Hard Determinism

Hard Determinism

1. The view that all choices are determined by other events, factors or actions.

2. "All our choices, decisions, intentions, other mental events and our actions are no more than the effects of other equally necessitated events..." - TED HONDERICH.

   • Everything we do is part of causal chain...cause, effect, cause, effect etc.
     • Just because we don't know what the cause is doesn't mean it's not there.

3. Denies the existence of free will - we cannot freely choose as any choice is simply the result of a series of determining factors.

4. Scientific Determinism (PHYSICAL LAWS)

   • Bases much of its ideas on the work of SIR ISAAC NEWTON who said that all physical beings and things were governed by immutable laws of science such as gravity, thermodynamics or motion.
     • Atoms (particles of physical things) act in a certain way in accordance with physical laws.
       • Humans are physical 'things' subject to the laws of 'Newtonian causation'.
         • A hard determinist would argue that even the most random of events/decisions etc. is a causally determined event.
           • D'HOLBACH believed that determinism was universal, directed by Newtonian laws of cause and effect He also claimed free will was an 'illusion' and came up with the fly analogy (the fly thinks it is controlling a horse and carriage but it clearly isn't - it is delusional - we are the fly)