Hard Determinism Disregards Agent-Causation

The question of whether people can choose their thoughts and actions or not has been a topic many great thinkers throughout history have thought about. Yet, despite countless arguments for and against it, no one has been able to prove whether free will exists or not. Free will is the ability to make a choice not determined by outside stimuli. The opposite of free will is determinism. Hard determinists argue that there is no such thing as free will; people don’t have the ability to choose freely, undetermined from outside stimuli. Yet despite many compelling arguments for the case, hard determinism disregards the unique quality of humanity. Humanity has the ability to think and reason, which ultimately gives them the unique attribute of agent-causation.

Hard determinism argues that all events are caused. Hard determinists define human thoughts and actions as events. If human thoughts and actions are events, then they must be caused. If every human thought and action is caused, then humans do not have the ability to choose their own thoughts and actions because they are entirely dependent on prior causes. If this is the case, there can be no such thing as free will.

Hard determinists further argue that if there is no such thing as free will, then there can be no such thing as moral responsibility, for if a man or woman cannot choose to do other than what they have done, there is no way any responsibility can fall on them for their thoughts or actions. Their actions were simply caused by something else, which was caused by something else, and so on.

While the hard determinists provide a valid argument, it is ultimately false. Looking at their first argument, it is easy to see how they believe the premise to be true. After all, anyo...

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...he hotdog away, that still leaves a 1% chance for change, for another decision. It may be caused by randomness, but it does not mean that the decision made is random. In actuality, that small random percentage gives him the choice to change his decision.

In conclusion, free will is not only possible, but quite probable, and, if there is free will, then, of course there is moral responsibility. Hard determinists have quite a few valid arguments to defend their case, but the best of them, the random probability argument, cannot be proven. Humanity’s understanding of physics just isn’t advanced enough to prove their claim to be true. Maybe at some point in time that will change, but for now it isn’t a good enough argument to disprove the possibility of free will, while the previous mentioned arguments in favor of free will find the concept of free will quite probable.