Nomological determinism

In philosophy, nomological determinism is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid, all-encompassing natural laws, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events. Here are two definitions from the literature:

"Nomological determinism is a contingent and empirical claim about the laws of nature: that they are deterministic rather than probabilistic, and that they are all-encompassing rather than limited in scope.[1]
—Steven W. Horst, Laws, Mind, and Free Will, p. 98
"[Nomological] determinism is a claim about the laws of nature: very roughly, it is the claim that everything that happens is determined by antecedent conditions together with the natural laws."[2]
—Kadri Vihvelin, Arguments for Incompatibilism in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The truth of nomological determinism has however been disputed. For example, with respect to the possible case of dualistic mental causation, Vihvelin comments:[2]

"If, on the other hand, some individuals or some parts of some individuals (e.g., the nonphysical minds of human beings) or some of the behaviors of some of the individuals (e.g., the free actions of human beings) do not fall under either deterministic or probabilistic laws, then the laws are not all-encompassing."
—Kadri Vihvelin, Arguments for Incompatibilism in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Nomological determinism is a common form of causal determinism, and is sometimes taken as a synonym for physical determinism. However, other authors specifically distinguish between nomological determinism and physical determinism.[3]

Nomological determinism also has been viewed as a form of causal determinism which can be asserted with not only physical determinism, but physical indeterminism.[4]

History

The notion of nomological (physical) determinism takes its classical form in the ideas of Laplace, who posited (in agreement with the physics of his time) that an omniscient observer (called sometimes Laplace's demon) knowing with infinite precision all the positions and velocities of every particle in the universe could predict the future entirely.[5] Needless to say, omniscient observers are imaginary creations, and infinite precision exceeds the capacities of human measurement. However, nomological determinism refers to these notions as a statement in principle, and their reduction to practice is not at issue.

Alternative Theories

Today nomological determinism is disputed by various interpretations of quantum mechanics.[6] Some have also argued that reformulations of determinism might be more compatible.[7]

"the ideal of a science of physics with strictly deterministic theories must be relinquished as inherently unrealizable."
—Ernest Nagel, Causality and Indeterminism in Physical Theory, p. 277

In place of the rigid and all-encompassing theory envisioned by nomological determinism, a different idea of a deterministic theory is proposed:

"a theory is deterministic if and only if, given the values of its state variables for some initial period, the theory logically determines a unique set of values for those variables for any other period."
—Ernest Nagel, Causality and Indeterminism in Physical Theory p. 292

See also

References

  1. ↑ Steven W Horst (2011). Laws, Mind, and Free Will. MIT Press. p. 98. ISBN 0262015250.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Vihvelin, Kadri (Mar 1, 2011). Edward N. Zalta, ed, ed. "Arguments for Incompatibilism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition). Retrieved 2013-02-06.
  3. ↑ In Carl Ginet (1990). On Action. Cambridge University Press. p. 92. ISBN 052138818X., Ginet explicitly excludes from physical determinism what he calls psychological determinism.
  4. ↑ Guttorm Fløistad (1982). Philosophie des sciences. M. Nijhoff. p. 69. ISBN 978-90-247-2518-2. Retrieved 10 February 2013. It should be noted that causal or nomological determinism is to be understood as that species of determinism of which the most well entrenched principles of physics are reflections. If nomological determinism on the quantum level is an invariable relation between probability distributions, as opposed to a relation between particular events, then, subject to interpretation and aggregation, this is the sort of determinism to which non-teleological theories are committed, Causing in these contexts, is always a cover-word for whatever determination physical science commits us to.
  5. ↑ For a discussion, see Robert C. Solomon, Kathleen M. Higgins (2009). "Free will and determinism". The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy (8th ed.). Cengage Learning. p. 232. ISBN 0495595152.
  6. ↑ Robert C Bishop (2011). "Chapter 4: Chaos, indeterminism, and free will". In Robert Kane, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Free Will: Second Edition (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 84 ff. ISBN 0195399692.
  7. ↑ Ernest Nagel (1999). "§V: Alternative descriptions of physical state". The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (2nd ed.). Hackett. pp. 285–292. ISBN 0915144719.