Soft determinists do not try to distinguish
free and unfree acts in normal life.
We do have to take moral responsibility for our
actions.
John Locke
If a man wakes up in a room which
has been locked from the outside, but
he decides to stay in the room, does
he have free will or is it a mere
illusion?
The man may not have the ability to open the
door, but he has free will to try and open the
door.
Tabula Rosa - We are born as
blank slates and ideas are
imprinted on our minds through
sensory experiences.
Hume
Disagreed with Buridian's donkey
In this puzzle, it is suggested that if a donkey has no obvious
choice about which bale of hay to eat from, due to them being
the same distance from him, he would die, due to the lack of
rationality to make a decision. Buridan argued that this is not the
same for humans – we have autonomy to make a random,
spontaneous decision.
Hume rejected this and argued that our decision
is not based on randomity but on necessity, given
the prior predetermined events.