Categories
- Art (356)
- Other (3,632)
- Philosophy (2,814)
- Psychology (4,018)
- Society (1,010)
Recent Questions
- Why did everyone start to hate the Russians if the U.S. did the same thing in Afghanistan, Iraq?
- What needs to be corrected in the management of Russia first?
- Why did Blaise Pascal become a religious man at the end of his life?
- How do I know if a guy likes you?
- When they say "one generation", how many do they mean?
In your formulation of “absolutely”, this is already proven for both future and current/past events as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: one cannot simultaneously know exactly time and energy (as well as position and momentum).
If you remove the word “absolutely”, then the opposite is proved: the movement of celestial bodies (and related events like eclipses), as well as the course of atomic clocks can be predicted with very high, almost absolute accuracy.
If we consider the motion of gas molecules, then again your statement is proved: their position cannot be predicted even for a few seconds in advance.
So it all depends on the required degree of accuracy and the events being considered.
This is a very interesting question that affects several aspects at once. First of all, are logical impossibility proofs even possible? Such proofs are not only possible, but also exist: it is enough to recall Godel's proof of the impossibility of completeness of sufficiently rich formal systems, Cantor's proof of the impossibility of one-to-one correspondence of elements of countable and uncountable sets, and other classical examples of this kind. If we follow standard logic (the first-order logic of predicates, which is used equally by both mathematicians and people in everyday life), then logical impossibility is logical inconsistency. Conversely, a logical possibility is a logical consistency. A similar relationship can be traced in applied logic (for example, in the logic of science). The logical form of natural laws in general is the implication ∀x(P(x) ⊃ Q(x)) – which is equivalent to ∃x(P(x) ∧ Q(x)). That is, any “positive” law of nature is at the same time a ban on phenomena that contradict this law, an expression of their impossibility. Therefore, in applied logic (again, we mean standard, classical logic), logical impossibility is a logical inconsistency with the accepted initial definitions. In this regard, in relation to a person as a subject of knowledge, “to prove the logical impossibility of absolutely accurately knowing information about future events until they have occurred”, in my opinion, is quite possible. In particular, by means of logical explication, the outline of which (without the use of formal apparatus) is proposed below.
The phrase “absolutely know information about future events” implies that in the present (in a broad sense, including the past) there is information about events that have not actually occurred yet. However, since the events themselves have not yet occurred and do not exist, but are just a possibility, then really existing information is information about the possibility (or impossibility) of conceivable future events, and not about the events themselves as such. Just as the possibility of an apple is not the apple itself, so the possibility of an event is not the event itself. Therefore, it is literally impossible to know any information about future events at all, due to the fact that this information is not yet available in the present. Further. Is it absolutely possible to know information about the possibilities of conceivable future events? This means having a complete definition of the relevant concepts of such capabilities. In turn, a complete definition of a concept is a definition with respect to all possible predicates, each of which must enter the content of the concept either without negation or with negation (a detailed logical analysis of this is given by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, in the section “On the Transcendental Ideal”). Accordingly, the subject of such knowledge must have the quality of omniscience. Only in the presence of such a quality can the subject absolutely accurately know information about the full extent of the possibility of a particular event, including absolutely accurate knowledge about whether the possibility is actually realized or not. Strictly speaking, in the case of omniscience, the subject has no limitations related to the difference between the possible and the real, just as there are no limitations imposed by time: for him, all events are equally “present”, without reference to the past or future. In all other cases, it is absolutely impossible to know the relevant information exactly, in principle. Therefore, a person (and in general any non-omniscient mind) can always judge future events only on the basis of an approximate (partial) knowledge of possibilities – with a certain (greater or lesser) probability, which is never equal to one. If we assume the opposite, then such an assumption inevitably contradicts the definition of man and human cognitive abilities, as well as the necessary distinction between what is possible and what is real for beings living in time.
The answer is unequivocal-NO. It is impossible to prove that something is impossible. It means living your entire life, the life of all of humanity, the entire universe, the entire multiverse, exploring all possible laws in all worlds and ides and so on…
You can draw a parallel: to prove that there is an extraterrestrial intelligence is much easier than to prove that it DOES NOT EXIST. After all, for the first one, we may not even need to lift our ass off the couch. “Aliens” themselves can visit us someday. But to prove the opposite – you need to explore all the worlds, the entire universe, all the multiverses and all all all all all…. And only then can we say that extraterrestrial intelligence does not exist (if this is confirmed).
Now to analyze your question:
You asked a very philosophical question. Moreover, the formulation of the question is not quite correct, as I have already said, it would be easier to ask whether it is possible to prove the logical relationship of events (determinism, fatalism)? The question is reversed, but the philosophical meaning does not change. So for fatalists, for example, the answer is unequivocal-no. For them, all events are interconnected. The past determines the future. In the world (in nature) there are no random events, nothing happens “just like that”. You will not be able to name a single phenomenon that at least something does not contribute to. BUT if we” stick “the category of “prove” to fatalism, then this is again impossible (at least for now). Humanity is not able to analyze absolutely all events in the universe, calculate them and get “what will happen in the future”.
On the other hand, adherents of the free will theory will tell you that fate is a utopia, that reason determines the future, we build our own world and the future is not defined in principle. BUT, again, they will not be able to prove this.
To sum it up again, the answer to your question is “NO”.