III: FREE WILL vs. DETERMINISM - Hard Determinism
There are a host of positions that you can study on this topic, but here we will point out three prominent ones. The first one we can look at is often called hard determinism which has had a long history going back to Greek atomism and more recently represented by the position of B.F. Skinner. You may think that you chose to take this course, that you freely selected the last movie you saw, or that you freely chose your current boyfriend of husband but none of these are the way things happen. You had, of necessity, to choose this course (and I to give it), the movie you went to, your lover. If this is the case, then can anyone be held responsible for what they do, whether it is for murder or a series of sordid affairs in the White House? Every event has a cause, nothing in nature happens gratuitously and human behavior is no exception. Has anyone ever argued this in a court of law? Yes, Clarence Darrow did in defending Leopold and Loeb in what has become a classic case of American jurisprudence. But whether the individual is held morally or legally culpable, the assumption made is that the individual could have done otherwise in making a choice. Exceptions can be made for the insane of very young children. The determinist denies that anyone can be held responsible for their actions.