Determinism - By Rudy Mcnair
A number of Ancient Greek philosophers from various different schools once concluded that, for everything that happens, there are inescapable conditions that determine its occurrence. Diodorus arrived at logical determinism, I think, as a consequence of belief in signs, omens and portents from which can be discovered what is going to happen and why. However, in the development of Western philosophy, “antecedent causes” and “initial conditions” are still useful clues to the workings of “reality” and what is logically necessary. Materialist philosophers of the Enlightenment maintained that men are stranded in nature and can govern neither themselves nor anything else. Even Schopenhauer accepted that irrational forces influence human events. A.J. Ayer decided that all significant statements are “scientific”, or are nonsense. This means that value statements (socially meaningful, ethical terms, like “good” or “wrong”) are thought to violate this philosophy. Logical positivism has consequently sought to distinguish between ‘logical’ concepts (which are true or false) termed “nonmodal” and problems of what might and might not be possible or “fulfilled”.
As for predictions, which are more similar to verdicts
than logical descriptions, some argue that neither true nor false apply to
them, although they eventually become true or false. The actions people take are no less
“necessary” than anything else, but, as Hobbes said, “nothing taketh a
beginning from itself”. Charles
Hartshorne objected that predictions concerning a person’s behaviour are always
false, the truth being expressed only by statements about what might and might
not happen. The final straw, that human
actions might be caused and also free, has so confused the issue that many
surrender to the notion that it is plainly impossible to entirely explain any
event or action in terms of ‘motive’ or ‘reason’.
The concept of events that are fated to occur and that an
external agency to the historical process itself can be imagined is the most
familiar sense of determinism.
Explaining history in terms of scientific necessity requires sufficient
conditions for actual occurrences (residing in the laws of nature). Finally, physicists have had to admit that
the classical concept of reality that was formerly constructed cannot be
maintained, and that the structure of space and time is correctly described by
quantum theory, the interference of probabilities with actuality will show up,
where we flounder trying to understand anything at all. Here we might be left with so-called
Pyrrhonean skepticism, extending doubt to everything knowable (either
‘zetetic’, perpetually searching and examining reality, ‘ephetic’, that
suspends judgment, or ‘aporetic’ skepticism that gives no final assent or
denial).
William James objected that determinism implies that the
world we have is the only possible world and that nothing could have been other
than it was; he declared this to be incompatible with the reasonableness of
regret and other basic moral sentiments
Regarding possibilities and human volition, I think that the feedback
from “personal potency” can offer us a dimension of logical leeway in which to
operate, that otherwise might have been forsaken. The absence of possible worlds yet to be
determined (freedom) which might be, like those liberties now present, are not
discovered with telescopes, time measurements or microscopes (see: abortion)
but in living ideas. The problem, for an
idealist (like me), is explaining intelligent motivation (willing).
Rudy Mcnair
The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 48 'Freedom'
