Radhakrishna's View On The Theory Of Determinism

The last few weeks of class we covered several different kinds of determinism from the various handouts we received. The hard determinist believe that everything happens in a causal fashion, that there is no free will and everything is predetermined. “We remember statements about human beings being pawns of their environment, victims of conditions beyond their control, the result of causal influences stemming from parents, etc.”1 These hard determinist think that the universe works like a clock. Everything has a causal effect onto the other and there is no free will or choice, that all the tiny variables added up to you making that choice. Hospers dives into the psychology and says that every choice you make is a predetermined factor

Radhakrishna reinterpreted the Hindu beliefs of reincarnation and a determined life based on past ones in a more western manner. This faith heavily relies on karma and “Just as there is cause and effect in the physical universe, so it exists in the moral universe.”5 Radhakrishna believes that “...the laws of Karma rule our free will in the sense of an undetermined action and that we always carry our whole past with us, he does not believe that our destiny is predetermined.” All the actions we 've made in the past define who we are, and we consult the past to make decisions about our future. The Akan have a more determined belief with God assigning your life a path, a destiny. “The Akan concept of destiny insists that every human being has a destiny that was fixed beforehand and that it is precisely this destiny that makes each individual unique.”6 Gyeke argues, though, that there is still a range of choice a person has, that destiny only comes into play when they experience repeated failures, that they weren 't meant to do that action or decision. This concept also still allows for accidents and

A perfect example is how I am unfree to do this final assignment. There are many forces that have me chained to to doing this like financial and social factors, despite the fact that I 'd much rather be doing other things. I am free though on how I choose to go about it. I could work on it a week ahead of time and work on it slowly, or I could choose to work on it in one single night. Thousands of other possibilities are also open. So to some degree, we are free, but yet also unfree. An opposition to this is the one that all the factors in our lives from the moment we are born have shaped all the moments we 've had henceforth. “what we believe and desire depends on factors completely beyond our control. Speaking generally, it depends on the way the world is; more specifically, it depends on our biological and psychological natures, the society in which we live, and our particular portion of it...”10 Everything happens in a causal chain down to the tiny chemical reactions in our brain, and all the feelings, our social place, the temperature in the room, to what we ate for breakfast. All these various variables pull and tug on our path and the choice we make is already determined. I think though that this is true to some degree, but the ultimate choice comes down to the rational thought and its decision. The weighing of all these factors is done