Topics Freedom

Question Can determinism be proven by reason alone? Or was it only discovered empirically?

Accepted:
November 15, 2008

Comments

It is not entirely straightforward to come up with a cogent statement of determinism. But perhaps something along the following lines will do: our world is a deterministic one if the laws of nature are such that, given the past and current state of the world, there is only one possible way its future state can evolve. If you prefer that in "possible world" talk, then the idea is that the actual laws are such that any other possible world which shares these same laws, and whose past and present duplicates that of the actual world, will also be a future duplicate.

Thus understood, the claim that our world is a deterministic one is a claim about the shape of the laws of nature governing the world. Do they, so to speak, uniquely fix what will happen next (given the past and current state of the world); or do they allow e.g. for irreducibly chancy events?

And that is surely an empirical question. We can't settle from the armchair whether (i) we live in a "classical" world where the laws make the world run like complicated clockwork, or (ii) we live in a "chancy" world where e.g. the laws governing fundamental particle interactions only settle the chances of various outcomes, or indeed (iii) whether the whole assumption that the world is totally subject to laws (whether classical or chancy) is badly wrong. We have to go and do the science.

Question Can determinism be proven by reason alone? Or was it only discovered empirically? Accepted:November 15, 2008

Question Can determinism be proven by reason alone? Or was it only discovered empirically?

Accepted:
November 15, 2008