This issue has been selected because it is a central problem of philosophy and as such provides a pathway to further study in a number of areas in the A2 specification. For example, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume discusses the issue of ‘liberty and necessity’ and seems to propose a form of soft determinism. The belief that human beings can act freely is central to Descartes’ dualism; it is discussed in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, and is relevant to the moral, political and religious philosophy themes.
The issues to be covered are:
What is determinism?
The issues to be covered are:
What is determinism?
- Determinism defined as the belief that a determinate set of conditions can only produce one possible outcome given fixed laws of nature; distinguished from fatalism, the religious notion of predestination and predictability. Chance as compatible with determinism.
- Determinism and human action. All human action as the inevitable result of environmental and hereditary factors. Human action as subject to natural laws. The experience of free will as an illusion.
- Free will as requiring indeterminism. The view that free will requires a gap in universal causality. Human decision-making as occupying a special place outside of the natural order.
- Free will as compatible with determinism. Voluntary action as defined in terms of the type of cause from which it issues: soft determinism.
- Voluntary action as causally determined and yet distinguishable from psychologically or physically constrained action.
- Determinism as undermining moral responsibility. The implications of the view that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. The extent to which praise, blame and punishment can be meaningfully employed if determinism is true.
- Determinism as undermining rationality. The distinction between reasons and causes. The distinction between action and bodily movement.
