Kamil Furman
Jagiellonian University
Determinism is quite often regarded as somehow related to the causation – such a view traces back to the early, pre-Laplacian concepts. Starting with Earman’s slogan that this way of defining ‘seeks to explain a vague concept – determinism – in terms of a truly obscure one – causation’ (Earman 1986: 5), we want to give in our paper a more substantial account of why determinism should not be defined in terms of causation.
Our paper is divided into two parts. In the first one, we sketch the history of the concept of determinism from the moment of the coinage of the notion (late 18th century (Hacking 1983)) to the contemporary views. We show that one can distinguish three main stages of understanding this concept:
i) Laplacian (around 1814)
ii) Machian (around 1900)
iii) Earmanian (after 1986).
We argue that the foundations of approach (i) are metaphysical (van Strien 2014) – we infer the features of a physical theory from our views about the world. Approach (iii) goes directly in the opposite direction: we infer the features of the world from the features of a physical theory. In intermediate approach (ii), any metaphysical component is denied, and determinism is the regulative principle of science. The aim of the above analysis is to show that defining determinism in terms of causation is based on metaphysics-first views and this is (to put it mildly) a very old-school way of reasoning.
In the second part, we enumerate some problems with defining determinism via causation:
1) There is no agreement on what causation is.
2) Some conceptions of causation are unsuitable in defining determinism, e.g., a probabilistic view of causation can’t be used to define determinism.
3) One might equally define causation by determinism (e.g., (Friedman 1980)).
4) One can manipulate the definition of causation by wanting to maintain or reject determinism (e.g., Lvov-Warsaw school).
Both parts of the paper add up to the conclusion that defining determinism in terms of causation is undesirable.
Literature:
Earman, J. (1986). A Primer on Determinism. D. Reidel Publishing Company
Friedman, K. (1980). “Analysis of causality in terms of determinism”. Mind 89 (356)
Hacking, I. (1983). “Nineteenth Century Cracks in the Concept of Determinism”. Journal of the History of Ideas, 44(3).
van Strien, M. (2014) “On the Origins and Foundations of Laplacian Determinism”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 45.
Chair: Brian Ortmann
Time: 04 September, 10:00-10:30
Location: HS E.002
SOPhiA 2026 