The Philosophy of Determinism

Can we predict future events and actions; and do we have free will?

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Determinism is the concept that all events, including human decisions and actions, are predetermined. This article explores the concept, history and practicality of determinism.

Disclaimer

Some of the content of this article is based on my opinions. So, I recommend that you make your own conclusions about determinism.

Laplace's Demon

Imagine an omniscient entity (Laplace's Demon) that knows the entire history of the universe and all its physical laws.

Demon and Angel with Tamara’s Soul — Mikhail Vrubel (Public Domain)

Could it predict the future of the whole universe, including your actions? If so, determinism is true and free will is false. (This statement assumes that free will and determinism are mutually exclusive.)

Knowing the entire history of the universe and all its physical laws is a big ask for us humans. So, is determinism more a philosophical than a scientific concept?

Determinism should be stated in a disprovable way for it to be a scientific concept.

It is difficult to believe that determinism is true when we can't accurately predict the weather, climate change, pandemics, economic crashes and conflicts.

For example, hours before the worst storm for over three hundred years hit southern England in 1987, a BBC weather forecaster assured viewers that no hurricane was coming.

Currently, we use 'work rounds' to help with these difficulties. I'll cover these below.

History

I thought determinism was a relatively recent concept. But, when I thought about determinism as a philosophical concept, Greek philosophers came to mind.

Greek Philosophers

During the 6th and 7th centuries BC, determinism was anticipated by the atomist philosophers, Democritus and Leucippus. They theorised that all processes in the world were due to the mechanical interplay of atoms.

Buddhism

Buddha in Sarnath Museum (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Buddhism has a similar concept called Dependent Origination (or Dependent Arising). It states that phenomena arise together in a mutually interdependent web of cause and effect and that every phenomenon is conditioned by, and depends on every other phenomenon.

China

According to the ancient Chinese Yi Jing (or I Ching, the Book of Changes), a 'divine will' sets the fundamental rules for the working out of the probabilities on which the universe operates. Human will is also a factor in how we deal with real-world situations.

Newtonian Physics

Public Domain

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that were the backbone of physics for centuries until Einstein created the theory of relativity.

Using these formulae, he was able to: - derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, - account for tides, and the trajectories of comets, - predict the equinoxes and other phenomena which removed doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity.

These laws strongly support the concept of determinism.

Quantum Mechanics

Newton's laws work well for predicting ordinary and microscopic events but are insufficient for describing events at atomic and subatomic scales.

Quantum mechanics uses probabilities to predict atomic and subatomic events. This is because measuring initial states at atomic and subatomic levels is impossible without causing disturbances.

Although quantum mechanics uses probabilities as its basis, its predictions have been verified experimentally to an extremely high degree of accuracy.

Quantum mechanics gives rise to weird concepts like 'superposition' (the mixing of states that classically would be mutually exclusive) and 'entanglement' (quantum entities that have interacted with each other remain mutually entangled, however distant they may become).

In quantum mechanics, no object has a definite position except when colliding headlong with another object. This would seem to contradict determinism.

Albert Einstein thought that quantum mechanics was absurd. As he famously replied to a letter from Max Born:

"God does not play dice."

He believed there must be a more reasonable explanation. Determinism perhaps?

Chaos Theory

Chaos theory or deterministic chaos, describes apparently random or unpredictable behaviour in systems governed by deterministic laws. This is a paradox because it connects randomness and deterministic motion - which are regarded as incompatible.

Sensitivity to initial conditions explains the randomness. Slightly changing initial conditions can make a big difference to the outcome.

This sensitivity is known as the 'butterfly effect', named after a paper written by Edward Lorenz, entitled Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?

‘Fair use’ image of Edward Norton Lorenz (1917–2008)

Lorentz first noticed this effect when he fed slightly different inputs into the same computer program.

It is this sensitivity to initial conditions that makes it difficult to accurately predict the weather, climate change, pandemics, economic crashes and conflicts.

Using an ensemble approach helps reduce this unpredictability. This involves making many predictions, each with different initial conditions. The most frequent outcome is used as the prediction.

Free Will

Which brings us back to the subject of free will. Given that we are not omniscient entities, many factors hinder us from determining initial conditions. For example:

• Chaos theory
• Heisenberg's uncertainty principle where position and momentum cannot be simultaneously measured.
• Neural noise - random electric fluctuations within neuronal networks.

Could determinism and free will not be mutually exclusive?

There are some circumstances where we don't have free will such as indoctrination, hypnosis and stimulating parts of our brains.

In 1990 Ammon and Gandevia carried out an experiment where participants were asked to choose between a left or right response.

Image credit: UK in Israel. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Stimulating the left side of the brain increases the likelihood of a right response and vice versa. Participants reported no awareness that their actions had been influenced.

Acknowledgements

This article was inspired by a lecture and its content from the University of Plymouth's Psychology Course.

You can view a video of this lecture on YouTube.

Bibliography

The Primacy of Doubt (2022) by Tim Palmer Hardback: (ISBN-13: 9780192843593) Paperback: (ISBN-13: 9780192843609)

In this wide-ranging book, Palmer takes us from the concepts of chaos theory to applying ensemble approaches to predicting the paths of climate change, pandemics, and potential economic crashes and conflicts. In the finale, he explores how the geometry of chaos may explain the deepest questions, with a provocative deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics, the nature of the cosmos, free will —and even God.

References

The Basics of Philosophy
Wikipedia

If you are interested in this type of article, you might also want to read:

What is Your Personality Type?

No referral links were used in the writing of this story.