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The Determinism of the Gaps

Published by Matthew Davidson on Sun, 31/03/2013 - 11:17am in
philosophy, Science

I'm surprised to find that it appears nobody's coined the phrase "the determinism of the gaps". So henceforth it's mine.

Just as the "God of the gaps" argument ("If [scientifically unexplained phenomena x] isn't the work of God, what else could it be?") is justly dismissed as an irrational argument from faith, so the scientistic claim that some imminent theory of everything will show that any observed phenomena is the result of the playing out of purely deterministic processes just because "What else is could it be?" should be dismissed for the same reason.

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