Determinism
- The belief that choices are influenced by factors other than the will of the individual.
- Events/actions are predetermined by other events therefore freedom of choice is an illusion.
Hard Determinism:
- The belief that people do not have free will to act in moral situations and that all moral actions have uncontrollable prior causes.
- Humans therefore cannot be morally blameworthy for their actions because their actions are determined.
- THEROY OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION: everything has a prior cause, causally determined.
T. Honderich:
“Our actions are no more than affects of other equally necessitated events”
Internal causes:
- Things such as our genes, health and mental state.
- Can be argued that these factors can cause us to do certain actions.
External causes:
- Our economic, religious, cultural background and experience of life that may effect us in such a way that our behaviour is pre.determined rather than free.
Clarence Darrow, American attorney:
- Defended Leopold + Leob for the murder of Bobby Franks argued that they should be given life sentences rather than death penalty because they were products of their upbringing (environment/friends/family). They were both rich + inelegant and wanted to plan ‘the perfect crime to show their supority over society’
- ‘All this was handed to them… none of us are bred perfect and pure.’
- There actions are results of what was done to them before.
- However, these others are not morally responsible also since they were products of what had earlier been done to them and so on.
- Link to Baruch Spinoza quote.
Baruch Spinoza - ‘Part two of Ethics 1677’:
‘The mind has no free will, but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause =, and this by another cause, and so on to infinity.’
It follows that once a person appears to have a moral choice, this appliance is an illusion: John Lock (1632-1703): X + Y example
“We think we are free when we decide to do X and Y but in fact we are not. These decisions are causally determined.”
External causes:
Our person experience of life may also affect our moral decision making… the idea that nature and nurture curtail our freedom suggest that our upbringing affects us in an irreversible and potentially damaging way.
e.g. Mary Bell
Mary Bell, in 1968 (aged 11), was convicted of the murder of two toddlers. Bell’s mother was a prostitute who specialised in sado-masochism. Mary would be forced to listen to her mother ‘entertain’ clients from behind a curtain.
- Hard determinists would argue that Mary Bell has ‘diminished responsibility; because of her violent and unstable background.
J. Hospers
Internal + external factors quote
Also decided that actions do not come from one single thought or decision, but there are ‘a combination of factors that lead to e.g. homicide”
Cosmological argument - something that is found both in the theory of hard determinism and predestination.
- The term ‘cosmological’ derives from the word ‘cosmos’ meaning ‘the universe’.
- This is the concept that God is the first cause. He himself has no cause. The belief that the causal chain can be traced back to an uncaused causer.
- The cosmological argument is that something cannot come from nothing and therefore everything has a cause. e.g. drink water because we a thirsty. Thirsty because of exercise. Exercise to loose weight and so on.
- Plato and Aristotle has used this argument but the most famous Christian application of the argument is found in Aquinas.
Negative aspects of hard determinism:
- It has a number of consequences. It puts us in doubt of praise and blame. How do we consider the morality of others if they are not morally responsible for their actions.
- We cannot be held morally responsible for our actions if they are casually determined and not a result of our own moral choice…… this they is that Adolf Hitler is no more culpable for his actions than the good-doing Christian church-goer.
- The whole notion of moral responsibility is called into question. Murderers murder because they have the wrong genes, poor upbringing, poor parents or teachers. This would have a huge impact on our notion of punishment, as it seems wrong to punish others if they are not responsible for their actions.
