Sam
>If it's mechanistic then it has to be predictable to an infinite degree.
No determinist would accept this requisite; no determinist accepts that reality is predictable to an infinite degree.
And to Ed and Sam,
The fallacy I suspect you’re looking for is perhaps just your rejection of counterfactual or hypothetical reasoning.
Rand’s invulnerable robot is an example of hypothetical reasoning. I’d say such a thing were impossible, unobservable, and helpful to posit only because it helps isolate important attributes which, in reality, are usually awfully difficult if not impossible to isolate.
As for counterfactuals, well, they are by their very nature impossible. Consider, “if the other team hadn’t scored that last point, we’d have one the game.” Or “If Killer hadn’t shot Victim, Victim wouldn’t have died.” Considering the impossible – e.g., the other team not scoring or the killer not shooting – is helpful. Accordingly, I can appreciate Branden’s question.
Ed,
Descartes’ demon is more to demonstrate what we shouldn’t reject rather than what we should accept. That is, just because we lack proof of the demon doesn’t mean we should reject it as a logically possibility. As a practical possibility, however, we should reject the demon – for one, because like you and Ockham suggest, it needlessly complicates matters – and for another, like you and Rand suggest, nothing in reality gives rise to the demon.
Jordan
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