Determinism: Difference between revisions

{{Head0 JTP|Authors=[[User:Rosa Lyubovitskaya]]}}

Determinism, the idea that every event is determined by past events based on the natural laws, has caused an important philosophical and scientific debate for a long time, leading to the following questions: "Is the universe fundamentally deterministic, meaning that every single event in the universe has already been predetermined billions of years ago? Do we really have free will the way we think we do, or are all events, including our own actions, merely the inevitable consequences of prior causes?"

Isaac Newton, who formulated the fundamental laws of physics, believed in a deterministic world, governed by those laws, while David Hume, believing free will can coexist with determinism, and Immanuel Kant, who believed in free will, both opposed determinism, asserting it would undermine moral unaccountability in humans. James Williams also leaned against determinism, stating it would deem the concept of regret meaningless.

Finally, the paper discusses the implications determinism would have on the concepts of information and knowledge, posing the question, whether determinism would make our pursuit of truth and understanding inauthentic, as, in the absence of free will, it would be impossible to independently obtain or question given knowledge.

== Etymology ==

== Definitions ==

'''Determinism:''' According the [[Free will|article about free will]], determinism can be defined as the idea that every event that will happen in the future is fully determined by events from the past and the natural laws.

'''Free Will (Indeterminism):''' Again referring to the [[Free will|article about free will]], free will (also called indeterminism) refers to having the full control to independently decide, which actions to carry out. In other words, free will can be described as ''"a significant kind of control over one’s actions”'' (O’Connor & Franklin, 2022), as cited in the article.<ref>O’Connor, T., & Franklin, C. (2022). Free Will. ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Winter 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/freewill</ref>

'''Causal Determinism:''' The idea that every event is caused by previous events and conditions, along with the natural laws that govern them, implying that all actions and decisions are the result of prior causes (Hoefer, 2023).<ref>Hoefer, C. (2023, September 21). Causal Determinism. ''Standord Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/</ref>

'''Logical Determinism:''' The idea that all propositions (statements), including those about the future, must be either true or false. This means that the [[truth]] or falsity of statements about future events is already fixed, even if those events have not yet occurred (Vihvelin, 2022, under “1. Preliminaries”).<ref name=":0">Vihvelin, K. (2022, August 22). Arguments for Incompatibilism. ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-arguments/</ref>

'''Theological Determinism:''' The idea that an omniscient God exists, who knows about the [[truth]] or falsity of all propositions, including those about the future, leading to the question of how free will can exist when God already infallibly knows all that is going to happen (Vihvelin, 2022, under “1. Preliminaries”).<ref name=":0" />

'''Compatibilism:''' As explained in the [[Free will|article about free will]], compatibilism is the idea that determinism is fully compatible with free will, and also that the freedom or abscence of freedom of an action is defined independently from its determination or causation, but by whether the action is caused by the person in question itself or another person or circumstance. Moreover, compatibilism states that causation and determination are a necessity for free and responsible action (Russell, 2020).<ref name=":1">Russell, P. (2020, May 27). Hume on free will. ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-freewill/#FreWilHumRel</ref>

'''Incompatibilism:''' The idea opposite to compatibilism, claiming that determinism is incompatible with [[free will]].

== Philosophers and Scientists on Determinism ==

Kant claims that our ability to reason and follow a framework of ethical rules gives us a choice and hence makes us ethically responsible for our actions, unlike animals whose actions, due to the lack of reason, are just a result of causality and determination, which removes all ethical accountability from animal predators (McCormick, n.d., under "7.b – The Idea of Reason: Reason and Freedom").<ref name=":2" />

== Arguments supporting Determinism ==

In his paper "Hemispheric Deconnection and Unity in Conscious Awareness", Sperry described his split-brain experiments, in which the ''corpus callosum'', which connects the brain's left and right hemispheres, was severed as a treatment for epilepsy, making both hemispheres function independently from one another (split brain).<ref>Sperry, R. W. (1968, October). ''Hemisphere Deconnection and Unity in Conscious Awareness. American Psychology'', Vol. 23, No. 10. California Institute of Technology</ref>

This important finding helps us to understand the following experiment conducted by Michael S. Gazzaniga on a split-brain-patient:

== Challenges of Determinism ==

== Information and Determinism ==

As stated in the [[Information|article about information]], Claude Shannon defines information as how surprising a message is to a receiver it is sent to. Shannon quantifies that value of surprise as the amount of reduced uncertainty of the receiver, known as the information entropy (also Shannon entropy).

According to Shannon, the more likely an event is to occur, the lower the informative content of a message that is delivered to the receiver becomes.

== Knowledge and Determinism ==

If we define "[[knowledge]]" not just as an awareness and understanding of something, as described in the [[Knowledge|article about knowledge]], but also something that is actually true, unlike a belief, which can be false, then the consequences of determinism depend on whether there is only one single objective truth, as stated by ''realism'', or, instead ''relativism'' applies, which would mean that there can be multiple subjective truths about one subject:

== Conclusion ==

Shannon's definition of information, as it was concluded, would remain meaningful in a deterministic world, despite a potentially reduced informative content, because all predetermined events would still remain surprising to the receiver of the information if it was unable to predict it correctly, as it would practically often be the case.

Also, we showed that the definition of logical determinism doesn't hold true for all statements, because, for example, certain Liar Paradox statements cannot be assigned one truth value.

All in all, answering the question of determinism and free will becomes more and more complex the more viewpoints are considered, so it may remain unanswered, provoking a never ending debate throughout various disciplines.  

== References ==