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[IcyTea31]

As part of a pair of high school philosophy courses, I'm going to have to write a bunch of essays for each. The first course is on "the philosophy of knowledge and reality", and the second is on "the philosophy of society". While I could just write them based on the coursebooks, I thought I'd ask these forums for some dialogue on the subjects.

Essays 1 and 2 of the first course are due on Oct. 13th, essay 3 on 15th, and essays 4 and 5 on the 29th, so I'll have to switch the topic after a few days, no matter how interesting it gets, sadly. More topics and deadlines will come once I get through the first course.


Thread rules:

• Stick to the current topic. For other philosophy discussions, please use other threads.
• Give citations whenever possible. They help me be critical about the discussion.
• Stay calm, and don't bicker. Forum guidelines still apply, and I'd like this to be productive.

Links to future discussions on this thread:
None yet!


Essay 1: Analyze the claim "This happened by chance."
The chapter of the coursebook that gives this assignment uses such terms as determinism, indeterminism, teleology, fatalism and chaos theory. Is there such a thing as fate? Does free will exist? Can there be a pure coincidence? As an analysis assignment, I don't need to take a stance, as long as I consider all sides of the issue and their implications.

[ChairmanPoo]

Relevant

[BFEL]

Define "chance" or alternately, what seperates "regular" chance from "pure" chance?

There are a nigh-infinity of different factors that can be analyzed, categorized, and otherwise broken down to render any given situation, no matter how large or insignificant into a definite repeatable condition. Whether this is a fight with your girlfriend or the rise of life on a planet, they could be orchestrated given enough knowledge, control, and time.
However, a vast majority of such situations are currently outside the ability of humanity to replicate consistently. Thus they could be classified from our perspective as "chance" happenings.

I would categorize this as the difference between "regular" chance and "pure" chance. The above is regular chance, while pure chance cannot be replicated or orchestrated through any means up to and including omnipotence.

So frankly "pure" chance or coincidence is outside of not just our capacity for categorization, but ANY categorization.

Next time I'll tell you about how you don't actually have free will and will never create anything unique! WOO *party streamer noise*

[IcyTea31]

The problem is, once we get down to the quantum level, we can only predict happenings by statistical probablity. Were we able to figure them out fully what causes them (and whatever causes those, and so on), we could conclude the universe to be deterministic and indeed consistently predict and replicate the 'chance' events. If they instead truly are random, that would make the universe indeterministic.

I don't think anything separates 'regular' and 'pure' chance, other than the fact that we know (most of) the events (if any) that lead to a 'regular chance' happening. The questions of their existence certainly have the same answer at least, whether it be positive or negative.

[BFEL]

Really guys? No one else wants to take a crack at this?


COWARDS

[LordBucket]

Really guys? No one else wants to take a crack at this?

The topic is potentially an interesting one, but I kind of interpreted the OP as "do my homework for me please."

Is there such a thing as fate? Does free will exist? Can there be a pure coincidence?

Depends on which assumptions you make. There isn't a great deal of evidence to support one initial set of assumptions over others. Define "fate." Define "free will." Define "coincidence." But defining those terms is the (stealth) point of the prompt. Defining terms for the specific purpose of giving answers based on the assumptions implied by our definitions...isn't a very interesting thing to do.

OP: babble nonsensically about whatever for two pages. That's what everyone else will do.

[Orange Wizard]

"This happened by chance."

"What happened was unpredictable and perhaps a little surprising."

Rephrase the claim to show the intended meaning, and make the original question irrelevant.