Abstract

PENARANDA, Fernando  and  RENDON, Carlos E. Determinism-indetermination and the debate on determinants-social determination of health. Rev. Fac. Nac. Salud Pública [online]. 2013, vol.31, suppl.1, pp.47-56. ISSN 0120-386X.

The debate between social determinants or determination of health, fostered by the Latin American social medicine movement after the proposal of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, involves analyzing the tension between determinism and indeterminism and its implications for conceiving causality from a historical and epistemological perspective. This paper presents some trends with regard to the cosmological and epistemological vision in Western history of thought that have marked this debate, analyzing the tensions between monist / pluralist positions, on one hand and deterministic / indeterministic on the other, as well as their impact on the way the subject is conceived and his relationship with nature, and the role of human freedom, causality and randomness. In the conclusions a way out for the tensions and conflicts analyzed from a dialectic perspective is proposed in order to overcome the causal cosmologic view of reality, in which a suitable space for the action of the subject as an agent is provided.

Keywords : determinants; determination; freedom; causality; subject.

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