Causality, Determinism And Freedom Of The Will

Extract

The classical determinist argument is that every event has a cause, that every event in the universe is an effect whose sufficient and necessary conditions are the state of the universe immediately preceding it. For this reason we could not have done otherwise than we did. We do not have free-wills and hence we are not morally responsible for our thoughts and actions. The classical deterministmay, however, modify his position and agree that not every event inthe world has a cause, but only that every human activity—our thoughts and our actions—are causally determined. Butit would still follow that we could not have done otherwise than wedid. As the first formulation entails the second formulation, and is more usual, we shall adopt that one.