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| | Causal Determinism |
 | | Fatalism is easily disentangled from determinism, to the extent that one can disentangle mystical forces and gods' wills and foreknowledge (about specific matters) from the notion of natural/causal law. |
 | | Prima facie at least, this is quite puzzling, for the BSA is founded on the idea that the laws of nature are ontologically derivative, not primary; it is the events of universal history, as brute facts, that make the laws be what they are, and not vice-versa. |
 | | Frequently, the puzzle presented is to decide, on the basis of the well-defined behavior before time t = a, what state the system will be in at t = a itself. |
| plato.stanford.edu /entries/determinism-causal (8954 words) |
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