Ethical Choice Essay

999 Words4 Pages
Our freedom to make ethical choices is an illusion. Discuss. This is a hard determinist statement which I do not agree with, hard determinism states that all your choices including ethical and moral choices, are predetermined and you have absolutely no free will to choose to do anything other. Therefore a person would have no responsibility for their actions. In my own opinion this causes many issues which can lead people to do immoral things and commit bad crimes, and be able to justify their actions by stating it was already determined for them to do it. With this idea you can’t be praised for doing good things or punished for doing bad as we did not choose to preform or commit these actions. Ted Honderich was a hard determinist and said all our choices, intentions and our actions are nothing more than effects from other past events that have already happened. David Hume would criticise this he argues against hard determinism and says we do have free will and moral responsibility, we are responsible for all our moral and non-moral actions regardless of whether they could have been determined by our past choices or values. John Hospers also thought all things were determined. We may think we are free but there is always something inside us that will urge us to make one decision over another. Clarence Darrow is another hard determinist; he took on the case of Leopold and Loeb who were the two teenagers from wealthy backgrounds. They were found guilty of kidnapping and murdering another teenage boy Bobby Franks. They had the idea of committing the perfect crime. Darrow convinced them to plead guilty and then argued that they should face life in prison as they were a danger to society rather than the death penalty. Darrow argued that the two teenagers were not responsible for their crimes, as it was because of their upbringing and their environment, so they
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