philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, accidentalism denies the

causal closure Physical causal closure is a metaphysical theory about the nature of causation in the physical realm with significant ramifications in the study of metaphysics and the mind. In a strongly stated version, physical causal closure says that "all phy ...

of physical determinism and maintains that events can succeed one another haphazardly or by chance (not in the mathematical but in the popular sense). Opponents of accidentalism maintain that what seems to be a chance occurrence is actually the result of one or more causes that remain unknown due only to a lack of investigation.

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...

used the term

tychism Tychism () is a thesis proposed by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce that holds that absolute chance, or indeterminism, is a real factor operative in the universe. This doctrine forms a central part of Peirce's comprehensive evoluti ...

(from τύχη, chance) for theories that make chance an objective factor in the process of the Universe. In ethics the term is used, like

indeterminism Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or are not caused deterministically. It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical pr ...

, to denote the theory that mental change cannot always be ascribed to previously ascertained psychological states, and that volition is not causally related to the motives involved. An example of this theory is the doctrine of the ''liberum arbitrium indifferentiae'' ("liberty of indifference"), according to which the choice of two or more alternative possibilities is affected neither by contemporaneous data of an ethical or prudential kind nor by crystallized habit (character).

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* Determinism Metaethics Metaphysical theories {{metaphysics-stub

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