Hard determinism implications

Implication of hard determinism on moral responsibility

Hard determinists believe that a moral agent's life is a hundred percent determined by one or more factors, these can be

god's power

physcological determinism

biological determinism

universal causation

If this is true, then we have no freewill. We have no control over our moral attitudes so then human ideas of right, wrong and morality is completely wrong. They are futile, baseless concepts

Augustine in his theory of predestination said that humans are all so deep in their sin that we cannot choose to do good, even if we wanted to. We will inevitably always choose wrong.

William James similarly said that 'any other future set of outcomes than the one fixed from eternity is impossible'. However, he did not restrict it like Augustine, by saying that humans always choose bad. He merely said that every choice has been predestined. They have no choice and have to pick that because it has been predetermined by the previous choices.

Early enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza said that 'there is no absolute or free will, the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause'. He basically said that an agent's moral choices are just the inevitable and predictable result of a chain of infinite regress.

John Hospers: said that moral ideas are worthless because there is always some cause that compels us to do what we do. He said that moral choice is all a matter of luck. this means that any moral choice is not down to values that a person holds but just luck on which one they would choose.

The implication of hard determinism is that it seems unfair to punish people if their actions are beyond their control.

Clarence Darrow was able to use hard determinism in his defence of the 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case. He said that the boys had acted due to how they had been brought up. They had been predetermined to have a superiority complex over poorer individuals.

This was to manifest itself again in other cases such as the James Bulger and Stephen Mobley. In the latter case, he attempted to say that his acitons were due to a mutation in a specific gene (MAOA) or the warrior gene.

Overall, blaming an individual for their behaviour is limited by hard determinism. There is also more of a recognition that hard determinism means that immoral acts cannot be blamed.