Be careful what you wish for: Acceptance of Laplacean Determinism commits one to belief in precognition.

Abstract

Laplacean Determinism is the thesis that every event that transpires in a closed universe is a physical event caused (i.e., determined) in full by some earlier event in accordance with laws that govern their behavior. On this view, it is possible, in principle, to make perfect predictions of the state of the universe at any time T n on the basis of complete knowledge of the state of the universe at time T 1 (his so-called demon argument). Thus, if Laplacean Determinism is correct, mental events such as free will, intention, and other forms of mental agency are tricks of the mind, misleading us into believing our volitional concerns have traction in a world ruled entirely by physical circumstance. Not surprisingly, advocates of free will and related acts of human volition have engaged in spirited debate with adherents to Laplacean orthodoxy, the results of which have been far from conclusive. Rather than join these deliberations, I wholly embrace the demon argument and then ask "What are the consequences of this allegiance?" As I hope to show, acceptance of this argument commits one to a belief in the existence of human precognition. This, I suggest, is a consequence that does not fit comfortably within a contemporary scientific worldview.