Difference Between Free Will, Hard Determinism

Hard Determinism argues that every event is causally determined. For an event ‘A’ to occur casually means that there are antecedent causes that ensure the occurrence of ‘A’ in accordance with impersonal, mechanical causal laws. To clarify hard determinism further, let me present hard determinism as an argument. Basically hard determinism argues that: (a) Determinism is true (b) Determinism is incompatible with free will (Holbach, 451). In defense of premise (a), the hard determinist says that obviously everything is caused, therefore determinism is true. To prove that determinism is false, the opponent would have to come up with an example of an uncaused event. To defend premise (b), the hard determinist

Hard determinism and libertarianism are both extreme philosophies with soft determinism (compatibilism) somewhat of a middle ground. Hard determinism sees very little or no free will for actions, that everything is inevitable. Libertarianism views that every person has free will in their decisions. Soft determinism states that there is a determined plan of action, but that there is a freedom dependent upon whether that determined action comes from an internal decision. Decisions are therefore resulting actions come from either external or internal motivations. Based upon the readings and personal experiences, I would have to say I am a soft-determinist.

As soft determinism only allows for negative freedom, it presents a sort of "underprivileged" type of freedom. According to this theory, the inner state of an agent determines at what choices the agent arrives. (Here it is possible to question what causes the inner state of the agent). The deterministic nature of soft determinism requires the answer to be that the inner state is determined. The result of the inner state, therefore, could not have been any different than what occurred. Had the cause of the inner state been different, the result would have been different accordingly. This can lead, however, to an indefinite regression of the causes of inner states, each being causally determined. A further threat of the theory is that the inner state of a person could be externally imposed, negating the freedom of soft determinism.

It has been debated over centuries whether us humans have control over our destiny, and if we are really able to decide on our own. The controversy between free will and determinism has been argued about for years. If we look into a dictionary, free will is define as the power given to human beings to be able to make free choices that is unconstrained by external circumstances or a force such as fate or divine intervention. Determinism is defined as a philosophical doctrine that every event, act, and decision is the inescapable consequence of antecedents that are independent of the human will. Determinism states that humans have no free will to choose what they wish. Due to this fact, contemporary philosophers cannot agree whether free will does exist, let alone it be a divine influence.

Free will and determinism is a topic do we have a written out plan for us to fellow or is it that we can chose own on future.

In other words, all events that occur within nature are determined by events that have already happened before it. Soft determinism believes that free will is compatible with determinism. They believe

In conclusion, from chaos, determinism, soft determinism or total free will, soft determinism is the most likely answer. Through the movies, Minority Report and Adjustment Bureau, examples of veto power and chance in relation to free will were shown while the Free Will New York Times article discussed the Libet experiment. In summary, soft determinism hinges on the different aspects of the human mind, the veto power creating limited free will, and the idea that the more knowledge a person has the more control they will have in their life. The human mind has the potential to be more than a monkey riding a tiger of subconsciousness with the use of veto power and a firm understanding of causation to better predict outcomes thus making better decisions.

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.

Many scientists reject the idea of free will and determinism. Many neuroscientists and psychologists think that free will is an illusion. Neuroscientists believe that the brain makes the decisions before us, when making a decision. When we act, the decision we make is causally effective. Brain activity however, is also causally effective. Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet argued that the brain tells the body what to do about a half-second before we feel an urge to do it. He argued that we have to drastically revise our ideas about free will. Libet believed we have free will in a very narrow sense. We can restrain or initiate a brain’s command to the body. But we only have about a tenth of a second to do that. John-Dylan Haynes did a similar experiment

There are two main philosophical positions, and they include determinism and indeterminism. Determinism holds the idea that every state of affairs including human decisions and actions are ultimately determined by external causes beyond their will. Indeterminism holds a different perspective that every single event is wholly determined by antecedent causes. It is simply the opposite of determinism because it holds that if one event is undetermined, then determinism is false. Indeterminism supports the free will of all events (Salles).

Beginning with determinism, the idea of determinism is that every event, including human actions, is brought about by previous events in accordance with universal casual laws that govern the world and that human freedom is just an illusion. At its most extreme form, “hard determinism”, believers of hard determinism believe that every behavior can be traced to a cause, although they may disagree about what those causes are. Popular explanations of human behavior that exemplify the determinist views (as taken from the textbook):

Free will does not exist because if it did then all the knowledge we have accumulated from our past experiences wouldn’t affect the choices we make in the present. The existence of free will also means that the destiny which God has chosen for us doesn’t exist because we would be free to create our own destiny. On the contrary hard determinism dose exist as it is supported by more theories in psychology than free will and because we constantly make decisions to live the lifestyle that has been chosen for us.

The story raises the philosophical anthropological dilemma of whether humans have free will or whether we will at some point in the future be able to predict and therefore determine all human behavior. This tension between the belief that humans are ultimately free agents or subject to a predetermined fate is a long running metaphysical dilemma. In ancient Greece, for example, King Oedipus was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. He was told this fate and did all he could possibly do to avoid it and failed. The Greeks believed that a person's fate was sealed at birth, suggesting that free will is an illusion which we are blind to.Determinism and Free Will Determinism is a belief that all things in the world are subject to a universal

Liberty, in philosophy, involves free will as contrasted with determinism. In politics, liberty consists of the social and political freedoms enjoyed by all citizens. In theology, liberty is freedom from the bondage of sin. Generally, liberty seems to be distinct from freedom in that freedom concerns itself primarily, if not exclusively, with the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; whereas liberty also takes into account the rights of all involved. As such, liberty can be thought of as freedom limited by rights, and therefore cannot be abused.

This means that our decisions would be just a lot of consecutive physical events in our brains that lead to a specific outcome.