Essay On Hard Determinism

Everything likes to believe that their actions are their own. We make decisions everyday that shape our life and lives around us. This idea of conscious decision making is known as free will. When free will is taken away, control is lost from our lives and what were once choices are now predetermined paths. The deterministic view shows that nothing is random, as the events of life are already set in stone. That is, every action, thought, event, and even disasters were always going to happen. The basis of hard determinism circulates around three main points: 1. Determinism is true of our world; 2. Determinism rules out alternative possibilities; 3. Free will requires that we can do otherwise/have alternative possibilities regarding our actions (Lecture notes). Breaking these down shows possible flaws and well as strengths in the deterministic argument. For people to believe hard determinism governs our lives,
Whether this thing that makes us ‘special’ is the presence of a soul or having strong morals, it is unknown, but as a human race we like to believe we are better and more important than those things around us. Those who do believe that human are somehow ‘special’ and exempt from determinism, do believe that there is determinism in the world. They only object to the thought that humans are also governed by the same laws that say dice or traffic are. However, this argument lacks physical evidence. As pointed out by Stephen Law, it is hard to believe that determinism s evident in all other aspect of life except inside our brains (Do We Ever Deserve to be Punished?). There is a large amount of egocentrism and ignorance that must coincide with this train of thought for it to be seen as true. There is no proof behind whether we have a soul or if we are indeed less susceptible to the laws of