JP asked:

I've been reading a lot about the theory of determinism and so far, no one has given me any good
explanation on how it may not be true. Can you?

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Determinism is the view that every event has a cause, and every cause is, itself, an event.

You seem to think that this theory must be true, since you ask for an explanation on how it "may not
be true." But, I would think that the question would be this: since you think it is true, what is your
argument for it? After all, isn't it up to the determinist who is the one asserting determinism to argue
for his view? Suppose that I simply say: well, you (the determinist) may be right, and if you can give
me a convincing argument I am prepared to listen to it. Please go on. What would youanswer? After
all, if you are the one who says determinism is true, isn't it up to you to argue for it?

Ken Stern

What would a universe in which determinism failed to hold be like?

Suppose instead we were talking about the law of non-contradiction. There is nothing one can say
about what universe in which the law of non-contradiction failed to hold would 'be like' (pace Hegel).
For if we allow that some contradictions are true then any proposition can be true, e.g. 'George W.
Bush is an alien from the planet Zog'. From a contradiction, anythingfollows. And saying that just isa
way of explaining why the law of non-contradiction is necessarily true.

Kant is one philosopher who held a similar view of determinism: that there is nothing one can say
about what a universe in which determinism failed to hold would 'be like', because determinism is a
precondition of objective experience. If determinism failed to hold, Kant thought, there would be no
distinction, in principle, between a veridical experience and an illusion. The argument for this is in the
'Analogies of Experience' in the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason.The general consensus,
however, is that Kant fails make his case, although most would agree that he succeeds in showing
that a universe in which experience is possible must be orderly and predictable (see e.g. Strawson
The Bounds of Sense).

In an orderly and predictable non-determinist universe, we would still identify 'causes' and 'effects'. It
would still be regarded as problematic to identify a particular event as 'not having a cause'. And I think
this is the source of your worry. To perceive an event as 'something that happens' just isa way of
locating it in a network of causes and effects that stretches out indefinitely throughout space and time.
So if we are to accept that determinism might not be true — as some believe, pointing to the
discoveries of modern physics — we have to learn a radically different way of looking at things.

Geoffrey Klempner