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.
The Principle of Multiple Determinism
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.