Steward, H orcid.org/0000-0003-1654-577X (2021) What Is Determinism? Why We Should Ditch the Entailment Definition. In: Hausmann, M and Noller, J, (eds.) Free Will: Historical and Analytic Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan , pp. 17-43. ISBN 978-3-030-61135-4
Abstract
What is the thesis of determinism? Though it is obvious that in principle there is more than one possible thesis that might be given this name, it seems to be the case that philosophers working on the free will problem have gradually gravitated towards a more-or-less standard definition, minor variations on which can now be found widely scattered through the free will literature. I call it the ‘entailment definition’ and it states, roughly, that determinism is the thesis that for any given time, a complete statement of the facts about that time, together with a complete statement of the laws of nature, entails every truth as to what happens after that time. In this paper, I argue that acceptance of the entailment definition has been a mistake—and that we need a definition of determinism which, by contrast with the entailment definition, makes explicit mention of the notion of natural necessity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Book Section |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Editors: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This is an author produced version of an article published in Free Will Historical and Analytic Perspectives. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Determinism, Free will, Natural necessity, Laws of nature |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 14 Jul 2020 10:21 |
Last Modified: | 10 Aug 2023 13:00 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/978-3-030-61136-1_2 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:163145 |