Determinism 101
Determinism is a philosophical concept that addresses the nature of causality and its implications for the universe and our place within it. At its core, determinism is the belief that all events, including human actions, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. In other words, for every event that occurs, there are conditions that could not have caused any other event. This idea has profound implications for our understanding of free will, morality, and the very nature of reality.
There are different types of determinism, including:
- Hard Determinism: This view asserts that every event, including human decisions, is completely caused by prior events and cannot be influenced by free will.
- Soft Determinism: This position suggests that while our choices may not be entirely determined, they are still the result of a complex interplay of causes and conditions.
- Compatibilist Determinism: This view argues that free will and determinism are compatible, meaning that it is possible to have free will without being completely controlled by prior events.
Kant on Determinism
Immanuel Kant’s position on determinism is complex and nuanced. He was neither a strict determinist nor a simple libertarian, but a compatibilist of a unique kind. He grappled deeply with the apparent contradiction between determinism and free will, proposing a sophisticated solution known as his two-standpoint theory:
- Determinism in the Phenomenal World
- Kant argued that as far as the world of appearances (the phenomenal world) is concerned, everything is subject to the laws of cause and effect. This is the world we experience through our senses and which science investigates.
- From a scientific or empirical perspective, human actions, like all other events, can be understood as determined by prior causes (our empirical character, circumstances, psychological drives, etc.). So, in this sense, when we view ourselves or others as objects in the empirical world, our actions appear to be determined.
- Freedom in the Noumenal World
- However, Kant also posited a noumenal world (the world of “things-in-themselves”), which lies beyond our sensory experience and is accessible only through reason.
- In this noumenal realm, he argued that human beings possess transcendental freedom. This is a different kind of causality - a causality of reason itself, unconditioned by prior empirical causes.
- For Kant, this freedom is not something we can empirically prove or know in the same way we know scientific laws. Instead, it’s a postulate of practical reason, meaning we must assume it to be true in order for morality and moral responsibility to make sense. If we weren’t truly free to choose our actions, then holding people accountable for them (praise or blame) would be meaningless.
Kant explicitly addressed the apparent conflict between determinism and freedom as one of his “Antinomies of Pure Reason” in the Critique of Pure Reason. An antinomy is a pair of seemingly contradictory but equally defensible propositions. He argued that the contradiction arises from trying to apply categories of understanding (like causality) beyond their proper domain (the phenomenal world) to the noumenal world.
NOTEIn essence, Kant holds that
- Our actions, as phenomena, are indeed determined by natural laws.
- Yet, we are also free as noumenal beings, capable of acting from reason and moral duty, independent of empirical influences.
This “two-standpoint” approach allows him to affirm the validity of scientific determinism while simultaneously preserving the possibility of moral responsibility and human freedom. While it’s a profound and influential solution, it has also been a subject of extensive debate and interpretation among philosophers ever since.
The core ideas regarding Kant’s two-standpoint theory concerning freedom and determinism are primarily discussed in his most significant work on theoretical philosophy - Critique of Pure Reason, the foundational text where Kant lays out his transcendental idealism, the distinction between the phenomenal (appearances) and noumenal (things-in-themselves) worlds. In the Third Antinomy of Pure Reason, within the “Transcendental Dialectic” section, Kant explicitly sets up the apparent contradiction between “causality according to the laws of nature” (determinism) and “causality through freedom.” He then resolves this antinomy by introducing his two-standpoint solution: that we are determined as phenomena in the empirical world but free as noumena.
Newtonian Mechanics and General Relativity
Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian mechanics/physics, which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed laws. The “billiard ball” hypothesis, a product of Newtonian physics, argues that once the initial conditions of the universe have been established, the rest of the history of the universe follows inevitably. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur (Laplace’s demon). In this sense, the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as the rolling balls on a billiard table, moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce predictable results.
Whether or not it is all-encompassing in so doing, Newtonian mechanics deals only with caused events; for example, if an object begins in a known position and is hit dead on by an object with some known velocity, then it will be pushed straight toward another predictable point. If it goes somewhere else, the Newtonians argue, one must question one’s measurements of the original position of the object, the exact direction of the striking object, gravitational or other fields that were inadvertently ignored, etc. Then, they maintain, repeated experiments and improvements in accuracy will always bring one’s observations closer to the theoretically predicted results. When dealing with situations on an ordinary human scale, Newtonian physics has been successful. But it fails as velocities become some substantial fraction of the speed of light and when interactions at the atomic scale are studied. Before the discovery of quantum effects and other challenges to Newtonian physics, “uncertainty” was always a term that applied to the accuracy of human knowledge about causes and effects, and not to the causes and effects themselves.
Newtonian mechanics, as well as any following physical theories, are results of observations and experiments, and so they describe “how it all works” within a tolerance. However, old western scientists believed if there are any logical connections found between an observed cause and effect, there must be also some absolute natural laws behind. Belief in perfect natural laws driving everything, instead of just describing what we should expect, led to searching for a set of universal simple laws that rule the world. This movement significantly encouraged deterministic views in Western philosophy.
There are discussions about determinism in the context of General Relativity (GR). While GR itself is a deterministic theory, its predictions and implications have been subject to interpretations that touch on the nature of determinism.
In classical GR, the Einstein Field Equations describe how mass and energy warp spacetime, leading to gravitational fields. The equations are deterministic, meaning that if we know the initial conditions (e.g., the distribution of matter and energy) and follow them carefully, we can predict the entire evolution of the universe.
However, some aspects of GR have led to discussions about determinism:
- Initial Conditions and Determinacy: In classical GR, the initial conditions are crucial in determining the fate of a system. However, the theory’s deterministic nature raises questions about the role of quantum fluctuations or other non-deterministic influences on the initial conditions.
- Black Hole Information Paradox: The paradox highlights the apparent loss of information when matter falls into a black hole. Some interpretations, such as Hawking’s black hole complementarity, suggest that information is preserved in a way that’s still deterministic, while others propose that it’s encoded in quantum states or other non-deterministic frameworks.
- Quantum Gravity and Determinism: The development of quantum gravity theories, such as loop quantum gravity (LQG) or string theory, aims to merge GR with quantum mechanics. In these approaches, determinism is often compromised due to the inherent probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics.
- Causal Dynamical Triangulation (CDT): CDT is a quantum gravity theory that uses a discretized spacetime, similar to LQG. It has been shown to be a deterministic theory, but its predictive power and fundamental laws are still being explored.
- Relational Quantum Mechanics: This approach posits that reality arises from the relationships between observers and the physical world. In this framework, determinism is not necessarily tied to a fixed set of initial conditions.
While GR itself is generally considered deterministic, its extensions, interpretations, and potential mergers with quantum mechanics have led to debates about determinism in these contexts. The discussions continue to be an active area of research, with ongoing efforts to reconcile the principles of GR with the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics.
Quantum Mechanics
Before Quantum Mechanics, Newtonian physics dominated. Modern quantum mechanics, however, casts reasonable doubt on this main thesis of determinism. Quantum mechanics is the product of a careful application of the scientific method, logic and empiricism. Through a large number of careful experiments physicists developed a rather unintuitive mental model: A particle’s path cannot be specified in from its quantum description. “Path” is a classical, practical attribute in everyday life, but one that quantum particles do not possess. Quantum mechanics attributes probability to all possible paths and asserts the only one outcome will be observed.
The randomness in quantum mechanics derives from the quantum aspect of the model. Different experimental results are obtained for eachook individual quanta. Some (including Albert Einstein) have argued that the inability to predict any more than probabilities is simply due to ignorance. The idea is that, beyond the conditions and laws can be observed or deduced, there are also hidden factors or “hidden variables” that determine absolutely in which order photons reach the detector screen. They argue that the course of the universe is absolutely determined, but that humans are screened from knowledge of the determinative factors. So, they say, it only appears that things proceed in a probabilistic way.
TIPAlbert Einstein insisted that, “I am convinced God does not play dice” in a private letter to Max Born, 4 December 1926
Cause and Effect
This article is an overview of the Cause and Effect as the Principle of Causality, establishing one event or action as the direct result of another, from the following 4 perspectives:
Kant’s Metaphysics
The nature of cause and effect is a concern of the subject known as metaphysics. Kant primarily discusses the concept of cause and effect in the Division One - Book II - Section III - 3.B. Second analogy of his Critique of Pure Reason:
Law of Causality - 1st VersionEverything that happens (begins to be) presupposes something which it follows in accordance with a rule.
Law of Causality - 2nd VersionAll alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect.
He thought that time and space were notions prior to human understanding of the progress or evolution of the world, and he also recognized the priority of causality. But he did not have the understanding that came with knowledge of Minkowski geometry and the Special Theory of Relativity, that the notion of causality can be used as a prior foundation from which to construct notions of time and space1
Aristotle’s (Western) Philosophy
In Book II, Chapter 3 of his work Physics, Aristotle considered in how many senses “because” may answer the question “why”. He believes understanding a thing means knowing its “how and why” and gave the following rough classification of the causal determinants of things:
The meaning of physics in AristotleAristotle’s Physics deals with the most general (philosophical) principles of natural or moving things, both living and non-living, rather than physical theories (in the modern sense) or investigations of the particular contents of the universe. The chief purpose of the work is to discover the principles and causes of change, or movement, or motion, especially that of natural wholes (mostly living things, but also inanimate wholes like the cosmos).2
Therefore the “process” in the discussion below is nothing but just the movement of a thing from one place to another, such as a vehicle head toward San Francisco from Los Angeles.
- Material Cause - The existence of material for the generating process to start from. For example, bronze for the statue
- Formal Cause - The material must receives the form (characteristics) of the type which conforms to its own definition
- Efficient Cause - There must be something to initiate a process for change and cease the process when completed, i.e. changing from what it was to what it is to be. According to Lloyd, of the four causes, only this one is what is meant by the modern English word “cause” in ordinary speech1.
- Final Cause - The end or purpose of the process being initiated. For instance, people exercise for their health.
Often, several of the 4 coalesce one another to produce a single effect and the same cause is often alleged for its opposite effects. For instance if the pilot’s presence would have brought the ship safe to harbour, we say that he caused its wreck by his absence.
In addition, none of them are the causes or effects of others. For example, we may say that a man is in fine condition because he has been in training, or that he has been in training because of the good condition he expected as the result. But one is the cause as aim (Final Cause) and the other as initiating the process (Efficient Cause).
中国阴阳学说
春秋战国末期，观星学有了很大的发展，对后世产生了很深远的影响。人们将星象分门别类，用星象“感应”来描述世间的种种现象 （Theory of causality）。其中 《吕氏春秋》 中的一段文字对此有代表性的描述:
《吕氏春秋》，有始览第一，应同篇类固相召，气同则合，声比则应。鼓宫而宫动，鼓角而角动。平地注水，水流湿；均薪施火，火就燥； 山云草莽，水云育林，旱云烟火，雨云水波，无不皆类其所生以示人。故以龙致雨，以形逐影。师之所处，必生荆楚。福祸之所自来， 众人以为命，安知其所？3
除此之外，世间万物亦可划分以阴阳、五行、以及 《易经》 中的八卦。
Buddhist Philosophy
Karma (Sanskrit: कर्म) is the causality principle focusing on 1) causes, 2) actions, 3) effects, where it is the mind’s phenomena that guide the actions that the actor performs. Buddhism trains 3) the actor’s actions for continued and uncontrived virtuous outcomes aimed at reducing suffering. This follows the 4) Subject-verb-object structure1
All the classic Buddhist schools teach Karma. “The law of karma is a special instance of the law of cause and effect, according to which all our actions of body, speech, and mind are causes and all our experiences are their effects.”1
A common theme to theories of karma is its principle of causality. This relationship between karma and causality is a central motif in all schools of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain thought. One of the earliest associations of karma to causality occurs in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad verses 4.4.5 - 6:4
NOTENow as a man is like this or like that,
according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be;
a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad;
he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds;
And here they say that a person consists of desires,
and as is his desire, so is his will;
and as is his will, so is his deed;
and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)
TIP“Karma” 的最好中文翻译是“业”（既“业障”的业）。玩原神的朋友， 这和纳西妲的元素战技“灭净三业”中的“业”是一个意思（三业 = Tri-Karma）
Taoism
Karma is an important concept in Taoism. Every deed is tracked by deities and spirits. Appropriate rewards or retribution follow karma, just like a shadow follows a person.
Compatibilism
Leibniz
Overview of Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is a very interesting many-sided man (or more easily known as the German Genius).
The German Genius (PDF)Leibnizian idea of perfectibility made Germany so proliferate at contributing genius to the world. His Philosophy guided German to constantly push themselves to the endless next levels of human perfection. I believe this notion of perfectionism largely contributed to the unbelievable Geramn warfare technologies during World War II, such as Tiger and KingTiger
He may have been the first computer scientist and information theorist5. He puzzled over the origins of the Slavic
languages and was fascinated by classical Chinese. Leibniz was also an expert in the Sanskrit language.5 He was also
perhaps the first major European intellectual to take a close interest in Chinese civilization5, which he knew by
corresponding with, and reading other works by, European Christian missionaries posted in China. He apparently read
Confucius Sinarum Philosophus in the first year of its publication.
He came to the conclusion that Europeans could learn much from the Confucian ethical tradition. He mulled over the
possibility that the Chinese characters were an unwitting form of his
universal characteristic. He noted how the
I Ching (易经) hexagrams correspond to the
binary numbers from 000000 to 111111, and concluded that this mapping was evidence of major Chinese accomplishments
in the sort of philosophical mathematics he admired. Leibniz was one of the western philosophers of the time who
attempted to accommodate Confucian ideas to prevailing European beliefs.
A diagram of I Ching hexagrams sent to Leibniz from Joachim Bouvet. The Arabic numerals were added by Leibniz.
Leibniz’s attraction to Chinese philosophy originates from his perception that Chinese philosophy was similar to his own The historian E.R. Hughes suggests that Leibniz’s ideas of “simple substance” and “pre-established harmony” were directly influenced by Confucianism, pointing to the fact that they were conceived during the period when he was reading Confucius Sinarum Philosophus.
Leibniz on Determinism/Libertarianism
Leibniz is best described as a compatibilist, a position that attempts to reconcile determinism with free will. He believed that all actions are determined by prior events, yet he also argued that we have genuine freedom. This might seem contradictory, but his solution lies in his unique metaphysical system.
Leibniz was a rationalist who believed in the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which states that for every fact and event, there must be a reason why it is so and not otherwise. This principle, along with his belief in a perfectly rational and benevolent God, led him to a form of determinism. In his view, the entire universe, from the beginning of time, unfolds in a predetermined way chosen by God as the best of all possible worlds.
Leibniz’s philosophy of monads - simple, non-interacting, spiritual substances that make up all of reality - is central to his view on freedom. Each monad is like a self-contained universe, with its entire history (past, present, and future) contained within it from the moment of its creation. The apparent causal interactions between monads (like a cue ball hitting an eight ball) are not true causation but rather a pre-established harmony, where God has perfectly synchronized all monads from the beginning. This, according to Leibniz, allow for freedom in that a free action is one that is spontaneous, intelligent, and contingent:
- spontaneous: The action originates from the internal nature of the monad itself, not from external forces. Since monads don’t interact, all actions are, in this sense, spontaneous.
- Intelligent: The action is a result of a monad’s “perception” and “appetition,” a kind of inner drive or will, rather than an arbitrary or random event.
- contingent: While an action is certain to happen because it’s part of the monad’s predetermined history, it’s not logically necessary. God could have chosen a different possible world where a different action occurred. Thus, the action is determined, but it’s not the only logical possibility.
Although both the Principle of Sufficient Reason and monads were introduced his The Monadology, Leibniz’s Theodicy is also directly related to his exploration of Compatibilism. Hence we shall focus these 2 book in the context of Compatibilism.
The Monadology
Theodicy
On page 138 of Theodicy, the only book-length treatise that he published during his lifetime6, Leibniz wrote
Hence the conclusion that God wills all good in himself antecedently, that he wills the best consequently as an end, that he wills what is indifferent, and physical evil, sometimes as a means, but that he will only permit moral evil as the sine quo non or as a hypothetical necessity which connects it with the best. Therefore the consequent will of God, which has sin for its object, is only permissive.
Leibniz thinks that the world that we live in is ABSOLUTELY the best possible world because it was created by a perfect God. That means that there is no “excess” evil; evil always serves some sort of purpose. This has a lot to do with The Principal of Sufficient Reason. Evil can exist in a perfect world because it has sufficient reason to be there. In fact the evil is necessary. He argues this in a few ways. Evil is necessary for a true type of free will. For free will to be truly admirable the individual needs to be able to choose from a full range of options (not just good ones). He also says that some ultimate goods (like free will, but we can think of others like courage, forgiveness, compassion) need suffering in order to exist. The evil is necessary. So God would allow for these evils in order to make greater good possible7.
Conclusion
The current state of the art in Philosophy (particularly in Kant) and Science (GR & Quantum) seem to suggest that our reality would be neither deterministic or non-deterministic but a mix or a new concept that human has yet to discover.
Footnotes
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Wikipedia, Physics (Aristotle) ↩
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Leibniz on the Problem of Evil ↩