Multiple Determinism

 Determinism is the philosophical view that every event, including human cognition, behavior, decision, and action, is casually determined by the environment. It is, in essence, the view that one's life is predetermined before one is even born. Determinism proposes there is a predetermined unbroken chain of prior occurrences back to the origin of the universe.

Determinists believe the universe is fully governed by causal laws resulting in only one possible state at any point in time. With numerous historical debates, many varieties and philosophical positions on the subject of determinism exist, most prominently the free will disputes  involving compatibilism and incompatibilism.

In other words, determinism necessarily entails that humanity or individual humans may not change the course of the future and its events (a position known as fatalism).However, some theorists  believe that the extent to which human beings  have influence over their future is itself merely dependent on present and past. Causal determinism is associated with, and relies upon, the ideas of materialism

Multiple determinism

The Principle of Multiple Determinism

The principle of multiple determinism specifes that a

target event at one level of organization, but particularly

at molar (e.g., social) levels of organization,

may have multiple antecedents within or across levels

of organization. For example, consider the multiple

factors that contribute to drug abuse.

Onthe biological

level, researchers identi®ed the contribution of individual

differences in the susceptibility of the endogenous

opiod receptor system while on the social

level investigators have noted the important role of

social context. 

Both operate, and our understanding

of drug abuse is incomplete if either perspective is

excluded. A corollary to this principle is that the

mapping between elements across levels of organization

becomes more complex (e.g., many-to-many) as

the number of intervening levels of organization

increases. One implication is that the likelihood of

complex and potentially obscure mappings increases

as one skips levels of organizations.