Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use determinism in a sentence

20 example sentences · noun

Determinism means the doctrine that all actions are determined by the current state and immutable laws of the universe, with no possibility of choice. Example: “Pereboom’s book presents probably the best available argument for hard incompatibilism (the view that free will is not compatible with causal determinism), and his defence of the sourcehood view is just part of this overall argument.”

Examples of determinism by meaning

nounThe doctrine that all actions are determined by the current state and immutable laws of the universe, with no...

  • Pereboom’s book presents probably the best available argument for hard incompatibilism (the view that free will is not compatible with causal determinism), and his defence of the sourcehood view is just part of this overall argument.2015 January 1, John Danaher, “The Free Will Debate: Sourcehood or Alternative Possibilities?”, in Philosophical Disquisitions

More sentences with determinism

  • Nominative determinism is usually applied to the idea that someone's name may influence their future.2016, Caroline Barchelder, The Gender Conversation: Evangelical Perspectives on Gender, Scripture, and the Christian Life, Morling Press…. From the entry nominative determinism
  • After all, the soft determinist says that we can have determinism and free will, too.2009, Michael Leming, Raymond De Vries, Brendan Furnish, editors, The Sociological Perspective: A Value-Committed Introduction, Wipf and…. From the entry soft determinist
  • Soft determinism, however, is open to objections that have led some philosophers to abandon the position.2007, Steven M. Cahn, “Free Will or Determinism?”, in Puzzles & Perplexities: Collected Essays, 2nd edition, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 9. From the entry soft determinism
  • A little-known aspect of pop sociology called nominative determinism intrigued Rory Honeyman for a very good reason.2003, Paul Di Filippo, chapter 2, in Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken, Open Road Integrated Media. From the entry nominative determinism
  • This determinism is broken up, we are told, by twentieth-century physics.1991 [1990], John Forrester, The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 95. From the entry Augustinian
  • It led willy-nilly to technological determinism, a philosophy that Mumford, the axiologist, generally repudiated.1990, Thomas Hughes, “Review of Lewis Mumford: A Life by Donald Miller,”, in Technology and Culture, volume 31, number 4, page 914. From the entry axiologist
  • Newspeak sets the scene of linguistic determinism, where language is hypothesised to influence or control a people group’s thought processes.2020 August 8, Zui, “Controlled Languages — Newspeak”, in The Language Closet. From the entry Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
  • It is confusion between having a fixed nature and having a fixed future that mismotivates the anguish over determinism.2003, Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves. From the entry mismotivate
  • Genetic determinism and biofascism go hand in hand.2001, Michael W. Fox, Bringing Life to Ethics: Global Bioethics for a Humane Society, page 164. From the entry biofascism
  • Economic determinism is the central tenet of political theory and "naive" reflectionism is the basic premise of cultural theory.1996, Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso, Powerless Fictions?:, page 180. From the entry reflectionism
  • As mothers we know about that.' This is biological determinism.1982 April 15, Donna Warnock, “Feminism and Militarism: Can the Peace Movement Reach Out?”, in Win. From the entry biological determinism
  • Wade: a flawed, but revolutionary pronouncement, the first real break in the prison of biological determinism that has kept women in their place.1983 February 5, Rhonda Copelon, quotee, “Roe v. Wade: The Challenge of the Next Decade”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 28…. From the entry biological determinism
  • Determinism is an example: it alleges that all the seeming irregularities and spontaneities in the world are haunted by an omnipresent system of strict necessitation.1957, J. W. N. Watkins, “Between Analytic and Empirical”, in Philosophy, volume 32, number 121, page 114. From the entry necessitation
  • There is a whole gradation of more or less rigid determinisms and more or less free indeterminisms, as they have been given in various theories.1937, Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics. From the entry indeterminism
  • He eventually nails his colours to the mast of strict determinism: every human action is inescapably caused by preceding events in the world, including events in the brain.2017 June 9, Steven Poole, “Behave by Robert Sapolsky review – why do we do what we do?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry inescapably
  • Moreover, suggestions that compatibilists can refute hard determinism on non-semantic grounds are misguided, building more into hard determinism than an adherent of this view needs to accept.2009, Susan Pockett, William P. Banks, Shaun Gallagher, editors, Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 128. From the entry compatibilist
  • Soft determinism is an inviting doctrine, for it allows us to maintain a belief in free will without having to relinquish the belief that every event has a cause.2007, Steven M. Cahn, “Free Will or Determinism?”, in Puzzles & Perplexities: Collected Essays, 2nd edition, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 9. From the entry soft determinism
  • While not acceptable to all Unitarians, the philosophical determinism known as Necessarianism, identified with Hartley and Priestley, also proved persuasive to many, both ministers and laymen.2000, R. K. Webb, “6: Miracles in English Unitarian Thought”, in Mark S. Micale, Robert L. Dietle, editors, Enlightenment, Passion…. From the entry necessarianism
  • This sense of determination, the famous determinism that Freud is rebuked for, is in truth more of a parody of nineteenth century Laplacean determinism than its extension.1991 [1990], John Forrester, The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 95. From the entry Augustinian

Meaning of determinism

  1. noun The doctrine that all actions are determined by the current state and immutable laws of the universe, with no possibility of choice.
  2. noun The property of having behavior determined only by initial state and input.

Full definition of determinism

Questions about determinism in a sentence

How do you use determinism in a sentence?
Determinism is used as a noun. For example: “Pereboom’s book presents probably the best available argument for hard incompatibilism (the view that free will is not compatible with causal determinism), and his defence of the sourcehood view is just part of this overall argument.”
What is a short sentence with determinism?
“Genetic determinism and biofascism go hand in hand.”
What does determinism mean?
Determinism means the doctrine that all actions are determined by the current state and immutable laws of the universe, with no possibility of choice.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: determinism (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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