Is free will possible in a deterministic universe?

Any/all latter moments.

Are you sure about that? Is there no feature in the "governing laws" that might bring that into question?

Are prior states special in the laws of physics?

 

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Special with regard what?

There might be, but it is not necessarily the case for all deterministic systems.
For all deterministic systems, however, knowing the state and the laws at a given time one could establish any and every moment in the future.
But it is not true for all deterministic systems that knowing the state of the current or future state and the laws one can establish every moment in the past.
So yes, I am sure that knowing X+1 does not necessarily mean you can know X, or any prior moment, in a deterministic system.
One only needs to have two different set of causes possibly leading to exactly the same output to understand that.
A simple deterministic system of squaring the previous number demonstrates the point adequately enough.

In a deterministic system they, along with the laws, completely determine the current state, as explained, but it doesn't necessarily work in reverse.
So if you feel the need to deem them special, or as seems to be your want you want me to deem them special, then they can be seen to be in that regard.
But I do not personally consider them particularly "special", and see no particular benefit of such a word in this context.
The states and moments are what they are.
In a deterministic system one leads inexorably and infallibly to the next.
If you wish to consider them special based on what I have offered, feel free, but you're going to have to clarify just exactly what you are asking if what I have so far said is insufficient for you.

 

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I have figured out consciousness I think but I am clearly not very good at communicating about it.
then again, I could be wrong, unfortunately.

what would make the difference between a self determining android and a human being is that one is made of meat and the other of metal, both could potentially have free will if they could self determine by means of retro causation.

initial conditions are no problem for free will if you get to choose them.
and the cool thing is, the past has already happened, so from the perspective of someone in the present, changing any amount of it would take no time at all.

 

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Well, sure, but that's the most trivial of distinctions.

You mean if they could time travel?

 

no, I don't think that is required, I mean if they could influence the past from the present.

 

That's pretty much time travel.

 

Why is an earlier moment more "fixed" or "actual" in some way than a later moment?

You've already said that determinism isn't about what we may or may not be capable of knowing.

The laws of physics are time-reversal invariant. The only proof against that is CPT symmetry breaking, which only exists in a universe which includes quantum field theory and everything that entails. So you must assume time-reversal symmetry in a wholly deterministic universe. If the laws of physics are the same in both directions in time, every moment is equally "real" and it is only our perceptions of time that lead us to belief we are "moving' through it, or that the future somehow doesn't yet exist. This means that no moment in time can be causally special relative to any other. It's only our human perception of time that makes earlier moments causative.

 

Fixed because it occurred and is unalterable

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If everything is already determined, what makes you think you, or anything occurring now, can alter the future any more than the past?

 

I don't think anything occuring now alters the future

The future is determined from the past and events occurring now

Just we do not have the ability to trace events into the future

The lack of such ability (to trace backwards, to find the cause of now, and forward, to find out what will be) gives us the illusion of free will

I will get that the person who built Roman chariots in Britain had no idea he would be partly responsible for the size of the Space Shuttle booster rockets, as has been proposed

The past is known and fixed so we can make some assumptions about its effect on now

The future, not so much can be assumed

Just had a thought - that's how detectives work. Gather evidence, the more different tracks of evidence converge on a past event, the more secure we can be the event was the cause of now

It can work forward if evidence seems to be leading to a future event coming to occur. So detectives set up a watch on a warehouse

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You want to try that again without contradicting yourself?
If the future cannot be altered, who's to say that every moment in time wasn't determined at once, by the inception of time itself?

Considering you can't demonstrate that, it's not much of an argument.

 

The very definition of a deterministic Universe

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That all depends on the theory of time, presentism, eternalism, or growing block.

 

I would contend the correctness of the definition of a deterministic Universe depends on the reality of the Universe

If it is deterministic, congrats

If it is something else, bad luck

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The nature of time is a reality of the universe.

 

That may be so, but we don't know what that nature is yet, and how/whether it affects the determinism of the universe.
That is what this thread is about.

 

Perhaps he does not know TIME does not exist

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:face palm:

 

Just like this thread has stipulated a solely deterministic universe without any quantum indeterminism, so must arguments/stipulations be made about the nature of time. Just presuming a theory of time that suits only one conclusion is begging the question, whereas another theory of time may not compel one conclusion. We do know that our universe includes quantum indeterminism and that we have no reason to believe any universe can exist without some parallel to it, so we've already stipulated things we can't know.

That would make determinism moot, violating a stipulation of this thread.

 

Not sure I understand the / any link

Can you explain please

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