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Deterministic
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism) or randomness. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.For example, see Determinism is often used to mean ''causal determinism'', which in physics is known as cause-and-effect. This is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state of an object or event is completely determined by its prior states. This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below. Debates about determinism often concern the scope of determined systems; some maintain that the entire universe is a single determina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition. Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists, what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion. Some conceive of free will as the right to act outside of external influences or wishes. Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices undetermined by past events. Determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with a libertarian model of free will. Ancient Greek philosophy identified this issue, which remains a major focus o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indeterminism
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically. It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical problem of free will, particularly in the form of libertarianism. In science, most specifically quantum theory in physics, indeterminism is the belief that no event is certain and the entire outcome of anything is probabilistic. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the "Born rule", proposed by Max Born, are often starting points in support of the indeterministic nature of the universe. Indeterminism is also asserted by Sir Arthur Eddington, and Murray Gell-Mann. Indeterminism has been promoted by the French biologist Jacques Monod's essay "''Chance and Necessity''". The physicist-chemist Ilya Prigogine argued for indeterminism in complex systems. Necessary but insufficient causation Indeterminists do not have to deny that causes exist. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indeterminism
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically. It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical problem of free will, particularly in the form of libertarianism. In science, most specifically quantum theory in physics, indeterminism is the belief that no event is certain and the entire outcome of anything is probabilistic. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the "Born rule", proposed by Max Born, are often starting points in support of the indeterministic nature of the universe. Indeterminism is also asserted by Sir Arthur Eddington, and Murray Gell-Mann. Indeterminism has been promoted by the French biologist Jacques Monod's essay "''Chance and Necessity''". The physicist-chemist Ilya Prigogine argued for indeterminism in complex systems. Necessary but insufficient causation Indeterminists do not have to deny that causes exist. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incompatibilistic
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several available physical alternatives. Thus, incompatibilism implies that there is a dichotomy between determinism and free will, where philosophers must support at most one or the other, not both. The incompatibilist view is pursued further in at least three different ways: libertarians deny that the universe is deterministic, hard determinists deny that any free will exists, and pessimistic incompatibilists (hard indeterminists) deny both that the universe is determined and that free will exists. Incompatibilism is contrasted with compatibilism, which rejects the dichotomy between determinism and free will. Libertarianism Metaphysical libertarianism argues that free will is real and that determinism is false. Such philosophical stance risks an in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laplace's Demon
In the history of science, Laplace's demon was a notable published articulation of causal determinism on a scientific basis by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone (the demon) knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics. This idea states that “free will” is merely an illusion, and that every action previously taken, currently being taken, or that will take place was destined to happen from the instant of the big bang. Discoveries and theories in the decades following suggest that some elements of Laplace's original writing are wrong or incompatible with our universe. For example, irreversible processes in thermodynamics suggest that Laplace's "demon" could not reconstruct past positions and momenta from the current state. English translation This intellect is often referred to as ''Laplace's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Randomness
In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps often has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual random events are, by definition, unpredictable, but if the probability distribution is known, the frequency of different outcomes over repeated events (or "trials") is predictable.Strictly speaking, the frequency of an outcome will converge almost surely to a predictable value as the number of trials becomes arbitrarily large. Non-convergence or convergence to a different value is possible, but has probability zero. For example, when throwing two dice, the outcome of any particular roll is unpredictable, but a sum of 7 will tend to occur twice as often as 4. In this view, randomness is not haphazardness; it is a measure of uncertainty of an outcome. Randomness applies to concepts of chance, probability, and information entropy. The fields of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality. The word "metaphysics" comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean "after or behind or among he study ofthe natural". It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works into the treatise we now know by the name ''Metaphysics'' (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, ''meta ta physika'', 'after the ''Physics'' ', another of Aristotle's works). Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Path Dependence
Path dependence is a concept in economics and the social sciences, referring to processes where past events or decisions constrain later events or decisions. It can be used to refer to outcomes at a single point in time or to long-run equilibria of a process. Path dependence has been used to describe institutions, technical standards, patterns of economic or social development, organizational behavior, and more. In common usage, the phrase can imply two types of claims. The first is the broad concept that "history matters", often articulated to challenge explanations that pay insufficient attention to historical factors. This claim can be formulated simply as "the future development of an economic system is affected by the path it has traced out in the past" or "particular events in the past can have crucial effects in the future." The second is a more specific claim about how past events or decisions affect future events or decisions in significant or disproportionate ways, thr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fatalism
Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are thought to be inevitable. Definition The term "fatalism" can refer to any of the following ideas: * Any view according to which human beings are powerless to do anything other than what they actually do. Included in this is the belief that humans have no power to influence the future or indeed the outcome of their own actions. * The belief that events are decided by fate and are outside human control. * One such view is theological fatalism, according to which free will is incompatible with the existence of an omniscient God who has foreknowledge of all future events. This is very similar to theological determinism. * A second such view is logical fatalism, according to which propositions about the future which we take to currently be either ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causality
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. In general, a process has many causes, which are also said to be ''causal factors'' for it, and all lie in its past. An effect can in turn be a cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future. Some writers have held that causality is metaphysically prior to notions of time and space. Causality is an abstraction that indicates how the world progresses. As such a basic concept, it is more apt as an explanation of other concepts of progression than as something to be explained by others more basic. The concept is like those of agency and efficacy. For this reason, a leap of intuition may be needed to grasp it. Accordi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cause-and-effect
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. In general, a process has many causes, which are also said to be ''causal factors'' for it, and all lie in its past. An effect can in turn be a cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future. Some writers have held that causality is metaphysically prior to notions of time and space. Causality is an abstraction that indicates how the world progresses. As such a basic concept, it is more apt as an explanation of other concepts of progression than as something to be explained by others more basic. The concept is like those of agency and efficacy. For this reason, a leap of intuition may be needed to grasp it. Accordin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laplace
Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five-volume ''Mécanique céleste'' (''Celestial Mechanics'') (1799–1825). This work translated the geometric study of classical mechanics to one based on calculus, opening up a broader range of problems. In statistics, the Bayesian interpretation of probability was developed mainly by Laplace. Laplace formulated Laplace's equation, and pioneered the Laplace transform which appears in many branches of mathematical physics, a field that he took a leading role in forming. The Laplacian differential operator, widely used in mathematics, is also named after him. He restated and developed the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the Solar System and was one of the first scientists to sugge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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