Predeterminism
Encyclopedia : P : PR : PRE : Predeterminism
Predeterminism is generally the philosophy that all of the events of history, past, present and future, have been decided before the advent of temporal existence.
Predeterminism versus Free Will
The difficulties in understanding exactly what free will is in a predeterministic framework lie in the unclear nature of free will. It is often loosely defined in a religious sense as the ability to make one's own decisions given to mankind by God. In this regard it is largely a moral philosophy intended as a reconciliation of evil. Verifiability of free will is a mixture of empirical experience and common sense philosophy.The argument for predeterminism states that temporal existence is bound to a causal chain of events. The initial conditions, according to predeterminism, issued forth this chain necessarily according to a predetermined set of universal laws. Advocates of predeterminism claim this predetermined set of universal laws is science itself. In effect, what this argument amounts to is the idea of a first cause.
Predeterminism and Science
Predeterminism is often studied in the context of quantum physics.
See also
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.