Quotes About Determinism

Do the laws governing the universe allow us to predict exactly what is going to happen to us in the future? The short answer is no, and yes. In principle, the laws allow us to predict the future. But in practice the calculations are often too difficult.

Even worse, if determinism breaks down, we can't be sure of our past history either. The history books and our memories could just be illusions. It is the past that tells us who we are. Without it, we lose our identity.

Doktrin determinisme sains ditolak banyak orang yang merasa doktrin itu membatasi kebebasan Tuhan untuk campur tangan di dunia.

To talk of probability is to suggest that events might happen differently from the way they do, whereas events themselves will unfold according to an inevitable path.

in order to act freely, we must act by chance, which is absurd, and what no man will dare to avow.

Arminian notion of Liberty of the Will, consisting in the will's Self-determination, is repugnant to itself, and shuts itself wholly out of the world.

The man who says that all events are necessitated has no ground for critizing the man who says that not all events are necessitated. For according to him this is itself a necessitated event.

Today the doctrine of metaphysical free will appears to us as one of those archaic relics of traditional religion that Epicurus and Lucretius should have done their utmost to combat. Moral freedom and determinism are by no means incompatible. Man is himself a causal agent in nature and is morally responsible when he acts "freely," i.e., from his own settled character and in his own capacity as an individual, provided he is exempt from external force or pressure.

every event whatsoever has a prior cause, whether known or not.

If man is nothing but a material mechanism and part of the world mechanism, then his choices of good and evil are mechanically determined, and he cannot be said to be an autonomous and responsible ethical being. Thus if materialism is to save moral responsibility and at the same time save determinism, it must represent man as partially determined (in his organic functions) and partially free (in his ethical capacity).

Nature almost surely operates by combining chance with necessity, randomness with determinism...

The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures.

Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development of our planetary system were not exceptions.

The behavior of running code is unambiguous.

This new environmental determinism (as, for instance, preached by John Dewey and his behaviorist forerunners) is an even more evil invention than Calvin's doctrine concerning predestination. Environment is merely a factor, an influence exercised on the human free will, but not a fatal and coercive power.

I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.

In relativity, movement is continuous, causally determinate and well defined, while in quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate and not well defined.

The open view of the future is the most plausible view because it squares with our everyday life. Whatever philosophy we might embrace, we all live as though the open view were true. With every decision we make we assume that much of our immediate future is settled (e.g., we take for granted the ongoing reality of our world and the laws of physics) but that some of it is up to us to decide. The open view simply says that this common-sense assumption is accurate. Responding

Our best theories of people, presented on their own terms and without reference to underlying particles and forces, leave plenty of room for human choice.

The issue that troubles us, when we get right down to it, isn't anything about the laws of physics; it's about free will.

Fatalism is now offered, not as just one possible philosophical attitude among others with reasons given for and against it, but as a fact backed by the tremendous authority of science.

The genome is as complicated and indeterminate as ordinary life, because it is ordinary life. This should come as a relief. Simple determinism, whether of the genetics or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will.

All that determinists are asking you to accept is that there cannot be effect without cause.

Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are random, in which case we are not responsible for them.