Ballinger, Clint
Determinism and the Antiquated Deontology of the
Social Sciences.
Working paper.
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Abstract
This article shows how the social sciences, particularly human geography, rejected
hard determinism by the mid-twentieth century partly on the deontological basis that
it is irreconcilable with social justice, yet this rejection came just before a burst of
creative development in consequentialist theories of social justice that problematize a
facile rejection of determinism on moral grounds, a development that has seldom
been recognized in the social sciences. Thus many current social science and human
geography views on determinism and social justice are antiquated, ignoring
numerous common and well-respected arguments within philosophy that hard
determinism can be reconciled with a just society. We support this argument by
briefly tracing the parallel development of stances on determinism in the social
sciences and the deontological-consequentialist debate in philosophy. The purpose of
the article is to resituate social science and human geography debates on
determinism and social justice within a modern ethical framework.
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