Predeterminism

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Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been already decided or are already known (by God, fate, or some other force), including human actions.

Predeterminism is closely related to

Likewise, the doctrine of fatalism already explicitly attributes all events and outcomes to the will of a (vaguer) higher power such as fate or destiny. Furthermore, in philosophic debates about the compatibility of free will and determinism, some argue that predeterminism back to the origin of the universe is simply what philosophers mean by the more common term "determinism." Others have suggested that the term "self-determination" be used to describe actions as merely "determined" by an agent's reasons, motives, and desires.

When various interpretation of the word predeterminism can be defined even better by other terms, such as the aforementioned determinism, predestination, or fatalism, then the definition of predeterminism itself appears awkward, unclear, and perhaps even worthless in terms of practical or philosophic discussion.

R. E. Hobart

R. E. Hobart is the pseudonym of Dickinson S. Miller, a student of William James who was later one of James' closest personal friends and for some years a colleague in the Harvard philosophy department. Hobart (Miller) criticized the core idea of James' The Will to Believe, namely that it was acceptable to hold religious faith in the absence of evidence for or against that faith. James referred to Miller as "my most penetrating critic and intimate enemy."

Nearly 25 years after James' death, R. E. Hobart published a short article in Mind in 1934 that is considered one of the definitive statements of determinism and compatibilism. It was entitled Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It.^[8]

Hobart's compatibilism was similar to earlier landmark positions by Thomas Hobbes and David Hume, as refined in the 19th-century compatibilist views of John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, and F. H. Bradley. But unlike them Hobart explicitly did not endorse strict logical or physical determinism, and he explicitly did endorse the existence of alternative possibilities, which can depend on absolute chance.

He was writing just a few years after the discovery of

'I am not maintaining that determinism is true...it is not here affirmed that there are no small exceptions, no slight undetermined swervings, no ingredient of absolute chance.'[8]^: 2

'"We say," I can will this or I can will that, whichever I choose". Two courses of action present themselves to my mind. I think of their consequences, I look on this picture and on that, one of them commends itself more than the other, and I will an act that brings it about. I knew that I could choose either. That means that I had the power to choose either.'^[8]: 8

Hobart supports the existence of alternative possibilities for action and the capability to do otherwise.^[9]

And he clearly prefers "determination" to "determinism." Hobart's article is frequently misquoted as "Free Will as Involving Determinism."^[10]

Philippa Foot

Philippa Foot is one who misquoted Hobart's title, but who had the same misgivings about determinism.

In 1957 she wrote an article in The Philosophical Review entitled "Free Will As Involving Determinism."

Nevertheless, she criticized arguments that free will requires indeterminism, and in particular the idea that one could not be held responsible for "chance" actions chosen for no particular reason.

Her article begins with the observation that determinism has become widely accepted as compatible with free will.

"The idea that free will can be reconciled with the strictest determinism is now very widely accepted. To say that a man acted freely is, it is often suggested, to say that he was not constrained, or that he could have done otherwise if he had chosen, or something else of that kind; and since these things could be true even if his action was determined it seems that there could be room for free will even within a universe completely subject to causal laws."^[11]: 439

Foot doubted that the ordinary language meaning of saying our actions are "determined" by motives has the same meaning as strict physical determinism, which assumes a causal law that determines every event in the future of the universe.

She notes that our normal use of "determined" does not imply universal determinism.

"For instance, an action said to be determined by the desires of the man who does it is not necessarily an action for which there is supposed to be a sufficient condition. In saying that it is determined by his desires we may mean merely that he is doing something that he wants to do, or that he is doing it for the sake of something else that he wants. There is nothing in this to suggest determinism in Russell's sense."^[11]: 441

Foot cited Bertrand Russell's view of causal determinism:

"The

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