Wednesday 9 November 2011

Determinism and fatalism

Determinism is the belief that every event in the universe is caused by previous events and so all outcomes are inevitable and (theoretically) predictable. In other words the present state of all the particles in the universe is the inevitable consequence of its initial state (the big bang). This would seem at first to annihilate the idea of 'free will', since whenever we 'seem to make a decision', in fact the outcome was inevitable. But in what way is 'seeming to make a decision' any different from actually making a decision?
Fatalism is the belief that some events are pre-determined. For example the bullet or lottery ticket 'has your name on it' - whatever you do you can't avoid the Finger of Fate. Many stories  (e.g. Macbeth, Oedipus) explore this assumption. The doctrine of Karma is a variation of this where a cosmic balance sheet is kept which subtly adjusts fate to influence future outcomes.

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