… ’tis commonly allow'd by philosophers, that what the vulgar call chance is nothing but a secret and conceal'd cause” (pp. 175, 181). Therefore, “Chance is nothing real in itself. Popper attributed this position to Hume (1739–1740/1969), who said, “Philosophers form a maxim, that the connexion betwixt all causes and effects is equally necessary, and that its seeming uncertainty in some instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary causes” (p. 183). Popper (1965/1979) thought philosophical (or psychological) determinism was vague: “For the thesis of philosophical determinism that ‘Like effects have like causes’ or that ‘Every event has a cause’ is so vague that it is perfectly compatible with physical indeterminism” (p. 220). Philosophical or Psychological Determinism For example, although religious revelations and teachings show a kind of ultimate reality, revelations require a special kind of interpretation and will not be considered here, nor will we consider all the variants of determinism and ultimate reality (e.g., Earman, 1986 Honderich, 1988). This still leaves ultimate realities that will not be addressed. A wholly capricious or haphazard indeterminism would be on the extreme left. Random indeterminism would be on the left side but not on the extreme left. The continuum can also include Earman's (1986) distinction: “I group random with stochastic or chancy, taking a random process to be one which does not operate wholly capriciously or haphazardly but in accord with stochastic or probabilistic laws” (p. 137). Peirce believed the universe has steadily been moving from more to less indeterminism. … So far as I know Peirce was the first post-Newtonian physicist and philosopher who thus dared to adopt the view that to some degree all clocks are clouds. … Peirce concluded that we were free to conjecture that there was a certain looseness or imperfection in all clocks, and that this allowed an element of chance to enter. Another dissenter was the pragmatist Peirce:Īmong the few dissenters was Charles Sanders Peirce, the great American mathematician and physicist and, I believe, one of the greatest philosophers of all time. It was assumed that the universe designed by the author of nature would be as logically perfect as humans thought it should be. Because of these views he was accused of impiety, of “casting a reflection upon the wisdom of the author of nature.” (p. 212, note 11) Newton himself may be counted among the dissenters, for he regarded even the solar system as imperfect, and consequently as likely to perish. However, there were dissenters, including Newton: This scientific or “physical determinism … became the ruling faith among enlightened men” (p. 212). This proposition, ‘All clouds are clocks,’ may be taken as a brief formulation of the view which I shall call ‘ physical determinism’” (p. 210). Popper said that almost everybody thought, “The Newtonian revolution the following staggering proposition: All clouds are clocks-even the most cloudy of clouds. He asked us to consider “a very disturbed or disorderly cloud … on the left on the other extreme of our arrangement, on its right … a very reliable pendulum clock, a precision clock” (p. 207). Popper's “clouds … represent physical systems which, like gases, are highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable” (p. 207). He distinguished indeterminisms and determinisms along a clouds-to-clocks continuum. To clarify these issues, the following outlines some ultimate realities-roughly along Popper's continuum, as explained below-as well as behavioral positions on them.Īlthough not a clear taxonomy for all determinisms ( Honderich, 1988, p. 5), Popper's (1965/1979) organizational outline was vivid. Further, in his later years, Skinner appeared to advance an evolutionary reality without any reliance on determinism. However, neither Skinner nor all other behavior analysts have consistently supported a shared understanding of determinism in any definite sense. Rakos referred to “what unquestionably is the central philosophical and conceptual unifier among committed behavior analysts: a shared understanding of the deterministic nature of human behavior and its implications for cultural design” (p. 153). Nevertheless, behaviorists have been presented as believing in determinism, one of these ultimate realities (e.g., Chiesa, 2003, p. 243 Neuringer, 1991a, p. 46 Rakos, 2006, p. 153 Watson, 1924/1970, p. 183). Inasmuch as ultimate realities are highly speculative, a behavior analyst might reasonably think they are not of vital concern.
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