Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective philosophy Not
deterministic ; containing randomness
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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What's indeterministic is not the wavefunction itself, but rather the outcomes of measurements, in other words, 'collapses' of the wavefunction.
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Likewise, could God create a universe with the laws that this one has — and let's assume that the laws are indeterministic even to God — and somehow make it probable that human-like creatures will arise naturally?
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If we reject deterministic laws, and accept an indeterministic universe, then Collins needs to show that God could have set up the initial conditions so that life would be a probable outcome.
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But is it possible to set up indeterministic physical laws so that life will probably appear?
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Bilbo: If we reject deterministic laws, and accept an indeterministic universe, then Collins needs to show that God could have set up the initial conditions so that life would be a probable outcome.
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And that's before we even consider the possibility that while we think it's indeterministic, an omniscient being might see how it is not.
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In other words, non-trivial propensities (those that differ from 0 and 1) only exist for genuinely indeterministic experiments.
Matthew Yglesias » The Bitter Fruits of a Finance-Oriented Economy 2010
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God could have perfectly created a universe, but since it is indeterministic, God would still need to intervene to create life.
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Virtually everything is, at the lowest level, indeterministic, but that doesn't make it impossible for us to achieve our desired outcomes, so it should definitely not be a problem for an omnipotent deity.
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If we define "omnipotence" as the ability to do anything that is possible, and if it is impossible to set up an indeterministic system so that a very improbable outcome become probable, then an omnipotent being cannot do it.
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