Philosophy

Philosophy

What is the definition of determinism?

In the field of philosophy, the term Determinism is a modern variant of the ancient word 'Democritus'. It refers to the philosophical concept that all the events and affairs and each human action and decision is the inevitable and absolute outcome of preceding affairs. Therefore, the concept of determinism explains that every event and moral choice is decided previous events that caused it (Bergson, 2008). Determinism is often presented as an anti-thesis of free will for the fact that it emphasizes that humans are incapable of acting in any other way than fated.

What is the definition of free will?

Free Will is the term used to define the ability of human beings to do that which they desire and the interests that they wish to pursue. For instance, a person who is driven by the urge to acquire power may strive to become a governor of a state or CEO of an organization. Similarly, a person motivated by heroism and structure may decide in favor of pursuing a career in the US army while an altruist may give high priority to social work or nursing when choosing a career path. Therefore, the term free will is the human capacity to chase the object of their interest, motivation, passion or desire (Honderich, 2002). The antithesis of free will is determinism which advocates that events and their outcomes are the result of a series of events that happened in the past.

Do you agree that every event has an explanatory cause?

Well, I believe it is safe to say that every event has a cause, but this leads to some deep questions and confusions. First of all, the fact that every event has a cause does not necessarily imply strict determinism. It is possible that some causes imply probabilities of outcomes, rather than specifically determined outcomes. Virtual particles "leaping out" of the Void, for example, are in some sense caused by the intrinsically energetic nature of the Void, but this intrinsic energy is indeterminate in the sense that there is no way, even in principle, to predict exact what kind of particle will pop out, exactly when and where it will pop into existence, and exactly when it will disappear back into the Void (Berofsky, 1966). This process is (so far a physics can tell us) purely random - albeit a sort of randomness that is somewhat structured by basic probabilities ...