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Eliminative Determinism
is a new theory of causation. It is a natural corollary of the theory
of eliminative materialism and its challenge to folk psychology. Rather
than present itself merely as an innovation or
intertheoretic version of traditional determinism, it seeks to offer
itself as a replacement, or at least as an alternative, for the
present generally accepted school of thought.
It is based upon principles of parsimony and simplicity. It does not
pretend to amend or eliminate the core determinist bottom-line doctrine
that the algorithms of causal consistency in human behaviour are the
inevitable result of antecedent conditions and that the human being, in
acts of apparent choice, is the ineluctable expression of his or her
heredity and past environment.
ELIMINATIVE DETERMINISM'S MOST BASIC
CONCEPT
My most basic concept of what I call eliminative determinism holds that the philosophical tradition of
characterising individual events
as the result
of a regularising causation (cause and effect) reflects our human-centred preoccupation
with the unpredictable vagaries
of the constantly
changing universe. Thus it is that we attribute an authoritarian,
law-applying agential order,
such as God or The Laws of Nature in an effort to combat our vague suspicions
of finding ourselves cast into
a chaotic
universe. The belief in such a theological or cosmic
ascendancy provides an assurance
that someone
or something is in control. Such faith or belief bestows relief. The surety of an authority-concept frees
us from ontological ignorance
and doubt. There is a lessening of the angst and dreaded
uncertainty, which the thought
of a cold,
lawless, incomprehensible chaotic
universe
engenders.
I argue that 'that which causes' equals 'that which exists' and 'that which exists' equates to that which is holistically cosmically present. The fact that nothing does not exist demonstrates that the existence of nothing or nothingness (or a vacuum) is a cosmo-physical impossibility. Nobody has ever provided evidence that nothing either exists or does not exist. Therefore there must be something rather
than nothing. Both something and nothing cannot not exist nor not not exist. A none - thing is an instantational impossibility which neither
exists as a thing nor as a none-thing. A none–thing is not even the nominatum of the referent
none-thing. Such is the immensity and complexity of the
cosmos; such is the universal
ubiquity of
modal change, and such is the
homogeny between
'changing entities,' all of which are governed by the curtailment of the existential imperative, which, driven by that which is possible, peremptorily determines that 'to exist' is analogous 'to cause.
So in answer to the question:
Why does billiard ball [a] move billiard ball [b] when it strikes it?
The answer is;
Because they both exist that way.
THE CLAIM
(1) *That which is necessarily materially possible* (*that which exists,* henceforth referred to as: *materio-possibilia*) is verifiably manifested in the physical concrecity of the existing objects to be found in the cosmos.
(2) Such an epistemically verifiable claim for the realisation of such materio-possibilia is also a subjunctively or alethically attained verity in that my claim must essentially be true as demonstrated by the occurrence of existents themselves, including me.
(I am materially possible - therefore I exist.)
(3) If my claim were to be untrue, then (counterfactually speaking) the cosmos would consist of physical-impossibilia,
which were incapable of being incorporated as elements of any
covering or natural law, with the concomitant chaos that would
obtain - I would not have written this and you would not be reading it.
(4) As that which is epistemically proved valid by the realisation of its own physical materialisation (i.e. including our autopoietic selves, who can only procreate materio-possibilia rather than physical-impossibilia, and the other physically manifested materio-possibilia to be found in the cosmos) that means that the reality of the cosmos equals the possible objects of which it consists.
(5) Thus
the cosmos constitutes the self-governed immensity which is regulated
by the compendium of possibility-governed actualised products of
materio-existential possibility – the ever-changing cosmic holon
itself.
What we humans interpret as causality
is actually our local observation and experience of the only way that
the cosmos can exist nomonologically circumscribed as it is by the
engendered inevitability and physical possibility of its own presence.
For humans to seek to single out attribute individual 'cause' to any
causal object is to differentiate and isolate that object as being an
individually culpable entity which is somehow antithetically separated
from the overall, shared, mutual or 'joint causal responsibility' or
'catenulate accountability' of all the causal objects in the cosmos
both historical and contemporary that exist in accordance with
scientific generalization based on empirical observations or Laws of
Nature or hypotheses confirmed by scientific experiments.
Reflective judgment can take up the slack to what is left unattended to by this new ontology.
Now the confrontation twixt old and new extends into the cobwebby domain of folk ontology and the Gothic seigneury of causality and free will and the psycho-myth of 'events.'
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Evans Experientialism 
