Determinism. Is that what you call it?

[Beiss]

Hello. For whatever reason, I felt like I wanted my "religious beliefs" status on Facebook to be accurate, and I realized that since I believe that we do not have souls and that our consciousness is really just the result of a bunch of chemicals bubbling around in our brains (as impossible as it may seem, this is the view that makes the most sense to me), and since I believe that there is no such thing as randomness in nature, then it follows I must believe that all our decisions and thoughts and actions are predetermined, as in a deterministic system, and that even though I can't just lie down and do nothing because fate has decided something for me (because if I did then that is exactly what fate has decided for me), nothing can happen in more than one way, and that if we had a powerful enough computer (and we never will) that had a perfect model of the universe, which it simulated/emulated (not sure which word means what), we could gaze into the future, since the state of the universe in the next "quantum of time" is entirely depending on that in the current one. Depending on whether you know what I mean, this might not make any sense to you at all, but there it is.

Now, I'm not here to argue that I'm right, or to have a deep, philosophical discussion on why I'm wrong, I just want to know what the word would be for this philosophy. If there is one. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of determinism, but it seems to me that general determinism isn't strict enough, that it's more like "it doesn't matter what you do because things will happen a certain way anyway" (which I think is really fatalism), but that "everything you do you do because you couldn't have done anything else".

EDIT: Wait, it's "scientific determinism", isn't it? There's a bunch of different ones, according to Wikipedia, and I agree with most of several of them, some of which seem to contradict each other.

[Dead Sun]

Hello. For whatever reason, I felt like I wanted my "religious beliefs" status on Facebook to be accurate, and I realized that since I believe that we do not have souls and that our consciousness is really just the result of a bunch of chemicals bubbling around in our brains (as impossible as it may seem, this is the view that makes the most sense to me), and since I believe that there is no such thing as randomness in nature, then it follows I must believe that all our decisions and thoughts and actions are predetermined, as in a deterministic system, and that even though I can't just lie down and do nothing because fate has decided something for me (because if I did then that is exactly what fate has decided for me), nothing can happen in more than one way, and that if we had a powerful enough computer (and we never will) that had a perfect model of the universe, which it simulated/emulated (not sure which word means what), we could gaze into the future, since the state of the universe in the next "quantum of time" is entirely depending on that in the current one. Depending on whether you know what I mean, this might not make any sense to you at all, but there it is.

Now, I'm not here to argue that I'm right, or to have a deep, philosophical discussion on why I'm wrong, I just want to know what the word would be for this philosophy. If there is one. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of determinism, but it seems to me that general determinism isn't strict enough, that it's more like "it doesn't matter what you do because things will happen a certain way anyway" (which I think is really fatalism), but that "everything you do you do because you couldn't have done anything else".

EDIT: Wait, it's "scientific determinism", isn't it? There's a bunch of different ones, according to Wikipedia, and I agree with most of several of them, some of which seem to contradict each other.

Your perception of the relation between brain and mind (that there is none) is sort of similar to the brain/mind identity theory.
Your perception of our freewill seems more reductionist than deterministic. I am only assuming, but you dont believe in fate or destiny do you? You say you believe everything is predetermined, yet I do not think you believe in a higher power.
However, if i am wrong about my assumptions i'd call you a fatalist

[Beiss]

As I've understood it (and someone correct me if I'm wrong), a fatalist is typically (though maybe not necessarily) a religious person who believes everything happens a certain way because a divine power desires it, and that you do have free will but that every attempt at escaping your fate (i.e. the will of said divine power) is futile. None of that applies to me.

I do not believe in a higher power, simply that if the universe is governed by a set of physical "laws", then so are we, and so are our minds and our will, which is then just an illusion, since every decision we make is directly dependent on chemical reactions in our brains which are in turn governed by the same laws as the rest of the universe. I will read up on reductionism and see if that's what that is.

[CarbEast]

Such view should, I believe, be called "rigorous determinism". It's nothing new really, for example Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827) said:
"An intellect which at a given instant knew all the forces acting in nature, and the position of all things of which the world consists supposing the said intellect were vast enough to subject these data to analysis would embrace in the same formula the motions of the greatest bodies in the universe and those of the slightest atoms; nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes."

But since scientific realities changed from what they were back in 19th century, these days you going to have several complications with this theory:

- Idea of calculating future collides heavily with Quantum Physics, which see the smallest blocks of matter as probability waves, not hard objects of certain shape, making them fundamentally impossible to predict completely.
- Another problem with predicting future through calculation lies in fundamental impossibility of seeing the objective reality, since what is seen connected strongly with who's looking (in accordance with Relativity Theory).
- Whether our consciousness is "a bunch of chemicals bubbling around in our brains" is not a matter of determinism, but rather a Mind/Matter monism. The key question here is whether mind exists as a biological nature phenomenon or does it goes beyond it. Both cases are possible in indeterministic model, just as in deterministic one.
- Finally, whether soul exists depends largely on what you think it is.

[Jingles]

Small world. I attended a conference on this very topic last week. I had to deliver a speech on what I ended up calling "scientific self-determinism". Got a hefty round of applause for it too, actually.

What you describe is what the main topic of the conference was. It was simply referred to there as "determinism", but it didn't go into much detail, so the other "isms" were largely neglected.

[Beiss]

I got a PM about this, too. It seems to me that my view is impossible, and that I only think this way because I don't know enough about the world and how it works, much like a person who believes the Earth is actually flat. I'm going to have to read up more about Quantum Physics. I know this is just as good as any religion, but I simply do not believe in randomness, that there is something that cannot be calculated, I just think we don't know how yet. And I guess anyone who does know anything about quantum physics would say I don't know what I'm talking about and that I'm wrong, and it would be pointless to argue with them before I find out more. I'll be back. Thanks for all your input so far!