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@jimdonegan Do I get Swinburne's right if I say that he sidesteps reductionism?
"We can't measure states of the brain sufficiently and we can't generalize brains either. This is why we can't build and test general theories and hence can't assume laws. Thus determinism. as a scientific concept, is not applicable to mind."
Yes, indeed. He doesn't DEMONSTRATE why everything he says is true. If causality the causal chain (as generally understood) do not determine mental states then he has room to make his argument. But why should that be the case? He needs to show WHY what he says is true rather than just declaring it.
@jimdonegan Hmm... I think he doesn't sidestep reductionism - he attacks the reductionist notion of determinism as non-scientific. An approach not without merits, I believe. Other notions of determinism ("first mover") have been attacked by Charles Hartshorne, by analogy in a similar way: create a conflict with respect to the proponent's belief system.
He sidesteps it by declaring it inapplicable, but without explaining ths. If he is a dualist or Platonist then why not just come clean and say that mental states are in the end not physical and have a life of their own. That's what Kuhn invited him to go for right at the beginning of the conversation.
If intentionality (a current system state) is not caused by a prior system state, then how is it caused?
That's the issue here; why would the causal chain NOT apply to mental states?
@jimdonegan the problem, I think, is that determinism is not falsifiable (which is the very foundation of a scientific belief). That's what Swinburne clearly shows. I don't think that he claims that "will" doesn't depend on prior states, it's just that we can't know the states.
Well, that cannot be true, else how are we to understand and talk about intentionality at all? Furthermore, this is the WEAK form of determinism we're talking about, not the stronger case in which everything can (theoretically) be predicted. Hume argued that even though there cannot be a causal LAW, we still observe causality 'flowing' from past to present and then to future states. It's a fairly trivial point that's being made. Past states are necessary for explaining future states.
@jimdonegan I think causality of mental states is beyond any doubt (and Swinburne didn't say anything to the contrary). The problem with determinism is that it's absolute or it isn't. Weak causal connections are contrary to determinism. The real point of determinism is that information is constant and no new information will ever be. This, I think, is not necessary for a world to exist in which we perceive laws and where limited deduction is possible. Statistical mechanics is a good example.