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Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behaviour, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.[1] With numerous historical debates, many varieties and philosophical positions on the subject of determinism exist from traditions throughout the world. It is a popular misconception that determinism necessarily entails that humanity or individual humans have no influence on the future and its events (a position known as fatalism); however, determinists believe that the level to which human beings have influence over their future is itself dependent on present and past. Causal determinism is associated with, and relies upon, the ideas of materialism and causality. Some of the main philosophers who have dealt with this issue are Steven M. Cahn, Omar Khayyám, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, Baron d'Holbach (Paul Heinrich Dietrich), Pierre-Simon Laplace, Arthur Schopenhauer, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche and, more recently, John Searle, Ted Honderich, and Daniel Dennett. The exact meaning of the term determinism has historically been subject to several interpretations. Some, called Incompatibilists, view determinism and free will as mutually exclusive. The belief that free will is an illusion is known as Hard Determinism. Others, labeled Compatibilists, (or Soft Determinists) believe that the two ideas can be coherently reconciled. Incompatibilists who accept free will but reject determinism are called Libertarians — not to be confused with the political sense. Most of this disagreement is due to the fact that the definition of free will, like that of determinism, varies. Some feel it refers to the metaphysical truth of independent agency, whereas others simply define it as the feeling of agency that humans experience when they act. In its central part, determinism is the theory that our choices and decisions and what gives rise to them are effects. What the theory comes to therefore depends on what effects are taken to be... [I]t is effects that seem fundamental to the subject of determinism and how it affects our lives.[5]
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