Hard Determinism
Those who reject free will and accept Determinism are variously known as "hard determinists", hard incompatibilists, free will skeptics, illusionists, or impossibilists. They believe that there is no 'free will' and that any sense of the contrary is an illusion. Of course, hard determinists do not deny that one has desires, but say that these desires are causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. According to this philosophy, no wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur. Determinists sometimes assert that it is stubborn to resist scientifically motivated determinism on purely intuitive grounds about one's own sense of freedom. They reason that the history of the development of science suggests that determinism is the logical method in which reality works.
William James said that philosophers (and scientists) have an "antipathy to chance." Absolute chance, a possible implication of quantum mechanics and the indeterminacy principle, implies a lack of causality. This possibility often disturbs those who assume there must be a causal and lawful explanation for all events.
Read more about this topic: Incompatibilism
Famous quotes containing the words hard and/or determinism:
“You know Steve, you’re not very hard to figure. Only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you’re going to say. Most of the time. And the other times, the other times, you’re just a stinker.”
—Jules Furthman (1888–1960)
“Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.”
—William James (1842–1910)