The principle of determinism and its manifestation in philosophy and psychology

The concept of determinism comes from the Latin word determino - I define it, and in the most general sense it means a certain logical conditioning of all events and phenomena occurring in nature and society. This category is widely used in describing and analyzing various phenomena in a wide range of sciences and ordinary people's minds. That is why the principle of determinism is interpreted and interpreted quite widely, depending on the scope of the scientific knowledge in which it is applied, as well as on the methodological basis on which the cognitive-analytic activity of the researcher is built.

The principle of determinism in philosophy is a doctrine according to which any fact of being, any phenomenon in nature, has a completely regular reason for its appearance and existence. In this sense, the principle of determinism is opposed to indeterminism, which implies a picture of the universe in which everything is possible and there is no rational explanation. The simplest form of causality can be shown by the law: the cause is a consequence, while this pattern has the following properties:

- a time sequence in which the cause always precedes the effect;

- the cause always acts as a generating factor in relation to the effect;

- continuity, according to which any consequence comes after the cause immediately, without a time interval;

- irreversibility means the uniqueness of the connection, that is, the reason can not be the cause of the cause, if it is already the cause of the effect, in the process of causality itself, the cause can not take the place of the investigation, although any event can be both a cause and an effect;

- the necessity and universality assume that under the same conditions of the event, a causal one, naturally and inevitably, generates the same effect.

The principle of determinism in psychology is manifested, based on its philosophical interpretation and understanding, and represents a scientific paradigm, according to which, all phenomena are not accidental and have a very specific cause. As applied to psychology, this is expressed in the fact that psychic phenomena are mediated by the factors that generated them and which affect their existence. Here the principle of determinism is regarded as a regularity in the genesis of mental and psychological phenomena from any causes preceding the emergence of these phenomena. It is believed that the temporal sequence in the origin of cause and effect does not exhaust all the characteristics of determinism. The principle of determinism can be manifested as a system, that is, when the properties of individual elements of the system are mediated by the properties of the system as a whole. The statistical form assumes that, under the action of the same reasons, certain deviations in the occurrence of effects can be observed, and others.

Previously, the dominant method in psychology was the orientation toward the mechanistic form of the manifestation of determinism, according to which it was regarded as the conditioning of mental manifestations by material factors. This approach contributed to the development of knowledge about reflexes, deviant behavior, affects, etc. But in general, this approach is limited, since it considers only external disturbances as the causes of mental phenomena.

The inclusion of the ideas of natural-science determinism in psychology contributed, first, to the transformation of psychology into independent scientific knowledge, and secondly, it oriented the methodology of determinism to the study of its internal laws of the origin of cause-effect relationships.