Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The thesis that the world is deterministic is the thesis that the state of the world at one time ‘fixes’ or ‘determines’ the state of the world at any future time (or at both future and past times in some stronger versions of the claim). As such the thesis must not be confused either with the thesis of Fatalism (that what will happen at a time is ‘destined’ to happen, irrespective of what happens at some earlier time, in particular irrespective of an agent's choices at that earlier time), nor with the claim sometimes made against those who deny ‘determinate reality’ to the future (or to the past and the future) that reality is ‘timeless’ in the sense that even what is not present in time and even what is future still has full reality.The notion of ‘fixation’ or ‘determination’ that is usually had in mind is this: from a total description of the state of the world atone time, and a specification of all of the laws of nature, a total description of the world at any other time can be derived by a purely logical, deductive, inference. Naturally, given the richness of magnitudes in the world, no claim that such descriptions could be given in any reasonably finitistic language is intended. This general idea of determinism is quite problematic, however, as many issues concerning what is to count as a state of the world, and of its full specification, and many issues concerning what is ... log in or subscribe to read full text