ABSTRACT

The world could be different in so many ways. What could be more obvious than this claim? And yet, reflection leads many to challenge it. Indeed, reflection suggests that things happen for a reason, and that when the reason is known, things could not have happened otherwise. Reflection therefore draws us to determinism. Contingency, the idea that mutually exclusive possibilities can all be live and that the occurrence of any one of these need not be inevitable, is incompatible with determinism. According to determinism, a state of affairs, call it B, is determined by a prior state of affairs, call it A, provided that if A obtains, then B must follow. Such an antecedent-consequent relation may be logical or causal. What makes it deterministic is that it admits no deviation.1