tailieunhanh - The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 24

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 24. The book is alphabetized by the whole headings of entries, as distinct from the first word of a heading. Hence, for example, abandonment comes before a priori and a posteriori. It is wise to look elsewhere if something seems to be missing. At the end of the book there is also a useful appendix on Logical Symbols as well as the appendices A Chronological Table of Philosophy and Maps of Philosophy. | 210 determinism logical contain either the statement John Doe gets married on 20 June 2145 or the statement John Doe does not get married on 20 June 2145 . Whichever alternative The Book contains is true. Thus it is alleged whether or not Mr Doe will get married is already settled. So with every other future event. Logical determinism of this sort is not to be confused with determinism since it includes no causal story about the future but is rightly associated with fatalism the attitude that it makes no difference what we do because the future is unaffected by our present actions. . destiny. R. Taylor Metaphysics 3rd edn. Englewood Cliffs NJ 1983 . determinism scientific. The best examples of determin-ism or the lack ofit are found in the theories ofphysics. At first glance we might say that such a theory is deterministic whenever the state of a system at some initial time plus the laws of the theory fix that system s state at any later time. But we need to take account of the fact that in relativistic as opposed to Newtonian space-time theories the notions of at some initial time or at any later time are inapplicable to spatially extended systems due to the relativity of simultaneity. Also it could be the case that an entire segment of a system s history is needed before its future behaviour gets fixed or that only a portion of its future behaviour will be fixed. And we might want to distinguish fixing a system s future behaviour from fixing its past history as well though in most physical theories the two go hand-in-hand since laws remain the same when the direction of time is reversed . Finally we want a definition adaptable to systems of any size or kind from electrons to the entire universe. Therefore the following revised definition suggests itself. Let R1 and R2 be any two regions of space-time perhaps including two distinct segments of an electron s history or events surrounding the big bang and the rest of the universe. Then a physical theory is .