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Determinism

Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism) or randomness. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.[1][2]

Determinism is often used to mean causal determinism, which in physics is known as cause-and-effect. This is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state of an object or event is completely determined by its prior states. This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below.

Debates about determinism often concern the scope of determined systems; some maintain that the entire universe is a single determinate system, and others identifying more limited determinate systems (or multiverse). Historical debates involve many philosophical positions and varieties of determinism. They include debates concerning determinism and free will, technically denoted as compatibilistic (allowing the two to coexist) and incompatibilistic (denying their coexistence is a possibility).

Determinism should not be confused with the self-determination of human actions by reasons, motives, and desires. Determinism is about interactions which affect our cognitive processes in our life.[3] It is about the cause and the result of what we have done. Cause and result are always bounded together in cognitive processes. It assumes that if an observer has sufficient information about an object or human being, that such an observer might be able to predict every consequent move of that object or human being. Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible.

Varieties

"Determinism" may commonly refer to any of the following viewpoints.

Causal

Causal determinism, sometimes synonymous with historical determinism (a sort of path dependence), is "the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature."[4] However, it is a broad enough term to consider that:[5]

...One's deliberations, choices, and actions will often be necessary links in the causal chain that brings something about. In other words, even though our deliberations, choices, and actions are themselves determined like everything else, it is still the case, according to causal determinism, that the occurrence or existence of yet other things depends upon our deliberating, choosing and acting in a certain way.

Causal determinism proposes that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. The relation between events may not be specified, nor the origin of that universe. Causal determinists believe that there is nothing in the universe that has no cause or is self-caused. Causal determinism has also been considered more generally as the idea that everything that happens or exists is caused by antecedent conditions.[6] In the case of nomological determinism, these conditions are considered events also, implying that the future is determined completely by preceding events—a combination of prior states of the universe and the laws of nature.[4] Yet they can also be considered metaphysical of origin (such as in the case of theological determinism).[5]

 
Many philosophical theories of determinism frame themselves with the idea that reality follows a sort of predetermined path.

Nomological

Nomological determinism, generally synonymous with physical determinism (its opposite being physical indeterminism), the most common form of causal determinism, is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events. Nomological determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace's demon.[7] Nomological determinism is sometimes called scientific determinism, although that is a misnomer.

Necessitarianism

Necessitarianism is closely related to the causal determinism described above. It is a metaphysical principle that denies all mere possibility; there is exactly one way for the world to be. Leucippus claimed there were no uncaused events, and that everything occurs for a reason and by necessity.[8]

Predeterminism

Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance.[9][10] The concept is often argued by invoking causal determinism, implying that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. In the case of predeterminism, this chain of events has been pre-established, and human actions cannot interfere with the outcomes of this pre-established chain.

Predeterminism can be used to mean such pre-established causal determinism, in which case it is categorized as a specific type of determinism.[9][11] It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism—in the context of its capacity to determine future events.[9][12] Despite this, predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism.[13][14]

Biological

The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity, in which case it represents a form of biological determinism, sometimes called genetic determinism.[15] Biological determinism is the idea that each of human behaviors, beliefs, and desires are fixed by human genetic nature.

Friedrich Nietzsche explained that a human being is "determined" by his/her body, since he/she is subject to passions, impulsions and instincts.[16]

Fatalism

Fatalism is normally distinguished from "determinism",[17] as a form of teleological determinism. Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen, so that humans have no control over their future. Fate has arbitrary power, and need not follow any causal or otherwise deterministic laws.[6] Types of fatalism include hard theological determinism and the idea of predestination, where there is a God who determines all that humans will do. This may be accomplished either by knowing their actions in advance, via some form of omniscience[18] or by decreeing their actions in advance.[19]

Theological determinism

Theological determinism is a form of determinism that holds that all events that happen are either preordained (i.e., predestined) to happen by a monotheistic deity, or are destined to occur given its omniscience. Two forms of theological determinism exist, referred to as strong and weak theological determinism.[20]

Strong theological determinism is based on the concept of a creator deity dictating all events in history: "everything that happens has been predestined to happen by an omniscient, omnipotent divinity."[21]

Weak theological determinism is based on the concept of divine foreknowledge—"because God's omniscience is perfect, what God knows about the future will inevitably happen, which means, consequently, that the future is already fixed."[22] There exist slight variations on this categorisation, however. Some claim either that theological determinism requires predestination of all events and outcomes by the divinity—i.e., they do not classify the weaker version as theological determinism unless libertarian free will is assumed to be denied as a consequence—or that the weaker version does not constitute theological determinism at all.[23]

With respect to free will, "theological determinism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge of all true propositions including propositions about our future actions," more minimal criteria designed to encapsulate all forms of theological determinism.[24]

Theological determinism can also be seen as a form of causal determinism, in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God.[5] Some have asserted that Augustine of Hippo introduced theological determinism into Christianity in 412 CE, whereas all prior Christian authors supported free will against Stoic and Gnostic determinism.[25] However, there are many Biblical passages that seem to support the idea of some kind of theological determinism.

Adequate determinism

Adequate determinism is the idea, because of quantum decoherence, that quantum indeterminacy can be ignored for most macroscopic events. Random quantum events "average out" in the limit of large numbers of particles (where the laws of quantum mechanics asymptotically approach the laws of classical mechanics).[26] Stephen Hawking explains a similar idea: he says that the microscopic world of quantum mechanics is one of determined probabilities. That is, quantum effects rarely alter the predictions of classical mechanics, which are quite accurate (albeit still not perfectly certain) at larger scales.[27] Something as large as an animal cell, then, would be "adequately determined" (even in light of quantum indeterminacy).[citation needed]

Many-worlds

The many-worlds interpretation accepts the linear causal sets of sequential events with adequate consistency yet also suggests constant forking of causal chains creating "multiple universes" to account for multiple outcomes from single events.[28] Meaning the causal set of events leading to the present are all valid yet appear as a singular linear time stream within a much broader unseen conic probability field of other outcomes that "split off" from the locally observed timeline. Under this model causal sets are still "consistent" yet not exclusive to singular iterated outcomes.

The interpretation sidesteps the exclusive retrospective causal chain problem of "could not have done otherwise" by suggesting "the other outcome does exist" in a set of parallel universe time streams that split off when the action occurred. This theory is sometimes described with the example of agent based choices but more involved models argue that recursive causal splitting occurs with all particle wave functions at play.[29] This model is highly contested with multiple objections from the scientific community.

Philosophical varieties

Determinism in nature/nurture controversy

 
Nature and nurture interact in humans. A scientist looking at a sculpture after some time does not ask whether we are seeing the effects of the starting materials or of environmental influences.

Although some of the above forms of determinism concern human behaviors and cognition, others frame themselves as an answer to the debate on nature and nurture. They will suggest that one factor will entirely determine behavior. As scientific understanding has grown, however, the strongest versions of these theories have been widely rejected as a single-cause fallacy.[30] In other words, the modern deterministic theories attempt to explain how the interaction of both nature and nurture is entirely predictable. The concept of heritability has been helpful in making this distinction.

Determinism and prediction

 
A technological determinist might suggest that technology like the mobile phone is the greatest factor shaping human civilization.

Other 'deterministic'[opinion] theories actually seek only to highlight the importance of a particular factor in predicting the future. These theories often use the factor as a sort of guide or constraint on the future. They need not suppose that complete knowledge of that one factor would allow us to make perfect predictions.

Structural determinism

Structural determinism is the philosophical view that actions, events, and processes are predicated on and determined by structural factors.[32] Given any particular structure or set of estimable components, it is a concept that emphasizes rational and predictable outcomes. Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela popularized the notion, writing that a living system's general order is maintained via a circular process of ongoing self-referral, and thus its organization and structure defines the changes it undergoes.[33] According to the authors, a system can undergo changes of state (alteration of structure without loss of identity) or disintegrations (alteration of structure with loss of identity). Such changes or disintegrations are not ascertained by the elements of the disturbing agent, as each disturbance will only trigger responses in the respective system, which in turn, are determined by each system’s own structure.

On an individualistic level, what this means is that human beings as free and independent entities are triggered to react by external stimuli or change in circumstance. However, their own internal state and existing physical and mental capacities determine their responses to those triggers. On a much broader societal level, structural determinists believe that larger issues in the society—especially those pertaining to minorities and subjugated communities—are predominantly assessed through existing structural conditions, making change of prevailing conditions difficult, and sometimes outright impossible. For example, the concept has been applied to the politics of race in the United States of America and other Western countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia, with structural determinists lamenting structural factors for the prevalence of racism in these countries.[34] Additionally, Marxists have conceptualized the writings of Karl Marx within the context of structural determinism as well. For example, Louis Althusser, a structural Marxist, argues that the state, in its political, economic, and legal structures, reproduces the discourse of capitalism, in turn, allowing for the burgeoning of capitalistic structures.

Proponents of the notion highlight the usefulness of structural determinism to study complicated issues related to race and gender, as it highlights often gilded structural conditions that block meaningful change.[35] Critics call it too rigid, reductionist and inflexible. Additionally, they also criticize the notion for overemphasizing deterministic forces such as structure over the role of human agency and the ability of the people to act. These critics argue that politicians, academics, and social activists have the capability to bring about significant change despite stringent structural conditions.

With free will

Philosophers have debated both the truth of determinism, and the truth of free will. This creates the four possible positions in the figure. Compatibilism refers to the view that free will is, in some sense, compatible with determinism. The three incompatibilist positions deny this possibility. The hard incompatibilists hold that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism, the libertarians that determinism does not hold, and free will might exist, and the hard determinists that determinism does hold and free will does not exist. The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was a determinist thinker, and argued that human freedom can be achieved through knowledge of the causes that determine our desire and affections. He defined human servitude as the state of bondage of anyone who is aware of their own desires, but ignorant of the causes that determined them. However, the free or virtuous person becomes capable, through reason and knowledge, to be genuinely free, even as they are being "determined". For the Dutch philosopher, acting out of one's own internal necessity is genuine freedom while being driven by exterior determinations is akin to bondage. Spinoza's thoughts on human servitude and liberty are respectively detailed in the fourth[36] and fifth[37] volumes of his work Ethics.

The standard argument against free will, according to philosopher J. J. C. Smart, focuses on the implications of determinism for free will.[38] He suggests free will is denied whether determinism is true or not. He says that if determinism is true, all actions are predicted and no one is assumed to be free; however, if determinism is false, all actions are presumed to be random and as such no one seems free because they have no part in controlling what happens.

With the soul

Some determinists argue that materialism does not present a complete understanding of the universe, because while it can describe determinate interactions among material things, it ignores the minds or souls of conscious beings.

A number of positions can be delineated:

  • Immaterial souls are all that exist (idealism).
  • Immaterial souls exist and exert a non-deterministic causal influence on bodies (traditional free-will, interactionist dualism).[39][40]
  • Immaterial souls exist but are part of a deterministic framework.
  • Immaterial souls exist, but exert no causal influence, free or determined (epiphenomenalism, occasionalism)
  • Immaterial souls do not exist – there is no mind-body dichotomy, and there is a materialistic explanation for intuitions to the contrary.

With ethics and morality

Another topic of debate is the implication that determinism has on morality.

Philosopher and incompatibilist Peter van Inwagen introduced this thesis, when arguments that free will is required for moral judgments, as such:[41]

  1. The moral judgment that X should not have been done implies that something else should have been done instead.
  2. That something else should have been done instead implies that there was something else to do.
  3. That there was something else to do, implies that something else could have been done.
  4. That something else could have been done implies that there is free will.
  5. If there is no free will to have done other than X we cannot make the moral judgment that X should not have been done.

History

Determinism was developed by the Greek philosophers during the 7th and 6th centuries BCE by the Pre-socratic philosophers Heraclitus and Leucippus, later Aristotle, and mainly by the Stoics. Some of the main philosophers who have dealt with this issue are Marcus Aurelius, Omar Khayyám, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, Baron d'Holbach (Paul Heinrich Dietrich), Pierre-Simon Laplace, Arthur Schopenhauer, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Ralph Waldo Emerson and, more recently, John Searle, Ted Honderich, and Daniel Dennett.

Mecca Chiesa notes that the probabilistic or selectionistic determinism of B. F. Skinner comprised a wholly separate conception of determinism that was not mechanistic at all. Mechanistic determinism assumes that every event has an unbroken chain of prior occurrences, but a selectionistic or probabilistic model does not.[42][43]

Western tradition

In the West, some elements of determinism have been expressed in Greece from the 6th century BCE by the Presocratics Heraclitus[44] and Leucippus.[45] The first notions of determinism appears to originate with the Stoics, as part of their theory of universal causal determinism.[46] The resulting philosophical debates, which involved the confluence of elements of Aristotelian Ethics with Stoic psychology, led in the 1st–3rd centuries CE in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias to the first recorded Western debate over determinism and freedom,[47] an issue that is known in theology as the paradox of free will. The writings of Epictetus as well as middle Platonist and early Christian thought were instrumental in this development.[48] Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides said of the deterministic implications of an omniscient god:[49] "Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest 'He knows', then it necessarily follows that [that] man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God's knowledge would be imperfect."[50]

Newtonian mechanics

Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian mechanics/physics, which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed laws. The "billiard ball" hypothesis, a product of Newtonian physics, argues that once the initial conditions of the universe have been established, the rest of the history of the universe follows inevitably. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur (Laplace's demon). In this sense, the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as the rolling balls on a billiard table, moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce predictable results.

Whether or not it is all-encompassing in so doing, Newtonian mechanics deals only with caused events; for example, if an object begins in a known position and is hit dead on by an object with some known velocity, then it will be pushed straight toward another predictable point. If it goes somewhere else, the Newtonians argue, one must question one's measurements of the original position of the object, the exact direction of the striking object, gravitational or other fields that were inadvertently ignored, etc. Then, they maintain, repeated experiments and improvements in accuracy will always bring one's observations closer to the theoretically predicted results. When dealing with situations on an ordinary human scale, Newtonian physics has been successful. But it fails as velocities become some substantial fraction of the speed of light and when interactions at the atomic scale are studied. Before the discovery of quantum effects and other challenges to Newtonian physics, "uncertainty" was always a term that applied to the accuracy of human knowledge about causes and effects, and not to the causes and effects themselves.

Newtonian mechanics, as well as any following physical theories, are results of observations and experiments, and so they describe "how it all works" within a tolerance. However, old western scientists believed if there are any logical connections found between an observed cause and effect, there must be also some absolute natural laws behind. Belief in perfect natural laws driving everything, instead of just describing what we should expect, led to searching for a set of universal simple laws that rule the world. This movement significantly encouraged deterministic views in Western philosophy,[51] as well as the related theological views of classical pantheism.

Eastern tradition

The idea that the entire universe is a deterministic system has been articulated in both Eastern and non-Eastern religions, philosophy, and literature.

The ancient Arabs that inhabited the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam used to profess a widespread belief in fatalism (ḳadar) alongside a fearful consideration for the sky and the stars as divine beings, which they held to be ultimately responsible for every phenomena that occurs on Earth and for the destiny of humankind.[52] Accordingly, they shaped their entire lives in accordance with their interpretations of astral configurations and phenomena.[52]

In the I Ching and philosophical Taoism, the ebb and flow of favorable and unfavorable conditions suggests the path of least resistance is effortless (see: Wu wei). In the philosophical schools of the Indian Subcontinent, the concept of karma deals with similar philosophical issues to the Western concept of determinism. Karma is understood as a spiritual mechanism which causes the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth (saṃsāra).[53] Karma, either positive or negative, accumulates according to an individual's actions throughout their life, and at their death determines the nature of their next life in the cycle of Saṃsāra.[53] Most major religions originating in India hold this belief to some degree, most notably Hinduism,[53] Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism.

The views on the interaction of karma and free will are numerous, and diverge from each other. For example, in Sikhism, god's grace, gained through worship, can erase one's karmic debts, a belief which reconciles the principle of karma with a monotheistic god one must freely choose to worship.[54] Jainists believe in compatibilism, in which the cycle of Saṃsara is a completely mechanistic process, occurring without any divine intervention. The Jains hold an atomic view of reality, in which particles of karma form the fundamental microscopic building material of the universe.

Ājīvika

In ancient India, the Ājīvika school of philosophy founded by Makkhali Gosāla (around 500 BCE), otherwise referred to as "Ājīvikism" in Western scholarship,[55] upheld the Niyati ("Fate") doctrine of absolute fatalism or determinism,[55][56][57] which negates the existence of free will and karma, and is therefore considered one of the nāstika or "heterodox" schools of Indian philosophy.[55][56][57] The oldest descriptions of the Ājīvika fatalists and their founder Gosāla can be found both in the Buddhist and Jaina scriptures of ancient India.[55][57] The predetermined fate of living beings and the impossibility to achieve liberation (moksha) from the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth was the major distinctive philosophical and metaphysical doctrine of this heterodox school of Indian philosophy,[55][56][57] annoverated among the other Śramaṇa movements that emerged in India during the Second urbanization (600–200 BCE).[55]

Buddhism

Buddhist philosophy contains several concepts which some scholars[by whom?] describe as deterministic to various levels.

One concept which is argued[by whom?] to support a hard determinism is the idea of dependent origination, which claims that all phenomena (dharma) are necessarily caused by some other phenomenon, which it can be said to be dependent on, like links in a massive chain. In traditional Buddhist philosophy, this concept is used to explain the functioning of the cycle of saṃsāra; all actions exert a karmic force, which will manifest results in future lives. In other words, righteous or unrighteous actions in one life will necessarily cause good or bad responses in another.[58]

Another Buddhist concept which many scholars perceive to be deterministic is the idea of non-self, or anatta.[59] In Buddhism, attaining enlightenment involves one realizing that in humans there is no fundamental core of being which can be called the "soul", and that humans are instead made of several constantly changing factors which bind them to the cycle of Saṃsāra.[59]

Some scholars argue that the concept of non-self necessarily disproves the ideas of free will and moral culpability. If there is no autonomous self, in this view, and all events are necessarily and unchangeably caused by others, then no type of autonomy can be said to exist, moral or otherwise. However, other scholars disagree, claiming that the Buddhist conception of the universe allows for a form of compatibilism. Buddhism perceives reality occurring on two different levels, the ultimate reality which can only be truly understood by the enlightened, and the illusory and false material reality. Therefore, Buddhism perceives free will as a notion belonging to material reality, while concepts like non-self and dependent origination belong to the ultimate reality; the transition between the two can be truly understood, Buddhists claim, by one who has attained enlightenment.[60]

Modern scientific perspective

Generative processes

Although it was once thought by scientists that any indeterminism in quantum mechanics occurred at too small a scale to influence biological or neurological systems, there is indication that nervous systems are influenced by quantum indeterminism due to chaos theory.[61] It is unclear what implications this has for the problem of free will given various possible reactions to the problem in the first place.[62] Many biologists do not grant determinism: Christof Koch, for instance, argues against it, and in favour of libertarian free will, by making arguments based on generative processes (emergence).[63] Other proponents of emergentist or generative philosophy, cognitive sciences, and evolutionary psychology, argue that a certain form of determinism (not necessarily causal) is true.[64][65][66][67] They suggest instead that an illusion of free will is experienced due to the generation of infinite behaviour from the interaction of finite-deterministic set of rules and parameters. Thus the unpredictability of the emerging behaviour from deterministic processes leads to a perception of free will, even though free will as an ontological entity does not exist.[64][65][66][67]

 
In Conway's Game of Life, the interaction of just four simple rules creates patterns that seem somehow "alive".

As an illustration, the strategy board-games chess and Go have rigorous rules in which no information (such as cards' face-values) is hidden from either player and no random events (such as dice-rolling) happen within the game. Yet, chess and especially Go with its extremely simple deterministic rules, can still have an extremely large number of unpredictable moves. When chess is simplified to 7 or fewer pieces, however, endgame tables are available that dictate which moves to play to achieve a perfect game. This implies that, given a less complex environment (with the original 32 pieces reduced to 7 or fewer pieces), a perfectly predictable game of chess is possible. In this scenario, the winning player can announce that a checkmate will happen within a given number of moves, assuming a perfect defense by the losing player, or fewer moves if the defending player chooses sub-optimal moves as the game progresses into its inevitable, predicted conclusion. By this analogy, it is suggested, the experience of free will emerges from the interaction of finite rules and deterministic parameters that generate nearly infinite and practically unpredictable behavioural responses. In theory, if all these events could be accounted for, and there were a known way to evaluate these events, the seemingly unpredictable behaviour would become predictable.[64][65][66][67] Another hands-on example of generative processes is John Horton Conway's playable Game of Life.[68] Nassim Taleb is wary of such models, and coined the term "ludic fallacy."

Compatibility with the existence of science

Certain philosophers of science argue that, while causal determinism (in which everything including the brain/mind is subject to the laws of causality) is compatible with minds capable of science, fatalism and predestination is not. These philosophers make the distinction that causal determinism means that each step is determined by the step before and therefore allows sensory input from observational data to determine what conclusions the brain reaches, while fatalism in which the steps between do not connect an initial cause to the results would make it impossible for observational data to correct false hypotheses. This is often combined with the argument that if the brain had fixed views and the arguments were mere after-constructs with no causal effect on the conclusions, science would have been impossible and the use of arguments would have been a meaningless waste of energy with no persuasive effect on brains with fixed views.[69]

Mathematical models

Many mathematical models of physical systems are deterministic. This is true of most models involving differential equations (notably, those measuring rate of change over time). Mathematical models that are not deterministic because they involve randomness are called stochastic. Because of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, some deterministic models may appear to behave non-deterministically; in such cases, a deterministic interpretation of the model may not be useful due to numerical instability and a finite amount of precision in measurement. Such considerations can motivate the consideration of a stochastic model even though the underlying system is governed by deterministic equations.[70][71][72]

Quantum and classical mechanics

Day-to-day physics

Since the beginning of the 20th century, quantum mechanics—the physics of the extremely small—has revealed previously concealed aspects of events. Before that, Newtonian physics—the physics of everyday life—dominated. Taken in isolation (rather than as an approximation to quantum mechanics), Newtonian physics depicts a universe in which objects move in perfectly determined ways. At the scale where humans exist and interact with the universe, Newtonian mechanics remain useful, and make relatively accurate predictions (e.g. calculating the trajectory of a bullet). But whereas in theory, absolute knowledge of the forces accelerating a bullet would produce an absolutely accurate prediction of its path, modern quantum mechanics casts reasonable doubt on this main thesis of determinism.

Quantum realm

Quantum physics works differently in many ways from Newtonian physics. Physicist Aaron D. O'Connell explains that understanding our universe, at such small scales as atoms, requires a different logic than day-to-day life does. O'Connell does not deny that it is all interconnected: the scale of human existence ultimately does emerge from the quantum scale. O'Connell argues that we must simply use different models and constructs when dealing with the quantum world.[73] Quantum mechanics is the product of a careful application of the scientific method, logic and empiricism. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is frequently confused with the observer effect. The uncertainty principle actually describes how precisely we may measure the position and momentum of a particle at the same time—if we increase the accuracy in measuring one quantity, we are forced to lose accuracy in measuring the other. "These uncertainty relations give us that measure of freedom from the limitations of classical concepts which is necessary for a consistent description of atomic processes."[74]

 
Although it is not possible to predict the trajectory of any one particle, they all obey determined probabilities which do permit some prediction.

This is where statistical mechanics come into play, and where physicists begin to require rather unintuitive mental models: A particle's path simply cannot be exactly specified in its full quantum description. "Path" is a classical, practical attribute in our everyday life, but one that quantum particles do not meaningfully possess. The probabilities discovered in quantum mechanics do nevertheless arise from measurement (of the perceived path of the particle). As Stephen Hawking explains, the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities.[75] In some cases, a quantum particle may indeed trace an exact path, and the probability of finding the particles in that path is one (certain to be true). In fact, as far as prediction goes, the quantum development is at least as predictable as the classical motion, but the key is that it describes wave functions that cannot be easily expressed in ordinary language. As far as the thesis of determinism is concerned, these probabilities, at least, are quite determined. These findings from quantum mechanics have found many applications, and allow us to build transistors and lasers. Put another way: personal computers, Blu-ray players and the Internet all work because humankind discovered the determined probabilities of the quantum world.[76]

On the topic of predictable probabilities, the double-slit experiments are a popular example. Photons are fired one-by-one through a double-slit apparatus at a distant screen. They do not arrive at any single point, nor even the two points lined up with the slits (the way it might be expected of bullets fired by a fixed gun at a distant target). Instead, the light arrives in varying concentrations at widely separated points, and the distribution of its collisions with the target can be calculated reliably. In that sense the behavior of light in this apparatus is deterministic, but there is no way to predict where in the resulting interference pattern any individual photon will make its contribution (although, there may be ways to use weak measurement to acquire more information without violating the uncertainty principle).

Some (including Albert Einstein) have argued that the inability to predict any more than probabilities is simply due to ignorance.[77] The idea is that, beyond the conditions and laws can be observed or deduced, there are also hidden factors or "hidden variables" that determine absolutely in which order photons reach the detector screen. They argue that the course of the universe is absolutely determined, but that humans are screened from knowledge of the determinative factors. So, they say, it only appears that things proceed in a merely probabilistically determinative way. In actuality, they proceed in an absolutely deterministic way.

John S. Bell criticized Einstein's work in his famous Bell's theorem, which, under a strict set of assumptions, demonstrates that quantum mechanics can make statistical predictions that would be violated if local hidden variables really existed. A number of experiments have tried to verify such predictions, and so far they do not appear to be violated. Current experiments continue to verify the result, including the 2015 "Loophole Free Test" that plugged all known sources of error and the 2017 "Cosmic Bell Test" experiment that used cosmic data streaming from different directions toward the Earth, precluding the possibility the sources of data could have had prior interactions.

Bell's theorem has been criticized from the perspective of its strict set of assumptions. A foundational assumption to quantum mechanics is the Principle of locality. To abandon this assumption would require the construction of a non-local hidden variable theory. Therefore, it is possible to augment quantum mechanics with non-local hidden variables to achieve a deterministic theory that is in agreement with experiment.[78] An example is the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bohm's Interpretation, though, violates special relativity and it is highly controversial whether or not it can be reconciled without giving up on determinism.

Another foundational assumption to quantum mechanics is that of free will,[79] which has been argued[80] to be foundational to the scientific method as a whole. Bell acknowledged that abandoning this assumption would both allow for the maintenance of determinism as well as locality.[81] This perspective is known as superdeterminism, and is defended by some physicists such as Sabine Hossenfelder and Tim Palmer.[82]

More advanced variations on these arguments include quantum contextuality, by Bell, Simon B. Kochen and Ernst Specker, which argues that hidden variable theories cannot be "sensible", meaning that the values of the hidden variables inherently depend on the devices used to measure them.

This debate is relevant because there are possibly specific situations in which the arrival of an electron at a screen at a certain point and time would trigger one event, whereas its arrival at another point would trigger an entirely different event (e.g. see Schrödinger's cat – a thought experiment used as part of a deeper debate).

Thus, quantum physics casts reasonable doubt on the traditional determinism of classical, Newtonian physics in so far as reality does not seem to be absolutely determined. This was the subject of the famous Bohr–Einstein debates between Einstein and Niels Bohr and there is still no consensus.[83][84]

Adequate determinism (see Varieties, above) is the reason that Stephen Hawking calls libertarian free will "just an illusion".[75]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ For example, see Franklin, Richard Langdon (1968). Freewill and Determinism: A Study of Rival Conceptions of Man. Routledge & K. Paul. ISBN 9780710031570.
  2. ^ Conceptually (20 January 2019). "Determinism – Explanation and examples". conceptually.org. Retrieved 20 January 2019.
  3. ^ Ismael, Jenann (1 October 2019). "Determinism, Counterpredictive Devices, and the Impossibility of Laplacean Intelligences". The Monist. 102 (4): 478–498. doi:10.1093/monist/onz021. ISSN 0026-9662.
  4. ^ a b Hoefer, Carl (1 April 2008). "Causal Determinism". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 ed.).
  5. ^ a b c Eshleman, Andrew (18 November 2009). "Moral Responsibility". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 ed.).
  6. ^ a b "Arguments for Incompatibilism". Arguments for Incompatibilism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2018.
  7. ^ Laplace posited that an omniscient observer, knowing with infinite precision all the positions and velocities of every particle in the universe, could predict the future entirely. For a discussion, see Robert C. Solomon; Kathleen M. Higgins (2009). "Free will and determinism". The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy (8th ed.). Cengage Learning. p. 232. ISBN 978-0495595151. Another view of determinism is discussed by Ernest Nagel (1999). "§V: Alternative descriptions of physical state". The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (2nd ed.). Hackett. pp. 285–292. ISBN 978-0915144716. A theory is deterministic if, and only if, given its state variables for some initial period, the theory logically determines a unique set of values for those variables for any other period.
  8. ^ Leucippus, Fragment 569 – from Fr. 2 Actius I, 25, 4.
  9. ^ a b c McKewan, Jaclyn (2009). "Evolution, Chemical". In H. James Birx" (ed.). Predeterminism. Encyclopedia of Time: Science, Philosophy, Theology, & Culture. Sage Publications, Inc. pp. 1035–1036. doi:10.4135/9781412963961.n191. ISBN 9781412941648.
  10. ^ . Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Archived from the original on 4 September 2012. Retrieved 20 December 2012.. See also "Predeterminism". Collins English Dictionary. Collins. Retrieved 20 December 2012.
  11. ^ "Some Varieties of Free Will and Determinism". Philosophy 302: Ethics. philosophy.lander.edu. Retrieved 19 December 2012. Predeterminism: the philosophical and theological view that combines God with determinism. On this doctrine events throughout eternity have been foreordained by some supernatural power in a causal sequence.
  12. ^ See for example Hooft, G. (2001). "How does god play dice? (Pre-)determinism at the Planck scale". arXiv:hep-th/0104219. Predeterminism is here defined by the assumption that the experimenter's 'free will' in deciding what to measure (such as his choice to measure the x- or the y-component of an electron's spin), is in fact limited by deterministic laws, hence not free at all, and Sukumar, C.V. (1996). "A new paradigm for science and architecture". City. 1 (1–2): 181–183. doi:10.1080/13604819608900044. Quantum Theory provided a beautiful description of the behaviour of isolated atoms and nuclei and small aggregates of elementary particles. Modern science recognized that predisposition rather than predeterminism is what is widely prevalent in nature.
  13. ^ Borst, C. (1992). "Leibniz and the Compatibilist Account of Free Will". Studia Leibnitiana. 24 (1): 49–58. JSTOR 40694201. Leibniz presents a clear case of a philosopher who does not think that predeterminism requires universal causal determinism.
  14. ^ Far Western Philosophy of Education Society (1971). Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Far Western Philosophy of Education Society. Far Western Philosophy of Education Society. p. 12. "Determinism" is, in essence, the position which holds that all behavior is caused by prior behavior. "Predeterminism" is the position which holds that all behavior is caused by conditions which predate behavior altogether (such impersonal boundaries as "the human conditions", instincts, the will of God, inherent knowledge, fate, and such).
  15. ^ "Predeterminism". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Retrieved 20 December 2012. See for example Ormond, A.T. (1894). "Freedom and psycho-genesis". Psychological Review. 1 (3): 217–229. doi:10.1037/h0065249. The problem of predeterminism is one that involves the factors of heredity and environment, and the point to be debated here is the relation of the present self that chooses to these predetermining agencies., and Garris, M.D.; et al. (1992). "A Platform for Evolving Genetic Automata for Text Segmentation (GNATS)". Science of Artificial Neural Networks. 1710: 714–724. Bibcode:1992SPIE.1710..714G. doi:10.1117/12.140132. S2CID 62639035. However, predeterminism is not completely avoided. If the codes within the genotype are not designed properly, then the organisms being evolved will be fundamentally handicapped.
  16. ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich (1974). The Gay Science. Vintage. p. 7. ISBN 978-0394719856.
  17. ^ SEP, Causal Determinism. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2016.
  18. ^ Fischer, John Martin (1989) God, Foreknowledge and Freedom. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 1-55786-857-3.
  19. ^ Watt, Montgomery (1948) Free-Will and Predestination in Early Islam. London: Luzac & Co.
  20. ^ Anne Lockyer Jordan; Anne Lockyer Jordan Neil Lockyer Edwin Tate; Neil Lockyer; Edwin Tate (2004). Philosophy of Religion for A Level OCR Edition. Nelson Thornes. p. 211. ISBN 978-0-7487-8078-5. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  21. ^ Iannone, Abel Pablo (2001). "Determinism". Dictionary of World Philosophy. Taylor & Francis. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-415-17995-9. Theological determinism, or the doctrine of predestination: the view that everything which happens has been predestined to happen by an omniscient, omnipotent divinity. A weaker version holds that, though not predestined to happen, everything that happens has been eternally known by virtue of the divine foreknowledge of an omniscient divinity. If this divinity is also omnipotent, as in the case of the Judeo-Christian religions, this weaker version is hard to distinguish from the previous one because, though able to prevent what happens and knowing that it is going to happen, God lets it happen. To this, advocates of free will reply that God permits it to happen in order to make room for the free will of humans.
  22. ^ Wentzel Van Huyssteen (2003). "Theological determinism". Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. Vol. 1. Macmillan Reference. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-02-865705-9. Retrieved 22 December 2012. Theological determinism constitutes a fifth kind of determinism. There are two types of theological determinism, both compatible with scientific and metaphysical determinism. In the first, God determines everything that happens, either in one all-determining single act at the initial creation of the universe or through continuous divine interactions with the world. Either way, the consequence is that everything that happens becomes God's action, and determinism is closely linked to divine action and God's omnipotence. According to the second type of theological determinism, God has perfect knowledge of everything in the universe because God is omniscient. And, as some say, because God is outside of time, God has the capacity of knowing past, present, and future in one instance. This means that God knows what will happen in the future. And because God's omniscience is perfect, what God knows about the future will inevitably happen, which means, consequently, that the future is already fixed.
  23. ^ Raymond J. VanArragon (2010). Key Terms in Philosophy of Religion. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 21. ISBN 978-1-4411-3867-5. Retrieved 22 December 2012. Theological determinism, on the other hand, claims that all events are determined by God. On this view, God decree that everything will go thus-and-so and ensure that everything goes that way, so that ultimately God is the cause of everything that happens and everything that happens is part of God's plan. We might think of God here as the all-powerful movie director who writes script and causes everything to go accord with it. We should note, as an aside, that there is some debate over what would be sufficient for theological determinism to be true. Some people claim that God's merely knowing what will happen determines that it will, while others believe that God must not only know but must also cause those events to occur in order for their occurrence to be determined.
  24. ^ Vihvelin, Kadri (2011). "Arguments for Incompatibilism". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 ed.).
  25. ^ Wilson, Kenneth (2018). Augustine's Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to "Non-free Free Will": A Comprehensive Methodology in the series Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 111. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck. pp. 273–298. ISBN 9783161557538.
  26. ^ The Information Philosopher, "Adequate Determinism", from the site: "We are happy to agree with scientists and philosophers who feel that quantum effects are for the most part negligible in the macroscopic world. We particularly agree that they are negligible when considering the causally determined will and the causally determined actions set in motion by decisions of that will."
  27. ^ Grand Design (2010), p. 32: "The molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.", and p. 72: "Quantum physics might seem to undermine the idea that nature is governed by laws, but that is not the case. Instead it leads us to accept a new form of determinism: Given the state of a system at some time, the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty." (Emphasis in original, discussing a many worlds interpretation.)
  28. ^ Kent, Adrian. "One world versus many: the inadequacy of Everettian accounts of evolution, probability, and scientific confirmation." Many worlds (2010): 307–354.
  29. ^ Vaidman, Lev. 2002. Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
  30. ^ Inmaculada de Melo-Martín (2005). "Firing up the nature/nurture controversy: Bioethics and genetic determinism". Journal of Medical Ethics. 31 (9): 526–530. doi:10.1136/jme.2004.008417. PMC 1734214. PMID 16131554.
  31. ^ Andrew, Sluyter (2003). "Neo-Environmental Determinism, Intellectual Damage Control, and Nature/Society Science". Antipode. 35 (4): 813–817. doi:10.1046/j.1467-8330.2003.00354.x.
  32. ^ Proulx, J (2008). "Structural determinism as hindrance to teachers' learning: Implications for teacher education". Proceedings of PME-33 and PME-NA-20. 4.
  33. ^ Leyland, M.L (1988). "An introduction to some of the ideas of Humberto Maturana". Journal of Family Therapy. 10 (4): 357–374. doi:10.1046/j..1988.00323.x.
  34. ^ Tate, W (1997). "Critical Race Theory and Education: History, Theory, and Implications" (PDF). Review of Research in Education. 22: 195–247. doi:10.3102/0091732X022001195. S2CID 53626156. (PDF) from the original on 19 August 2020.
  35. ^ Pleasants, N (2019). "Free Will, Determinism and the "Problem" of Structure and Agency in the Social Sciences". Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 49: 3–30. doi:10.1177/0048393118814952. hdl:10871/34537. S2CID 149735710.
  36. ^ "Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse." – Ethics, Book IV, Preface
  37. ^ "At length I pass to the remaining portion of my Ethics, which is concerned with the way leading to freedom. I shall therefore treat therein of the power of the reason, showing how far the reason can control the emotions, and what is the nature of Mental Freedom or Blessedness; we shall then be able to see, how much more powerful the wise man is than the ignorant." Ethics, book V, Preface
  38. ^ J. J. C. Smart, "Free-Will, Praise and Blame,"Mind, July 1961, pp. 293–294.
  39. ^ By "soul" is meant an autonomous immaterial agent that has the power to control the body but not to be controlled by the body (this theory of determinism thus conceives of conscious agents in dualistic terms). Therefore the soul stands to the activities of the individual agent's body as does the creator of the universe to the universe. The creator of the universe put in motion a deterministic system of material entities that would, if left to themselves, carry out the chain of events determined by ordinary causation. But the creator also provided for souls that could exert a causal force analogous to the primordial causal force and alter outcomes in the physical universe via the acts of their bodies. Thus, it emerges that no events in the physical universe are uncaused. Some are caused entirely by the original creative act and the way it plays itself out through time, and some are caused by the acts of created souls. But those created souls were not created by means of physical processes involving ordinary causation. They are another order of being entirely, gifted with the power to modify the original creation. However, determinism is not necessarily limited to matter; it can encompass energy as well. The question of how these immaterial entities can act upon material entities is deeply involved in what is generally known as the "mind-body problem". It is a significant problem which philosophers have not reached agreement about.
  40. ^ "Free Will". Free Will (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2022.
  41. ^ van Inwagen, Peter (2009). The Powers of Rational Beings: Freedom of the Will. Oxford.[page needed]
  42. ^ Chiesa, Mecca (2004) Radical Behaviorism: The Philosophy & The Science.
  43. ^ Ringen, J. D. (1993). "Adaptation, teleology, and selection by consequences". Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 60 (1): 3–15. doi:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-3. PMC 1322142. PMID 16812698.
  44. ^ Stobaeus Eclogae I 5 (Heraclitus)
  45. ^ Stobaeus Eclogae I 4 (Leucippus)
  46. ^ Susanne Bobzien Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford 1998) chapter 1.
  47. ^ Susanne Bobzien The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem (Phronesis 43, 1998).
  48. ^ Michael Frede A Free Will: Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought (Berkeley 2011).
  49. ^ Though Moses Maimonides was not arguing against the existence of God, but rather for the incompatibility between the full exercise by God of his omniscience and genuine human free will, his argument is considered by some as affected by modal fallacy.
  50. ^ The Eight Chapters of Maimonides on Ethics (Semonah Perakhim), edited, annotated, and translated with an Introduction by Joseph I. Gorfinkle, pp. 99–100. (New York: AMS Press), 1966.
  51. ^ Swartz, Norman (2003) The Concept of Physical Law / Chapter 10: Free Will and Determinism https://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/physical-law/
  52. ^ a b al-Abbasi, Abeer Abdullah (August 2020). "The Arabsʾ Visions of the Upper Realm". Marburg Journal of Religion. University of Marburg. 22 (2): 1–28. doi:10.17192/mjr.2020.22.8301. ISSN 1612-2941. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
  53. ^ a b c Bodewitz, Henk (2019). "Chapter 1 – The Hindu Doctrine of Transmigration: Its Origin and Background". In Heilijgers, Dory H.; Houben, Jan E. M.; van Kooij, Karel (eds.). Vedic Cosmology and Ethics: Selected Studies. Gonda Indological Studies. Vol. 19. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 3–19. doi:10.1163/9789004400139_002. ISBN 978-90-04-40013-9. ISSN 1382-3442.
  54. ^ House, H. Wayne. 1991. "Resurrection, Reincarnation, and Humanness." Bibliotheca Sacra 148(590). Retrieved 29 November 2013.
  55. ^ a b c d e f Balcerowicz, Piotr (2016). "Determinism, Ājīvikas, and Jainism". Early Asceticism in India: Ājīvikism and Jainism. Routledge Advances in Jaina Studies (1st ed.). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 136–174. ISBN 9781317538530. The Ājīvikas' doctrinal signature was indubitably the idea of determinism and fate, which traditionally incorporated four elements: the doctrine of destiny (niyati-vāda), the doctrine of predetermined concurrence of factors (saṅgati-vāda), the doctrine of intrinsic nature (svabhāva-vāda), occasionally also linked to materialists, and the doctrine of fate (daiva-vāda), or simply fatalism. The Ājīvikas' emphasis on fate and determinism was so profound that later sources would consistently refer to them as niyati-vādins, or 'the propounders of the doctrine of destiny'.
  56. ^ a b c Leaman, Oliver, ed. (1999). "Fatalism". Key Concepts in Eastern Philosophy. Routledge Key Guides (1st ed.). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 80–81. ISBN 9780415173636. Fatalism. Some of the teachings of Indian philosophy are fatalistic. For example, the Ajivika school argued that fate (nyati) governs both the cycle of birth and rebirth, and also individual lives. Suffering is not attributed to past actions, but just takes place without any cause or rationale, as does relief from suffering. There is nothing we can do to achieve moksha, we just have to hope that all will go well with us. [...] But the Ajivikas were committed to asceticism, and they justified this in terms of its practice being just as determined by fate as anything else.
  57. ^ a b c d Basham, Arthur L. (1981) [1951]. "Chapter XII: Niyati". History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas, a Vanished Indian Religion. Lala L. S. Jain Series (1st ed.). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 224–238. ISBN 9788120812048. OCLC 633493794. The fundamental principle of Ājīvika philosophy was Fate, usually called Niyati. Buddhist and Jaina sources agree that Gosāla was a rigid determinist, who exalted Niyati to the status of the motive factor of the universe and the sole agent of all phenomenal change. This is quite clear in our locus classicus, the Samaññaphala Sutta. Sin and suffering, attributed by other sects to the laws of karma, the result of evil committed in the previous lives or in the present one, were declared by Gosāla to be without cause or basis, other, presumably, than the force of destiny. Similarly, the escape from evil, the working off of accumulated evil karma, was likewise without cause or basis.
  58. ^ Goldstein, Joseph. "Dependent Origination: The Twelve Links Explained". Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  59. ^ a b "Anatta | Buddhism". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  60. ^ Repetti, Ricardo (2012). "Buddhist Hard Determinism: No Self, No Free Will, No Responsibility" (PDF). Journal of Buddhist Ethics. 19: 136–137, 143–145. (PDF) from the original on 26 January 2020.
  61. ^ Lewis, Edwin R.; Macgregor, Ronald J. (1 June 2006). "On indeterminism, chaos, and small number particle systems in the brain". Journal of Integrative Neuroscience. 05 (2): 223–247. doi:10.1142/S0219635206001112. ISSN 0219-6352. PMID 16783870.
  62. ^ Lewis, E.R.; MacGregor, R.J. (2006). "On Indeterminism, Chaos, and Small Number Particle Systems in the Brain" (PDF). Journal of Integrative Neuroscience. 5 (2): 223–247. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.361.7065. doi:10.1142/S0219635206001112. PMID 16783870. (PDF) from the original on 8 June 2011.
  63. ^ Koch, Christof (2009). "Free Will, Physics, Biology and the Brain". In Murphy, Nancy; Ellis, George; O'Connor, Timothy (eds.). Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will. New York: Springer. Bibcode:2009dcnf.book.....M. ISBN 978-3-642-03204-2.
  64. ^ a b c Kenrick, D. T.; Li, N. P.; Butner, J. (2003). "Dynamical evolutionary psychology: Individual decision rules and emergent social norms" (PDF). Psychological Review. 110 (1): 3–28. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.526.5218. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.110.1.3. PMID 12529056. S2CID 43306158.
  65. ^ a b c Nowak A., Vallacher R.R., Tesser A., Borkowski W., (2000) "Society of Self: The emergence of collective properties in self-structure", Psychological Review 107.
  66. ^ a b c Epstein J.M. and Axtell R. (1996) Growing Artificial Societies - Social Science from the Bottom. Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
  67. ^ a b c Epstein J.M. (1999) Agent Based Models and Generative Social Science. Complexity, IV (5)
  68. ^ "John Conway's Game of Life".
  69. ^ Karl Popper: Conjectures and refutations[page needed]
  70. ^ Werndl, Charlotte (2009). "Are Deterministic Descriptions and Indeterministic Descriptions Observationally Equivalent?". Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. 40 (3): 232–242. arXiv:1310.1615. Bibcode:2009SHPMP..40..232W. doi:10.1016/j.shpsb.2009.06.004. S2CID 11515304.
  71. ^ Werndl, Charlotte (2009). Deterministic Versus Indeterministic Descriptions: Not That Different After All?. In: A. Hieke and H. Leitgeb (eds), Reduction, Abstraction, Analysis, Proceedings of the 31st International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium. Ontos, 63–78.
  72. ^ J. Glimm, D. Sharp, Stochastic Differential Equations: Selected Applications in Continuum Physics, in: R.A. Carmona, B. Rozovskii (ed.) Stochastic Partial Differential Equations: Six Perspectives, American Mathematical Society (1998) ISBN 0-8218-0806-0[page needed]
  73. ^ "Struggling with quantum logic: Q&A with Aaron O'Connell".
  74. ^ Heisenberg, Werner (1949). Physikalische Prinzipien der Quantentheorie [Physical Principles of Quantum Theory]. Leipzig: Hirzel/University of Chicago Press. p. 4. ISBN 9780486601137.
  75. ^ a b Grand Design (2010), p. 32: "the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets...so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion", and p. 72: "Quantum physics might seem to undermine the idea that nature is governed by laws, but that is not the case. Instead it leads us to accept a new form of determinism: Given the state of a system at some time, the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty." (discussing a Many worlds interpretation)
  76. ^ "Scientific American, "What is Quantum Mechanics Good For?"". Scientific American.
  77. ^ Albert Einstein insisted that, "I am convinced God does not play dice" in a private letter to Max Born, 4 December 1926, Albert Einstein Archives 19 August 2010 at the Wayback Machine reel 8, item 180
  78. ^ Jabs, Arthur (2016). "A conjecture concerning determinism, reduction, and measurement in quantum mechanics". Quantum Studies: Mathematics and Foundations. 3 (4): 279–292. arXiv:1204.0614. doi:10.1007/s40509-016-0077-7. S2CID 32523066.
  79. ^ Zeilinger, Anton (2010). Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation (1st ed.). 18 West 18th Street, New York 10011: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 261. ISBN 978-0-374-23966-4. A new picture of the world must encompass three properties that evidently seem to play a significant role in quantum experiments[...]The second important property of the world that we always implicitly assume is the freedom of the individual experimentalist. This is the assumption of free will. It is a free decision what measurement one wants to perform.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  80. ^ Gisin, Nicolas (2014). Quantum Chance: Nonlocality, Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels. Switzerland: Sringer International Publishing. p. 90. ISBN 978-3-319-05472-8. not only does free will exist, but it is a prerequisite for science, philosophy, and our very ability to think rationally in a meaningful way. Without free will, there could be no rational thought. As a consequence, it is quite simply impossible for science and philosophy to deny free will.
  81. ^ BBC Radio interview with Paul Davies, 1985: "There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it involves absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the 'decision' by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears."
  82. ^ Hossenfelder, Sabine; Palmer, Tim (2020). "Rethinking Superdeterminism". Frontiers in Physics. 8: 139. arXiv:1912.06462. Bibcode:2020FrP.....8..139P. doi:10.3389/fphy.2020.00139. ISSN 2296-424X.
  83. ^ Bishop, Robert C. (2011). "Chaos, Indeterminism, and Free Will". In Kane, Robert (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (Second ed.). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 90. ISBN 9780195399691. OCLC 653483691. The key question is whether to understand the nature of this probability as epistemic or ontic. Along epistemic lines, one possibility is that there is some additional factor (i.e., a hidden mechanism) such that once we discover and understand this factor, we would be able to predict the observed behavior of the quantum stoplight with certainty (physicists call this approach a "hidden variable theory"; see, e.g., Bell 1987, 1–13, 29–39; Bohm 1952a, 1952b; Bohm and Hiley 1993; Bub 1997, 40–114, Holland 1993; see also the preceding essay in this volume by Hodgson). Or perhaps there is an interaction with the broader environment (e.g., neighboring buildings, trees) that we have not taken into account in our observations that explains how these probabilities arise (physicists call this approach decoherence or consistent histories15). Under either of these approaches, we would interpret the observed indeterminism in the behavior of stoplights as an expression of our ignorance about the actual workings. Under an ignorance interpretation, indeterminism would not be a fundamental feature of quantum stoplights, but merely epistemic in nature due to our lack of knowledge about the system. Quantum stoplights would turn to be deterministic after all.
  84. ^ Baggott, Jim E. (2004). "Complementarity and Entanglement". Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy, and the Meaning of Quantum Theory. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 203. ISBN 978-0-19-852536-3. OCLC 52486237. So, was Einstein wrong? In the sense that the EPR paper argued in favor of an objective reality for each quantum particle in an entangled pair independent of the other and of the measuring device, the answer must be yes. But if Einstein was wrong to hold to the realist's belief that the physics of the universe should be objective and deterministic, it must be acknowledged that no answer exists for such a question. It is in the nature of theoretical science that there can be no such thing as certainty. A theory is only "true" for as long as the majority of the scientific community maintain a consensus view that the theory is the one best able to explain the observations. And the story of quantum theory is not over yet.

Bibliography

  • Daniel Dennett (2003) Freedom Evolves. Viking Penguin.
  • John Earman (2007) "Aspects of Determinism in Modern Physics" in Butterfield, J., and Earman, J., eds., Philosophy of Physics, Part B. North Holland: 1369–1434.
  • George Ellis (2005) "Physics and the Real World", Physics Today.
  • Epstein, J.M. (1999). "Agent Based Models and Generative Social Science". Complexity. IV (5): 41–60. Bibcode:1999Cmplx...4e..41E. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.118.546. doi:10.1002/(sici)1099-0526(199905/06)4:5<41::aid-cplx9>3.0.co;2-f.
  • Epstein, J.M. and Axtell R. (1996) Growing Artificial Societies – Social Science from the Bottom. MIT Press.
  • Harris, James A. (2005) Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy. Clarendon Press.
  • Kenrick, D. T.; Li, N. P.; Butner, J. (2003). "Dynamical evolutionary psychology: Individual decision rules and emergent social norms" (PDF). Psychological Review. 110 (1): 3–28. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.526.5218. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.110.1.3. PMID 12529056. S2CID 43306158.
  • Albert Messiah, Quantum Mechanics, English translation by G. M. Temmer of Mécanique Quantique, 1966, John Wiley and Sons, vol. I, chapter IV, section III.
  • Ernest Nagel (3 March 1960). "Determinism in history". Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 20 (3): 291–317. doi:10.2307/2105051. JSTOR 2105051. (Online version found here)
  • John T Roberts (2006). "Determinism". In Sahotra Sarkar; Jessica Pfeifer (eds.). The Philosophy of Science: A-M. Taylor & Francis. pp. 197 ff. ISBN 978-0415977098.
  • Nowak A., Vallacher R.R., Tesser A., Borkowski W., (2000) "Society of Self: The emergence of collective properties in self-structure", Psychological Review 107.

Further reading

  • George Musser, "Is the Cosmos Random? (Einstein's assertion that God does not play dice with the universe has been misinterpreted)", Scientific American, vol. 313, no. 3 (September 2015), pp. 88–93.

External links

  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Causal Determinism
  • from the Dictionary of the History of Ideas
  • Philosopher Ted Honderich's Determinism web resource
  • Determinism on Information Philosopher
  • The Society of Natural Science 26 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • Determinism and Free Will in Judaism
  • Snooker, Pool, and Determinism

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This article is about the general notion of determinism in philosophy For other uses see Determinism disambiguation Not to be confused with Fatalism Predeterminism Predictability or Theological determinism Determinism is a philosophical view where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism otherwise called nondeterminism or randomness Determinism is often contrasted with free will although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible 1 2 Determinism is often used to mean causal determinism which in physics is known as cause and effect This is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state of an object or event is completely determined by its prior states This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below Debates about determinism often concern the scope of determined systems some maintain that the entire universe is a single determinate system and others identifying more limited determinate systems or multiverse Historical debates involve many philosophical positions and varieties of determinism They include debates concerning determinism and free will technically denoted as compatibilistic allowing the two to coexist and incompatibilistic denying their coexistence is a possibility Determinism should not be confused with the self determination of human actions by reasons motives and desires Determinism is about interactions which affect our cognitive processes in our life 3 It is about the cause and the result of what we have done Cause and result are always bounded together in cognitive processes It assumes that if an observer has sufficient information about an object or human being that such an observer might be able to predict every consequent move of that object or human being Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible Contents 1 Varieties 1 1 Causal 1 1 1 Nomological 1 1 2 Necessitarianism 1 2 Predeterminism 1 2 1 Biological 1 3 Fatalism 1 4 Theological determinism 1 5 Adequate determinism 1 6 Many worlds 1 7 Philosophical varieties 1 7 1 Determinism in nature nurture controversy 1 7 2 Determinism and prediction 2 Structural determinism 2 1 With free will 2 2 With the soul 2 3 With ethics and morality 3 History 3 1 Western tradition 3 1 1 Newtonian mechanics 3 2 Eastern tradition 3 2 1 Ajivika 3 2 2 Buddhism 4 Modern scientific perspective 4 1 Generative processes 4 2 Compatibility with the existence of science 4 3 Mathematical models 4 4 Quantum and classical mechanics 4 4 1 Day to day physics 4 4 2 Quantum realm 5 See also 6 References 6 1 Notes 6 2 Bibliography 7 Further reading 8 External linksVarieties Edit Determinism may commonly refer to any of the following viewpoints Causal EditCausal determinism sometimes synonymous with historical determinism a sort of path dependence is the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature 4 However it is a broad enough term to consider that 5 One s deliberations choices and actions will often be necessary links in the causal chain that brings something about In other words even though our deliberations choices and actions are themselves determined like everything else it is still the case according to causal determinism that the occurrence or existence of yet other things depends upon our deliberating choosing and acting in a certain way Causal determinism proposes that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe The relation between events may not be specified nor the origin of that universe Causal determinists believe that there is nothing in the universe that has no cause or is self caused Causal determinism has also been considered more generally as the idea that everything that happens or exists is caused by antecedent conditions 6 In the case of nomological determinism these conditions are considered events also implying that the future is determined completely by preceding events a combination of prior states of the universe and the laws of nature 4 Yet they can also be considered metaphysical of origin such as in the case of theological determinism 5 Many philosophical theories of determinism frame themselves with the idea that reality follows a sort of predetermined path Nomological Edit Nomological determinism generally synonymous with physical determinism its opposite being physical indeterminism the most common form of causal determinism is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events Nomological determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace s demon 7 Nomological determinism is sometimes called scientific determinism although that is a misnomer Necessitarianism Edit Necessitarianism is closely related to the causal determinism described above It is a metaphysical principle that denies all mere possibility there is exactly one way for the world to be Leucippus claimed there were no uncaused events and that everything occurs for a reason and by necessity 8 Predeterminism Edit Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance 9 10 The concept is often argued by invoking causal determinism implying that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe In the case of predeterminism this chain of events has been pre established and human actions cannot interfere with the outcomes of this pre established chain Predeterminism can be used to mean such pre established causal determinism in which case it is categorized as a specific type of determinism 9 11 It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism in the context of its capacity to determine future events 9 12 Despite this predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism 13 14 Biological Edit The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity in which case it represents a form of biological determinism sometimes called genetic determinism 15 Biological determinism is the idea that each of human behaviors beliefs and desires are fixed by human genetic nature Friedrich Nietzsche explained that a human being is determined by his her body since he she is subject to passions impulsions and instincts 16 Fatalism Edit Fatalism is normally distinguished from determinism 17 as a form of teleological determinism Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen so that humans have no control over their future Fate has arbitrary power and need not follow any causal or otherwise deterministic laws 6 Types of fatalism include hard theological determinism and the idea of predestination where there is a God who determines all that humans will do This may be accomplished either by knowing their actions in advance via some form of omniscience 18 or by decreeing their actions in advance 19 Theological determinism Edit Theological determinism is a form of determinism that holds that all events that happen are either preordained i e predestined to happen by a monotheistic deity or are destined to occur given its omniscience Two forms of theological determinism exist referred to as strong and weak theological determinism 20 Strong theological determinism is based on the concept of a creator deity dictating all events in history everything that happens has been predestined to happen by an omniscient omnipotent divinity 21 Weak theological determinism is based on the concept of divine foreknowledge because God s omniscience is perfect what God knows about the future will inevitably happen which means consequently that the future is already fixed 22 There exist slight variations on this categorisation however Some claim either that theological determinism requires predestination of all events and outcomes by the divinity i e they do not classify the weaker version as theological determinism unless libertarian free will is assumed to be denied as a consequence or that the weaker version does not constitute theological determinism at all 23 With respect to free will theological determinism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge of all true propositions including propositions about our future actions more minimal criteria designed to encapsulate all forms of theological determinism 24 Theological determinism can also be seen as a form of causal determinism in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God 5 Some have asserted that Augustine of Hippo introduced theological determinism into Christianity in 412 CE whereas all prior Christian authors supported free will against Stoic and Gnostic determinism 25 However there are many Biblical passages that seem to support the idea of some kind of theological determinism Adequate determinism Edit Adequate determinism is the idea because of quantum decoherence that quantum indeterminacy can be ignored for most macroscopic events Random quantum events average out in the limit of large numbers of particles where the laws of quantum mechanics asymptotically approach the laws of classical mechanics 26 Stephen Hawking explains a similar idea he says that the microscopic world of quantum mechanics is one of determined probabilities That is quantum effects rarely alter the predictions of classical mechanics which are quite accurate albeit still not perfectly certain at larger scales 27 Something as large as an animal cell then would be adequately determined even in light of quantum indeterminacy citation needed Many worlds Edit The many worlds interpretation accepts the linear causal sets of sequential events with adequate consistency yet also suggests constant forking of causal chains creating multiple universes to account for multiple outcomes from single events 28 Meaning the causal set of events leading to the present are all valid yet appear as a singular linear time stream within a much broader unseen conic probability field of other outcomes that split off from the locally observed timeline Under this model causal sets are still consistent yet not exclusive to singular iterated outcomes The interpretation sidesteps the exclusive retrospective causal chain problem of could not have done otherwise by suggesting the other outcome does exist in a set of parallel universe time streams that split off when the action occurred This theory is sometimes described with the example of agent based choices but more involved models argue that recursive causal splitting occurs with all particle wave functions at play 29 This model is highly contested with multiple objections from the scientific community Philosophical varieties Edit Determinism in nature nurture controversy Edit Nature and nurture interact in humans A scientist looking at a sculpture after some time does not ask whether we are seeing the effects of the starting materials or of environmental influences Although some of the above forms of determinism concern human behaviors and cognition others frame themselves as an answer to the debate on nature and nurture They will suggest that one factor will entirely determine behavior As scientific understanding has grown however the strongest versions of these theories have been widely rejected as a single cause fallacy 30 In other words the modern deterministic theories attempt to explain how the interaction of both nature and nurture is entirely predictable The concept of heritability has been helpful in making this distinction Biological determinism sometimes called genetic determinism is the idea that each of human behaviors beliefs and desires are fixed by human genetic nature Behaviorism involves the idea that all behavior can be traced to specific causes either environmental or reflexive John B Watson and B F Skinner developed this nurture focused determinism Cultural materialism contends that the physical world impacts and sets constraints on human behavior Cultural determinism along with social determinism is the nurture focused theory that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are Environmental determinism also known as climatic or geographical determinism proposes that the physical environment rather than social conditions determines culture Supporters of environmental determinism often quantify also support behavioral determinism Key proponents of this notion have included Ellen Churchill Semple Ellsworth Huntington Thomas Griffith Taylor and possibly Jared Diamond although his status as an environmental determinist is debated 31 Determinism and prediction Edit A technological determinist might suggest that technology like the mobile phone is the greatest factor shaping human civilization Other deterministic opinion theories actually seek only to highlight the importance of a particular factor in predicting the future These theories often use the factor as a sort of guide or constraint on the future They need not suppose that complete knowledge of that one factor would allow us to make perfect predictions Psychological determinism can mean that humans must act according to reason but it can also be synonymous with some sort of psychological egoism The latter is the view that humans will always act according to their perceived best interest Linguistic determinism proposes that language determines or at least limits the things that humans can think and say and thus know The Sapir Whorf hypothesis argues that individuals experience the world based on the grammatical structures they habitually use Economic determinism attributes primacy to economic structure over politics in the development of human history It is associated with the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx Technological determinism is the theory that a society s technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values Structural determinism EditStructural determinism is the philosophical view that actions events and processes are predicated on and determined by structural factors 32 Given any particular structure or set of estimable components it is a concept that emphasizes rational and predictable outcomes Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela popularized the notion writing that a living system s general order is maintained via a circular process of ongoing self referral and thus its organization and structure defines the changes it undergoes 33 According to the authors a system can undergo changes of state alteration of structure without loss of identity or disintegrations alteration of structure with loss of identity Such changes or disintegrations are not ascertained by the elements of the disturbing agent as each disturbance will only trigger responses in the respective system which in turn are determined by each system s own structure On an individualistic level what this means is that human beings as free and independent entities are triggered to react by external stimuli or change in circumstance However their own internal state and existing physical and mental capacities determine their responses to those triggers On a much broader societal level structural determinists believe that larger issues in the society especially those pertaining to minorities and subjugated communities are predominantly assessed through existing structural conditions making change of prevailing conditions difficult and sometimes outright impossible For example the concept has been applied to the politics of race in the United States of America and other Western countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia with structural determinists lamenting structural factors for the prevalence of racism in these countries 34 Additionally Marxists have conceptualized the writings of Karl Marx within the context of structural determinism as well For example Louis Althusser a structural Marxist argues that the state in its political economic and legal structures reproduces the discourse of capitalism in turn allowing for the burgeoning of capitalistic structures Proponents of the notion highlight the usefulness of structural determinism to study complicated issues related to race and gender as it highlights often gilded structural conditions that block meaningful change 35 Critics call it too rigid reductionist and inflexible Additionally they also criticize the notion for overemphasizing deterministic forces such as structure over the role of human agency and the ability of the people to act These critics argue that politicians academics and social activists have the capability to bring about significant change despite stringent structural conditions With free will Edit Main article Free willPhilosophers have debated both the truth of determinism and the truth of free will This creates the four possible positions in the figure Compatibilism refers to the view that free will is in some sense compatible with determinism The three incompatibilist positions deny this possibility The hard incompatibilists hold that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism the libertarians that determinism does not hold and free will might exist and the hard determinists that determinism does hold and free will does not exist The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was a determinist thinker and argued that human freedom can be achieved through knowledge of the causes that determine our desire and affections He defined human servitude as the state of bondage of anyone who is aware of their own desires but ignorant of the causes that determined them However the free or virtuous person becomes capable through reason and knowledge to be genuinely free even as they are being determined For the Dutch philosopher acting out of one s own internal necessity is genuine freedom while being driven by exterior determinations is akin to bondage Spinoza s thoughts on human servitude and liberty are respectively detailed in the fourth 36 and fifth 37 volumes of his work Ethics The standard argument against free will according to philosopher J J C Smart focuses on the implications of determinism for free will 38 He suggests free will is denied whether determinism is true or not He says that if determinism is true all actions are predicted and no one is assumed to be free however if determinism is false all actions are presumed to be random and as such no one seems free because they have no part in controlling what happens With the soul Edit Some determinists argue that materialism does not present a complete understanding of the universe because while it can describe determinate interactions among material things it ignores the minds or souls of conscious beings A number of positions can be delineated Immaterial souls are all that exist idealism Immaterial souls exist and exert a non deterministic causal influence on bodies traditional free will interactionist dualism 39 40 Immaterial souls exist but are part of a deterministic framework Immaterial souls exist but exert no causal influence free or determined epiphenomenalism occasionalism Immaterial souls do not exist there is no mind body dichotomy and there is a materialistic explanation for intuitions to the contrary With ethics and morality Edit Another topic of debate is the implication that determinism has on morality Philosopher and incompatibilist Peter van Inwagen introduced this thesis when arguments that free will is required for moral judgments as such 41 The moral judgment that X should not have been done implies that something else should have been done instead That something else should have been done instead implies that there was something else to do That there was something else to do implies that something else could have been done That something else could have been done implies that there is free will If there is no free will to have done other than X we cannot make the moral judgment that X should not have been done History EditDeterminism was developed by the Greek philosophers during the 7th and 6th centuries BCE by the Pre socratic philosophers Heraclitus and Leucippus later Aristotle and mainly by the Stoics Some of the main philosophers who have dealt with this issue are Marcus Aurelius Omar Khayyam Thomas Hobbes Baruch Spinoza Gottfried Leibniz David Hume Baron d Holbach Paul Heinrich Dietrich Pierre Simon Laplace Arthur Schopenhauer William James Friedrich Nietzsche Albert Einstein Niels Bohr Ralph Waldo Emerson and more recently John Searle Ted Honderich and Daniel Dennett Mecca Chiesa notes that the probabilistic or selectionistic determinism of B F Skinner comprised a wholly separate conception of determinism that was not mechanistic at all Mechanistic determinism assumes that every event has an unbroken chain of prior occurrences but a selectionistic or probabilistic model does not 42 43 Western tradition Edit In the West some elements of determinism have been expressed in Greece from the 6th century BCE by the Presocratics Heraclitus 44 and Leucippus 45 The first notions of determinism appears to originate with the Stoics as part of their theory of universal causal determinism 46 The resulting philosophical debates which involved the confluence of elements of Aristotelian Ethics with Stoic psychology led in the 1st 3rd centuries CE in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias to the first recorded Western debate over determinism and freedom 47 an issue that is known in theology as the paradox of free will The writings of Epictetus as well as middle Platonist and early Christian thought were instrumental in this development 48 Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides said of the deterministic implications of an omniscient god 49 Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad If thou sayest He knows then it necessarily follows that that man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act otherwise God s knowledge would be imperfect 50 Newtonian mechanics Edit This section s tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia See Wikipedia s guide to writing better articles for suggestions April 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian mechanics physics which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed laws The billiard ball hypothesis a product of Newtonian physics argues that once the initial conditions of the universe have been established the rest of the history of the universe follows inevitably If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur Laplace s demon In this sense the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as the rolling balls on a billiard table moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce predictable results Whether or not it is all encompassing in so doing Newtonian mechanics deals only with caused events for example if an object begins in a known position and is hit dead on by an object with some known velocity then it will be pushed straight toward another predictable point If it goes somewhere else the Newtonians argue one must question one s measurements of the original position of the object the exact direction of the striking object gravitational or other fields that were inadvertently ignored etc Then they maintain repeated experiments and improvements in accuracy will always bring one s observations closer to the theoretically predicted results When dealing with situations on an ordinary human scale Newtonian physics has been successful But it fails as velocities become some substantial fraction of the speed of light and when interactions at the atomic scale are studied Before the discovery of quantum effects and other challenges to Newtonian physics uncertainty was always a term that applied to the accuracy of human knowledge about causes and effects and not to the causes and effects themselves Newtonian mechanics as well as any following physical theories are results of observations and experiments and so they describe how it all works within a tolerance However old western scientists believed if there are any logical connections found between an observed cause and effect there must be also some absolute natural laws behind Belief in perfect natural laws driving everything instead of just describing what we should expect led to searching for a set of universal simple laws that rule the world This movement significantly encouraged deterministic views in Western philosophy 51 as well as the related theological views of classical pantheism Eastern tradition Edit This section possibly contains original research Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations Statements consisting only of original research should be removed December 2010 Learn how and when to remove this template message The idea that the entire universe is a deterministic system has been articulated in both Eastern and non Eastern religions philosophy and literature The ancient Arabs that inhabited the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam used to profess a widespread belief in fatalism ḳadar alongside a fearful consideration for the sky and the stars as divine beings which they held to be ultimately responsible for every phenomena that occurs on Earth and for the destiny of humankind 52 Accordingly they shaped their entire lives in accordance with their interpretations of astral configurations and phenomena 52 In the I Ching and philosophical Taoism the ebb and flow of favorable and unfavorable conditions suggests the path of least resistance is effortless see Wu wei In the philosophical schools of the Indian Subcontinent the concept of karma deals with similar philosophical issues to the Western concept of determinism Karma is understood as a spiritual mechanism which causes the eternal cycle of birth death and rebirth saṃsara 53 Karma either positive or negative accumulates according to an individual s actions throughout their life and at their death determines the nature of their next life in the cycle of Saṃsara 53 Most major religions originating in India hold this belief to some degree most notably Hinduism 53 Jainism Sikhism and Buddhism The views on the interaction of karma and free will are numerous and diverge from each other For example in Sikhism god s grace gained through worship can erase one s karmic debts a belief which reconciles the principle of karma with a monotheistic god one must freely choose to worship 54 Jainists believe in compatibilism in which the cycle of Saṃsara is a completely mechanistic process occurring without any divine intervention The Jains hold an atomic view of reality in which particles of karma form the fundamental microscopic building material of the universe Ajivika Edit In ancient India the Ajivika school of philosophy founded by Makkhali Gosala around 500 BCE otherwise referred to as Ajivikism in Western scholarship 55 upheld the Niyati Fate doctrine of absolute fatalism or determinism 55 56 57 which negates the existence of free will and karma and is therefore considered one of the nastika or heterodox schools of Indian philosophy 55 56 57 The oldest descriptions of the Ajivika fatalists and their founder Gosala can be found both in the Buddhist and Jaina scriptures of ancient India 55 57 The predetermined fate of living beings and the impossibility to achieve liberation moksha from the eternal cycle of birth death and rebirth was the major distinctive philosophical and metaphysical doctrine of this heterodox school of Indian philosophy 55 56 57 annoverated among the other Sramaṇa movements that emerged in India during the Second urbanization 600 200 BCE 55 Buddhism Edit Buddhist philosophy contains several concepts which some scholars by whom describe as deterministic to various levels One concept which is argued by whom to support a hard determinism is the idea of dependent origination which claims that all phenomena dharma are necessarily caused by some other phenomenon which it can be said to be dependent on like links in a massive chain In traditional Buddhist philosophy this concept is used to explain the functioning of the cycle of saṃsara all actions exert a karmic force which will manifest results in future lives In other words righteous or unrighteous actions in one life will necessarily cause good or bad responses in another 58 Another Buddhist concept which many scholars perceive to be deterministic is the idea of non self or anatta 59 In Buddhism attaining enlightenment involves one realizing that in humans there is no fundamental core of being which can be called the soul and that humans are instead made of several constantly changing factors which bind them to the cycle of Saṃsara 59 Some scholars argue that the concept of non self necessarily disproves the ideas of free will and moral culpability If there is no autonomous self in this view and all events are necessarily and unchangeably caused by others then no type of autonomy can be said to exist moral or otherwise However other scholars disagree claiming that the Buddhist conception of the universe allows for a form of compatibilism Buddhism perceives reality occurring on two different levels the ultimate reality which can only be truly understood by the enlightened and the illusory and false material reality Therefore Buddhism perceives free will as a notion belonging to material reality while concepts like non self and dependent origination belong to the ultimate reality the transition between the two can be truly understood Buddhists claim by one who has attained enlightenment 60 Modern scientific perspective EditGenerative processes Edit Main article Emergence Although it was once thought by scientists that any indeterminism in quantum mechanics occurred at too small a scale to influence biological or neurological systems there is indication that nervous systems are influenced by quantum indeterminism due to chaos theory 61 It is unclear what implications this has for the problem of free will given various possible reactions to the problem in the first place 62 Many biologists do not grant determinism Christof Koch for instance argues against it and in favour of libertarian free will by making arguments based on generative processes emergence 63 Other proponents of emergentist or generative philosophy cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology argue that a certain form of determinism not necessarily causal is true 64 65 66 67 They suggest instead that an illusion of free will is experienced due to the generation of infinite behaviour from the interaction of finite deterministic set of rules and parameters Thus the unpredictability of the emerging behaviour from deterministic processes leads to a perception of free will even though free will as an ontological entity does not exist 64 65 66 67 In Conway s Game of Life the interaction of just four simple rules creates patterns that seem somehow alive As an illustration the strategy board games chess and Go have rigorous rules in which no information such as cards face values is hidden from either player and no random events such as dice rolling happen within the game Yet chess and especially Go with its extremely simple deterministic rules can still have an extremely large number of unpredictable moves When chess is simplified to 7 or fewer pieces however endgame tables are available that dictate which moves to play to achieve a perfect game This implies that given a less complex environment with the original 32 pieces reduced to 7 or fewer pieces a perfectly predictable game of chess is possible In this scenario the winning player can announce that a checkmate will happen within a given number of moves assuming a perfect defense by the losing player or fewer moves if the defending player chooses sub optimal moves as the game progresses into its inevitable predicted conclusion By this analogy it is suggested the experience of free will emerges from the interaction of finite rules and deterministic parameters that generate nearly infinite and practically unpredictable behavioural responses In theory if all these events could be accounted for and there were a known way to evaluate these events the seemingly unpredictable behaviour would become predictable 64 65 66 67 Another hands on example of generative processes is John Horton Conway s playable Game of Life 68 Nassim Taleb is wary of such models and coined the term ludic fallacy Compatibility with the existence of science Edit Certain philosophers of science argue that while causal determinism in which everything including the brain mind is subject to the laws of causality is compatible with minds capable of science fatalism and predestination is not These philosophers make the distinction that causal determinism means that each step is determined by the step before and therefore allows sensory input from observational data to determine what conclusions the brain reaches while fatalism in which the steps between do not connect an initial cause to the results would make it impossible for observational data to correct false hypotheses This is often combined with the argument that if the brain had fixed views and the arguments were mere after constructs with no causal effect on the conclusions science would have been impossible and the use of arguments would have been a meaningless waste of energy with no persuasive effect on brains with fixed views 69 Mathematical models Edit Many mathematical models of physical systems are deterministic This is true of most models involving differential equations notably those measuring rate of change over time Mathematical models that are not deterministic because they involve randomness are called stochastic Because of sensitive dependence on initial conditions some deterministic models may appear to behave non deterministically in such cases a deterministic interpretation of the model may not be useful due to numerical instability and a finite amount of precision in measurement Such considerations can motivate the consideration of a stochastic model even though the underlying system is governed by deterministic equations 70 71 72 Quantum and classical mechanics Edit Day to day physics Edit Further information Macroscopic quantum phenomena Since the beginning of the 20th century quantum mechanics the physics of the extremely small has revealed previously concealed aspects of events Before that Newtonian physics the physics of everyday life dominated Taken in isolation rather than as an approximation to quantum mechanics Newtonian physics depicts a universe in which objects move in perfectly determined ways At the scale where humans exist and interact with the universe Newtonian mechanics remain useful and make relatively accurate predictions e g calculating the trajectory of a bullet But whereas in theory absolute knowledge of the forces accelerating a bullet would produce an absolutely accurate prediction of its path modern quantum mechanics casts reasonable doubt on this main thesis of determinism Quantum realm Edit Quantum physics works differently in many ways from Newtonian physics Physicist Aaron D O Connell explains that understanding our universe at such small scales as atoms requires a different logic than day to day life does O Connell does not deny that it is all interconnected the scale of human existence ultimately does emerge from the quantum scale O Connell argues that we must simply use different models and constructs when dealing with the quantum world 73 Quantum mechanics is the product of a careful application of the scientific method logic and empiricism The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is frequently confused with the observer effect The uncertainty principle actually describes how precisely we may measure the position and momentum of a particle at the same time if we increase the accuracy in measuring one quantity we are forced to lose accuracy in measuring the other These uncertainty relations give us that measure of freedom from the limitations of classical concepts which is necessary for a consistent description of atomic processes 74 Although it is not possible to predict the trajectory of any one particle they all obey determined probabilities which do permit some prediction This is where statistical mechanics come into play and where physicists begin to require rather unintuitive mental models A particle s path simply cannot be exactly specified in its full quantum description Path is a classical practical attribute in our everyday life but one that quantum particles do not meaningfully possess The probabilities discovered in quantum mechanics do nevertheless arise from measurement of the perceived path of the particle As Stephen Hawking explains the result is not traditional determinism but rather determined probabilities 75 In some cases a quantum particle may indeed trace an exact path and the probability of finding the particles in that path is one certain to be true In fact as far as prediction goes the quantum development is at least as predictable as the classical motion but the key is that it describes wave functions that cannot be easily expressed in ordinary language As far as the thesis of determinism is concerned these probabilities at least are quite determined These findings from quantum mechanics have found many applications and allow us to build transistors and lasers Put another way personal computers Blu ray players and the Internet all work because humankind discovered the determined probabilities of the quantum world 76 On the topic of predictable probabilities the double slit experiments are a popular example Photons are fired one by one through a double slit apparatus at a distant screen They do not arrive at any single point nor even the two points lined up with the slits the way it might be expected of bullets fired by a fixed gun at a distant target Instead the light arrives in varying concentrations at widely separated points and the distribution of its collisions with the target can be calculated reliably In that sense the behavior of light in this apparatus is deterministic but there is no way to predict where in the resulting interference pattern any individual photon will make its contribution although there may be ways to use weak measurement to acquire more information without violating the uncertainty principle Some including Albert Einstein have argued that the inability to predict any more than probabilities is simply due to ignorance 77 The idea is that beyond the conditions and laws can be observed or deduced there are also hidden factors or hidden variables that determine absolutely in which order photons reach the detector screen They argue that the course of the universe is absolutely determined but that humans are screened from knowledge of the determinative factors So they say it only appears that things proceed in a merely probabilistically determinative way In actuality they proceed in an absolutely deterministic way John S Bell criticized Einstein s work in his famous Bell s theorem which under a strict set of assumptions demonstrates that quantum mechanics can make statistical predictions that would be violated if local hidden variables really existed A number of experiments have tried to verify such predictions and so far they do not appear to be violated Current experiments continue to verify the result including the 2015 Loophole Free Test that plugged all known sources of error and the 2017 Cosmic Bell Test experiment that used cosmic data streaming from different directions toward the Earth precluding the possibility the sources of data could have had prior interactions Bell s theorem has been criticized from the perspective of its strict set of assumptions A foundational assumption to quantum mechanics is the Principle of locality To abandon this assumption would require the construction of a non local hidden variable theory Therefore it is possible to augment quantum mechanics with non local hidden variables to achieve a deterministic theory that is in agreement with experiment 78 An example is the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics Bohm s Interpretation though violates special relativity and it is highly controversial whether or not it can be reconciled without giving up on determinism Another foundational assumption to quantum mechanics is that of free will 79 which has been argued 80 to be foundational to the scientific method as a whole Bell acknowledged that abandoning this assumption would both allow for the maintenance of determinism as well as locality 81 This perspective is known as superdeterminism and is defended by some physicists such as Sabine Hossenfelder and Tim Palmer 82 More advanced variations on these arguments include quantum contextuality by Bell Simon B Kochen and Ernst Specker which argues that hidden variable theories cannot be sensible meaning that the values of the hidden variables inherently depend on the devices used to measure them This debate is relevant because there are possibly specific situations in which the arrival of an electron at a screen at a certain point and time would trigger one event whereas its arrival at another point would trigger an entirely different event e g see Schrodinger s cat a thought experiment used as part of a deeper debate Thus quantum physics casts reasonable doubt on the traditional determinism of classical Newtonian physics in so far as reality does not seem to be absolutely determined This was the subject of the famous Bohr Einstein debates between Einstein and Niels Bohr and there is still no consensus 83 84 Adequate determinism see Varieties above is the reason that Stephen Hawking calls libertarian free will just an illusion 75 See also EditAmor fati Calvinism Digital physics False necessity Fractal Game theory Ilya Prigogine Interpretations of quantum mechanics Lazy reason Naturalism literature Notes from Underground Open theism Philosophical interpretation of classical physics Positivism Radical behaviorism Superdeterminism Voluntarism Wheeler Feynman absorber theoryReferences EditNotes Edit For example see Franklin Richard Langdon 1968 Freewill and Determinism A Study of Rival Conceptions of Man Routledge amp K Paul ISBN 9780710031570 Conceptually 20 January 2019 Determinism Explanation and examples conceptually org Retrieved 20 January 2019 Ismael Jenann 1 October 2019 Determinism Counterpredictive Devices and the Impossibility of Laplacean Intelligences The Monist 102 4 478 498 doi 10 1093 monist onz021 ISSN 0026 9662 a b Hoefer Carl 1 April 2008 Causal Determinism In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2009 ed a b c Eshleman Andrew 18 November 2009 Moral Responsibility In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2009 ed a b Arguments for Incompatibilism Arguments for Incompatibilism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University 2018 Laplace posited that an omniscient observer knowing with infinite precision all the positions and velocities of every particle in the universe could predict the future entirely For a discussion see Robert C Solomon Kathleen M Higgins 2009 Free will and determinism The Big Questions A Short Introduction to Philosophy 8th ed Cengage Learning p 232 ISBN 978 0495595151 Another view of determinism is discussed by Ernest Nagel 1999 V Alternative descriptions of physical state The Structure of Science Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation 2nd ed Hackett pp 285 292 ISBN 978 0915144716 A theory is deterministic if and only if given its state variables for some initial period the theory logically determines a unique set of values for those variables for any other period Leucippus Fragment 569 from Fr 2 Actius I 25 4 a b c McKewan Jaclyn 2009 Evolution Chemical In H James Birx ed Predeterminism Encyclopedia of Time Science Philosophy Theology amp Culture Sage Publications Inc pp 1035 1036 doi 10 4135 9781412963961 n191 ISBN 9781412941648 Predeterminism Oxford Dictionaries Oxford Dictionaries April 2010 Archived from the original on 4 September 2012 Retrieved 20 December 2012 See also Predeterminism Collins English Dictionary Collins Retrieved 20 December 2012 Some Varieties of Free Will and Determinism Philosophy 302 Ethics philosophy lander edu Retrieved 19 December 2012 Predeterminism the philosophical and theological view that combines God with determinism On this doctrine events throughout eternity have been foreordained by some supernatural power in a causal sequence See for example Hooft G 2001 How does god play dice Pre determinism at the Planck scale arXiv hep th 0104219 Predeterminism is here defined by the assumption that the experimenter s free will in deciding what to measure such as his choice to measure the x or the y component of an electron s spin is in fact limited by deterministic laws hence not free at all and Sukumar C V 1996 A new paradigm for science and architecture City 1 1 2 181 183 doi 10 1080 13604819608900044 Quantum Theory provided a beautiful description of the behaviour of isolated atoms and nuclei and small aggregates of elementary particles Modern science recognized that predisposition rather than predeterminism is what is widely prevalent in nature Borst C 1992 Leibniz and the Compatibilist Account of Free Will Studia Leibnitiana 24 1 49 58 JSTOR 40694201 Leibniz presents a clear case of a philosopher who does not think that predeterminism requires universal causal determinism Far Western Philosophy of Education Society 1971 Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Far Western Philosophy of Education Society Far Western Philosophy of Education Society p 12 Determinism is in essence the position which holds that all behavior is caused by prior behavior Predeterminism is the position which holds that all behavior is caused by conditions which predate behavior altogether such impersonal boundaries as the human conditions instincts the will of God inherent knowledge fate and such Predeterminism Merriam Webster Dictionary Merriam Webster Incorporated Retrieved 20 December 2012 See for example Ormond A T 1894 Freedom and psycho genesis Psychological Review 1 3 217 229 doi 10 1037 h0065249 The problem of predeterminism is one that involves the factors of heredity and environment and the point to be debated here is the relation of the present self that chooses to these predetermining agencies and Garris M D et al 1992 A Platform for Evolving Genetic Automata for Text Segmentation GNATS Science of Artificial Neural Networks 1710 714 724 Bibcode 1992SPIE 1710 714G doi 10 1117 12 140132 S2CID 62639035 However predeterminism is not completely avoided If the codes within the genotype are not designed properly then the organisms being evolved will be fundamentally handicapped Nietzsche Friedrich 1974 The Gay Science Vintage p 7 ISBN 978 0394719856 SEP Causal Determinism Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University 2016 Fischer John Martin 1989 God Foreknowledge and Freedom Stanford California Stanford University Press ISBN 1 55786 857 3 Watt Montgomery 1948 Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam London Luzac amp Co Anne Lockyer Jordan Anne Lockyer Jordan Neil Lockyer Edwin Tate Neil Lockyer Edwin Tate 2004 Philosophy of Religion for A Level OCR Edition Nelson Thornes p 211 ISBN 978 0 7487 8078 5 Retrieved 22 December 2012 Iannone Abel Pablo 2001 Determinism Dictionary of World Philosophy Taylor amp Francis p 194 ISBN 978 0 415 17995 9 Theological determinism or the doctrine of predestination the view that everything which happens has been predestined to happen by an omniscient omnipotent divinity A weaker version holds that though not predestined to happen everything that happens has been eternally known by virtue of the divine foreknowledge of an omniscient divinity If this divinity is also omnipotent as in the case of the Judeo Christian religions this weaker version is hard to distinguish from the previous one because though able to prevent what happens and knowing that it is going to happen God lets it happen To this advocates of free will reply that God permits it to happen in order to make room for the free will of humans Wentzel Van Huyssteen 2003 Theological determinism Encyclopedia of Science and Religion Vol 1 Macmillan Reference p 217 ISBN 978 0 02 865705 9 Retrieved 22 December 2012 Theological determinism constitutes a fifth kind of determinism There are two types of theological determinism both compatible with scientific and metaphysical determinism In the first God determines everything that happens either in one all determining single act at the initial creation of the universe or through continuous divine interactions with the world Either way the consequence is that everything that happens becomes God s action and determinism is closely linked to divine action and God s omnipotence According to the second type of theological determinism God has perfect knowledge of everything in the universe because God is omniscient And as some say because God is outside of time God has the capacity of knowing past present and future in one instance This means that God knows what will happen in the future And because God s omniscience is perfect what God knows about the future will inevitably happen which means consequently that the future is already fixed Raymond J VanArragon 2010 Key Terms in Philosophy of Religion Continuum International Publishing Group p 21 ISBN 978 1 4411 3867 5 Retrieved 22 December 2012 Theological determinism on the other hand claims that all events are determined by God On this view God decree that everything will go thus and so and ensure that everything goes that way so that ultimately God is the cause of everything that happens and everything that happens is part of God s plan We might think of God here as the all powerful movie director who writes script and causes everything to go accord with it We should note as an aside that there is some debate over what would be sufficient for theological determinism to be true Some people claim that God s merely knowing what will happen determines that it will while others believe that God must not only know but must also cause those events to occur in order for their occurrence to be determined Vihvelin Kadri 2011 Arguments for Incompatibilism In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Spring 2011 ed Wilson Kenneth 2018 Augustine s Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to Non free Free Will A Comprehensive Methodologyin the series Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 111 Tubingen Germany Mohr Siebeck pp 273 298 ISBN 9783161557538 The Information Philosopher Adequate Determinism from the site We are happy to agree with scientists and philosophers who feel that quantum effects are for the most part negligible in the macroscopic world We particularly agree that they are negligible when considering the causally determined will and the causally determined actions set in motion by decisions of that will Grand Design 2010 p 32 The molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets and p 72 Quantum physics might seem to undermine the idea that nature is governed by laws but that is not the case Instead it leads us to accept a new form of determinism Given the state of a system at some time the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty Emphasis in original discussing a many worlds interpretation Kent Adrian One world versus many the inadequacy of Everettian accounts of evolution probability and scientific confirmation Many worlds 2010 307 354 Vaidman Lev 2002 Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Inmaculada de Melo Martin 2005 Firing up the nature nurture controversy Bioethics and genetic determinism Journal of Medical Ethics 31 9 526 530 doi 10 1136 jme 2004 008417 PMC 1734214 PMID 16131554 Andrew Sluyter 2003 Neo Environmental Determinism Intellectual Damage Control and Nature Society Science Antipode 35 4 813 817 doi 10 1046 j 1467 8330 2003 00354 x Proulx J 2008 Structural determinism as hindrance to teachers learning Implications for teacher education Proceedings of PME 33 and PME NA 20 4 Leyland M L 1988 An introduction to some of the ideas of Humberto Maturana Journal of Family Therapy 10 4 357 374 doi 10 1046 j 1988 00323 x Tate W 1997 Critical Race Theory and Education History Theory and Implications PDF Review of Research in Education 22 195 247 doi 10 3102 0091732X022001195 S2CID 53626156 Archived PDF from the original on 19 August 2020 Pleasants N 2019 Free Will Determinism and the Problem of Structure and Agency in the Social Sciences Philosophy of the Social Sciences 49 3 30 doi 10 1177 0048393118814952 hdl 10871 34537 S2CID 149735710 Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage for when a man is a prey to his emotions he is not his own master but lies at the mercy of fortune so much so that he is often compelled while seeing that which is better for him to follow that which is worse Ethics Book IV Preface At length I pass to the remaining portion of my Ethics which is concerned with the way leading to freedom I shall therefore treat therein of the power of the reason showing how far the reason can control the emotions and what is the nature of Mental Freedom or Blessedness we shall then be able to see how much more powerful the wise man is than the ignorant Ethics book V Preface J J C Smart Free Will Praise and Blame Mind July 1961 pp 293 294 By soul is meant an autonomous immaterial agent that has the power to control the body but not to be controlled by the body this theory of determinism thus conceives of conscious agents in dualistic terms Therefore the soul stands to the activities of the individual agent s body as does the creator of the universe to the universe The creator of the universe put in motion a deterministic system of material entities that would if left to themselves carry out the chain of events determined by ordinary causation But the creator also provided for souls that could exert a causal force analogous to the primordial causal force and alter outcomes in the physical universe via the acts of their bodies Thus it emerges that no events in the physical universe are uncaused Some are caused entirely by the original creative act and the way it plays itself out through time and some are caused by the acts of created souls But those created souls were not created by means of physical processes involving ordinary causation They are another order of being entirely gifted with the power to modify the original creation However determinism is not necessarily limited to matter it can encompass energy as well The question of how these immaterial entities can act upon material entities is deeply involved in what is generally known as the mind body problem It is a significant problem which philosophers have not reached agreement about Free Will Free Will Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University 2022 van Inwagen Peter 2009 The Powers of Rational Beings Freedom of the Will Oxford page needed Chiesa Mecca 2004 Radical Behaviorism The Philosophy amp The Science Ringen J D 1993 Adaptation teleology and selection by consequences Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 60 1 3 15 doi 10 1901 jeab 1993 60 3 PMC 1322142 PMID 16812698 Stobaeus Eclogae I 5 Heraclitus Stobaeus Eclogae I 4 Leucippus Susanne Bobzien Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy Oxford 1998 chapter 1 Susanne Bobzien The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free Will Problem Phronesis 43 1998 Michael Frede A Free Will Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought Berkeley 2011 Though Moses Maimonides was not arguing against the existence of God but rather for the incompatibility between the full exercise by God of his omniscience and genuine human free will his argument is considered by some as affected by modal fallacy The Eight Chapters of Maimonides on Ethics Semonah Perakhim edited annotated and translated with an Introduction by Joseph I Gorfinkle pp 99 100 New York AMS Press 1966 Swartz Norman 2003 The Concept of Physical Law Chapter 10 Free Will and Determinism https www sfu ca philosophy physical law a b al Abbasi Abeer Abdullah August 2020 The Arabsʾ Visions of the Upper Realm Marburg Journal of Religion University of Marburg 22 2 1 28 doi 10 17192 mjr 2020 22 8301 ISSN 1612 2941 Retrieved 23 May 2022 a b c Bodewitz Henk 2019 Chapter 1 The Hindu Doctrine of Transmigration Its Origin and Background In Heilijgers Dory H Houben Jan E M van Kooij Karel eds Vedic Cosmology and Ethics Selected Studies Gonda Indological Studies Vol 19 Leiden and Boston Brill Publishers pp 3 19 doi 10 1163 9789004400139 002 ISBN 978 90 04 40013 9 ISSN 1382 3442 House H Wayne 1991 Resurrection Reincarnation and Humanness Bibliotheca Sacra 148 590 Retrieved 29 November 2013 a b c d e f Balcerowicz Piotr 2016 Determinism Ajivikas and Jainism Early Asceticism in India Ajivikism and Jainism Routledge Advances in Jaina Studies 1st ed London and New York Routledge pp 136 174 ISBN 9781317538530 The Ajivikas doctrinal signature was indubitably the idea of determinism and fate which traditionally incorporated four elements the doctrine of destiny niyati vada the doctrine of predetermined concurrence of factors saṅgati vada the doctrine of intrinsic nature svabhava vada occasionally also linked to materialists and the doctrine of fate daiva vada or simply fatalism The Ajivikas emphasis on fate and determinism was so profound that later sources would consistently refer to them as niyati vadins or the propounders of the doctrine of destiny a b c Leaman Oliver ed 1999 Fatalism Key Concepts in Eastern Philosophy Routledge Key Guides 1st ed London and New York Routledge pp 80 81 ISBN 9780415173636 Fatalism Some of the teachings of Indian philosophy are fatalistic For example the Ajivika school argued that fate nyati governs both the cycle of birth and rebirth and also individual lives Suffering is not attributed to past actions but just takes place without any cause or rationale as does relief from suffering There is nothing we can do to achieve moksha we just have to hope that all will go well with us But the Ajivikas were committed to asceticism and they justified this in terms of its practice being just as determined by fate as anything else a b c d Basham Arthur L 1981 1951 Chapter XII Niyati History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas a Vanished Indian Religion Lala L S Jain Series 1st ed Delhi Motilal Banarsidass pp 224 238 ISBN 9788120812048 OCLC 633493794 The fundamental principle of Ajivika philosophy was Fate usually called Niyati Buddhist and Jaina sources agree that Gosala was a rigid determinist who exalted Niyati to the status of the motive factor of the universe and the sole agent of all phenomenal change This is quite clear in our locus classicus the Samannaphala Sutta Sin and suffering attributed by other sects to the laws of karma the result of evil committed in the previous lives or in the present one were declared by Gosala to be without cause or basis other presumably than the force of destiny Similarly the escape from evil the working off of accumulated evil karma was likewise without cause or basis Goldstein Joseph Dependent Origination The Twelve Links Explained Tricycle The Buddhist Review Retrieved 26 January 2020 a b Anatta Buddhism Encyclopedia Britannica Retrieved 26 January 2020 Repetti Ricardo 2012 Buddhist Hard Determinism No Self No Free Will No Responsibility PDF Journal of Buddhist Ethics 19 136 137 143 145 Archived PDF from the original on 26 January 2020 Lewis Edwin R Macgregor Ronald J 1 June 2006 On indeterminism chaos and small number particle systems in the brain Journal of Integrative Neuroscience 05 2 223 247 doi 10 1142 S0219635206001112 ISSN 0219 6352 PMID 16783870 Lewis E R MacGregor R J 2006 On Indeterminism Chaos and Small Number Particle Systems in the Brain PDF Journal of Integrative Neuroscience 5 2 223 247 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 361 7065 doi 10 1142 S0219635206001112 PMID 16783870 Archived PDF from the original on 8 June 2011 Koch Christof 2009 Free Will Physics Biology and the Brain In Murphy Nancy Ellis George O Connor Timothy eds Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will New York Springer Bibcode 2009dcnf book M ISBN 978 3 642 03204 2 a b c Kenrick D T Li N P Butner J 2003 Dynamical evolutionary psychology Individual decision rules and emergent social norms PDF Psychological Review 110 1 3 28 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 526 5218 doi 10 1037 0033 295x 110 1 3 PMID 12529056 S2CID 43306158 a b c Nowak A Vallacher R R Tesser A Borkowski W 2000 Society of Self The emergence of collective properties in self structure Psychological Review 107 a b c Epstein J M and Axtell R 1996 Growing Artificial Societies Social Science from the Bottom Cambridge MA MIT Press a b c Epstein J M 1999 Agent Based Models and Generative Social Science Complexity IV 5 John Conway s Game of Life Karl Popper Conjectures and refutations page needed Werndl Charlotte 2009 Are Deterministic Descriptions and Indeterministic Descriptions Observationally Equivalent Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 3 232 242 arXiv 1310 1615 Bibcode 2009SHPMP 40 232W doi 10 1016 j shpsb 2009 06 004 S2CID 11515304 Werndl Charlotte 2009 Deterministic Versus Indeterministic Descriptions Not That Different After All In A Hieke and H Leitgeb eds Reduction Abstraction Analysis Proceedings of the 31st International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium Ontos 63 78 J Glimm D Sharp Stochastic Differential Equations Selected Applications in Continuum Physics in R A Carmona B Rozovskii ed Stochastic Partial Differential Equations Six Perspectives American Mathematical Society 1998 ISBN 0 8218 0806 0 page needed Struggling with quantum logic Q amp A with Aaron O Connell Heisenberg Werner 1949 Physikalische Prinzipien der Quantentheorie Physical Principles of Quantum Theory Leipzig Hirzel University of Chicago Press p 4 ISBN 9780486601137 a b Grand Design 2010 p 32 the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion and p 72 Quantum physics might seem to undermine the idea that nature is governed by laws but that is not the case Instead it leads us to accept a new form of determinism Given the state of a system at some time the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty discussing a Many worlds interpretation Scientific American What is Quantum Mechanics Good For Scientific American Albert Einstein insisted that I am convinced God does not play dice in a private letter to Max Born 4 December 1926 Albert Einstein Archives Archived 19 August 2010 at the Wayback Machine reel 8 item 180 Jabs Arthur 2016 A conjecture concerning determinism reduction and measurement in quantum mechanics Quantum Studies Mathematics and Foundations 3 4 279 292 arXiv 1204 0614 doi 10 1007 s40509 016 0077 7 S2CID 32523066 Zeilinger Anton 2010 Dance of the Photons From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation 1st ed 18 West 18th Street New York 10011 Farrar Straus and Giroux p 261 ISBN 978 0 374 23966 4 A new picture of the world must encompass three properties that evidently seem to play a significant role in quantum experiments The second important property of the world that we always implicitly assume is the freedom of the individual experimentalist This is the assumption of free will It is a free decision what measurement one wants to perform a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location link Gisin Nicolas 2014 Quantum Chance Nonlocality Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels Switzerland Sringer International Publishing p 90 ISBN 978 3 319 05472 8 not only does free will exist but it is a prerequisite for science philosophy and our very ability to think rationally in a meaningful way Without free will there could be no rational thought As a consequence it is quite simply impossible for science and philosophy to deny free will BBC Radio interview with Paul Davies 1985 There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance But it involves absolute determinism in the universe the complete absence of free will Suppose the world is super deterministic with not just inanimate nature running on behind the scenes clockwork but with our behavior including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another absolutely predetermined including the decision by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another the difficulty disappears Hossenfelder Sabine Palmer Tim 2020 Rethinking Superdeterminism Frontiers in Physics 8 139 arXiv 1912 06462 Bibcode 2020FrP 8 139P doi 10 3389 fphy 2020 00139 ISSN 2296 424X Bishop Robert C 2011 Chaos Indeterminism and Free Will In Kane Robert ed The Oxford Handbook of Free Will Second ed Oxford New York Oxford University Press p 90 ISBN 9780195399691 OCLC 653483691 The key question is whether to understand the nature of this probability as epistemic or ontic Along epistemic lines one possibility is that there is some additional factor i e a hidden mechanism such that once we discover and understand this factor we would be able to predict the observed behavior of the quantum stoplight with certainty physicists call this approach a hidden variable theory see e g Bell 1987 1 13 29 39 Bohm 1952a 1952b Bohm and Hiley 1993 Bub 1997 40 114 Holland 1993 see also the preceding essay in this volume by Hodgson Or perhaps there is an interaction with the broader environment e g neighboring buildings trees that we have not taken into account in our observations that explains how these probabilities arise physicists call this approach decoherence or consistent histories15 Under either of these approaches we would interpret the observed indeterminism in the behavior of stoplights as an expression of our ignorance about the actual workings Under an ignorance interpretation indeterminism would not be a fundamental feature of quantum stoplights but merely epistemic in nature due to our lack of knowledge about the system Quantum stoplights would turn to be deterministic after all Baggott Jim E 2004 Complementarity and Entanglement Beyond Measure Modern Physics Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory Oxford New York Oxford University Press p 203 ISBN 978 0 19 852536 3 OCLC 52486237 So was Einstein wrong In the sense that the EPR paper argued in favor of an objective reality for each quantum particle in an entangled pair independent of the other and of the measuring device the answer must be yes But if Einstein was wrong to hold to the realist s belief that the physics of the universe should be objective and deterministic it must be acknowledged that no answer exists for such a question It is in the nature of theoretical science that there can be no such thing as certainty A theory is only true for as long as the majority of the scientific community maintain a consensus view that the theory is the one best able to explain the observations And the story of quantum theory is not over yet Bibliography Edit Daniel Dennett 2003 Freedom Evolves Viking Penguin John Earman 2007 Aspects of Determinism in Modern Physics in Butterfield J and Earman J eds Philosophy of Physics Part B North Holland 1369 1434 George Ellis 2005 Physics and the Real World Physics Today Epstein J M 1999 Agent Based Models and Generative Social Science Complexity IV 5 41 60 Bibcode 1999Cmplx 4e 41E CiteSeerX 10 1 1 118 546 doi 10 1002 sici 1099 0526 199905 06 4 5 lt 41 aid cplx9 gt 3 0 co 2 f Epstein J M and Axtell R 1996 Growing Artificial Societies Social Science from the Bottom MIT Press Harris James A 2005 Of Liberty and Necessity The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth Century British Philosophy Clarendon Press Kenrick D T Li N P Butner J 2003 Dynamical evolutionary psychology Individual decision rules and emergent social norms PDF Psychological Review 110 1 3 28 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 526 5218 doi 10 1037 0033 295x 110 1 3 PMID 12529056 S2CID 43306158 Albert Messiah Quantum Mechanics English translation by G M Temmer of Mecanique Quantique 1966 John Wiley and Sons vol I chapter IV section III Ernest Nagel 3 March 1960 Determinism in history Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 20 3 291 317 doi 10 2307 2105051 JSTOR 2105051 Online version found here John T Roberts 2006 Determinism In Sahotra Sarkar Jessica Pfeifer eds The Philosophy of Science A M Taylor amp Francis pp 197 ff ISBN 978 0415977098 Nowak A Vallacher R R Tesser A Borkowski W 2000 Society of Self The emergence of collective properties in self structure Psychological Review 107 Further reading EditGeorge Musser Is the Cosmos Random Einstein s assertion that God does not play dice with the universe has been misinterpreted Scientific American vol 313 no 3 September 2015 pp 88 93 External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to Determinism Wikimedia Commons has media related to Determinism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Causal Determinism Determinism in History from the Dictionary of the History of Ideas Philosopher Ted Honderich s Determinism web resource Determinism on Information Philosopher The Society of Natural Science Archived 26 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine Determinism and Free Will in Judaism Snooker Pool and Determinism Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Determinism amp oldid 1136254394, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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