'Only Hard Determinism is justifiable' Discuss. Determinism is the idea that all actions are governed by laws outside of one’s control. Some philosophers believer that one’s ability to make free choices is an illusion whereas, others state that there is something else beyond understanding that may cause one’s actions to be determined. There are a variety of theories which are response to dealing with debate about free will and determinism. Hard determinism is the theory that human behaviour and actions are wholly determined by external factors, and therefore humans do not have genuine free will or ethical accountability.
Aquinas argued that the definition of God cannot be comprehended by humans. As humans are finite, and God is infinite, it is impossible for humans to make an accurate definition of God. Another issue with the ontological argument is its problems with proving existence just from a description. David Hume claimed that it was impossible to derive existence from a definition. Hume was an empiricist, and therefore believes that for something to exist, there must be evidence that can be accessed by the senses.
It does not prove God’s existence; it argues that there must be a necessary being which created the universe. This is consistent with some views of God, however, it is far from an all-encompassing explanation. The argument is not considered to be the end-all-be-all defense for the existence of God. However, it is a good
For Kant, if an action is performed, based on the end goal or result, or based on the outcome, it is not moral. Therefore the Hypothetical imperative was no use because these judgments were not dependent on morals and they were dependent on outcome. Categorical imperatives, on the other hand, are moral commands that tell eveyone what to do and do not depend on an end goal or outcome. According to Kant, these categorical imperative apply to everyone, because they are based on an adjective a priori of reason which Kant calls the categorical imperative. Kant broke the categorical imperative down into three rules which he called Maixms.
Those who oppose cognitivists are called non cognitivists and they believe that when someone makes a moral statement they are not describing the world, but they are merely expressing their feelings and opinions, they believe that moral statements are not objective therefore they cannot be verified as true or false. In this essay I will be discussing the multiple branches of cognitive theories and non cognitive theories in order to answer the Janus-like question whether or not moral statements truly hold objective meaning. Ethical naturalism is just one branch of a cognitive theory in which naturalists believe that ethical statements are the same as non-ethical ones, meaning they are all factual and can
Meanwhile, McCloskey believes that the only conclusion we can reach is that something caused the universe to exist. From reading his article, I feel that he does not formulate a valid argument as to how the power exists or how it created the universe. He goes onto to describe any creator that could exist is either a powerful being or a muddler and is not a god, but an evil spirit or a being that had very disastrous consequences due to their limitations ( McCloskey, pg.64). McCloskey closes his argument of the cosmological argument by stating that belief in either is not a source of strength or security ( McCloskey,
Under this conception, language is not an adequate tool to determine which particulars belong within a concept. Regardless of this semantic confusion, without a conception of language that is not idea-based, (III) would also seem to rule out a word from mentally representing every possible quality of concept-instances. Thus, without further development of a theory of language, this understanding of Hume’s theory is bizarrely both circular and
“Compare and Contrast intuitionism and Emotivism” Both Intuitionism and Emotivism are meta-ethical concepts to explain the terms “good” and “bad” without being caught in the naturalistic fallacy described by GE Moore. Moore’s theory states that good cannot be categorised in any physical manner as theories – but instead “good” can not be defined in terms of anything but itself, and following this through to a moral theory we can conclude “that neither science nor religion can establish the basic principles of morality.” Intuitionism holds that there are objective moral truths, but rather than reasoning or deducing these truths, they are self evident to the “mature” mind. Moore contends that just as we know there is a world out there, we know objective moral truths – they are just common sense or intuition. These truths are universal and beyond human experience and reasoning, and from them we gain our sense of what is “good” and what is “bad”. Moore would say we can see these self evident truths when, in an argument, we are reduced to “it’s just wrong,” they require no further explanation, proof or justification.
In the writings of Principa Ethica(1903);G.E Moore criticises the cognitive stance of Ethical naturalism of Naturalistic fallacy. Here Moore claims that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”, this meaning that one cannot move from a fact to a moral judgment as, he saw this as logically inconsistent. For example one cannot say that ethical language or moral terms are similar to natural properties. This would deduce them to as meaningless. In fact, Moore claims that ethical language is similar to simple concepts, by this he means that one can only determine the meaning of ethical language in association with another object.
INTRODUCTION In other to expose Husserl’s phenomenology comprehensively, Matheson outlined two basic critiques on representationalism- the view that consciousness is something like a self enclosed room or box as against the Husserlian view of consciousness as intentional. CRITIQUE OF REPRESENTATIONALISM First, the common –sense realist view that we are conscious of the external world because the world streams into the mind via the senses is misguided because the mind is not literally a physical space (like a camera) into which sense-data can ‘stream’- the mind is not the eyeball or the eardrum. Second, the representationalist theory that states that sense-data allow the mind to reconstruct a ‘representation’ of the outside world and consciousness is an indirect experience of these representations is implausible on close inspection because it seems to be incapable of accounting for the truth: how can I know that my representations are true representations of the world if I never have access to the things themselves against which to measure them. If the representationalist is right, says Matheson, then we live exclusively in a world of ‘copies’ or ‘limitations’ without ever seeing the originals, consequently, we are deluded in thinking that we experience the world and possess no criteria for judging truth. For Matheson, Husserl provides a better conceptual ground for rejecting the representationalist theory.