X-Nico

unusual facts about determinism


On the Freedom of the Will

Therefore, humans are capable of deliberation in which a stronger abstract motive outweighs other motives and necessarily determines the will to act.


Alfred Mele

Without committing himself to the idea that human autonomy is compatible with determinism or incompatible (a position held by both libertarians and incompatibilists), Mele provides arguments in support of autonomous agents for both positions.

Alternative possibilities

John Martin Fischer is best known for the view of "semi-compatibilism" - the idea that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, whether free will is or is not compatible with determinism.

For example, John Martin Fischer's Semi-compatibilism assumes with Frankfurt that we can have moral responsibility, even if determinism (and/or indeterminism) is incompatible with free will.

Antero Alli

Like his colleague Rob Brezsny, Alli proposes a free will approach to astrology, which advocates providing clients with the information to make decisions instead of deterministic predictions.

Cultural determinism

Romanticism had a large element of cultural determinism, drawn from writers such as Goethe, Fichte, and Schlegel.

Frances Cress Welsing

She states that her position is more analogous to the "determinist" model of physicist Albert Einstein, than to the "indeterminacy" theories of Max Born and Werner Heisenberg.

Hard determinism

Some physicists challenge the likelihood of determinism on the grounds that certain interpretations of quantum mechanics stipulate that the universe is fundamentally indeterministic, such as the Copenhagen interpretation; whereas other interpretations are deterministic, for example, the De Broglie-Bohm Theory and the many-worlds interpretation.

Robert Heilbroner

The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, edited by Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.

Technological determinism

Media and cultural studies theorist Brian Winston, in response to technological determinism, developed a model for the emergence of new technologies which is centered on the Law of the suppression of radical potential.

Theological determinism

Theological determinism exists in a number of religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam.


see also