Environmental determinism and archaeology. Understanding and evaluating determinism in research design

Social and Ethical Responsibility against Social Determinism

Background: Because of the highlighted role of ethical responsibility in social and individual life, it is looked as an important issue in ethics area. Social responsibility that is defined as a sub-factor of ethical responsibility will have such an important place. What is discussed in responsibility discussions commonly is the “human will”. Responsibility is more based on the free will. In th...

Neo-Environmental Determinism and Agrarian "Collapse" in Andean Prehistory

Introduction: neo-environmentalism in Andean archaeology In early anthropology, environmental determin-ism was used to explain race, human demography , material culture, cultural variation and cultural change. As anthropological interpretation evolved, simplistic reductionist thinking was replaced with more complex socio-cultural explanations. Despite these theoretical advances, environmental d...

Why should they believe us? Determinism, non-determinism and evidence

In Software Engineering, as in Computing Science, the topics that we teach to our students can be considered as falling into two broad categories: the deterministic, and the non-deterministic. Deterministic topics are those where a specific scenario or operation leads to outcomes that can be assessed in terms of true/false values, and so this classification encompasses large elements of compute...

Determinism and Criminal Law

Moral Responsibility and Determinism

conditions, would they choose to hold on to the concrete judgment that Bill is morally responsible or the abstract judgment that no one can be responsible in a deterministic universe? The results showed no clear majority on either side. Approximately half of the subjects chose to hold onto the judgment that the particular agent was morally responsible, while the other half chose to hold onto th...