Hard Determinism, anyone? March 5, 2008
Posted by Nina Rosenstand in Ethics, Nina Rosenstand's Posts, Philosophy.trackback
Fun discussion over at “The Garden of Forking Paths” about new studies concerning hard determinism. If I can extricate myself from grading papers, I’ll put a post together about it–in the meantime, enjoy this link: http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2008/02/why-reading-def.html
I think the tendency for people to use determinism as an excuse is more of a commentary on general trends in our society than on the idea itself. Like we discussed in class, the implications of hard determinism could be both positive and negative, the problem is that people in this adversarial society have tendencies to pick the negative implications, using determinism as an excuse.
Further comment in relation to class, I find it interesting that both Sartre and Nietzsche would frown upon using determinism as an excuse, yet Nietzsche was a determinist and Sartre was an advocate of free will. Weird enough existentialism seems to be built on critique of certain things, allowing these polar opposites to be grouped together.
I guess the people cheated more because they though that whether or not they’re going to get punished has nothing to do with their actions since their future is already “determined”. Maybe they don’t comprehend that their future is “determined” by their actions.