Right, for determinism to work in practice, some method of determining that ‘previous world state’ must be viable. But if there are no viable methods, and if somehow that can be proven, then we can be confident that determinism is impossible, or at the very least, that determinism is a faulty idea.
Determinism also needs to be distinguished from predictability. A universe that unfolds deterministically is a universe that can be predicted by an omniscient being which can both capture a snapshot of all the causally relevant events, and have a perfect knowledge of the laws of physics.
The existence of such a predictor, known as a Laplace’s demon is not a prerequisite for the actual existence of determinism, it is just a way of explaining the concept. It is not contradictory ro assert that the universe is deterministic but unpredictable.
Right, for determinism to work in practice, some method of determining that ‘previous world state’ must be viable. But if there are no viable methods, and if somehow that can be proven, then we can be confident that determinism is impossible, or at the very least, that determinism is a faulty idea.
What you are talking about is prediction.
Determinism also needs to be distinguished from predictability. A universe that unfolds deterministically is a universe that can be predicted by an omniscient being which can both capture a snapshot of all the causally relevant events, and have a perfect knowledge of the laws of physics.
The existence of such a predictor, known as a Laplace’s demon is not a prerequisite for the actual existence of determinism, it is just a way of explaining the concept. It is not contradictory ro assert that the universe is deterministic but unpredictable.
It seems that your comment got cut off at the end there.
Edited
Well, if we were to know that assertion is unprovable, or undecidable, then we can treat it as any other unprovable assertion.