Hard Determinism There are several viewpoints which consider whether we are free when making decisions and taking courses of action. One of these perspectives is hard determinism. J. Mackie described hard determinism as: 'The view that all actions are explicable in terms of their causes and are therefore inevitable' (J. Mackie) This outlines the basic idea that no action or decision is free. This is based upon the notion that for an action to happen there are a series of factors that ensure the occurrence of that action: '…all our choices, decisions, intentions, other mental events, and our actions are no more than effects of other necessitated events' (T. Honderich) Therefore we are not free to act as we wish due to our actions being determined previously by prior events. As Ekstrom suggested, apparent forking paths appear in life, which seem to give us our own choice, however we are conditioned to take the path we choose by such factors as our upbringing and culture, so our choice is not one of our own but rather that of conditioning. For example, a simple action such as choosing what to wear in the morning may appear on the surface a 'free' choice but on closer inspection it is not at all. We are all affected initially by our social and environmental background; taking into account current trends, our peers and even the environment and activities of the day you are preparing for would affect the choice. Religious and cultural background may also influence this decision considering the fact that a Muslim woman would have to think carefully about her dress so as to be dressed modestly as her religion state... ... middle of paper ... ...elled sinful if the act they committed was made through no decision of their own? An example of this presented by J. Hospers compares a kleptomaniac and a thief. In a world governed by hard determinism neither is blameworthy as neither person has a choice with regard to the act of theft. Even the thief who was conditioned by past cause, as mentioned previously. To summarise, hard determinism focuses on the concept that human beings are not responsible for their actions as they do not decide them freely, rather they are determined for the individual by specific factors and past causes. Although we may believe that we are free to make our own decisions, whatever they may be, we are sadly misunderstood: 'All events are totally predetermined by other events and so freedom of choice is an illusion' (J. Mackie)
The problem of free will and determinism is a mystery about what human beings are able to do. The best way to describe it is to think of the alternatives taken into consideration when someone is deciding what to do, as being parts of various “alternative features” (Van-Inwagen). Robert Kane argues for a new version of libertarianism with an indeterminist element. He believes that deeper freedom is not an illusion. Derk Pereboom takes an agnostic approach about causal determinism and sees himself as a hard incompatibilist. I will argue against Kane and for Pereboom, because I believe that Kane struggles to present an argument that is compatible with the latest scientific views of the world.
“There is a continuum between free and unfree, with many or most acts lying somewhere in between.” (Abel, 322) This statement is a good summation of how Nancy Holmstrom’s view of free will allows for degrees of freedom depending on the agent’s control over the situation. Holmstrom’s main purpose in her Firming Up Soft Determinism essay was to show that people can have control over the source of their actions, meaning that people can have control over their desires and beliefs, and because of this they have free will. She also tried to show that her view of soft determinism was compatible with free will and moral responsibility. While Holmstrom’s theory about the self’s being in control, willingness to participate, and awareness of an act causes the act to be free, has some merit, her choice to incorporate soft determinism ultimately proved to invalidate her theory.
Chisholm’s Freewill Argument on the Dilemma of Determinism In determining the free will of a human’s nature many philosophers want to solve the dilemma of determinism. The dilemma of determinism is as follows ( Rowe, p.587): A.) If determinism is true, we are not responsible for our actions since our choices are determined by factors that we have no control over.
freedom as long as one does not disturb others in their state of nature; in this
choose, the freedom to choose. We also have to take the responsibility of our choices. We
Correspondingly, it is a problem due to the fact, if our own actions are not self-caused, then our desires and characters are caused by outside forces. In the same way, it is not a problem if the immediate cause of an action is our own desires and character, then that is sufficient for the action to be free. When given the ability to decide on your own, it is free will. For instance, a man was given a personal choice to commence. But he chose not to think and form a choice. Instead his friend made choices for the man. Basically, the man did not desire free will to decide on his own, he chose to be told what to
Determinism, a doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will, especially when up against nature. An influential component found in naturalistic writing, London, Garland, and Crane each lend their writing to this movement, realism, modeled after the writings of Darwin, Marx, and Freud. Determinism, generally pessimistic, presents itself in the form of Koskoosh, an elderly, blind man left to die by his tribe. This indigenous, cold-climate tribe embraces the “survival of the fittest” mentality. Simply surviving was a burden for this tribe and they certainly did not have the resources to sustain a dependent person. The story mentions the good times when the dogs and people were fat, as
The question of whether people can choose their thoughts and actions or not has been a topic many great thinkers throughout history have thought about. Yet, despite countless arguments for and against it, no one has been able to prove whether free will exists or not. Free will is the ability to make a choice not determined by outside stimuli. The opposite of free will is determinism. Hard determinists argue that there is no such thing as free will; people don’t have the ability to choose freely, undetermined from outside stimuli. Yet despite many compelling arguments for the case, hard determinism disregards the unique quality of humanity. Humanity has the ability to think and reason, which ultimately gives them the unique attribute of agent-causation.
“The truth is that nothing can give us what we think we want, and ordinarily think we have. We cannot be morally responsible, in the absolute, buck-stopping way in which we often unreflectively think we are. We cannot have "strong" free will of the kind that we would need to have, in order to be morally responsible in this way” (…).
Who we are and what we do are factors that are beyond our control and through this, will limit our moral responsibility.
may be free to choose our own path. The fatal flaw in this argument is that
Determinism currently takes two related forms: hard determinism and soft determinism [1][1]. Hard determinism claims that the human personality is subject to, and a product of, natural forces. All of our choices can be accounted for by reference to environmental, social, cultural, physiological and hereditary (biological) causes. Our total character is a product of these environmental, social, cultural, physiological and hereditary forces, thus our beliefs, desires, values and habits are all outside of our control. The hard determinist, therefore, claims that our choices are determined by these factors; free will is an illusion because the choices and decisions we make are derived from our character, which is completely out of our control in creating. An example might help illustrate this point. Consider a man who has just repeatedly stabbed another man outside of a bar; the other man is dead. The hard determinist would argue that there were factors outside of the killer’s control which led him to this action. As a child, he was constantly beaten by his father and was the object of ridicule and contempt of his classmates. This trend of hard luck would continue all his life. Coupled with the fact that he has a gene that has been identified with male aggression, he could not control himself when he pulled the knife out and started stabbing the other man. All this aggression, and all this history were the determinate cause of his action.
Sigmund Freud is a well known psychologist and philosopher. He is widely known for his strange psychological reasoning and comparisons of children and sex. But for the purpose of this essay, the focus will be more on his philosophical views of determinism in his book, Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
though, is that we do not have the right to place a value on another person (whether increasing
Behavior is quite an interesting aspect of man to observe. All day long we demonstrate diverse types of behavior, from eating certain foods to speaking in certain ways. But of most interest is rational behavior. Behavior is rational "if, and only if, it can be influenced, or inhibited by the adducing of some logically relevant consideration." (p.297) In his essay MacIntyre tries to show us that rational behavior is not causally determined, but that it comes out of our free will.