Determinism Flashcards
What is hard determinism?
The view that all choices are determined by other action or events prior to the choice. These choices were determined by other events and actions going right back beyond birth. The concept of free will is an illusion
What is soft determinism?
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What is predestination?
The belief that God already knew before all time began who would be saved and go to heaven. (Elects and reprobates)
Therefore, there is no free will or choice.
What is libertarianism?
The moral agent has absolute free will. The moral agent has control over their moral attitudes. Therefore, all human ideas of rightness, wrongness and moral value have absolute worth
Who are the main predestination thinkers?
St Augustine of hippo and Calvin
What did st Augustine of hippo believe?
Augustine argued that through God’s grace (God’s love and mercy) some people will receive salvation because God did not intend that all humanity remain in this desperate state of sin so they become elects. No person can ask for it or do anything to deserve it. It is given randomly to a small fixed number of people.
• Only God knows why certain people are chosen and not others.
Those people not chosen were labelled, by Augustine, as ‘reprobates’. According to Augustine God decided which individuals would receive grace before any of them were even born.
What did Calvin believe?
- Calvin believed in predestination which is the idea that god has already decided whether we are the elect or the reprobates (whether we are going to heaven or hell) and we can’t change this, no matter what we do.
- Calvin argued that since humanity is totally depraved due to ‘the fall’ of Adam and Eve; humanity cannot respond in faithful obedience to God i.e. moral agents cannot choose for themselves to obey or disobey God because they are too wrapped up in sin.
What did Armenia’s argue ?
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Who are the main hard determinists?
John Locke - philosophical
Ivan Pavlov - psychological
Darwin, Weissman, Watson, Crick and Dennett - scientific
Who are the main thinkers of soft determinism?
Thomas Hobbes
A.J. Ayer
What did Locke argue ? (Hard determinism)
- Believed that all human actions and choices have a last cause which lead Locke to believe that all events that happen are determined by an unbreakable chain of past causes
- “free will is just an illusion” this is because moral agents who believed they have free will think they do because they can pause and reflect before making a choice, however, Locke believed that all such thoughts were just the moral agents ignorance of universal causation
What does Ivan Pavlov believe?
All human reactions are just conditioned responses associated with the environmental conditions of ones upbringing. Therefore, all of a moral agents actions are determined by their own unique environmental conditioning
