Determinism
The idea that every event or state of affairs including every human decision and action is the inevitable and necessary consequence of antecedent states of affairs.
It should be distinguished from pre-determinism; the idea that the entire past (as well as the future) was determined at the origin of the universe
SEPARATE IDEAS
Determinism is NOT Pre-Determinism.
nor should it be confused with determination; the idea that events (including human actions) can be adequately determined by immediately prior events (such as agents reasons, motives, desires), without being pre-determined back to before the agents birth or even back to the origin of the universe
Determinism
A modern name for Democritus' ancient idea that causal laws control the motion of atoms and that everything - including human minds - consists merely of atoms in a void as fellow material. "an absolute necessity leaves no room for chance, nothing occurs at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity"
In-determinism
Events are not caused by prior events, events happen according to chance and at random.
"Free will means having the power to do different things, and to choose to do what makes most sense at the moment. It means we will choose what it is most in our natures at any moment to do. Are those choices caused? Certainly. They are caused by a combination of our natures - who we are at that moment, something that has been shaped by both genes and experiences - and the actual constraints of the situation in which we find ourselves. We can know that whatever a person is doing at any moment, it is in accord with that person's nature and with the situation in which he finds himself, however he came to have his particular nature and to be in that particular situation.
Each of us has many courses of action that are possible in the sense that they are within our power - we could do them if we choose to do so - but we act only in ways that accord with our natures, at any moment in time and in any given situation, by making the particular choices we make. Free will doesn't mean doing things that make no sense. Free will means that your thinking, reasoning, emotions, personality, memories, goals, decision-making strategies, and everything else that makes you who you are actually matter. Are our lives and choices therefor predictable? Well, given even small amounts of quantum uncertainty, no, not in perfect detail; but, in a larger sense, yes. All of us are, in general, fairly predictable, which is a good thing if you think about the amount of predictable cooperation that is necessary for us to do things like drive cars on roads used by other drivers. And most of the decisions we makes seem to make sense, and are in that sense predictable in terms of who we are and what our goals and desires and skills and attitudes and beliefs happen to be. But can I know what those decisions will be without going through the kinds of reasoning, emoting, thinking, and other behaviors that constitute the way I make decisions? No, it's simply impossible. No one will ever be able to have that kind of foreknowledge.
So we do have free will in a deterministic universe.
In-determinism, on the other hand, makes free will impossible, because random events by definition cannot be under control. To the extent that determinism is true, we humans do indeed have something that we all innately feel and believe that we have: free will. In this most important sense, determinism makes free will possible and meaningful"
“In your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet…There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter…And each line has to end with a rigid pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet…But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants…You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”
-CaR
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