The Collaborative International Dictionary
deterministic \de*ter`min*ist"ic\, a.
of or pertaining to determinism; as, deterministic theories.
causally determined and not subject to random chance.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1874, from determinist (see determinism) + -ic.
Wiktionary
a. 1 of, or relating to determinism 2 (context mathematics of a Turing machine English) having at most one instruction associated with any given internal state 3 (context physics of a system English) Having exactly predictable time evolution. 4 (context computing of an algorithm English) Having each state depend only on the immediately previous state, as opposed to having some states depend on backtracking where there may be multiple possible next actions and no way to choose between them except by trying each one and backtracking upon failure.
WordNet
adj. an inevitable consequence of antecedent sufficient causes
Usage examples of "deterministic".
From this single premise, he develops an almost mathematical calculus that seeks to explain all human behavior as the deterministic result of patterns of positive and negative reinforcement inherent in the physical and social environment.
Skinner, we are born into a deterministic environment which shapes our behavior patterns from the very moment of birth.
Skinner, after relentlessly outlining the series of deterministic processes which have programmed man the species, man the social being, and man the self-conscious individual, after showing that free will and even morality do not exist, after presenting us with an image of man as a protoplasmic robot, then declares that we should use the tool of behavioral technology to so modify the contingencies of reinforcement which control us as to reprogram ourselves in our own ideal image.
Skinner considers himself and his technology of behavior to be end products of the long chain of deterministic evolution which produced them.
Once such a consciousness becomes part of the general culture, that culture is free from the previous deterministic restraints of that process, though certainly not from its continued influence.
Western civilization self-consciousness of the deterministic nature of its economic structure.
But once Dialectical Materialism had described the deterministic process of class struggle and economic evolution, it became obsolete because it cracked open the closed system it described by the very act of describing it.
By so doing, he altered the deterministic nature of the process, since human consciousness now had awareness of this controlling element of its own behavior and thought.
Skinner has failed to comprehend is that at the very moment that he himself elucidated the process, this whole process of natural selection ceased to be deterministic, just as the insights of McLuhan and psychopharmacology have shattered the determinism of brain biochemistry and the sensorium.
But, apart from the already mentioned deterministic chains of causes and effects, the fantasy must also contain processes characterized by relative freedom.
The reckoning of religious faith is deterministic right in its essence.
Her characters are not overwhelmed in a deterministic world, oppressed by the forces of heredity and environment.
The last great transglobal trade empire, run from the arcologies of Hong Kong, has collapsed along with capitalism, rendered obsolete by a bunch of superior deterministic resource allocation algorithms collectively known as Economics 2.
With historical, deterministic computers, you always got the same answer to the same question.
This was harder than Celest, where he merely cranked on deterministic relationships.