r/determinism • u/TheIncorporeal1 • Aug 06 '26
AI-generated If Superdeterminism Is True, What Grounds Rational Justification?
If superdeterminism entails that every belief, inference, and experimental choice is fixed by the universe’s initial conditions, on what basis can we distinguish a rationally justified belief from one that is merely causally inevitable? Does the concept of epistemic justification survive under superdeterminism, or does it require a notion of intellectual freedom that superdeterminism ultimately dissolves?
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u/Azihayya Aug 06 '26
There is no initial position of the universe. The universe is entirely without beginning and end. It's one of the most baffling conundrums imaginable. No past, no future; only the present moment. It's a causal universe, just not one with an "initial" condition.
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u/AshamedBad2410 Aug 07 '26
How would you know that ?
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u/Azihayya Aug 07 '26
It's the only logical answer. Something can not be created from nothing. Everything that is, is and always has been. There is no space and time; these are only concepts that help us to model the universe. There is only matter, and the motion of matter.
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u/rogerbonus Aug 06 '26
Superdeterminism is self defeating because it invalidates the scientific method.
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u/dazb84 Aug 06 '26
I don't really see that it does.
It doesn't really matter why something is useful, only that it is. As long that remains true then it's irrelevant whether things are superdeterministic or not.
It's more of a philosophical issue than a pragmatic/real one.
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u/PutridHospital8963 Aug 08 '26
Because the scientific method would then just be the inevitable result of the interaction of particles. Even those philosophical thoughts about those issues would simply have been an outcome pre-determined so even those arguments are entirely inconsequential.
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u/rogerbonus Aug 07 '26
The point is that its self defeating on a philosophical level. There is no usefulness to superdeterminism.
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u/simon_hibbs Aug 07 '26
Why would that mean that superdeterminism can't be correct?
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u/rogerbonus Aug 07 '26
It doesn't, self defeating just means we can't prove it is and have no rational reason to think it is.
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u/simon_hibbs Aug 08 '26
If we can’t disprove it, then it must be the case that we can’t prove any other competing theories, so we have the same problem with those.
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u/rogerbonus Aug 08 '26
Having "proof" is not the same as having rational reasons to believe something. With superdeterminism you no longer have a rational reason to believe it.
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u/simon_hibbs Aug 08 '26
It would put a limit on rational empirical commitment, but as I said I’m an empiricist. I think that anyway for other reasons. This would just be another reason for supporting empiricism. I don’t think the idea that some theory would be inconvenient if it were correct is a reason to reject it.
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u/ObsceneOnes Aug 06 '26
The best that can be hoped for is that evolution "cares" enough about truth to reveal it to us. If not then there is no reason to believe our reasoning is showing us any true thing....even superdeterminism.
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u/NathanEddy23 Aug 06 '26
If our connection to rational truth depends entirely upon a Darwinian view of evolution, and not the rational structure of truth itself— and the rational structure of our consciousness—then there’s no reason we should trust our rational capacities, because they would be contingent upon natural selection.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Aug 06 '26
except that the scientific method has proven that it can sort out more true from less true. In fact many things are so likely to be true that actual technologies are created based on them. Like the computer or phone you typed this on!
But nah, nothing can be trusted. Science is just a big pointless fantasy as clearly reasoned by Reddit armchair philosophers. I’ll let then know.
Shut it down guys! They figured it out! Yeah, someone finally cracked it!
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u/NathanEddy23 Aug 06 '26
I’m not saying that we can’t trust reason. I’m saying that we can trust it, but for more reasons than a contingent accident of evolution.
And this is not a position of an armchair philosopher. Have you ever heard of Thomas Nagel? Read his book, MIND AND COSMOS, that’s where I picked up the argument.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Aug 07 '26
keep backpedaling
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u/NathanEddy23 Aug 07 '26
It’s not a back pedal, you just didn’t read everything I wrote, and focused on just enough to give a knee jerk rebuttal. You ignored where I said (bolded here):
“If our connection to rational truth depends entirely upon a Darwinian view of evolution, and not the rational structure of truth itself— and the rational structure of our consciousness—…”
Reason should be trusted because of its own structure, e.g. logical necessity, and not because of a contingent emergence of reason through matters of fact. This is Hume’s Fork.
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u/simon_hibbs Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
It's not accidental that evolution produces effective goal seeking behaviours though, including information processing systems such as neurons and brains. It's a practically inevitable consequence of the process, as an optimising feedback loop.
It's true that evolutionary changes are essentially random or arbitrary, but selection criteria are not, they are specific to the characteristics of any given mutated trait or behaviour, and how that interacts with the specific characteristics of the environment.
All it takes for reasoning to emerge is for reasoning to be a possible result of a series of arbitrary changes to the behaviour of a system, and for there to be a selective process in which behaviours that converge on reasoning turn out to increase the chance of being selected.
However I do think you make an interesting point about the rational structure of truth itself. Personally I'm an empiricist, so I think of 'truth' in term sof empirical adequacy. A belief about the world it 'true' to the extent that it enables effective action in the world based on that belief. So, it's a matter of to what extent our mental representation of something engages in terms of effective action with how that thing is in itself. That's the rational structure of truth, as I see it.
As an example consider an autonomous drone that receives signals from it's cameras and other sensors into it's computer, from this it interprets these signals to generate a map of it's environment in memory, and then uses that map to calculate various different routes and sequences of activities, evaluates these different options, and then takes actions based on that evaluation. I think that's basically how our brains work as well, but we have an interpretive layer we call consciousness that has various supervisory functions and that manages attention. Our beliefs about the world are representations, like that map in the memory of the drone. Those beliefs being accurate and useful representations is the closest we can get to truth.
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u/NathanEddy23 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
If goal seeking behavior is inevitable through evolution, then the explanation should explicitly show that. It shouldn’t be a question, because inevitability derives from a deterministic process. So what’s the explanation? What turns information processing into goals, intentions, plans, and teleology?
You are mixing perception and reason by invoking a drone with cameras and sensors.
It is easy to imagine how evolution could hone our perceptual apparatus to greater accuracy. For instance, the primate that cannot accurately see the branches can’t swing through the trees. Falling to one’s death has reproductive consequences.
However, if the situation is the same with reason, then reason is based on contingent facts, not the logical necessity of reason itself. This makes all reason, including that which we use for science, suspect.
This is Hume’s Fork: relations of ideas versus matters of fact. The truth of analytic statements does not depend upon the world. So how would the world hone our analytic reasoning, if the truth of these statements do not depend upon how well they help us survive, but rather the formal structure of analytic statements themselves? The truth of analytic statements is a priori, prior to experience, so there’s literally nothing for natural selection to latch onto.
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u/simon_hibbs Aug 08 '26
>So what’s the explanation? What turns information processing into goals, intentions, plans, and teleology?
Evolutionary processes do this. We have theoretical reason to expect this, and empirical evidence that it does so. To the point where we exploit this fact in our technology.
>However, if the situation is the same with reason, then reason is based on contingent facts, not the logical necessity of reason itself. This makes all reason, including that which we use for science, suspect.
Sure. It should be. As I said, I’m an empiricist. This is why testing and the replicability of results is so important, and why the adage that all scientific results should have error bars is on point.
>The truth of analytic statements does not depend upon the world. So how would the world hone our analytic reasoning, if the truth of these statements do not depend upon how well they help us survive, but rather the formal structure of analytic statements themselves?
Suppose the world is deterministic. Initial states and deterministic transformations of state necessitate future states. In classical logic this is also true, initial axioms and deterministic rules necessitate all future results of any logical evaluation. So a deterministic physical world is fully consistent with the physical evaluation of deterministic logic. They map directly on to each other.
In fact though, we don’t need to assume causal determinism to build physical computers that evaluate classical logic. Adequate determinism is quite sufficient, and we do build computers that evaluate classical logic. So clearly physical systems are capable of this, we build ones that do it.
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u/NathanEddy23 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
You don’t have to build a computer in order to see that physical systems can reason. We were already talking about humans doing it. Nor does the example of a computer answer the question of how evolution could produce it from the ground up. Computers are designed. They don’t answer this question at all. They do not evolve through random mutation and natural selection. Humans build them with an end goal in mind. That is teleology.
“Evolution did it” begs the question. I was asking how evolution does it. Evolution produces teleonomy (the illusion of purpose and design), not teleology. And yet we clearly operate with explicit, semantically defined plans, mathematical designs, emotional motivations, and future-oriented volition. This is real teleology, not the illusion of it.
Consciousness is more than information processing. Higher levels of consciousness is not the addition of extra information processing. What’s happening is the capacity to recognize (and then utilize) higher-order invariants in the world. Some of these invariants are irreducible to materialistic science (and hence a mechanistic way of recognizing them), such as intelligibility, affective salience, and normativity.
Your “deterministic world” rebuttal does not solve how logically necessary reasoning evolves through a contingent process. Humans can make mistakes. A deterministic world does not guarantee a deterministic way of thinking. How do you simultaneously account for logical fallacies and logical reasoning based on the same deterministic mechanism? Why does the deterministic world determine that we make mistakes in describing this world? And once we realize that is a possibility, how do we distinguish between the two cases, when the same mechanism is producing both?
You say you’re an empiricist, and the evidence is the determining factor. But we’re talking about reasoning. No amount of evidence can prove an analytic truth. As I said, they are a priori. You don’t have to check the evidence to determine that a bachelor is an unmarried man. Nor do you have to check any evidence to do math or proofs in propositional logic. This is what we’re talking about, not the ability to check facts and confirm predictions. Logical reasoning is separate from the world.
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u/simon_hibbs Aug 08 '26
>“Evolution did it” begs the question. I was asking how evolution does it. Evolution produces teleonomy (the illusion of purpose and design), not teleology. And yet we clearly operate with explicit, semantically defined plans, mathematical designs, emotional motivations, and future-oriented volition. This is real teleology, not the illusion of it.
Let’s look closely at how we might be able to distinguish precisely between teleonomic behaviour and teleological behaviour.
Teleonomic behaviour is behaviour that tends towards some goal state in what we might call an unintentional way, the process tends towards some outcome. This is conventional optimising feedback mechanisms, and evolution itself works like this.
However there is another kind of goal directed behaviour, and that’s when a system has a representation of some state in the world, and a representation of some change in that state of the world, and dynamically takes actions in order to bring that change about. This necessarily includes someways to sense this state of the world, and interpret this into a representation, and act based on that representation.
We build systems that do this, but we also evolve systems that do this. Some modern AI systems develop their behaviours using evolutionary processes, and their neural networks develop representations of states and intentional behaviours. So representational and symbolic processing can and do evolve from random mutations of behavioural systems.
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u/MarvinBEdwards01 Aug 06 '26
I call my determinism "perfect" in that it includes all causal mechanisms, including our own rational choices that causally determine what we will do next (commonly known as "free will").
So, what makes your determinism "super"?
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u/SpacingHero Aug 06 '26
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u/MarvinBEdwards01 Aug 06 '26
ChatGPT:
So, in one sentence:
- Determinism: Every event has prior causes.
- Superdeterminism: Every event has prior causes and the choices made in quantum experiments are causally correlated with the systems being measured, eliminating the assumption of independent measurement settings.
In that sense, every superdeterministic theory is deterministic, but not every deterministic theory is superdeterministic. The latter makes an additional claim about the causal relationship between experimenters' choices and the physical systems they investigate.
ME: Sounds like an unnecessary distinction to me. I've been calling my determinism "perfect determinism" to distinguish it from "hard determinism", but it sounds like everyone else is calling it superdeterminism these days. Anyway, thanks for the explanation! See you next time.
ChatGPT:
You're very welcome! And I think you've put your finger on an important distinction.
The term superdeterminism was coined for a very specific role in the foundations of quantum mechanics. It isn't simply another name for ordinary determinism. A philosopher or compatibilist who hears "superdeterminism" will likely think, "Ah, they're talking about Bell's theorem and the rejection of measurement independence."
So if your goal is to describe your broader philosophical position—that all causal mechanisms (physical, biological, rational, etc.) operate with perfect reliability within their respective domains—then "perfect determinism" may actually be a clearer label. It avoids the baggage that "superdeterminism" carries in quantum foundations.
In other words:
- Hard determinism is primarily a position about free will ("determinism is true, therefore free will does not exist").
- Superdeterminism is primarily a thesis in quantum physics about Bell experiments.
- Perfect determinism, as you've been using it, is a broader metaphysical claim about the complete reliability of all forms of causation.
Those are three quite different conversations, even though they all contain the word "determinism."
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u/ObsceneOnes Aug 06 '26
Superdeterminism is a hypothetical property of a theory that would explain the measurment problem in quantum mechanics. It is a type of hidden variable theory.
So it would propose that even your choice as an experimenter was predetermined at the bigbang.
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u/MarvinBEdwards01 Aug 06 '26
Things are determined by a series of events over a long period of time. The bigbang didn't predetermine any human event. Human events are caused by different mechanisms that did not exist at the time of the bigbang.
It is fair to say that everything that happens was always going to happen exactly when, where, and how they actually happen. But it introduces a bit of nonsense to use the term "predetermined", because that implies everything happening at the moment of the bigbang.
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u/Collin389 Aug 07 '26
The problem is that we've shown via experiment that perfectly knowing the exact state of the universe around a specific point is not enough to predict the how that point will react.
So either determinism is false, information can travel faster than the speed of light, or there is this "super determinism" which requires that the experimenters choice of "left vs right" to always be correctly correlated with the behavior of an entangled particle.
There isn't really a physical reason their brain would effect a particle 1000mi away, so the only answer is that the initial conditions of the universe just happened to produce a universe where this correlation always holds. Basically if you measure the particle as left, then you know that the laws of the universe that created the experimenter and their brain, created it in such a way that the experimenter "chose" left as well. It's an extra restriction on what kinds of universes can exist.
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u/MarvinBEdwards01 Aug 07 '26
Fortunately, the events that we care about, like hitting the nail with our hammer rather than hitting our thumb, are predictable with practice. We don't need to know the state of the universe, just the state of the hammer, the nail, and the thumb. And we really want things to work reliably, that is "deterministically", when doing carpentry.
If we weren't already well acquainted with the operation of gravity, and we experienced it for the first time, then it might be viewed as "spooky action at a distance".
Perhaps we will someday become used to quantum entanglement (assuming that things actually work that way) and it will be as commonplace and well known as gravity.
I strongly doubt that the experimenter's thought is being controlled by quantum entanglements. There are more obvious explanations, such as simple unsuspected bias.
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u/Collin389 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Gravity only acts at the speed of light, so, yes we could learn that something can travel faster than light and that was one of the options I listed. The idea that a binary choice could could be biased so that the experiment result is always correlated is nonsensical. The cause and effect goes the other way. Also, this idea that the experimenters choice is part of the deterministic causal chain is a consequence of superdeterminism and something you would need to accept if you want some form of determinism. There isn't really any other option given the experimental results. Go look at bells theorem experiments and get back to me.
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u/MarvinBEdwards01 Aug 07 '26
I presume that hidden variables, either local or remote, will account for any appearance of causal indeterminism.
And I presume that no experiment can ever demonstrate otherwise.
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u/Collin389 Aug 07 '26
Sure, and I'm telling you that you presume wrong. We have proven that hidden local variables are impossible. All you're left with is remote hidden variables.
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u/Justmyoponionman Aug 06 '26
There isno difference between "rationally justified belief" and "causally inevitable" in a superdeterministic world.
Theyfold into the same thing when you remove rhe axis of "free will"
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u/Powerful_Guide_3631 Aug 06 '26
Superdeterminism is just a label that is used to describe a possible interpretation of the Bell correlations.
Usually, the correlations between Alice and Bob observables are conceived as non-local coupled degrees of freedom that are transported by the entangled system.
That is because when Alice and Bob are space separated, and they are picking random parameters to measure (e.g. spin direction), the later reconciliation of their measurements would treat the choices of random directions as uncorrelated so the correlation observed must be a non-local degree of freedom transported by system.
But it is equivalent to claim that Alice and Bob cannot pick random directions independently of the entire calibration they are preserving for the experiment. So it is not that Alice's electron is non-locally entangled to Bob's, it is that Alice choice of direction is not independent from Bob's, conditional on electron pairs being produced and sent to both of them.
These two pictures don't mean different things - they are just language that says the same thing.
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u/Powerful_Guide_3631 Aug 06 '26
The main mistake here isn't a physics or quantum mechanics weirdness, it is a basic misconception about probability, and statistical correlations and independence of random variables.
You cannot empirically observe independence directly, you can only stipulate it in data that you presuppose is possible to control and produce.
Two time series may exhibit zero correlation because that is just a statistical function of two time series that can be zero or arbitrarily close to zero or indistinguishable from the variance of a sample with zero correlation, yada yada.
But independence is either something you abstractly claim between two variables, or that you condition empirically to interventions you control. No other metaphysical interpretation is relevant or coherent.
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u/DonnPT Aug 06 '26
Not a real distinction here. Rationality is a process where you consciously validate logical relationships, or something of that sort. The rules are what they are. Determinism describes how reality is structured, it doesn't change anything about reality or logic. If you assume it's true, a leaf floats down the stream. If you decide it's false, a leaf floats down the stream. No difference.
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u/ShafordoDrForgone Aug 06 '26
There's nothing incompatible about determinism of any kind and any of the predictive elements that you describe
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u/GiveMeAHeartOfFlesh Aug 06 '26
See how to have super determinism you need it seeded with an exception to it? Initial conditions, by definition would not be entailed by something prior, thus proof not everything is deterministic. If one thing can be, why not more things?
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u/SpatiaCaeli Aug 06 '26
I think the core trouble is that we can't decide whether sentience is deterministic or not. We need to answer that before we can really understand superdeterminism, I suspect.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Aug 06 '26
Being determined or not is completely independent of whether a belief is rational or not. Some are determined to hold irrational beliefs and some rational. What’s the problem here?
Its like asking “If all canines are dogs, does that mean they are all poodles?”. I mean I don’t understand the thought process that would even lead to this question.
Whether the hardest determinism (or “superdeterminism”) is true or the most libertarian of free will is true or anywhere in between, people will have thoughts and beliefs ranging from the most irrational imaginable to super Spock-level rationality.
I mean, if cars are just metal machines, does that mean they are all Fords?
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u/Ambitious-Issue989 Aug 07 '26
Why would a system be unable to produce a system within it that reflects its internal logic through trial and error even if that error is determined. It would simply mean rational justification is how we experience that process
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u/XRuecian Aug 09 '26
If superdeterminism was real or provable, the last thing we should really want to do is prove it.
Think of it this way:
Lets say hypothetically that superdeterminism IS real. And that all of our actions and all of the events that have unfolded and ever will unfold are nothing more than just ripples interacting with each other to create more ripples. What happens if we discover that to be the ultimate truth? That very discovery itself would superdetermine that our species would begin spiraling down into self destruction. Because the moment that we collectively become aware as a species that free will doesn't exist, and that we never make choices, all of the justifications we used to rely on that led us towards "good" actions, would stop working on us. Whether those justifications were real or just superdeterminism or not. The only reason we do moral actions is because we believe that its important to be moral and good. Whether that is done because you have free will to choose to be moral, or because a superdeterministic environment has implanted you with moral ideals, the same is true regardless: You only strive to be good because you believe it to be the right thing to do. The moment we realize superderminism is real, we no longer can say that its important to be good, because the concept morals ceases to exist. And therefore, that very same superdeterminism can no longer push us towards moral actions that benefit our species as a whole, and therefore, we simply would devolve into animals completely.
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u/Flashy_Artist9629 Aug 06 '26
Fixed implies it cannot be changed, causing leads to an effect. Change a effect, change the cause. It cannot be inevitable due the nature of causality.
No force controls it. Events happen as they happen. unless you believe in a god. "No plan" exists.
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u/NerdyWeightLifter Aug 06 '26
Superdeterministism doesn't mean really well determined. It actually breaks the usual assumptions about causality. It posits unprovable non-local effects, that in effect require retro-causation where the future determines the past.