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Philosophical Approaches - Papers

Philosophical Approaches

Philosophical Approaches

Amie Davis
Strayer University
Professor Blais
April 25, 2012

Hard determinism has the notion that any action is the result of a long chain of prior causes and that free will is an illusion. Every event happens the way it is supposed to happen and there is no deviation from the result. Coined by William James, "Soft Determinism" is the notion that the future is unknown. A person's action helps determine the future and that lack of human interventions would lead to hard determinism - ultimately bleak pessimism, or fatalism. The soft-determinist attempts to make determinism and moral responsibility compatible.
Determinism is compatible with a specific ...

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b, he has deliberated over the options of choice; c, he was not coerced internally or externally by causes which would force him to choose one option over others; and d, he made the choice given his criteria of making a choice --his criteria led him to choose this particular option over the others. Thus, by a "free-choice" is meant that the above processes occurred. The choice was determined by antecedent factors, the criteria used by the agent to pick the option were determined. Even though determinism is true, there is moral responsibility.
What the soft-determinist says is that we should not worry so much about whether or not some sort of magical indeterminate power of free-will exists, but whether the term 'free-will' has a useful meaning. And, says the soft-determinist, it does. What it means is everything that we ordinarily mean when we refer to the process of choosing among options. A person is said to have made a free-choice and is morally responsible for his action when he ...

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 12/22/2012 02:29:39 AM
Submitted By: ADAV77
Category: Philosophy
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1159
Pages: 5

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