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Difference Between Hard Determinism And Compatibilism

1001 Words5 Pages

Rabindra Bidari
Professor Geisler
PHIL 1301-23405
3 March 2018
Libertarianism, Hard Determinism, and Compatibilism
“Free Will” is one of the most discussed element in philosophy. Free will is an ability to act freely in any circumstances without influence of external power. Mostly discussed leading theories of free will are libertarianism, hard determinism and compatibilism. Libertarianism believes that some actions are free because we have the ability to control them. On the other hand, Hard Determinism believes that there are no free actions at all, and Compatibilism believes that there is free action when someone does what he wants to do.
Libertarianism believes in free actions because we have the ability to control some of these actions. …show more content…

According to Hard Determinism, every action is determined by external force. No one acts freely because no one has the ability to control their actions. Based on the materialist theory of hard determinism, universe is the combination of physical entity like atom and actions are the result of the combination of external force and the nature of laws. In determinist view, every action is determined by the external force plus the laws of nature, so there is a possibility to predict what will happen next. Moreover, hard determinism follows the theory of casual determinism that all actions are the consequences of past events plus the laws of nature. Since, the past events are experienced and the laws of nature are known, all actions that will occur in the future is predictable, or in fact known. Furthermore, we can’t make changes to the past events and we can’t control the laws of nature, all our actions are pre-determined therefore we don’t have free actions. Although we think we are acting freely, this is our illusion because we are ignoring the fact that action is driven by external force that we have no control. According to journal “Free Will: A Human, Fuzzy, Chaotic Process” the person can no longer rely upon his or her choices during decision making if the principle of cause and effect is violated or nullified then the person’s reasons for a choice and the choice itself is broken by external force hindering the free

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