Please revise your essay, the thesis statement should be clear and specific...In this paper, I will argue... because...The organizational statement should be written right after the thesis statement.

Sophia Valentine

Florida Atlantic University

PHI 2010

Dr. Guilmette

27 July 2018

Hard determinism

Consistently we are faced with the mystery of human action, actions like an individual committing an arm robbery and, in the process killing a guard, or a respectable person in the community accused of abusing children. In every one of these occurrences and endless others we battle to comprehend why individuals acted the way they do. Our answers commonly rely upon our most profound convictions about the idea of the human self. A few people belief that genuine freedom of choice is not always possible because our decisions and actions are determined by factors outside our ability to control. This view is known as determinism; and, at its most extraordinary frame, hard determinism (Chaffee 4.1)

Determinism is a hypothesis that clarifies and affirms that human events, including basic choices and free will are controlled by the current or outer elements. Determinism is comprehended to have evacuated the likelihood of free will since people can't act any other way than they actually do. Numerous philosophical theories that attempts to clarify determinism attests the possibility that; reality takes after a kind of predetermined way. Free will is the possibility that an individual has opportunity in basic leadership that are not influenced by existing or outside variables. Hard determinism then again is a view on through and through freedom. Hard determinism on the other hand is a view on free will. Holback argues that determinism is true and is incompatible with free will concluding that free will does not exist. (Holback, 451)

Over decades, free will and determinism’s problem has remained to be a major phenomenon to philosophers such that, it has been a very big issue because without free will the society cannot be moral. There cannot be the act of human being’s actions being right or being wrong and on the other hand no human action could be good or rather be evil. Absence of free will could also mean that every individual behavior would be determined before-hand implying that no people could have choices or even be creative. Every human being’s daily activities whether mental or physical involves the process of choice selection as well as decision making. Though most of decisions that one makes throughout the day are made with little thought, some decisions are extremely obvious to an individual because of the need of reflecting on the choices before choosing. The whole idea of hard determinism is the position that this paper will discuss.

Generally, hard determinists believe that no human action involves free will. Holbach was a hard determinist. In his article, he explains how everything an individual does is determined by things that are beyond his or her control. Actually, people tend to be motivated to seek pressure in order to avoid pain, but on the other hand people cannot help what gives them pain or pressure. Regardless of what one does, the process of his or her actions and its effect is inevitable. He gives an example of some poisoned water which demonstrates that for each individual’s action there must be a reason behind it, and that those reasons are simple changes that the brain makes which determines his or her decision. And because one cannot control the changes that the brain makes that causes one to choose what to do, then it actually means that no one cannot control their own actions.

Moreover, hard determinists also give a more logical prospection of human beings and their actions. This prospective focus mainly on the causes rather than the instant cause of an individual’s action. Furthermore, the implications of being determined are considered and no one is made responsible for the decision that he or she makes simply because they are beyond his or her control. To add on this, hard determinists tries to provide a fact that human beings feel and think that they are free while they are really not. Halbach believes that the reason behind people thinking that they are free is because they are ignorant to the whole process of choice selection and decision making that determines their behaviors. Furthermore, people naturally fail to question the reason for their choices which allows human beings to have free will.

Hard determinism on the other hand is very important especially in courts of law and in the legal systems where it becomes or would be most convincing. For example, an individual in a trial may find hard determinism as a defense by arguing that his or her actions were as a result of external forces which were ultimately beyond his or her control. Therefore, if this defensive mechanism successfully persuades the judges in courts of law and is acceptable in the legal systems, then there are ground to accept that both free will as well as determinism are not compatible at all.

While soft determinists argue about the uniqueness of human beings because they possess free will, hard determinist disagrees with this component that differentiates human from animals. Hard determinism views that human beings are also not freer than robots. Additionally, it would be wrong to punish a criminal because they just couldn’t help it and this could lead to an unstable society full of mayhems and chaos.

Moreover, hard determinists believe that human mind must be determined and there is no room to separate the mind from the rest of the human body. For example, libertarianism a form of determinism argues that the mind is in charge of making one’s decision an argument that hard determinist finds unconvincing. From the evidence provided by the discussion in this paper, hard determinism is the most convincing theory to follow on the question of free will and determinism. This is because human being’s actions which are as a result of choices beyond one’s control are determined by something else which Holbach says it is either an existing or an external force that drives human beings in decision making. Therefore to clear up hard determinism further, let me exhibit hard determinism as a contention. Fundamentally hard determinism contends that: (a) Determinism is valid (b) Determinism is contrary with choice.

Work Cited

John Chaffee. The Philosopher's Way 5e