I am genuinely and in good faith interested what you think about quantum mechanics and that there seems to be an element of true randomness there.
I was pretty much a determinist until an actual physicist that I know and respect told me that he is totally convinced that there is stuff in quantum mechanics that just cannot be predetermined.
And if anything can be undeterminable then by influencing other things there would exist true randomness and then a fully deterministic world cannot exist in my eyes.
But I am very willing to learn more if you know a good counter-argument since I always thought determinism is quite an elegant view of the world.
I just cannot follow it if I am not convinced it is true.
I am not sure you replied to the right comment since I never mentioned free will at all but was more interested in how a person believing in determinism handles the current state of science that at least suggests the existence of true randomness.
In my eyes true randomness contradicts a deterministic world, but I am interested to learn more from anyone who is more educated on this topic.
If I understand you correctly I agree with you though that what might be called free will is what happens in an individuals brain when they make a decision.
The discussion whether this decision making process in the brain can be truly free is a very interesting one, but not the one I wanted to have.
My personal layman’s opinion is that my brain has enough uniqueness to it that the decisions I make are individually mine and there are other unique people that make their own individual choices.
If those choices and decisions are truly free matters less to me as long as they are truly individual.
I thought that to be the case for a long time.
If I could control all the variables I could roll a die to a 6 every time or at least tell the outcome as soon as it’s thrown if I know everything else there is to know.
I also recognize that my understanding of modern physics is minimal at best.
But a physicist friend of mine told me that there is stuff that is truly random, so in gross simplification if I throw the exact same die in the exact same way under the exact same conditions it could still show different results making it impossible to predetermine the result.
If that is the case I don’t think this world is a system where it is possible to determine the future even with perfect information.
And maybe you are right that my knowledge is just too superficial to hold a real opinion in the debate between determinism and indeterminism, but I also don’t really have a horse in this race.
Just if you were to ask me as a layman I would think indeterminism to be more plausible given the (grossly simplified) information above.
The OP that I replied to described himself as a determinist, so I was just curious of their response.
But now I got a lot of other input to think about so I am happy either way.
Again, none if this is meant to attack you and I realize to someone more informed this might just seem as random rambling, but I was just honestly interested so thank you again for the response.
What's the best response to someone who believes in hard determinism but also uses this to deny responsibility for any immoral actions they commit?
That is, they think all of their decisions were preordained, and then use this to claim that they can’t be held responsible for anything they do.