I've been thinking...
1) Everything is both a cause and an effect. There may be no original cause for something, but even that would be an event.
2) I am not sure who's theory this is but...if you could know the trajectories of EVERY atom in the ENTIRE universe, then you would be able to map out their future interactions and could therefore, predict the future. If you saw the future, would you have free will over it, if you saw yourself getting shot, would you be able to stop that from happening by not being there at the time? Or would it still happen somehow, even if you just get shot at a different location?
your thougts?
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3 comments:
1. I don't see why the absence of a first cause would be an event, but in any case the term "event" implies to me an intelligent observer who identifies it as such, just as a student in class might see another student's non-contribution as so exceptional as to count as an event. So if we don't have a reason to think there was an intelligent observer (God) to identify this non-event as an event, I especially don't see that it would be one.
2.In theory, yes, if you knew the future course of every atom you would be able to predict the future, but, again, what kind of event would one be predicting: the human scale events we would be interested in? I doubt if we'd be able to see the wood for the trees. After all, by definition, the physical happenings would be what the theory says we already know, the behaviour of atoms. We need the theory to build in that we would still be able to perceive events in the human terms we operate with in our present state of ignorance. With regard to getting shot, your question implies that the behaviour of the atoms would be purposeful ("We'll get him in the end!")rather than blind cause and effect.If you believe in theological determinism, you might think you could never escape your destiny, but if your determinism is purely causal, ie blind, purposeless, I don't think you need to. But actually I am not sure the question makes sense: it sems to contradict the initial supposition that one could predict every future event, including therefore one's attempts to avoid getting shot, and therfore one would already know whether the attempts were successful or not.
isnt that the answer?
Basically. These were not designed to be questions, merely my random ponderings :D
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