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 and even more so nondeterminism (aka 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 bound 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]
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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
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
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.[such as?]
Philosophical varieties
Determinism in nature/nurture controversy
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
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 the making of 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
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]
- 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
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]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
Point of view (philosophy), in philosophy and psychology, the context for opinions, beliefs and experiences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_view_(philosophy)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#approaches
https://thesaurus.yourdictionary.com/perspective
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NOTE. PAN, PANORAMA, FRAME, BACKGROUND, STRUCTURE, POINTS, LINES, IMAGE, LEVEL, DEPTH, SENSATION, PERCEPTION, COGNITION, ALGORITHM, ANALYTICS, REASON, LOGIC, RATIONALE, OUTLINE, SLANT, VIEWPOINT, ATTITUDE, CONTEXT, CONTENT, EXPECTATION, PROSPECT, LINEAR-PERSPECTIVE, NARROW FOCUS, LENS, ANGLE OF APPROACH, CONCENTRATION, ATTENTION, BIAS, DISTORTION, OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE, MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION, OBSERVER, OBSERVATION, OBJECT, OBJECTIVE, ELUCIDATION, PREDILICTION, INCLINATION, INFERENCE, DISPOSITION, DEMEANOR, DISPARAGEMENT, DIRECTION, DISTANCE, ASPECT, VIEWPOINT, POINT OF ANALYSIS, OUTLIER, SCATTER, RANDOM, PERIPHERY, DETRACTOR, DISTRACTION, DETERRANT, DIVERSION, DECOY, DECEPTION, DERANGEMENT, DEFERRAL, PROCLIVITY, OPINION, PREFERENCE, VIEW, CONTAINMENT, BOUNDS, DEFINERS, QUALIFIERS, IDENTIFIERS, CATEGORIZERS, CATEGORIES, CLASSIFIERS, QUANTIFIERS, EQUATIZERS, OPERATORS, OPERATIONS, ZERO POINT, STRUCTURE, SCHEMATIC, SCHEMA, SCHEME, FUNCTION, STATISTICS, INFERENCE, DEDUCTION, EXTRAPOLATION, INTERPOLATION, ILLUSTRATION, EXAMPLE, PERMUTATION/COMMUNICATION/CONVERSION/COMMUNITIZATION/PERTURBATION/ABERRATION/DERIVATION/INTEGRATION/DEVIATION/PROPERTIZATION/ETC., COMMUTATIVE, ETC..
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