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From: hsf@hlexa.UUCP (Henry Friedman)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Misuse of "random" in free will discussions
Message-ID: <4183@hlexa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-May-85 11:37:06 EDT
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Posted: Mon May  6 11:37:06 1985
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Reply to Michael Ellis's questions about "random" and "determinate".

My objection to the word "random" was based on the belief that it
always means that all possibilities have EQUAL probability--like
picking a lottery number from the barrel of all tickets.  But I see
from the dictionary that the word can also be used for anything
described by probabilities (a random process).

Therefore my objection, in general, is not necessarily valid.  However,
it appears that some the users of "random" in the free will discussion
do use it improperly in the first sense of equal probabilities--as
if all possible choices of behavior in a nondeterministic model must
be equally probable.  Of course that is not so.

Concerning my use of the word "determinite" (fixed or definite in
spacetime), the best description of the distinction that I've seen
between determinate and deterministic was in the encyclopaedaia Britannica
article on Time.

But basically the distinction arises from (to quote Rudy Rucker),
the "block" model of the universe. That is, that the universe can
be thought of as a four-dimensional block existing in a  matrix of
nothingness (or maybe better, existing in a matrix consisting of a
hypertime of only one event). (This is my description, not Rucker's.) 
In the block model, time has direction
but doesn't actually flow: everything (past and future) just IS.
The concept of an absolute or special "present" is meaninglesss, except
as a purely subjective experience of conscious beings (us).

Now, in that block model every event in spacetime is definite,
DETERMINATE (though only a hypothetical five-dimensional creature could
be aware of all the events).  The DETERMINISTIC events are those in
spacetime that are causally necessitated by earlier events in time.
If determinism is absolute, then every event would also be deterministic.
But whatever the level of determinism, every event is fixed or definite
in the block, even though it cannot be causally predicted from an earlier
knowledge of "initial conditions."

It would seem that Schroedinger's wave function applies to one's
knowledge of FUTURE nondeterministic (quantum) events with respect to
a viewpoint from any given PRESENT.  But if one accepts the meaningfulness
of the block model, one could say that the future event is definite,
even though we cannot know in the present what the future event is.
In the many worlds version of the block model (the block would now
be a five dimensional block) all possible branches of the wave function
would exist.