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Determinism is a rather broad category of philosophy dealing with cause and effect and events in your life. What all deterministic ideas have in common is that they all believe that cause-and-effect are real; how far they are willing to take this, though, is what makes the different forms of determinism unique. To clear up any possible misconceptions about cause and effect I will quickly explain it. Essentially what it means is that everything we do causes an effect in the world. It also means that there is a cause for every effect. Think of it this way: you throw a rock into a lake as a cause, the water ripples as an effect. The water could not ripple without a cause, which is the throwing of the rock into the lake. Likewise, there as to be an effect for throwing the rock into the lake. Keep this in mind as you read on. The first form of determinism I wish to discuss is soft determinism, since it uses cause-and-effect to the smallest extent. What this belief basically says is that we are free in so far as that we are not forced to perform an action. Here is an example that will make it perfectly clear: Let's say that you steal someone's purse for money. That is a free act since nothing forced you to steal the purse. Now let's say someone threatened to kill your date if you did not steal someone's purse for them. That is forced and unfree since you rationally did not have a choice, which an effect of the person threatening your date, which is a cause. It is pretty straight-forward, and gives you freedom in the world, but there is a problem: Soft determinism does not completely explain out cause-and-effect in the world. To understand what I mean, you must continue reading on to the next type of determinism...hard determinism. Hard determinism is quite different from soft determinism, regardless of the similar label. This belief says that cause-and-effect controls everything, and that there is no freedom in the world. What this means is that everything is an effect of some cause that you have no control over, causing a chain reaction of events in which you can do nothing to alter. Think of this forcing of events as a chain reaction in a fission reactor: as the electrons (causes) are shot out by the nuclear release of electrons (effect) from the plutonium, causing a chain reaction in which you can't stop until it frees every electron in the reactor. That is the basic idea of hard determinism; there is a cause that forces all events since what you do is part of the chain reaction, so no matter what you do, it is all part of some reaction. If this is not clear to you, just read on to fatalism, there is an example that is less technical. When this cause-and-effect chain reaction began varies according to your cosmological view. Apparently, hard determinists believe that it started when the world began, which can be the Big Bang, Genesis from the Bible, etc. What they all hold in common, though, is that it all started at the beginning of the universe, when ever that was... Believing that the chain reaction of cause-and-effect started when time began is the belief of fatalists, which I have believe to be another label for hard determinists. Fatalism is cause-and-effect to the nth degree. They say that when time started cause-and-effect began, and so the future was completely planned out at the beginning of time. In other words, fatalism, to my knowledge, is another label for hard determinists. To understand this, you have to understand the idea of the nonexistence of luck. Let's take the most basic luck-driven event; the flipping of a coin. What effects the flipping of a coin? There is the rate at which the coin turns, the force applied on the coin at flipping, the wind, the type of surface it lands on, the amount of gravity at the point at which you flip the coin, the height it reaches, etc., etc. As you can see there are a ton of variables, but if you knew what all of them were and you had the knowledge to utilize all the information you could predict which face will be facing up when the coin lands. You can also take these effects back even farther, and you can see how fatalism, when compared to the other versions of determinism, is the only reasonable version. Think of about waking up in the morning: you either will or won't get up when your buzzer goes off. Let's say you don't. Fine you didn't because of a hang-over. You got that at a party. You went because you had a bad day at work. The bad day happened because you were late for a meeting. You were late because of traffic. The traffic was caused by an accident. This was caused by someone talking on a car phone. This was because the stock market crashed. The crash was caused by low returns in Asia, etc., etc. As you can see, everything can be traced back as far as you want to bother to trace it, but to fatalists it goes back to the beginning of time, and if you knew all that there is to know about any point in time and had the ability to process all that info, you can figure out the effects and predict the future. This also makes fatalism the only deterministic belief that has no apparent flaws. Soft determinists fail to take cause-and-effect far enough, essentially making them fatalists that have not applied cause-and-effect far enough. Fatalism also has no obvious flaws; cause-and-effect undeniably exists and it can be taken as far back as the beginning of time. Now please don't take this as being biased; I am trying to give every viewpoint on my site an equal chance, but I feel that the fact that fatalism (hard determinism) is the only belief system within this area of philosophy that has no direct flaws. What this does not include, though, are indirect flaws. An example is the theory of agency. Obviously, if that belief is true, then fatalism is false, but it hangs on the idea of the agent, which is not directly connected to cause-and-effect and this area of philosophy. So, to keep things simple, within the scope of the web pages that directly pertain to fatalism, it is the only one that works without question. This still leaves the door open for the theory of agency, but you have to first believe in the agent, which does not pertain to these direct pages. I hope you understand this; if not, let me know, I would be quite happy to try to explain it to you. What all of this also means to you and me is that there is no control over any events in the world. This leads to people not being able to be held responsible for their actions. Think of it, you do what you do because you were forced by cause-and-effect, so why should you be punished by some cause you had no control over? It also takes away regret, since there was nothing you could do about it. This is one of the arguments that indeterminists use to argue against determinism. Quite disturbing, huh? ;) |