Determinism
Certainty series:
• Agnosticism
• Belief
• Certainty
• Determinism
• Doubt
• Epistemology
• Justification
• Estimation
• Fallibilism
• Fatalism
• Nihilism
• Probability
• Solipsism
• Uncertainty
Determinism is the philosophical proposi-
tion that every event, including human cogni-
tion and behavior, decision and action, is
causally determined by an unbroken chain of
prior occurrences.[1] Numerous historical de-
bates, many varieties and philosophical posi-
tions on the subject of determinism exist
from traditions throughout the world.
Philosophy of
determinism
It is a popular belief that determinism neces-
sarily entails that humanity or individual hu-
mans have no influence on the future and its
events
(a position known as
fatalism);
however, determinists believe that the level
to which human beings have influence over
their future is itself dependent on present
and past. Causal determinism is associated
with, and relies upon, the ideas of material-
ism and causality. Some of the main philo-
sophers who have dealt with this issue are
Steven M. Cahn, Marcus Aurelius, Omar
Khayyám, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza,
Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, Baron
d’Holbach (Paul Heinrich Dietrich), Pierre-Si-
mon Laplace, Arthur Schopenhauer, William
James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein,
Niels Bohr, 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.[2] A mechanistic determinism would as-
sume that every event has an unbroken chain
of prior occurrences, but a selectionistic or
probabilistic model does not.[3][4]
The nature of
determinism
The exact meaning of the term determinism
has historically been subject to rigorous scru-
tiny and several
interpretations.
Some
people, called Incompatibilists, view determ-
inism and free will as mutually exclusive. The
belief that free will is an illusion is known as
Hard Determinism.