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Encyclopedia > Causal determinism

Put simply, causal determinism expresses the belief that every effect has a cause, and therefore science, pursued diligently enough, will explain all natural phenomena and thus produce a TOE (Theory of Everything).


This idea goes hand in hand with materialism. Scientists and skeptics may implicitly favour causal determinism because it does not allow for any supernatural explanations of reality.


As Pierre-Simon Laplace noted around 1814, such a theory would also (in theory) grant a sufficiently powerful being the ability to determine any future state of the universe, thus making the future as readily accessible as the past (at least from that powerful being's frame of reference).


See also: Determinism


  Results from FactBites:
 
Becoming: A Problem for Determinists? (5985 words)
The causal determinist maintains that the future relative to any moment is fully determinate at that moment and is predictable on the ground of natural regularities by any perfect knower of the initial conditions and relevant laws.
Since the question of whether causal determinism requires his metaphysics of time is not at all a threat In his metaphysics, that issue does not attract his attention very much.
Determinism is considered to be one of several if not ‘the chief metaphysical pitfall which must be ruled out for the process system to succeed.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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