Causal Determinism Quotes

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will...Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.

Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion.

The cynics are correct the sense of freewill is only that feeling which we have when we take the necessitated option that most appeals to us.

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.

The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power. You think yourself free, because you do what you will; but are you free to will, or not to will; to desire, or not to desire? Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

The "determinist" swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression "know everything" means nothing.

All is bound by the law of causation

Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, consider'd as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of thought to pass from cause to effects and effects to causes, according to their experienc'd union.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless.

Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.

His will cannot be neutral or 'free' to act contrary to his nature.

Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will.

The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.

All things obey fixed laws.

Everything has a cause.

The neutral view of free will is impossible. It involves choice without desire.

Everything, including that which happens in our brains, depends on these and only on these: A set of fixed, deterministic laws.

If you prove the cause, you at once prove the effect; and conversely nothing can exist without its cause.

Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

Everybody acts as if they have free will. They act as if they can make these decisions; do they know they don't? I think there's been some back-down on the idea that everything is determined.

Of causes, some are complete and primary, others auxiliary and proximate. Hence, when we say that all things come about through fate by antecedent causes, we do not mean this to be understood as 'by complete and primary causes,' but 'by auxiliary and proximate causes.'

I'm not sure I understand how responsibility for our choices makes sense if they are not determined.