[b]From: “Moral Responsibility in a Deterministic Universe”
by Ray Bradford
Any discussion on the bearing of determinism upon issues of moral and personal responsibility first requires an adequate understanding of determinism and its distinction from fatalism. Dennett’s definition of determinism adequately captures the viewpoint as, “All physical events are caused and determined by the sum total of all previous events.” Human behavior, as with all other causal sequences in the universe, is a function of antecedent states and causes. Popular misconception often interprets this viewpoint as the position that all our behaviors, including me writing this paper, are the direct one-to-one result of our genetic composition. While such a position is one form of determinism, genetic determinism, it is not the most widely accepted version. By and large, determinism instead suggests that human behavior results from an incredibly complex function of inherited genetic predisposition, environmental and cultural influences, and prior responses to, and interpretations of, environmental influences (learning). However, the theory holds that given an initial set of conditions external and internal to the mind, only one “choice” or behavior will result. Thus, given any set of actual initial conditions in this world (as opposed to slightly different “possible worlds”), any person’s “choice” could not have been otherwise.
While easy to confuse, determinism carries a subtle but significant distinction from fatalism. Fatalism suggests that certain events will occur regardless of how humans act. This is a significantly different conclusion than determinism. Dennett aptly sketches the distinction in his interview with Reason magazine, “Fatalism is the idea that something’s going to happen to you no matter what you do. Determinism is the idea that what you do depends. What happens depends on what you do, what you do depends on what you know, what you know depends on what you’re caused to know, and so forth–but still, what you do matters. There’s a big difference between that and fatalism. Fatalism is determinism with you left out.” [/b]
This distinction has always been one I can never quite seem to grasp “for all practical purposes”. How “in the world” is it applicable?
Fatalism, after all, is defined as: “the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable.”
Either I must type these words or I have some capacity [however problematic and/or inexplicable] to choose not to. Or to choose other words instead.
I can understand that events will unfold because of how we choose to act. But: if we choose to act only in accordance with the immutable laws of matter, then there is still nothing other than those particular events unfolding in the only possible world.
I still see “choice” here as equivalent to the falling dominoes. Only the dominoes are utterly mindless matter not able to be conscious of toppling over per the natural laws of physics.