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Even if determinism has been somewhat refuted by Quantum Uncertainty (a fact that is peddled by the layman, and never acknowledged by the leading scientists - Einstein, Bohr etc.), isn't it still the case that all events on a slightly larger scale are still determined. After all a gust of wind isn't random (as to transcend causation). Determinism is, in part, the prerequisite to sanity as none of us expect the Earth to stop turning or our cars to stop working for no mechanically justified reason. As a note of interest, a computer cannot be programed to do something random.

November 10, 2005

Response from Peter Lipton on November 10, 2005
If indeterminism is true then, strictly speaking, nothing is determined no matter how big. Perhaps most larger scale systems behave as if they were governed by deterministic laws, but as I think the physicist Richard Feynman pointed out, all it takes to magnify atomic indeterministic effects is a geiger counter, which could serve as an indeterministic switch to turn on as large a system as you like.
Response from Daniel J. Velleman on November 10, 2005
I'd just like to add one comment to Peter's response. His statement that "most large scale systems behave as if they were governed by deterministic laws" is not only compatible with quantum mechanics, it is actually predicted by quantum mechanics. In most cases, quantum mechanics predicts that a large scale system will, with probability only slightly less than 1, behave according to the laws of classical mechanics.

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