Determinism
Determinism is a philosophical doctrine that holds that all physical events, including human thought and actions, are causally determined by the unbreakable chain of cause-consequence and, therefore, the current state « determines" in some sense the future. There are different formulations of determinism, differing in the details of their claims. There are three types of determinism:
- Logical determinism argues that the true value of any proposition is timeless. For example, the phrase "Mañana lloverá" is true or false, and if it is true, then tomorrow it will rain by logical necessity.
- Epistemic determinism argues that if any future fact is known in advance, then such fact must inevitably occur.
- Causal determinism argues that all events are the result of natural laws and previous conditions.
To distinguish the different forms of determinism, it is convenient to classify them according to the degree of determinism they postulate:
- Strong determinism argues that there are no genuinely random or random events and that, in general, the future is potentially predictable from the present. The past could also be "predictable" if we know perfectly a precise situation of the causal chain. Pierre-Simon Laplace defended this kind of determinism.
- The weak determinism maintains that it is the probability that is determined by the facts present, or that there is a strong correlation between the present state and the future states, even admitting the influence of essentially random and unpredictable events.
It should be noted that there is an important difference between determination and predictability of events. Determination exclusively implies the absence of chance in the cause-effect chain that gives rise to a specific event. Predictability is a potential fact derived from the accurate determination of events, but it requires that the initial conditions (or any point) of the chain of causation be known.[citation required]
Determinism in the social sciences
Since the social sciences study both individual behavior and the behavior of systems made up of various individuals, there are forms of determinism that hold that the global behavior of the system is deterministic (without affirming anything about the determinism of individuals) and forms more radical that uphold determinism even at the level of the individual.
Some authors, such as Marvin Harris, who are not strictly determinists, have raised the possibility of a probabilistic determinism, by which it would not be the facts themselves that are determined, but the probability that a social system evolves in one sense or another.
Determinism in social systems
There are several theories that postulate some form of determinism for the evolution of social systems. In general, these theories postulate some form of weak determinism, justifying determinism not so much because the behavior of individuals could be deterministic, but because the very structure and constraints of the systems are what produce determinism, even when individuals may be endowed with free will. Some forms of determinism are:
- Economic determinism: states that the evolution of societies is governed or restricted by economic factors. The philosopher Karl Marx suggested that social structures are strongly conditioned by economic factors and mode of production, in turn determined by technology (productive forces). This position should not be confused with economic determinism strictu sensu (the difference is in "condition" against "determine" completely). Within some current technocratic, neoclassical and neoliberal approaches, there seems to be a tacit assumption of economic determinism, namely that a same set of economic measures applied on a large scale will produce identical (or very similar) results in different societies and in different times, regardless of other extra-economic factors of a political, social and cultural nature.
- Technological Determinism: Technical forces determine social and cultural changes. This position is similar to that maintained by Jared Diamond, Marvin Harris or Karl Marx for which the material factors, including the technology and available resources, strongly condition other social developments, although none of the three authors is a determinist itself. This current, which is mainly about the so-called Toronto School, studies the media that pay special attention to its technological nature and how it influences and determines the social uses that are made of it and even the social forms that arise from them.
- Geographical Determinism: For many authors, especially the second half of the centuryXIX and the first half of the centuryXX., the physical environment determines human societies as a collective and man as an individual and at their level of socio-economic and cultural development, so human beings must adapt to the conditions imposed by the environment. This "geographic school" or "geography-making form" is considered driven by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel. The American geographer Ellen Churchill Semple took these ideas to radical ends in her work Influences of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-geography. A variant of this type of determinism is climate determinism, which states that culture and history are highly conditioned by the climatic characteristics of the area where they live. An example of this type of determinism is the one that Ellsworth Huntington poses in his works Climate and civilization and The Pulse of Asia: the origins of civilization are determined by the climate. If the climate is not favourable, there will be no high level of human development (civilization). It could also be defined as a climate determinism. Another form of weak geographical determinism is the position of Jared Diamond, who suggests that the presence of certain domesticable animals or certain natural resources in certain regions has had a decisive impact on the expansion of ancient and modern civilizations.
- Determinism by social character (as Thomas Hobbes argues) denies freedom by virtue of social coexistence. The society is the one that imposes rules or laws necessary to balance the individual interests and desires, since in the event of the lack of such regulation the individual would result in a generalized chaos that would attack each and every other, as Hobbes says:Homo homini lupus» ('Man is a wolf for man').
- Class determinism: it says that the social level in which a person will die is linked (or correlated, probabilistically) with the social level in which he is born, so that in social terms there is immobility. It is considered an anonymous of the American dream, because society does not measure the value of people based on their ideas, thoughts or personal achievements, but on their social level, and it is impossible then to climb into society, unless it is intended for that.[chuckles]required]
Determinism in individuals
Again within the forms of determinism, in relation to individuals, there are positions from probabilistic determinism to strong determinism, which denies any role for chance. From a human point of view, strong individualistic determinism' He maintains that there is no free will. Determinism holds that life is governed or strongly determined by circumstances beyond human control, such that no one is ultimately responsible for what they do or fail to do.
- Biological Determinism: Set of theories that defend the possibility of giving ultimate answers to the behavior of living beings from their genetic structure. Therefore, the conduct of humans and other animals is due to forms that have been necessary for the survival of their genes and which extend to complex social systems adapted to their most favorable evolutionary process.
- Genetic determinism: states, in its strongest version, that the human being is not free because it is conditioned or determined by its genes. In the weaker versions, genetic determinism maintains that personality and to a large extent success and actions in life are subject primarily to genes, which are the main explanatory factor.
- Environmental determinism (also, educational determinism or behavioral determinism) states that it is not the genes that condition the human being, but the education it receives throughout life, which is the cause of its behavior (see also correlation and its comparison with causality). For behavioral determinism, human beings are not free because their behaviors were conditioned. Psychologist B. F. Skinner defended this posture (conducting), as did J. B. Watson.
- psychic determinism: concept coined by psychoanalysis, part of the fact that every psychic phenomenon has a cause and, therefore, also the free choice or human decision, in which the cause is the force of the most potent motive, or the internal psychological situation determined by all the conditionings derived from inheritance, biology, education, temperament and character of the person who decides or the unconscious.
- Language determinism. It refers to the fact that the specific form of the spoken language and the concepts present in it strongly impose or condition the type of reasoning, conceptions and ideas about the world. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, very popular in the middle of the centuryXX.It's a form of linguistic determinism. In general, most forms of linguistic determinism have been highly criticized and discussed by both linguists and cognitive science specialists.
Determinism in the natural sciences
In physics, determinism about the physical laws was dominant for centuries, and some of its main proponents were Pierre Simon Laplace and Albert Einstein. Laplace, who contributed enormously to the development of physics and probability theory, stated:
We can look at the present state of the universe as the effect of the past and the cause of its future. It could condense an intellect that at any given moment would know all the forces that animate the nature and positions of the beings that make up it. If this intellect was vast enough to submit the data to the analysis, it could be condensed into a simple formula of motion of the great bodies of the universe and of the lightest atom; for such intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future, as well as the past, would be in front of their eyes.Laplace
Classical mechanics and the theory of relativity are theories that postulate laws of temporal evolution, that is, "equations of motion" deterministic type. There have been authors like Karl Popper or Ilya Prigogine who have tried to refute this determinism in classical physics based on arguments such as the existence of systems with bifurcations, the arrow of time, chaos, etc. However, according to M. López Corredoira, all that these authors are doing is basically inappropriately confusing determinism with predictability. Determinism is inseparable from classical mechanics and the theory of relativity, predictability is not, therefore, Despite the deterministic fact in the way that classical and relativistic mechanics treat the time evolution of physical systems, in practice there are many difficulties in achieving a complete knowledge of the physical state of a classical or relativistic system.[citation required]
Most of the scientific community considers quantum mechanics as a random and non-deterministic event, based on probabilities and apparently not governed by principles common to traditional mechanics. From Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, through Bell's theorem, to the evidence shown by thousands of experiments carried out in recent decades, it is shown that indeterministic laws govern subatomic mechanics, contrary to what Albert Einstein thought, which He supported the idea of non-predictability based on the existence of unknown hidden variables that determine this apparent random reality. The open question in science today is not whether or not quantum scales behave deterministically, but why macroscopic reality is deterministic and quantum reality is indeterministic.[citation needed]
The solution to this problem could come from the long-awaited and elusive theory of everything, which would explain the apparent contradictions between the observations of the macroscopic reality of the theory of relativity and the observations of the quantum theory, both undoubtedly Empirically proven by the scientific method. In the subatomic sphere, a valid approximation to this indeterministic-deterministic jump without the need to have the theory of everything could come from the explanation of how observation and, more specifically, consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function defining that indeterminacy. [citation required]
Strong determinism in the natural sciences in general is synonymous with cosmological determinism, which states that the Universe is governed by unbreakable physical laws (including the human species); therefore, everything that happens happens like this because it could never have happened otherwise.[citation needed]
Religious determinism
The position of theological determinism or religious determinism is summarized as follows: "If God knows everything, it will be because He himself has determined all things according to his criteria, so God is the cause of human actions."[citation required]
Calvinism, in its most extreme branches, maintains that the human being lacks free will and is predestined;[citation needed] while other currents of Protestantism they generally oppose determinism and point out that, if God is omnipotent, he can also make human beings free even if he knows what he is going to do with that freedom; that is, God and human beings are authors, jointly, of the latter.[citation required]
Environmental determinism
Also called climatic determinism, it refers to the conditioning circumstances that “determine” limits on the strictly human environment, that is, the attitudes and activities of society are determined by an environmental limit.[quote required]
The history of environmental determinism dates back to the V century BCE. C., a time from which a medical treatise attributed to Hippocrates is known, entitled: Air, water and other places. Determinism covers the idea of causality, according to which nothing is ordered or organized by chance; but rather everything is a consequence of everything and for this reason it is predictable: by knowing an effect, it is possible to determine its cause or by determining a reaction it is possible to identify the triggering action. From determinism, the environment models and molds not only the individual, but also society as a whole, its relationships, its interrelationships, its structures and other activities.[citation required]
In the framework of the concept of environmental determinism, there is a kind of immanent order in Nature, determined by physical, biological, chemical and other laws, and everything obeys these laws and all activities are determined by these parameters. In opposition to this theory, indeterminism emerges as an alternative. Its main representative was Karl Popper, who categorically denies this perfect natural order, arguing that the causal forecast of the Universe is an extremely complex and impossible exercise, for which reason he proposes a probabilistic theory in which chance or ordered chance is responsible. of the universal conformation.[citation required]