Toward a Demarcation of Forms of Determinism
Vladimir Marko
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Abstract
In the current philosophical literature, determinism is rarely defined explicitly. This paper attempts to show that there are in fact many forms of determinism, most of which are familiar, and that these can be differentiated according to their particular components. Recognizing the composite character of determinism is thus central to de-marcating its various forms. KEYWORDS: Determinism – fatalism – logical determinism – scientific determinism – logical fatalism. Determinism is a basic philosophical concept. It is usually assumed that both the term " determinism " and determinism as a philosophical conception or theory are clear and obvious. In the literature, however, the precise contours of determinism are not explicitly defined – an obscurity that often leads to inconsistencies and misunderstandings. In this article, I put to the side questions concerning the soundness or adequacy of the philosophical views I shall consider. Instead, I am interested only in the basic conceptual contours of different kinds of determin-ism and whether it is possible to sort them into some kind of interrelated order for the purposes of better demarcating varieties of determinism. My
Key takeaways
- Although "pure" determinism and fatalism commonly posit a causal connection between the past and the future, such that the latter can be predicted on the basis of the former, they do not entail the predictability of the future, for causality does not necessary imply predictability.
- We have good reason to interpret certain systems as "deterministic" even though we may not be able to predict events occurring within it, which would suggest that determinism need not come hand in hand with the predictability thesis.
- He criticizes the common assumption that logical determinism implies (logical) fatalism.
- The term "(logical) fatalism" (a view according to which time is symmetrical and all possible worlds are reduced to the actual world) has, over time, completely replaced the term "(logical) determinism".
- With both determinism and fatalism, we are able to supply other features as building blocks (giving rise to further conceptions): time component (character of time, temporal direction, time symmetry or asymmetry), causality, logical, physical, epistemic or other properties (laws of nature, statistical laws, probabilistic laws, linear or nonlinear changes to the system, etc.).
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