predict the effect of every possible cause. No one can be sure every cause will have an effect. Both the cause and the effect are necessary to identify either as such. Throw humans in the mix and... 🤣
It's a terrible analogy/metaphor, but imagine free will or volition as a "fork in the road" in your consciousness that in the physical world is just a road. You can foresee countless possible options but you can only choose one. Outside of his own mind, a scientist can't identify any of those options, so your ultimate choices will always appear random, undetermined by any possible cause -- if he doesn't completely evade the existence of those options, of course.
In this sense, "randomness" still doesn't disprove determinism, however. It proves that a scientist can never identify whatever initiated the process of "selection", which is exactly, in this context, what "random" means or refers to: our inability to determine the cause of whatever phenomenon we're trying to understand or explain. But it's one thing to believe something is unknown and another to believe it's unknowable. "Randomness" can't be a final determination regarding the causation of everything without including whatever (🤣) lead to that determination itself, without denying even the possibility of "selection".
In other words, just as science can't prove free will -- empirically -- it also can't disprove determinism. The power of volition and its willful submission to causality must be understood to do science at all.