Question

Address one of the following questions with a 200 word post.

1. What is causal determinism? Provide some examples of objects that are causally determined.

2. Explain the relation between fatalism and causal determinism.

3. Assuming causal determinism is true, does it follow that we cannot hold people responsible for their actions? Why of Why not?

4. Provide and example of an action which is entirely uncaused. Would this uncaused action be free?

5. Provide an example of a person who is free because they have a second order belief or desire.

Answer 1

• 1.Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature. The idea is ancient, but first became subject to clarification and mathematical analysis in the eighteenth century.
• Causal Determinism is a metaphysical paradigm that posits that all activity in the universe is both (i) the effect of [all] antecedent activity, and (ii) the only activity that can occur given the antecedent activity. That is what is meant by saying that everything is “determined”, it is the inexorable consequence of antecedent activity.
• If Causal Determinism is true, everything that has ever occurred, is occurring, and will occur since the universe came into existence (however that might have occurred) can only occur exactly as it has occurred, is occurring, or will occur, and cannot possibly occur in any different manner.
• When one believes everything that happens is the only possible thing that could happen. This is Determinism, a belief in the inevitability of causation. The chains and networks of causes are so powerful that it appears that every outcome is inevitable.
• We are already locked in to everything else that is going to happen in the entire future of the universe. Nothing that didn't happen could possibly have happened. Everything that did happen was the only possible thing that could have happened at that point in time and space, given the causes.
• A simple example could be when you are in a restaurant browsing through the menu card , it may seem that there are many things that you might order: starting from may be a veg cuisine/ Non-veg cuisine.
• Eventually you will make a choice and eat something while others in the restaurant will also follow the similar steps. To a determinist, causal processes dictated that what you ordered was inevitable.
• When you entered the restaurant you may not have known, yet, that you would end up ordering say a salad, but that simply reflects your ignorance of what was happening in your unconscious mind. To a determinist, there was never any chance at all that you could have ordered the salad or may be a drink.
• Let's say you're driving down the road, and a person in a car coming toward you is texting on a cell phone. The driver doesn't see you, and you swerve to miss the car but hit a neighbor's mailbox. The cause of the accident was not that you swerved but that another driver was on a cell phone while driving. The effect was hitting the mailbox but avoiding hitting the other driver.
• Now, let's say you have a bucket of water and you put it outside on a below-freezing day. What will happen? The water will freeze. Under these conditions, this is the only possible outcome. These examples are quite different, but determinists believe that the exact same outcome would have happened no matter who was driving the car or who was putting the bucket of water outside. The outcomes of both of these very different scenarios are predetermined.
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