Hard determinism is another concept on free will which views that determinism is true, and it is incompatible with free will, thus free will does not exist (Honderich 11). In this paper, we will look deeply into the concept of compatibilism. Compatibilists or soft determinists maintain and believe that determinism is well compatible with free will. Compatibilists thus define "free will" in a way that enables it to co-exist
In the philosophical view of determinism with respect to free will, it focuses more on the circumstances surrounding the agent instead of just the individual agent. A strength to determinism is that there is a cause for everything, therefore nothing is left to chance and that there is always a reason to be traced back to. On the other hand, the same theory states that agents are not responsible for their own actions because previous events dictated their behavior, and that is considered by many to be a weakness of determinism. Critics of determinism claim that having a universal view of determinism will lead to moral irresponsibility and moral decay (Nichols and Knobe 664). Compatibilism, also referred to as soft determinism, is “the view that all events, including human actions, are caused.
If all my actions, my beliefs and my desires are determined by preceding conditions, how can I ever be free? This is the conflict presented by traditional theories of determinism and freewill. But analysis of such a concept of freewill shows it be incoherent. In this case, we must either reject the thesis that we have freewill, or reformulate our concept of freewill so that it is coherent. I will argue that such a reformulation is not only compatible with determinism but also necessary, if we are to maintain that we have any kind of freewill.
It is impossible to reconcile any kind of determinison with the concept of free will. There are 3 different views on determinism. Hard determinism, which is the belief that we have no free will, our actions are already planned so therefore we have no moral responsibility. On the other end of the scale there’s libertarianism, this is the belief that we have absolute free will, so we have full moral responsibility of our actions. And in between these 2 theories there is compatibilism, which is also known as soft determinism, this is the belief that our actions are free but they are conditioned.
FREE WILL VERSUS DETERMINISM Does behaviour result from forces over which we have no control? Or do we have free choice to behave as we wish? Do we really choose our actions? Free Will versus Determinism is one of the major debates within psychology and also within philosophy. Free will What is freewill?
Secondly, moral absolutes do exist. The final body paragraph will counter the supporting arguments by clarifying that absolute objective truths do not exist as moral truth can be universal but not absolute as every culture has the opportunity to hold the same moral truth and the opportunity to be tolerant of all societies. To reply, a current example that is relevant today is provided to show that theoretically the counter argument is strong, but practically Sumner’s statement is not possible. Cultural relativism is the theory that a person's culture strongly influences an individual’s mode of perception and thought (“Relativism”, 2014). The principle claims that there are no objective truth or values as morality is relative to each society or culture.
It then follows that an agent does not act freely, has no free will, and is therefore never morally responsible for its actions. Though the logic of this seems feasible, I argue that the consequences of hard determinism are unacceptable, as all performed actions are not fully pre-determined. I posit that determinism is only true insofar that actions are influenced by their pre-determined conditions. Rather than P1 inescapably leading to P2, it is more intuitive that the consequences of P1 influence an agent to perform a certain action. Further, I posit that there are an infinite number of possible actions to be taken as a result of P1 as determined by the agent itself.
Today it has become more of a psychological problem that is affected by causes in natural phenomena [2]. There are many stances one can take regarding free will but the two extremes are Determinism (where the belief is that there is no such thing as free will, everything is determined) and Libertarianism (where the will is free and choices are not determined). The small part of the long going argument I’ll be focusing on in this essay is on Libet-style experiments. Many determinists have used these experiments as evidence against free will. I will be putting my arguments whether that is the case.
Pragmatic philosophy is a type of philosophy that rejects the idea that there is such a thing as absolute truth (Moore & Bruder, 2011). Instead in this philosophy they think the truth is relative to time, place, purpose, and is ever changing in the light of new data (Moore & Bruder, 2011). Pragmatism roots primarily are located in the United States. It is also known as American pragmatism. The main school of thought for pragmatism is that there is no absolute or fixed
‘Critically assess the claim that free will and determinism are compatible’ The theodicean issue concerning free will, beside being offered as a solution in the film, ‘Time Bandits’ dates back at least as far as Democrates, however hard determinism is a far more modern invention by some six centuries, when Rene Descartes first suggested that everything is mechanistic, and that (although he is not known to have used these words) the doctrine of cause and effect happens because of tight coupling. When answering the question, it is important to consider the two main types of determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism. Supporters of hard determinism, such as Spinoza, state that no actions (or indeed occurrences for that matter) are free, because any action necessarily has antecedents, which implies that the action happened as a result of mechanical laws and not as a result of free will. B. F. Skinner supported this view, denying the existence of intentional actions through his research in behavioural psychology. Soft determinism states that although some actions are not free, for instance I feel I have no choice but to come in to school every day, others are free, because the fact that an action has a cause does not imply that the action was axiomatically not free.