Critically Assess the View That We Are Not Responsible for Our Evil Actions

Nancy Holmstrom’s account of soft determinism makes it simple to understand how free will and determinism can be compatible due to an individual’s experiences and decisions. Combining the environmental factors that influenced my decision to attend the University of Kansas, my decision would fall the middle of Holmstrom’s continuum but slightly to the side of free

Hard determinism is the belief that every event has one cause and one outcome. Blatchford agrees with this idea that everything is predestined. He believes that to freely choose, one has to be able to choose alternative paths. According to Blatchford, in his essay “Not Guilty,” human behavior is compelled by heredity and environment. He believes that every event in human behavior is caused because of a person’s heredity and environment. Blatchford does admit though that our thoughts, desires,

Defending Hard Determinism Against the Strongest Objections Raised Against It In this academic essay there will be a clear and defined description of both hard determinism and its eventual nemesis indeterminism. Based on these definitions there will be a personal attempt at denying hard determinism. This will be accomplished through the introduction of David Hume and his radical philosophy on causality and the relation this may have on hard determinism, as well as the various possibilities it may distinguish. Furthermore the Causal Principle will also be introduced and slandered in its incapability to provide a concrete defense for hard determinism and its potential in proposing a solution

The objection here can be simply defined in the following argument: 1. If hard determinism is true, than we have no free will. 2. If we have no free will, then we are not responsible for our actions. 3. We are responsible for our actions, therefore hard determinism is false. Let us refer back to the best friend example from before. You fell asleep, missing the concert you and your friend had made plans for months ago, but you were causally determined to make no other choice but that one, so it is wrong to assign any blame to you. The objection is simply the opposite. We can indeed act other than we do act and so we are ultimately responsible for our actions. Other choices were available, you just did not choose those other options. Because you could have made the right choice, blame or punishment is a very apparent reality. With that belief, you absolutely could have better prepared for accidently falling asleep, such as taking a nap hours before the concert or setting a second alarm to wake up, therefore the possibilities to act differently were there, you just didn’t choose them. In addition, because those choices were available, you can assume some blame, if not all, therefore making you responsible for the actions that hurt your best friend’s feelings. Anything other than this view, opposing views claim, goes against the common sense view that we want to be able to blame or

An example of an external force could be parents supporting a type of behaviour thereby encouraging it. On the other hand an internal force would be driven by hormones. Free-will believers assume that things are a bit difficult. They acknowledge that there is internal and external factors, but yet they still believe that humans are free to choose their own behaviour. Stace theorizes the idea of compatibility or soft determinism. He argues that free-will exists but to an extent which is known as soft determinism. Stace defines free act as “free acts are all caused by desire, motives, or by some sort of psychological state of the agent’s mind”. Unfree acts on the other hand are “those whose immediate causes are states of affairs external to the agent”. Soft determinism is the view that determinism and free-will are compatible. It is a form of compatibilism. Soft determinism consists of two main claims:

For example, there are some philosophers who believe that our genes determine our future entirely, and some philosophers that believe our actions are dictated by environmental conditioning (Doyle 2001, p. 147). These two perspectives are both faulty and inaccurate. Our genes, however, are only hereditary units that determine the characteristics of our bodies. Although this may have some effect on the way we act, most of the information stored in the brain is accumulated throughout life. This does disqualify biological determinism alone as an explanation for our actions, although it can still be treated as a contributing factor in a more complete theory of determinism. For example, in a free will theory that uses O’Connor’s definition of free will, some biological genetic processes could explain our primal, animalistic desires, that cause us to act “out of character”. The behavioral (environmental) determinism perspective argues that the environment we are reared in has a massive effect on our perspective on reality; thus, it can be used to predict the decisions we will make in a given circumstance. This does not, however, prove that all of life is determined by causal chains, as is posited by determinists, it simply bolsters the idea that nurture plays a large role in developing our character. It provides no evidence to show that a certain childhood environment is somehow indicative of the likelihood of certain specific decisions in a certain situation. Adequate determinism, arguably the most rational of all deterministic schools of thought, is guided by statistical laws, and does not claim to be able to predict everything perfectly. It only claims to predict things that have been sufficiently experimented and explained by classical laws in the macroscopic world and, thus, does not claim to explain issues presented by QM that are contradictory to

There is the idea that people’s past history, or their upbringing is an essential factor in determining if an actor is evil. The historicist narrative can temper blame against an evildoer, and in result, alter the definition of evil. While the actor should not be absolved of his crime, it is important to mention that in some cases, the evil action itself can be explained through the actor’s

Hard determinists are those who says everything is determined, and it follows from that that we are not free, that we do not have morally significance freedom (Chaffee). For example: If a person chooses salt over sugar, that choice was not his or her choice because it was pre-determined, and was caused by something. The problem of free will comes down to the notion of moral responsibility. On the contrary, someone that thinks that free will is incompatible with determinism, that we do have free will and that therefore determinism is false, is called a Libertarian. Nothing forces a libertarian to do what he/she wants to do freely. For example, imagine a person is at the supermarket and has in front of him the potato section and the sweet potato section. He chooses to grab a potato instead of a sweet potato. At that very moment, when he is grabbing the potato, he has chosen to grab the potato.

In the early 19th century, small particles of matter were seen moving about in virtual empty three dimensional space and are acted against one another by its own forces that are uniquely determined based on their position and velocity which were based on Newton's laws. Humans are merely an aggregate version of these particles. Determinism was an intrinsic feature at that stage. Fast forward to the 20th century, science is now utilising hard evidence to break the boundaries between fact and fiction. The particles that was once, understood by our limited knowledge using the framework of the Native Realism then, is proven to be false with the use of Quantum Mechanics and the Theory of Relativity. With this, we know that the theory based on Hard Determinism is mistaken and freedom which was widely scorned by scientific communities in the 19th century, becomes the very essences of reality today. When we observe it from the outside, it takes the form of quantum-mechanical unpredictability; when we observe it from within, we call it our free

Some claim that forces not of their own making largely determine people’s behavior. Behaviorists strongly support this statement with a word known as determinism. Simply put, determinism is “the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will” (determinism, 2011). Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that people have no free will and cannot be held accountable for their behavior. Removing choice and self-respect determinism belittles human behavior. By crafting an extensive spectrum of laws of behavior, deterministic psychology underestimates the individuality of human beings and their liberty to choose their own destiny.

Indeed, predeterminism seems quite incompatible with what we naturally conceive of as “free will.” However, Harry Frankfurt argues for a better understanding of our ‘free will’ sense of accountability; Frankfurt argues that a person, Jones, is unknowingly implanted with a device in his brain that will activate and force him to perform a certain immoral action against his will. However, the device will only activate if Joes does not already intend to (and does) perform the immoral act by his own agency. If Jones commits the immoral act, and the device does not activate, it might as well have never been implanted inside him. Yet, we would still hold Jones morally responsible in this situation, even if he was unable to choose to do otherwise. Thus, Frankfurt’s solution to our concept of moral responsibility is that one should be exempt from the responsibility of an act if he or she performed the action only because he or she could not have done otherwise; I will return to this idea

Deterministic psychologists believe that controlling and predicting behavior is a way to further study human behavior, as well as improve human welfare (Ogletree and Oberle 2008). From a determinist point of view, men are not free psychologically and so their actions are determined and predictable if enough knowledge is known about the circumstances (Ogletree and Oberle 2008). The questioning of morality is present in deterministic view because it is thought that part of man’s freedom is in his morality, but really it is determined by the rewards or punishments for certain actions as laid out by the society or culture he is living in. In Huemer’s (2009) book he says that there are two reasons that people believe in the determinist view. The first is when they believe in God; God is all knowing, he knows what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, so that must mean there are no alternatives to what has already been

Free will is the ability of voluntarily choosing between two actions, which falls under the concept of moral responsibility. In the case of Jerome Bowden, Bowden was convicted for the murder of a fifty-five-year-old woman. Bowden had the mentality of a nine-year-old and tested a low IQ score of 65, yet was still sentenced to death. If the idea of free will is explained as one who acts without the interference of any biological or environmental pressures, it is then logical to say that Bowden was not under any awareness of his actions. In a biological perspective, due to his mental disorder, Jerome Bowden had no free will. Bowden was unable to read, write, and like many mentally disabled individuals, did not understand his actions. Mental illness will always erode the foundational idea of free will. Determinism is defined, in a simple definition, as the actions of human being previously determined by causes outside of the willingness of the individuals. If the idea of determinism is true, we as people or even the legislators cannot hold human beings morally responsible for their actions. One article reads, “the determinist approach proposes that all behavior is caused by preceding factors and is thus predictable.” Some behaviorist believes in “environmental determinism”. To believe in the theory, is to say that, in Bowden’s case, Bowden was impacted to act outside of the law to commit murder

The nature of evil is a crucial yet difficult to understand concept. The conundrum of how good people can turn bad is one of the most prominent questions in today’s society. However, the word good is to be used lightly as following John Locke’s theory of Tabula Rasa; people aren’t born inherently good or evil thus their morality comes from experience and perception. The privileged like to think that they are all good people and there is a distinct line that separates them from everyone else. However it is not nearly so black and white. Almost everyone is neither wholly good nor evil but rather a product of their circumstance. Who is to say a privileged, successful student wouldn’t flourish in a life of crime they been born into it? I will

behavior and whether that is an act of freedom or determinism. A question that I propose and