Hard Determinism

Introduction

In this paper, WE will argue that hard determinism is the only viable position with respect to the free will and determinism debate. WE will consider W.T. Stace's objection concerning the semantic problem, which is explaining what the real sense of the word" free will" means, and the objection raised by the libertarians, which is how can a person want things and the wanting just comes up out of nowhere, but ultimately WE will reject both.

Discussion

Hard determinism holds that everything that happens must happen, because everything is causally determined by the given antecedent conditions and laws of nature. The argument hard determinists give goes as follows. Premise one: an event is causally determined just in case it is not possible for the event not to have occurred. Premise two: every event is either causally determined or it isn't. Premise three: for an act to be free, the act should be avoidable, and avoiding it had to come from our own will. Premise four: it had to happen. Premise five: if an event is not causally determined, then it is a random event. Premise six: if the event is random, then it doesn't result from the exertion of anyone's will. Premise seven: every human action is an event. Premise eight: so, every human action is such that it is either causally determined or not. Premise nine: for any human act A, if act A is causally determined then the agent could not have acted otherwise, thus the act can not be free. Premise ten: if A is random then A is not a result of the exertion of the agents will. Conclusion: therefore, no action is free (Schick and Vaughn 220-227).

In the first premise of hard determinism it clearly states what is meant by " free", if any act is determined to occur, it cannot be free. There cannot be any free human acts. The second premise, simply out, states that if a cause is present an effect of some sort must occur. Because anything that happens has either a cause or many sets of causes, which gives reason as to why nothing is free.

Some compatibilists argue that the third premise is false because behaviors are voluntary. Hard determinists respond to the objection with the following argument for why human's actions have to be causally determined. Premise one: no action is free if it occurs. Premise two: all human actions result ...