Indeterminism is a methodological position, therefore, not everything in the world has a cause. This is a philosophical category that denies the objective causal relationship and cognitive essence of explanation in science. The basic laws of nature exist thanks to the principle of probability. Chance is an equal, fundamental entity with the help of which the evolutionary character of nature can be explained. Also, indeterminism can be, on the one hand, naturalistic, since it confirms the self-sufficiency of nature, and on the other hand, theological, since it explains the origin of nature from God.
The principle of indeterminism also occurs in physics; it is expressed in the causelessness of microprocesses, but quantum physics denies such a phenomenon, since it reflects them in a special statistical form.
In biology, the principle of indeterminism lies in identified causality and unambiguous predictability. Since the need has been revealed for the use of statistical methods to reflect the cause-and-effect relationships of actual processes, based on which it is impossible to make unambiguous and decisive predictions. Indeterminists talk about the bankruptcy of the principle of causality, in general. They refute the development of modern natural science and talk about the effectiveness of the dialectical-materialist theory, which recognizes objectivity and represents the diversity of causal relationships and forms of their reflection in people's minds. Many modern young physicists are becoming supporters of this worldview. Scientific progress will not be possible regardless of the principles of dialectical materialism, in particular the principle of causality.
Indeterminism is also often found with concepts such as determinism and agnosticism.
Determinism and indeterminism are philosophical positions regarding the objective causality of objects, objects and phenomena that have opposite definitions regarding this.
Agnosticism and indeterminism deny the possibility of knowing various phenomena under the pretext of the absence of objective, cause-and-effect patterns in social life, which are inherent only in nature.
Agnosticism and indeterminism have similar definitions because they both express the idea that it is impossible to fully know the true essence of man's knowledge of reality.
Explanation of the concept of "determinism"
“Determination” is a Latin word that is translated as “to determine,” “to limit,” “to separate.” Based on this explanation, the scientific direction is based on the separation of properties and characteristics of an object. This allows you to understand what influence it has on ongoing processes, how other objects are associated with it and determine its existence.
The concept of “determinism” in a philosophical view is the doctrine of causality and laws. This concept is a building block of the scientific method. Taking into account the main categories, scientific research is aimed at analyzing, determining the conditions and causes, relationships and laws of various changes that occur in society, the natural environment, and human thinking. In philosophy, determinism unites the concept of nature, which is deciphered in causality, chance or necessity.
Philosophy
One important philosophical implication of determinism is that, according to incompatibilists, it undermines many versions of free will, which also undermines the sense of moral responsibility and the condemnation of regret. You wouldn't even condemn regret because moral responsibility doesn't matter; killing a person would be nothing more than drinking water when you are thirsty. First, this lack of moral responsibility is in itself chaotic; the act of drinking water is certainly morally different from killing a person. To clarify, a deterministic world will view your actions, such as killing a person, as the only possibility of what could have happened; the outcome of not killing a person is literally impossible. If it were true, as Kant argues, if our will is determined by antecedent causes, then we are no longer responsible for those actions because those actions are determined by a force outside of us. The moral reality of our world is greatly disturbed by determinism because killing a person is clearly morally wrong.
According to William James in his The Dilemma of Determinism, the judgment of regret is also inappropriate in a deterministic world. We would simply have no logical reason to regret, to consider an "impossible" event to have occurred instead of a "necessity", to make moral judgments about past events that could not have led to any other result. On the contrary, our ability and will to make judgments of regret is evidence that our world is in fact indeterministic, and confirms the uncertainty of the outcomes of events. The judgment of regret can be effectively made because our will is not determined by antecedent causes. Bertrand Russell, in his essay “The Elements of Ethics,” argues against these antecedent reasons. Imagine we are presented with two alternative options; Determinism states that our will to choose one of them is due to a antecedent cause, and the other two alternatives would be impossible, "but this does not prevent our will from being the cause of other effects (Russell)." The fact that different possibilities can be brought about and chosen by our will means that morality (right and wrong) can be different from choice. The ability to effectively judge different possible outcomes is strong evidence that moral responsibility exists and should be tempered, and fits perfectly with indeterminism.
Ancient Greek philosophy
Leucippus
Oldest mention of the concept of chance
It is the earliest philosopher of atomism, Leucippus, who said this:
“Thus the cosmos became like a spherical shape: the atoms were subject to random and unpredictable motion, rapid and continuous.”[5]
Aristotle
Main article: Four Reasons
Aristotle described four possible causes (material, efficient, formal and final). Aristotle called these causes with the word αἰτίαι ( Aitiai
, as in
etiology
), which translates as causes in the sense of multiple factors responsible for an event. Aristotle did not adhere to the simplistic idea of "every event has a (single) cause" that came later.
In his Physics
and
Metaphysics
, Aristotle said that there were accidents (συμβεβηκός,
Sumbebekos
) caused by nothing other than chance (τύχη,
tuchhe
). He noted that he and the early physicists did not find a place for chance among their causes.
We have seen how far Aristotle distances himself from any view that makes chance the decisive factor in the general explanation of things. And he does this on conceptual grounds: random events, in his view, are by definition unusual and lack certain explanatory characteristics: as such they form an additional class to those things for which full natural explanations can be given.[6]
— R.J. Hankinson, "Causes" in Blackwell, A Companion to Aristotle
Aristotle contrasted his random chance with necessity:
Also, there is no definite cause for an accident, but only chance (τυχόν), namely an indefinite (ἀόριστον) cause.[7]
It is quite obvious that there are principles and causes that can be generated and destroyed, in addition to the actual processes of generation and destruction; for if this is not so, everything will be by necessity: that is, if there must necessarily be some cause, other than chance, of what is generated and destroyed. Will it happen or not? Yes, if this happens; otherwise no.[8]
Pyrrhonism
The philosopher Sextus Empiricus described the Skeptic's position for reasons as follows:
... we show that the existence of causes is plausible, and if those that prove the existence of a cause are also plausible, and if it is not possible to give preference to any of these causes over others - since we have no agreed upon sign, criterion, or proof , as stated earlier - then, if we are guided by the statements of Dogmatics, it is necessary to postpone the verdict on the existence of causes, too, saying that they no more exist than they do not exist [9]
Epicureanism
Epicurus argued that when atoms move through empty space, there are times when they are "deflected" ( clinamen
) from their otherwise defined pathways, thereby initiating new causal chains. Epicurus argued that these deviations would allow us to be more responsible for our actions, which would not be possible if every action were deterministic. For Epicureanism, the random interventions of autocratic gods are preferable to strict determinism.
Early modern philosophy
In 1729 Will
from Jean Meslier's estate:
“Matter, by virtue of its own active force, moves and acts blindly.”[10]
Shortly after Julien Offroy de la Mettrie in his L'Homme Machine.
(1748, anonymous) Wrote:
“Perhaps the reason for human existence is simply existence itself? Perhaps it was accidentally thrown to some point on this earth's surface without any
and
why
".
In his Anti-Sénèque
[
Traité de la vie heureuse, par Sénèque, avec un Discours du traducteur sur le même sujet
, 1750] we read:
“So chance threw us into life.”[11]
In the 19th century, French philosopher Antoine-Augustin Cournot theorized chance
in a new way, as a series of non-linear causes.
He wrote in Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances
(1851):
“Probability is relevant not because of rarity. On the contrary, due to chance they produce many possible others.”[12]
Modern philosophy
Charles Pierce
Tychism (Greek: τύχη "chance") is a thesis proposed by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce in the 1890s.[13] He argues that absolute chance, also called spontaneity, is the real factor at work in the universe. This can be seen as the direct opposite of Albert Einstein's oft-quoted dictum: "God does not play dice with the universe" and Werner Heisenberg's early philosophical insight into the uncertainty principle.
Peirce does not, of course, claim that there is no
law in the Universe. On the contrary, he argues that a completely random world would be a contradiction and therefore impossible. The complete absence of order is itself a type of order. The position he defends is rather that there are both regularities and irregularities in the universe.
Karl Popper comments[14] that Peirce's theory received little attention from his contemporaries, and that other philosophers did not accept indeterminism until the advent of quantum mechanics.
Arthur Holly Compton
In 1931, Arthur Holly Compton championed the idea of human freedom based on quantum uncertainty and invented the concept of amplifying microscopic quantum events to give a chance to the macroscopic world. In his somewhat bizarre mechanism, he imagined sticks of dynamite attached to his amplifier, expecting Schrödinger's Cat paradox.[15]
Responding to criticism that his ideas made chance the direct cause of our actions, Compton clarified the two-step nature of his idea. Atlantic Monthly
article from 1955. First there is a series of random possible events, then a determining factor is added in the act of choice.
A set of known physical conditions does not allow us to accurately determine what a future event will be. These conditions, so far as they can be known, instead define the range of possible events from which some particular event will occur. When a person exercises freedom, by his act of choice he himself adds a factor not provided by physical conditions, and thus determines what will happen. The fact that he does this is known only to the man himself. From the outside, one can only see the action of physical law in his action. It is the inner knowledge that he is actually doing what he intends to do that tells the actor himself that he is free.[16]
Compton hailed the rise of indeterminism in 20th-century science, writing:
In my own reflections on this vital question I am in a much more contented state of mind than I could have been at any earlier stage of science. If the statements of the laws of physics were considered correct, one would have to assume (as most philosophers do) that the sense of freedom is illusory, or if [free] choice were considered effective, that the laws of physics... [were] unreliable. The dilemma proved awkward.[17]
Along with Arthur Eddington in Britain, Compton was one of those rare eminent physicists in the English-speaking world of the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s who championed the "liberation of free will" through Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, but their efforts were met not only by physical and philosophical criticism, but above all with fierce political and ideological campaigns.[18]
Karl Popper
In his essay Clouds and Clocks
, included in his book
Objective Knowledge
, Popper contrasted "clouds", his metaphor for indeterministic systems, with "clocks", that is, deterministic. He sided with indeterminism, writing
I believe that Peirce was right that all clocks are clouds to some extent - even the most accurate of clocks. This is, I think, the most important inversion of the erroneous deterministic idea that all clouds are clocks.[19]
Popper also popularized propensity probability.
Robert Kane
Kane is one of the leading modern philosophers of free will.[20][21] Defending what is called in philosophical circles "libertarian freedom", Kane argues that "(1) the presence of alternative possibilities (or the ability of an agent to do otherwise) is a necessary condition for free action, and (2) determinism is incompatible with alternative possibilities (it excludes the opportunity to act differently).”[22] It is important to note that the core of Kane's position is not based on the defense of alternative possibilities (AP), but on the notion of what Kane calls ultimate responsibility (UR). Thus, AP is a necessary but insufficient criterion of free will. It is necessary that there be (metaphysically) real alternatives to our actions, but this is not enough; our actions may be random, beyond our control. Control is the “ultimate responsibility.”
The ultimate responsibility for creativity in Kane's picture lies at the heart of what he calls “self-forming actions,” or SFAs—those moments of indecision during which people experience conflicting desires. These SFAs represent the indeterminate, regression-stopping voluntary actions or abstinences in agents' life histories that are necessary for UR. UR is not required by everyone
an action performed by our own free will is indeterminate, and therefore for every action or choice we could have done differently; it requires only that some of our choices and actions be uncertain (and therefore we could have done differently), namely SFA. They shape our character or nature; they inform our future choices, reasons, and motives in action. If a person has had the opportunity to make a character-forming decision (SFA), he is responsible for the actions that result from his character.
Mark Balaguer
Mark Balaguer, in his book Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem
[23] argues similarly to Kane. He believes that, conceptually, free will requires indeterminism, and the question of whether the brain behaves indeterministically is open to further study. empirical study. He also wrote "A Scientifically Accurate Version of Indeterministic Libertarian Free Will" on the subject.[24]
Origin of the term "determinism"
The question of the cause of this or that phenomenon has always worried people. Over time, the concept of determinism was filled with new questions, developed, and enriched. But no scientific name was given for the constant questions about cause-and-effect relationships.
The word “determinism” was first recorded during the Middle Ages. It denoted a type of logical explanation of a concept, which is the antonym of the word “generalization.” Already in the 16th and 17th centuries, this word received a new meaning - conditionality. In the 17th century, determinism was the name given to causality and regularity. At the same time, the foundation is laid for the formation of mechanistic determinism. Since this period, the concept has been used in all branches of science to explain the dynamics, patterns, and universality of certain categories and objects.
There is another point of view - the opposite of the theory of causality, which is called indeterminism. Indeterministic supporters did not agree with the causal, natural conditionality of various phenomena in the natural environment and human society. The basic concepts of this direction: causeless randomness of phenomena, human free will, arbitrariness. The concept of indeterminism in philosophy was found in antiquity and modernity. The founder and successor of thoughts about chance and causelessness are the indeterminists: D. Hume, B. Russell, H. Reichenbach, and others.
Bibliography
- Lejeunne, Denis. 2012. The Radical Use of Chance in 20th Century Art
, Rhodope. Amsterdam - James, William. The dilemma of determinism. Kessinger Publications, 2012
- Narain, Veer et al. “Determinism, Free Will and Moral Responsibility.” TheHumanist.com, 21 October 2014, thehumanist.com/magazine/november-de December-2014/philosophically-speaking/determinism-free-will-and-moral-responsibility.
Russell, Bertrand. "Elements of Ethics". Philosophical Essays, 1910
Formation of a deterministic view in the ancient period
Understanding the causality of certain phenomena appeared in the ancient period among ancient peoples. This was facilitated by the development of political and public life, especially in Ancient Greece. Views about causation were expressed by Democritus and Leucippus.
In ancient India, ideas of cause and effect were closely related to karma and rebirth. Here, one can observe the relationship between a person’s behavior and his quality of rebirth in a future life.
In Ancient China, Lao Tzu studied deterministic processes especially carefully. He called this process “Tao”. It exists constantly, in everything and everywhere. Tao represents inaction, does not depend on time, creates the universal unity of the world.
The formation of the deterministic direction originates in Ancient Greece. Ancient philosophers, in their works, examined in detail the laws of the world. It was called differently: “nike”, “logos”, “homeomerism”, “nous”, “atoms”, “chance”, “vortex”, four types of cause according to Aristotle.
Unique determinism
This concept is not so much philosophical as it relates to physics and mechanics. Unambiguous determinism is the foundation of these areas of science. This concept denotes the influence of certain external factors and conditions on the initial state of the material system. This influence is rigid, unambiguous, it decides the further history of the existence of the material system. If something happens by chance, adherents of this trend argued, it is not a studied phenomenon - there is no chance as such.
One can successfully illustrate unambiguous determinism using the example of Newton's 2nd law. Also, the representation of the field in electrodynamics (Maxwell) led to an important conclusion - the state of the field in the present time does not depend on the surrounding situation at a distance. The law of short-range action works here - the field is influenced by the conditions that have developed in the vicinity of it.
The principle of unambiguous influence of causes is also visible in other theories of physics:
- mass (weight of an object) depends on the speed of movement;
- the passage of time and the curvature of space depend on the distribution of masses;
- the power of the gravitational field clearly affects the course of various processes;
- the movement of masses in space affects gravity.
In all these examples, the theory of unambiguous determination in philosophy works. But our world is multifaceted, not all processes strictly depend on each other. There are circumstances in which there is no clear relationship between processes and objects.
Determinants influencing psychological development
The human psyche develops under the influence of various factors of an objective and subjective nature.
Objective
Objective factors in the development of the human psyche include:
- cultural and economic level of society;
- style of raising a child in the family, school;
- caring for a person;
- satisfying the need for closeness and belonging to a group;
- features of mentality.
Objective determinants also include genetic background, temperament and the presence of diseases.
Subjective
Subjective determinants of personality development are interconnected with objective ones and are the basis for self-development. Subjective factors include the conditions under which a person’s motivation, needs, consciousness and behavior style are formed.
Through the acquisition of knowledge and self-knowledge, the path to new opportunities lies.
Irina Sherbul
Description of probabilistic determinism
After unambiguous determinism, a theory of probabilistic causation of phenomena appeared. Its appearance coincides with the peak of development of theories about thermodynamics and statistical physics. The concept of hard causality, over time, showed its imperfection, especially when probabilistic methods and research theories appeared. Statistical patterns were primary; they became the beginning of models of the probabilistic world. The probabilistic method of study undermines the authority of unambiguous causality, the main idea of which is: external causes are omnipotent.
Content
- 1 Necessary but not sufficient causation
- 2 Probabilistic causation
- 3 Internal indeterminism versus unpredictability
- 4 Philosophy 4.1 Ancient Greek philosophy 4.1.1 Leucippus
- 4.1.2 Aristotle
- 4.1.3 Pyrrhonism
- 4.1.4 Epicureanism
- 4.3.1 Charles Pierce
- 5.1 Mathematics
Foundations of modern determinism
Already in the 20th century, a new model of ideas about the universe began to form. In the mid-twentieth century, a new idea about synergetics appeared, and the physical and mathematical foundations of self-organization phenomena were developed. Modern determinism is a combination of individual ideas of all ideas about causality, starting from the ancient period. The new approach derives three categories of time dependence of cause and effect:
- the cause appears first, then the effect, strict sequence - this is the classical model;
- there is a gap between cause and effect, but they are closely connected by the conditions of short-range action, the final speed;
- cause and effect appear simultaneously: when the process of cause is just beginning, its effect immediately arises, then the cause is “extinguished” by its effect.
Representatives of determinism and indeterminism
The development of determinism occurs from antiquity to the present day. During this time, many philosophers, physicists and scientists became devoted determinists, studying different categories of this view of the organization of the world. Among other representatives of determinism, the most significant contribution was made by the works of Montesquieu. This is the originator of the concept of geographical causality. In his works, he describes in detail the influence of climate on some characteristics of peoples.
A proponent of univocal determinism was Pierre-Simon Laplace. His ideas were the starting point for supporters and opponents of the world organization model. His concept was supported and complemented by L.I. Mechnikov, E. Huntington and others. The classification of forms of causality was determined by Mario Bunge. Actively developed the idea of cause and effect in physics: Maxwell, Lagrange, V.A.Fok.
Representatives of the modern view of determinism as a synegretic concept are V.P. Bransky, V.V. Mantatov, D. Blokhintsev, K. Nikolsky and others.
Determinism and indeterminism are two completely opposite philosophical movements in the field of the role and place of causality. Followers of determinism are confident in the objective nature of causality. Proponents of indeterminism, on the contrary, completely deny objective causation, and causation in general.
Recommendations
- Born's rule itself does not imply whether the observed indeterminism is due to the object, the measurement system, or both. The ensemble interpretation according to Born does not require fundamental indeterminism and the absence of causality.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Interpretations of Philosophy
- The uniform distribution is the most "agnostic" distribution, representing the absence of any information. Laplace, in his theory of probability, was apparently the first to notice this. Currently, this can be shown using the definition of entropy.
- Popper, K. (1972). Of Clouds and Clocks: An Approach to Rationality and Human Freedom Embedded in Objective Knowledge
. Oxford Clarendon Press. 220. Indeterminism—or more accurately, physical indeterminism—is simply the doctrine that not all events in the physical world are predetermined with absolute certainty. - “Ὁ τοίνυν κόσμος συνέστη περικεκλασμένῳ σχήματι ἐσχηματισμένος τὸ ν τρόπον τοῦτον. ἀτόμων σωμάτων ἀπρονόητον καὶ τυχαίαν ἐχόντων τὴν κίνησιν συ νεχῶς τε καὶ τάχιστα κινουμένων” H. Diels-W. Kranz Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
, Berlin Weidmann 1952, 24, I, 1 - Hankinson, R.J. (2009). "Causes". Blackwell, A Companion to Aristotle
. paragraph 223. - Aristotle, Metaphysics
, Book V, 1025a25 - Aristotle, Metaphysics
, Book VI, 1027a29-33 - Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism
Book III Chapter 5 - Meslier, J. Testament
. - Jde La Mettrie, JO.: Anti-Sénèque
- Cournot, A.A.: Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances et sur les caractères de la critical analysis
, § 32. - Peirce, C. S.: The Doctrine of Necessity Examined
, Monist, 1892 - Popper, K: On Clouds and Cuckoos
, included in
Objective Knowledge
, revised, 1978, p. 231. - SCIENCE, 74, p. 1911, August 14, 1931
- "Science and Human Freedom", in Arthur's Cosmos by Holly Compton
, 1967, Knopf, p. 115 - Compton, A. The Human Significance of Science,
paragraph ix - Kozniak, Boris (2018), "The First Missionaries of Quantum Free Will: A Socio-Historical Analysis", Free Will and Action
, Historical-Analytical Studies in Nature, Mind and Action, Springer International Publishing,
6
, pp. 131–154, Doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-99295-2_10, ISBN 9783319992945 - Popper, K: On Clouds and Cuckoos
, included in
Objective Knowledge
, revised, 1978, p. 215. - Kane, R. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Free Will
- Information Philosophers “Robert Kane is the recognized dean of libertarian philosophers who have written extensively on the problem of free will.”
- Kane (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Free Will
, para. 11. - Notre Dame Reviews: Free will as an open scientific problem
- "Marc Balaguer: A Scientifically Authoritative Version of Indeterminist Libertarian Free Will." turingc.blogspot.pt
. 2012-07-06. - Popper, K: On Clouds and Cuckoos
, included in
Objective Knowledge
, revised, 1978, p. 212. - Popper, 1978, quoting Henry Pemberton. A look at the philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton
- Ehrman, J. Determinism: what we have learned and what we do not yet know
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Causal Determinism
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Causal Determinism
- "Spacetime Branching Conference." Archived from the original on 2011-09-30. Retrieved 2011-07-27.
- "Millstein R.L.: Is the evolutionary process deterministic or indeterminate?
"(PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-09-30. Retrieved 2011-07-28. - Kimura, M. Neutral theory of molecular evolution
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Science
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- The end of confidence. Ilya Prigozhin. pp. 19–21. Free press; 1st edition (August 17, 1997) ISBN 978-0-684-83705-5 [2]
- Cosmos Magazine: How Much Free Will Do We Have?
- ^ a b
BBC Science:
Free will is similar to animals and humans, but not as free - "Is Homosexuality an Evolutionary Step to a Superorganism?" Wired
. 2008-01-03. - “E. O. Wilson proposes a new theory of social evolution.” Wired
. 2010-08-26. - de Koninck, Charles (2008). "The Philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington and the Problem of Indeterminism." Works of Charles de Koninck
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