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| Question | Answer |
| Epicurus (3rd Century Greece) | Universe is an entirely physical flux of atoms within a void. Anything is theoretically predictable, as we are governed by the natural law of cause and effect. |
| Determinism | All events, including human action, are ultimately determined by external causes. |
| Hard determinism | Because determinism is true, human freewill does is mere illusion and does not really exist. |
| Causal determinism | The universal law of causation means that every single event that happens has a cause and effect chain all the way back to the big bang. |
| Reductionism | To understand a complex entity (in this case, human choice), we need to reduce it to its smallest components (in this case, the brain and biology) |
| Spinoza | 17th Century Dutch rationalist. "You think you are making a free choice but that simply reflects the ignorance of the causes operating on you all the time" |
| Simon-Pierre Laplace | 19th Century French physicist "If there was an intelligence (the demon) vast enough to know the movement of every single atom in the universe, the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes" |
| Scientific determinism | Since every event in nature has a cause or causes that account for its occurrence, and since human beings exist in nature, human acts and choices are as determined as anything else in the world. Explained through scientific law of causation. |
| Criticism of scientific determinism Laws of nature are probabilistic | History shows that scientific laws are constantly replaced when theories are disproved and newer ones take their place. Scientific laws of causation then are not 100% fact, they are just a theory. In the future it might be proved wrong. |
| Criticism of scientific determinism Is the quantum world indeterminate? | Quantum theory is the idea that physical laws that apply to the world, don't necessarily apply at a quantum level. Protons, electrons for instant are not necessarily governed by cause and effect. Thus, maybe our choices aren't either. |
| Psychological determinism | Otherwise known as 'radical behaviourism' All behaviour is the result of genetic and environmental conditions. There is no 'free will' that exists separately. |
| B.F. Skinner | 20th Century American psychologist and radical behaviourist. Book: Beyond Freedom and Dignity Believed that free will was an illusion and really, choice was a product of environmental and genetic factors. |
| Ivan Pavlov | 20th Century Russian physiologist Experiment demonstrated a physiological change in a dog just by ringing a bell. This showed that the dog changed its state base on external factors. Supports radical behaviourist theory. |
| Criticism of Skinner's psychological determinism | Many Criticise skinner by saying that he oversimplifies human action. Animals act on instinct whereas humans act on reason. You can't observe something in a dog and apply the same to a human. |
| Theological determinism | A form of predeterminism which states that all choices and events that happen are predestined to happen, by God, or that they are destined to occur given its omniscience. The theory raises questions about moral freedom and purpose. |
| Criticism of theological determinism Timeless God | St Thomas Aquinas' view is that God doesn't exist in time, rather he exists timelessly. God sees all times, rather like a rolled up scroll. He sees the results of our future choices but does not cause them. |
| Criticism of theological determinism A Temporal God | In Process theology, God and the physical universe are two aspects of the one reality. God has has not seen the future and human choice will shape it. |
| Libertarianism | Human beings possess free will. Opposite view of determinism Most libertarians are mind/body dualists |
| Moderate libertarianism | Accept that nature is governed by cause and effect but deny all human behaviour is. We have physical limitations, social limitations and psychological limitations by having a strong urge to do something. When we reject our psychological urges, we exercise our free will. |
| Strengths of libertarianism We feel free | Experience tells us overwhelmingly that we are free moral agents. If freedom is an illusion, it's an extremely good one |
| Incompatibilism | The idea that determinism and libertarianism are incompatible. One is either right or wrong. |
| Compatibilism | Sometimes called 'soft determinism' View that human freedom and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism. |
| David Hume | Free will exists within a determined universe. The universe and human behaviour shows causal order but human behaviour isn't logical necessity, it is constant conjunction. |
| David Hume's logical necessity | Things that are necessary truths. Cannot not be the case. Eg. Mathematical truths. 1+1=2 etc |
| David Hume's constant conjunction | Cause and effect are not logically necessary. They are observable instances and Hume terms them 'constant conjunction'. |
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