Determinism

Determinism: A Description

The definition of Determinism that is generally accepted by most philosophers is The belief that the state of the world at time T is determined by a course of natural law and the state of the world at time T'. It is also important to note that determinism is closely related to fatalism and prediction. Fatalism is the belief that since everything is already determined, it does not matter what we do. Having defined determinism, we can now proceed to further clarify what it means. The relationship between prediction and determinism is most easily seen in Laplace's famous theory. The theory basically states that if a being was perfectly intelligent, it could compute the state of the world at any time, given the state of the world at a single time.

The first thing we should clarify is the unnatural use of time. The reason for using " T " and " T' " instead of saying a present time in relation to a future time is that modern physics has established that time is bi-directional. This modern interpretation is obviously at odds with our ordinary conception of time. Most of us view time as moving in one direction, with the past permanently behind us, and the present and future more fluid but possibly determined by the past. The modern view, however, holds that time does not flow, but is simply another dimension of measurement. This entails the idea that not only do the past states of the world affect the present and future states, but also the present and future influence the past states. This is why we use T and T' when talking about determinism since it allows for the state of the world at any time to determine the state of the world at any other time, past or future.

When most people think of determinism, they usually think of events that determine other events. This is an extremely casual way to think of determinism and a view that can in no way be taken in this formal explanation. Because of the difficulty in saying, "Specific event A determines specific event B," we must add to it an open-ended ceteris paribus clause. In other words, to make the statement true we have to qualify it without end. An example of this would be Bob. Bob watches the football game every Sunday. Because of this he goes to his fridge and takes out a bottle of his favorite brew. Therefore, the football game is the cause of Bob's going to the fridge. This is true unless, say, his daughter starts crying, his grandmother dies, the game is on a Monday night, or infinitely many other reasons. So we see that the aforementioned statement is true, but it is tautologically true, which means that it is uselessly true. So since viewing determinism on such a specific level is difficult to manage, it is easier to think of it in terms of the state of the entire universe. Viewing it on this level would then eliminate such petty factors, and in the process of doing so eliminate the need for an open-ended ceteris paribus.

Now we come to the laws of nature. These "laws" raise epistemic difficulties for determinism. This simply means that in light of the laws of nature, determinism is difficult to prove true or false. Then the question that surfaces is, are there laws of nature, or are they only a best systems analysis. These problems arise on a couple of different levels. First, for determinism to be true there obviously need to exist laws of nature in the conventional sense, this being the idea that laws of nature not only exist but also govern the activity of