Determinate Cause Of His Action example essay topic

Determinism currently takes two related forms: hard determinism and soft determinism [1] [1]. Hard determinism claims that the human personality is subject to, and a product of, natural forces. All of our choices can be accounted for by reference to environmental, social, cultural, physiological and hereditary (biological) causes. Our total character is a product of these environmental, social, cultural, physiological and hereditary forces, thus our beliefs, desires, values and habits are all outside of our control. The hard determinist, therefore, claims that our choices are determined by these factors; free will is an illusion because the choices and decisions we make are derived from our character, which is completely out of our control in creating. An example might help illustrate this point.

Consider a man who has just repeatedly stabbed another man outside of a bar; the other man is dead. The hard determinist would argue that there were factors outside of the killer's control which led him to this action. As a child, he was constantly beaten by his father and was the object of ridicule and contempt of his classmates. This trend of hard luck would continue all his life. Coupled with the fact that he has a gene that has been identified with male aggression, he could not control himself when he pulled the knife out and started stabbing the other man. All this aggression, and all this history were the determinate cause of his action.

Soft determinism touts itself as a looser form of determinism; it maintains that a modicum of freedom can exist within determinism. For the soft determinist, the personality or character of the agent is still derived from environmental, social, cultural, physiological and hereditary factors. The agent's actions are still a result of this character. However, the soft determinist maintains that we are free because freedom is not a freedom from all causes but is a freedom from some causes. One might argue that there was no compulsion in the action of the killer; he knows the consequences of his actions and is aware that murder is wrong.

If someone held a gun to his head and told him to stab the other individual, we could not rightly state that his actions were free if there is some external compulsion. His personality is created within a context that instills certain societal values and norms of behavior. Just because the character of the killer is caused by his history, freedom is not precluded because he could have chosen not to pull out the knife. Freedom, according to the soft determinist needs to require alternative un compelled choices.

Prior causes are necessary because otherwise actions are simply capricious and the agent becomes a victim of chance. Though soft determinism provides an interesting, more comforting alternative to hard determinism, it may be problematic for two reasons. Firstly, though soft determinism asserts a freedom of choice, it is unclear as to what degree these choices affect the shaping of one's own personality. One's personality seems inescapable under both forms of determinism; one is condemned to act with complete reference to it. Under soft determinism, it appears that who or what we are is still rigidly defined.

Secondly, soft determinism seems only able to confirm moral freedom and not freedom of the will. According to the hard determinist approach, because our actions are compelled by past causes, we cannot be held morally responsible for those actions. The soft determinist wants to assert that, so long as our choices are derived from our personality and are not compelled by some external factors, we are free to choose from a range of relevant alternatives. This approach of the soft determinist is problematic because, as I have just stated above, we are unclear as to the degree our choices can affect our personality, and since our personality defines which course of action would be most applicable to it, it appears that we are quite rigidly defined by that personality and its history. This ines capability of character does not provide much meaning to the life one leads. Indeed, the freedom soft determinism gives us is not the freedom to be or will who we are.

It would be wrong to deny the important role of the character of the individual in the choices that that individual makes in life. However, it is one thing to claim that our personality is grounded in our history, and a completely separate thing to claim that this personality is so rigidly defined by that grounding. We are, of course, born into certain conditions we cannot escape, which do have a profound effect on the formation of our personality. An individual's sex is (at least, initially) determined and that individual cannot escape that fact. As too are our ethnicity, family, genes and so forth. We will inherent values during this upbringing, but that does not mean those values are fixed, nor does it mean that we cannot act against our social, cultural, environmental or even biological conditions.

It is worth considering a comparison between man and the machine he constructs. Machines are constructed to follow a certain set of programmed commands which it cannot decide for some reason to break. It works according to those commands, and unless it is made to recognize a conflict in those commands, it will carry those command processes out. Arguably, animals work on a similar principle dictated by their genes. For example, there is reason enough to believe that when a dog is in heat it will not all of a sudden consider the responsibilities it must face if it impregnates the bitch and thus decides to wear a condom as a result. Dogs just simply go at it if the conditions are right without considering the repercussions of their actions.

Humans, in contrast, do not seem so determined. If one were completely determined by those factors outside of one's control, it is difficult to imagine how innovations in thinking could emerge. How can a Muslim man in a fundamentally Islamic nation come to question some of the precepts of the way his religion is practiced in his country if he is simply a sponge, a product of everything that his country and community have provided. One could counter that it is through his experiences that this fundamental shift in understanding occurs. I think, however, this is the point. This man assesses who he is and what he is, what is lacking and what he wants to be and acts to bring that about.

Certainly, most (if not all) of his important choices are framed with reference to his past experiences. One cannot simply leave behind one's own past, but one can transcend it. Why is it that an individual can transcend his or her past? At the risk of begging the question, he or she is able to transcend his or her past because he or she can will to do so. The two forms of determinism I have discussed are both short sighted theories.

They rely on past events to construct an immediate causal future. The future of hard determinism is linear, predicated on the laws of cause-and-effect as external forces acting upon the individual from birth to death. Soft determinism does not put itself in much of a better position; one's past still necessarily formulates the way one chooses for an immediate future. What determinism seems to miss is that we, as individuals, can envision multiple possible futures for ourselves. The clich'e "tomorrow is a new day" is an apt one. What will I do tomorrow?

What is it that I want in life? How shall I achieve my goals? The questions abound. We approach our own futures as something that is not yet constructed or defined and as open and possible.

Not only do we reflect on who we are, we understand who and what we are not and from that we may formulate what it is we desire to be. We do not simply respond to our environmental conditions, we manipulate them towards achieving our own ends. Because we conceive of our future as something indeterminate and undefined, instead envisioning a multiplicity of possible futures that we actively choose and pursue, we have directed ourselves towards the future in such a fashion that the question of determinism becomes irrelevant. As such, our choices and actions become purposeful (or meaningful) to us. It may be impossible to refute determinism in all (or even in any) of its forms. Deterministic theory is necessarily historical.

In order to be certain that our actions are not determined, we would have to be able to go back in time and change them. We look back at an action and wonder what if we had done it differently, but are also brought to realize that no amount of desire can change what has already happened. When gripped by the ines capability of our past, it seems to make sense that our future could also be so determined. I have attempted to show in this essay that two of the more prominent theories of determinism-hard and soft determinism-may be problematic because of their primary focus on the past as a determinate for the immediate future. Hard determinism cannot see beyond the effect of the next action; soft determinism cannot see beyond the effect of the next choice. Every individual is able to project multiple possible futures and actively pursues them according to desire.

Even though one's history is important in the formulation of desires-one's history provides the context by which desires arise-it does not determine them. Desires may be formulated by habit, but they may also become prevalent in light of a current lack or deficiency that goes beyond immediate environmental or physiological conditions. In choosing to fast, for example, a woman might conceive of herself as spiritually deficient and thus conceive of the suffering that comes as a result of her fasting as intrinsically valuable (valuable in itself). Her fasting takes on special significance for her because the suffering is considered an end in itself.

It is important to note here that this spiritually deficient woman is not compelled to action by some immediate physiological or intellectual need. If this were so, she would not have conceived of herself as spiritually lacking. It is only in reflecting on her present condition that she may then understand herself as spiritually deficient; through this present understanding of herself she is able to negate her present situation by turning her attention towards fulfilling this need, giving her action of fasting meaning. That is, the cause of her act of fasting is not derived from some past or present determinate but rather is derived from a future possibility which is presently non-existent. In contrast, the suffering (i. e., hunger) of a depressed person is (usually) a result of that depression; the suffering just happens to the person. The suffering the depressed person is feeling is only a cause of the lack of active sustenance, and thus the suffering is not valued in and of itself by the individual.

Our choices and actions, therefore, gain purpose because we reflect upon ourselves and conceive not only who we were and who we are, but who we desire to be. It is because we can actively respond to this self-conception and self-projection that we have free will and our lives are, in turn, meaningful.