Determinism

Part of a series on
Philosophy
Philosophy portal Contents Outline Lists Glossary History Categories
Philosophies By period Ancient Ancient Egyptian Ancient Greek Medieval Renaissance Modern Contemporary Analytic Continental By region African Egypt Ethiopia South Africa Eastern philosophy Chinese Indian Indonesia Japan Korea Vietnam Indigenous American Aztec philosophy Middle Eastern philosophy Iranian Western American British French German Italian Russian By religion Buddhist Confucian Christian Hindu Islamic Jain Jewish Taoist
Branches Epistemology Ethics Logic Metaphysics Aesthetics Education History Language Law Meta Mind Ontology Phenomenology Political Religion Science
Philosophers Aesthetic philosophers Epistemologists Ethicists Logicians Metaphysicians Philosophers of mind Social and political philosophers Women in philosophy
v t e

Part of a series on statistics
Probability theory
Probability Axioms Determinism System Indeterminism Randomness
Probability space Sample space Event Collectively exhaustive events Elementary event Mutual exclusivity Outcome Singleton Experiment Bernoulli trial Probability distribution Bernoulli distribution Binomial distribution Exponential distribution Normal distribution Pareto distribution Poisson distribution Probability measure Random variable Bernoulli process Continuous or discrete Expected value Variance Markov chain Observed value Random walk Stochastic process
Complementary event Joint probability Marginal probability Conditional probability
Independence Conditional independence Law of total probability Law of large numbers Bayes' theorem Boole's inequality
Venn diagram Tree diagram
v t e

Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable.^[1] Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Like eternalism, determinism focuses on particular events rather than the future as a concept. The opposite of determinism is indeterminism, or the view that events are not deterministically caused but rather occur due to chance. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.^[2][3]

Historically, debates about determinism have involved many philosophical positions and given rise to multiple varieties or interpretations of determinism. One topic of debate concerns the scope of determined systems. Some philosophers have maintained that the entire universe is a single determinate system, while others identify more limited determinate systems. Another common debate topic is whether determinism and free will can coexist; compatibilism and incompatibilism represent the opposing sides of this debate.

Determinism should not be confused with the self-determination of human actions by reasons, motives, and desires. Determinism is about interactions which affect cognitive processes in people's lives.^[4] It is about the cause and the result of what people have done. Cause and result are always bound together in cognitive processes. It assumes that if an observer has sufficient information about an object or human being, that such an observer might be able to predict every consequent move of that object or human being. Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible.