Determinism Means- All One Thing

Vastly Far Reaching

Whether humans have free will or not is a small part of the determinism discussion. The universe is deterministic and so nothing in it can have free will to do things that are uncaused by other things. But the free will vs determined behaviour is where most philosophers remain focussed- e.g. free will or not, morality, crime and punishment, personal responsibility and so on. All the human centred arguments. That’s where they concentrate.

But if determinism is true, and it is, then the effects of that are vastly far more reaching, covering everything in the universe. It means not just human behaviour is determined, but every event, every particle is determined, instantly , in the present moment.

The whole thing moves as one thing, because there’s only the particles and the physical laws. There is no free anything, just determined things.

Nothing is Separate

If you consider humans as robotic, operating on input/output principles, unfolding in a determined universe. Then you can look down from above and see that what was felt as a personal and communal process, is a determined impersonal process.

Nothing is separate. The whole thing is one big determined process with everything bouncing off and interacting with everything else in the present moment.

At no point do you “decide” what to do next.

Input Output

Input causing output, not output being “decided” upon.

Just as the present arrangement of particles causes the next arrangement of particles, so language input into one human being through the ears, causes or creates the output from that human being. And that output becomes input for the first human being and that input creates/causes the following output.

It’s all input/output, but you could say it’s a chain of determined events. Or say it’s one huge event evolving exactly as does the whole universe of particles. In fact they are the same thing: the universe evolving and people talking. It’s one whole thing.

Another input causing output is thought. A determined thought can arise in your own mind causing output in the form of talking. Or it could create another thought, and another.

Cause and Effect

It’s just one wave function. The quantum wave function of the universe, as discovered by science.

A bird diving on an insect is part of the entire wave function. The bird's senses, the insect’s movements, are exactly a tiny fraction of the one huge wave function. You might as well call it a wave function, because physics does.

Even human thoughts are part of the one huge wave function. All the 8 billion minds full of thoughts are the wave function unfolding. Even the “interactions, decisions and choices”  are exactly obeying the laws of physics.

Anywhere you look, at living or non living things, everything is perfectly unfolding as it must. Everything influences everything else because it’s the one thing. It’s not a series of causes and effects, everything is both the cause and the effect at once.

A Bird in the Sky

When a bird flies across the valley, it has motion, direction, and a destination in mind. It left a hillside of trees and is above a reedy swamp. The sky is blue with moving white clouds and a gentle breeze. How can determinism explain this?

It’s easy enough to see each aspect of nature as determined. The cloud, the blue, the tree and the bird, including the bird mind/brain.

But you can visualise the whole thing as a present moment happening. Sky, clouds and breeze are particles trapped in their cause and effect paths. Particles bounce along as determined, causing the unique pattern of each present moment. Each now. The only now! 

Even the bird is a unique pattern of particles put together by time and evolution and DNA. Each protein and every molecule of the bird is responding to the laws of physical particles as we see it fly across the valley. The particles don’t disintegrate and fall apart because the way they are set up and arranged by evolution keeps them in place while they fly.But even though the bird flies through the air, it can be seen as particles of the bird interacting with the air, and beyond that with the trees and the reeds and the valley. It can be seen as one inevitable happening that has been determined.

And once a single particle or a single bird can be seen this way, our  vision can be zoomed out to see a countryside or an ocean or a city full of busy people, also in the same way.

It’s a strange way, at first, but a true way. It’s the view of the universe that is arrived at by science, logic and intelligent thinking. 

But it’s the actual feeling of the bird flying and the breeze blowing and the self looking viewed in this different way, that’s important. Maybe this true way of seeing can go into the bones, and be at least included alongside the view of folk psychology and cultural norms.

All Happens in Silence

Language, laws of nature, logic, mathematics and names of things - all are emergent “inventions” coming after everything got going.

Everything was happening in silence, without comment and without consciousness (and still is), because language and thought also happens in silence.

An electron or quark or earthworm exist and do exactly as they must, even without knowing anything. Without thought and language everything still continues perfectly well. Even humans do too - but they think their thinking and talking is doing it.

The Environment

There is only the environment. Everything adjusts to the environment and everything is the environment. The environment is everything.

The environment is not fine tuned for life. Life is fine tuned for the environment. By natural selection. Life and the environment are the same thing, in perfect harmony, as one.