Strengths And Weaknesses Of Determinism

Determinism is one of the three types of freedom. Determinism is the view that every event and human action in your life are brought upon us by previous experiences with the natural laws that govern the world. Determinism believes that human freedom is an illusion (BOOK). Some of the causes to why determinists believe that human freedom is an illusion is: human nature, environment, psychological forces, and social dynamics. An example of human nature is taking a vitamin or eating healthy food to balance your diet. We do this because we believe that our physical bodies have a causal relationship with a diet or taking a vitamin. An example of the environment is when you bring an umbrella with you to work because you know it is going to rain.

Another weakness is determinism mistakenly admires the people for the good they do and to blame others for the wrong they do. This is when it gets hard to understand, because if our human actions are already determined then we cannot deliberate rationally (WEBSITE). The idea that our choices we make and what we decide to do is illusory. This causes the whole notion of moral responsibility to be questioned. An example of this is a murderer murdered because he or she was raised in a poor environment, wrong genetics, poor family relationship and parenting. It would seem wrong to punish this murderer for his or her acting immorally if his or her is not responsible for their actions. (WEBSITE) The weaknesses of determinism makes there be many grey areas and hard to understand whether or not our human actions are already

(WEBSITE). To go along with the strengths there are a few weaknesses libertarianism has also. Like libertarianism does not have an explanation for human actions, but surely our actions as humans have to be caused by something, it is just not stated. Libertarians point our moral judgment to an objective source, in which is unaffected by our environment and childhood. This is what makes libertarianism questionable. Besides that fact that libertarianism has a difficult time showing how things cause another, it is also difficult to show that there are no causes that are beyond the human control.