Soft Determinism According to John Stewart Mill

In an essay taken from

Valdosta
State
University by an unsighted author titled “Soft Determinism,” the author speaks about soft determinist John Stewart Mill and his theories on determinism. John Stewart Mill lived from 1806 until 1873. Mill believed that all events were determined, but that people are free and morally responsible for there actions in certain ways. Mill offers up the idea that we as humans have the ability to make choices and that we should be held responsible for those choices. However, Mill also states that we cannot act against something called the “strongest preference of motive.” Whatever this strongest preference or motive may be, we are in its control. He believes that punishment and reward are two examples of strong preferences or motives. If we fear punishment, we will not do something wrong. If we want to be rewarded for something, we will do something that we subconsciously know will get us a reward. 

Mill also claims that our character and personality can be changed by will.  “For Mill, every choice we make is determined, but choices meeting certain conditions are free.” This may mean that we may show different personalities and character traits based upon which preference or motive is driving us at a specific time.

 

Because this essay interests me, I am not going to spend a great deal of time summarizing it. This essay is very interesting to me because it talks about punishment. According to Mr. Mill, we do things to avoid punishment and seek reward. Although I do believe this to be mostly true, it still does not explain why people commit crime. If people truly feared punishment and did things specifically to avoid being punished, they would not commit criminal offenses. Although people generally commit crimes to benefit themselves; IE: to support drug habits or make money, there is no true reward to crime. 

If a person wanted to argue that a person committed a crime for the “reward,” then the following question has to be asked. If committing a crime truly does reward the criminal, then according to Mr. Mill’s theory, does the motive to gain reward outweigh the motive to avoid punishment?  

I agree that most everything we do is done with a preference in mind. However, I also believe that that preference is to not go to jail in most cases. I believe that there are a lot more factors in the reasons why we choose to do something or not to do something. I think that John Stewart Mill had a great theory but I don’t think that he looked in to it very deeply. Either that, or the author who wrote the paper that I am sighting did a poor job of displaying Mr. Mill’s work.  

I am apt to believe that if Mr. Mill’s theory was correct there would be no crime. If everyone acted to avoid punishment and gain reward, everyone would be an upstanding citizen trying to please everyone so that they would gain some sort of moral or physical reward. They would not be out in the street shooting people just for the sake of shooting them. I don’t mean to sound cold on a sensitive subject here, but I don’t see any reward in a student going on a mass shooting spree at a local university. You see, we have the free will to make choices. Most often we do not think about how something we do will benefit us. Criminals who commit crimes don’t think about going to jail. Students who massacre their fellow students don’t think about the consequences of their actions. We don’t live in a society where all choice is made based on a reward/punishment basis. Sorry folks, its just not that easy. 

Unknown. “Soft Determinism.” .

Valdosta
State
University. 17 Apr. 2007 <http://chiron.valdosta.edu/jrpeace/2010%20class%20notes%20Mill%20soft%20determinism.htm>.  

Determinism-Hard or Soft?

In an article titled “Determinism,” an unknown author describes different types of determinism and gives definitions and critiques of each type of determinism. The author states that there are two basic types of determinism. These two types are naturalistic and theistic. Naturalistic determinants believe that all human behavior is encoded in us genetically and behaviorally. Naturalist determinants included people like atheist B.F. Skinner. Theistic determinants believe that God is the ultimate cause who determines everything. 

The author then goes on to state that there are many arguments for determinism. He makes statements regarding the sovereignty of God, stating that he must be the ultimate cause of everything. Then author also states that there are two different types of determinists within the naturalistic and theistic determinists. These two subgroups are hard determinists and soft determinists. Hard determinists believe that God is the only cause for everything and that every act is cause directly by God. The author states that hard determinism completely takes human choice out of the picture. Soft determinists believe that God is the primary cause for everything but that actions are not directly caused by God. The author states that God is the primary source and humans are the secondary source. This means that human free choice is compatible with sovereignty. 

I think that this is a good article because although it may not have totally answered my question, I may have found out what type of person I am. I think that I may be a soft determinist. I am a strong advocate of free will, but I do believe in God and believe that he has some guidance over our lives. I believe that he chooses when we are born and when we die. I do not believe that he is the cause of every action like a hard determinist would believe. I believe that God holds the world in his hand but I don’t believe that he makes any human do or fail to do anything that he or she does or does not do. I think God made us and guides us spiritually but I do not believe that he has any direct affect on the choices that we make as people. 

I don’t like to associate myself with any type of determinism, but soft determinism seems more acceptable to me than hard determinism. Hard determinism is just too extreme for me. As I said before, the only reason I would say that I am a soft determinist at all is because I feel that God does control some things that we cannot. Everyone is born with out choice and everyone dies.  These two things are inevitable. God may give us morals to follow but he does not pick us up and place us into a situation. God is the primary cause because he is our creator. He has created everything that could affect us. He gave us the ability to choose. Humans are the secondary cause. We have the God given ability to make choices. Sometimes we choose the right things and sometimes we don’t. 

As far as genetics go, I think it is absurd. B.F. Skinner stated that genetics are the primary cause and that we are locked into decisions due to our genes. Our genes may affect our abilities to make good choices or even our ability to choose at all, but there is no serial killer gene. People still have to actively choose do participate in a certain action. Naturalistic determinism is the answer atheists choose to explain human reasoning because they do not believe that God has any power over his people because they do not believe in God. However, the idea of naturalistic determinism and fate seem to go hand in hand to me. If atheists do not believe in God, I don’t see how they could believe in fate. Therefore, I don’t know how they can justify believing in naturalistic determinism.

Unknown. “Determinism.” The Protestant Apologetics andTheology Page. The Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. 11 Apr. 2007 <http://www.ovrlnd.com/Apologetics/Determinism.html>.  

Determinism – Forced Choice or Free Choice?

In an article simply titled “Determinism,” an unnamed author states that determinism is the opposite of free will. The author states that determinism means that everything is set in stone. He says that everything that will happen in the future is as sure to happen as something that has already happened. This means that everything in our lives is predetermined before our birth, thus, leaving us no free will. The author mentions something in the article that I find very interesting. He describes something called “genetic determinism.” Genetic determinism means that our fate lies in our genes and that our fate is predetermined by our genes. Much like hair color and eye color, we have no control over our “genetic determinism.” However, the author does mention that due to breakthroughs in genetic technology, we should be able to eventually pinpoint the genes and “change our fate” by changing our genetic makeup. He calls genetic determinism “puppet determinism” because “we are dancing on the strings of our genes.” 

The author does bring up a good point about morality in his article. He states that if determinism is true then our outlook on morality is pointless. If determinism is true then we are predestined to do the things we do. Therefore, if we kill someone, it is because we were predestined to kill them. This also means that the person who was killed we predestined to be killed by the person who killed them. According to the author, morals are pointless because we could not, or should not, be held responsible for something that we were predestined to do either by hard determinism or our genetic makeup. Basically, the author states that everything is God’s will and humans have no ability to choose. I believe that determinism is a load of crap set in place by religious leaders centuries ago to control people and force Christianity upon them. Don’t get me wrong, I am a Christian man but I do believe that determinism is a bunch of bull. I think that the church came up with the idea so that anytime something bad happened; they could simply say that it was God’s will and feel better about themselves. I’ve said it once and I will say it again. I believe that the only things in life that we don’t choose to do or not to do, are be born and die. One might argue that one can choose when to die and I do agree with that to some extent, but I also believe that God does have our birth date and death dates predetermined. However, everything in between is free will.  

People do not have deterministic genes that say that they will kill someone when they are 24. People make choices and unfortunately some of those choices are bad. Determinism was the church’s excuse for everything bad in the world. They didn’t want to accept that people were evil. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is the perfect example that determinism is crap. Adam and Eve were told by God not to eat the forbidden fruit. There was no divine power stopping them from doing it. They chose to eat the fruit even after being told not to. This shows that humans have always had free will. If it was God’s will to have sinners in this world, he would not have even wasted his time giving Adam and Eve the opportunity to eat the fruit or not. He would have just created a world with sin. This goes to show that God wanted humans to have free will.  Now, whether or not you believe the story of Adam and Eve is a whole different discussion. However, my point is clear. I really believe that determinism is a ridiculous theory. Everyone is born with a clean slate and can make choices for themselves. Determinism is an excuse for unacceptable human behavior.  Unknown. “Determinism.” . CTNS. 10 Apr. 2007 <http://www.meta-library.net/gengloss/determ-body.html>.

The Minimal Free Will Thesis

While searching the internet for my next source, I came across an essay called “A Proof of Free Will” by Micharl Huemer of the University of Colorado. I decided to take a look into the essay and see what I could find. Mr. Huemer is a very strong advocate of free will. He often references to a subject called the MFT. The MFT is the minimal free will thesis. The minimal free will thesis states that at least some of the time, someone has more than one course of action that he can perform (Huemer). Mr. Huemer goes on to state that “the minimal free will thesis is the least that must be true if free will exists.” He says this because if there was always only one course of action, people would never have to making choices, thus, eliminating free will altogether.  According to Mr. Huemer’s essay, the counterpart to the minimal free will thesis is called determinism. Determinism states that the only thing anyone can ever do is the thing he actually does (Huemer). By this he means that we have no choices in life. According to determinism, we really have no control over our lives because all we can possibly do are the things that we do. Mr. Huemer goes on to state that “determinists hold that any person, at any given time, has one and only one course of action open to him.” He then goes on to argue about how if a student’s car breaks down he cannot make it to class. He states that that is a determinist statement because there are other options available to get the student to class. He used this example to reinforce the minimal free will thesis. 

I tend to agree with Mr. Huemer. Although I do believe that his essay was full of scholar’s jargon, he makes many good points. The minimal free will thesis is something that is very interesting to me. I don’t believe that anyone could argue that there is nothing in life that we choose to do or choose not to do, except for maybe be born and die. For determinism to be true, one would have to prove the MFT to be false, and I don’t feel that that is an achievable task. The MFT is interesting because it is only the minimal proof needed to prove that we have free will and it works perfectly. A person cannot argue that they have more than one way to get to work in the morning. A person cannot say that my car broke down and there is no other possible way for me to get to work.   As far as determinism goes, I think it is a bit absurd. It is difficult to argue that there is only one possible course of action for everything. I make choices everyday. When I wake up in the morning and go get a bowl of cereal I am not dragged by some supernatural force to the Cheerios. I sit and contemplate over my cereal. Maybe that is a bad example. Let me give a better one. This class for instance, is a perfect example that determinism is false. If determinism were true and my computer broke, I would not be able to  complete this class because according to determinism, typing this paper on this computer is the one and only course of action open to me. In reality, if my computer broke, all I would have to do is go to the computer lab and type this paper. The key to that is whether or not I would CHOOSE to go to the computer lab. You see, everyone has a choice in life. We all have the ability to choose different courses of action. There are very few circumstances where there is only one possible course of action. However extreme the alternative may be, there is still an alternative. If your car breaks down 100 miles from home, you can still get home. You have the free will to make choices that are going to get you home, one way or another.

Moral Obligation Driven by Free Will

Recently I was searching for a journal article to research and I stumbled across the article “Moral Responsibility” by Andrew Eshlemen. “Moral Responsibility was published in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. When I first came across the article it didn’t really catch my attention because I did not think that the topic of moral responsibility really pertained to my question. But, after reading the article I realized that the article may not have much to do with my question, but my question has everything to do with the article. 

 

Moral responsibility is something that we are all raised to have. The example given in the text by Andrew Eshlemen is that if a person comes across a car accident, he or she may feel morally obligated to help. He also goes on to say that the way a person responds can sometimes change the way society perceives that person. He stated that if a person stops and helps and saves a child, that person is more than likely to be perceived as a hero. If that person just keeps on going and does not even stop to help or call for help, that person may be perceived as immoral.

 

The way this issue of moral responsibility fits into my question is this. Do we feel moral obligation to do things because we are raised and taught to do them and are therefore forced by society or are we freely choosing to do things that are perceived as morally correct or incorrect. I think this is a two sided coin. If a person is raised in a neighborhood where it is “eat or be eaten,” that person probably doesn’t feel as much moral obligation to help the car accident victim as a person raised in a nice, quiet neighborhood would. So, I do think society plays some roll in how morally obligated we feel towards others.

 

However, being that I am an advocate of the idea that we as humans have free will to make choices, I believe that we freely choose what we are morally obligated to do. We may have been raised a certain way which influences the way we think, but we are still freely choosing to act on something. If a person sees a car accident they must freely choose to stop, get out of their car and help. They may have been told to when they were young and they may not have. Either way it doesn’t matter. If a person stops to help, it is in their own free will. Honestly, they could keep on driving and society would probably never know that that person even saw the accident.

 

Throughout the rest of his essay, Mr. Eshlemen goes on to describe some ancient history on moral obligation. He gives insight on Aristotle’s take on the issue. Aristotle was the first to construct explicitly a theory of moral responsibility (Eshlemen). This is significant because there were people on earth for thousands of years before Aristotle’s time and no one ever stopped to think whether or not we are morally obligated to do things. Aristotle believed that moral obligation went hand in hand with human responsibility. Many people believe that moral obligation is based upon what God would want a person to do.

 

I tend to agree with Aristotle. We are responsible for our own actions. If we mess up, we should be blamed for it. If we do something well, we should be praised for it. I believe that moral obligation and free will go hand in hand. Even if we do something because we think it is what God wants us to do, we still have the physical ability not to do it. Therefore, everything we do that is not physically forced upon us is done in free will.

 

  

Free Will Defined

Free will is a concept in traditional philosophy used to refer to the belief that human behavior is not absolutely determined by external causes, but is the result of choices made by an act of will by the agent (Carroll). This means that all choices made with free will were not forced or imposed upon anyone. There are two theories on why humans act the way they do. There is the free will theory and the theory that we are molded by some other entity.

 

There are many different theories on what that “other entity” may be that makes us do the things we do. Many people believe that God controls everything a person does and therefore we as humans have no free will. However, even great philosophers such as Thomas Hobbs said that “God is the ultimate cause of every action, but as long as a person is not physically forced to do an act, the act is free.” This brings me to my argument about people committing crimes because they are forced into a life of crime by society.

 

I feel that people who commit crimes use society as an excuse. If even God cannot force us to do something, why should we believe that society made someone commit a crime? If a person decides to go out and shoots somebody, society did not make them do that. Society did not buy the gun, society didn’t load the gun, and society did not pull the trigger. More importantly, society did not make the person buy the gun, load it, or shoot anyone.

 

I truly believe that when a crime is committed it is committed in free will. However, Mr. Carroll does bring up a good point in his essay when he talks about the Christian philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas.
St. Thomas Aquinas believed that there were some exceptions to the free will rule. For instance, babies and mentally challenged individuals may not have the ability to form free will. A person cannot be accused of doing something in their own free will if it cannot be established that they were able to form a rational decision to do something. For example, if a toddler finds a gun in his father’s office and accidentally shoots his father, it cannot be argued that the toddler shot his father on his or her own free will and therefore cannot be called a murder. The toddler was incapable of forming free will. Now, if a mentally stable 21 year old adult is placed in the same scenario, a murder has taken place, not an accident. The difference in the two scenarios is that the adult has the ability to form a decision based upon free will.

 

I do strongly agree with the idea that there are some exceptions to the free will theory. If a person is incapable of making choices for themselves that rules out all possibility of them having the ability to do anything in their own free will. I believe that is why the insanity plea was put into place in the criminal justice system. I do feel however, that many individuals who made bad choices try and use the insanity plea as a scapegoat and it often works. But if a person is truly unable to do something in his or her own free will, I don’t believe that they should be held responsible for an action that they may have committed.

 

People who believe in free will are called libertarians (Carroll) .They believe that while people may not be able to control everything in the universe, human nature is controlled specifically by humans. It is not controlled by God, society, or anything else.

 

 

 

The Big Question

For my I-Search paper I chose the question, “Do we make choices in life based upon free will or are we pressured by society into making the choices that we make?” I chose this question because it is a very important question to me. It is important for me to answer this question because I am a criminal justice major and a future police officer. We have a huge problem with crime in
America and if we do not know where crime stems from, we will not know how to properly address it. If we cannot figure out what makes people commit crimes, we will never be able to solve the crime epidemic that we face. Also, as a child and in my past jobs as a security officer and a loss prevention officer, I have seen a lot of bad things happen to good people. I have also seen some people do some pretty bad things. I have seen people steal who don’t need to steal. They just did it for the thrill of it. What makes people steal just for the fun of it?  

After reading my paper, I want readers to understand that there are many different factors that cause people to commit crime. However, the main reason people commit crimes is because they freely choose to do so. I don’t believe that there is any unseen force that forces people to commit crimes or do anything else in life. I think that people need to understand that the choices that they make in life can be both rewarding and devastating. Although people may be more prone to crime because of their living conditions and income, they do not have to commit crimes.  

I believe that my readers will be very interested to learn that many different people have many different beliefs on what makes people do the things they do. There are some people who believe that God is the ultimate decision maker in our lives and that He is the reason that we do everything. There are some people who believe that God is the ultimate reason that we live our lives the way we do, but He gives us the ability to make choices, thus, making our own destinies. Then, there are the total free will people. These people are generally atheists who do not believe in a higher power and that we are nothing more than another animal species in the animal kingdom. 

I believe that I know what type of believer I am but throughout this essay I hope to know what type I am for sure. I haven’t changed my question at all throughout my I-Search process but I have changed some of my views on the subject. 

Before this class, I had no idea what an I-Search paper was. I have struggled though finding essays and articles to research because it is very hard to find essays that link free will to crime. I have found multiple articles on what free will and determinism are, but I have had a hard time finding articles on the reasoning for crime. Most of the articles I have read relating to free will and determinism have dealt with some sort of religious aspect. Most articles talk about whether or not there is a God and whether or not we should be held morally responsible for our actions. 

I have found many articles that deal with morality. Morality is a big issue is criminal justice and does somewhat relate to my topic. I also plan to interview a few of my criminal justice professors and see what they think about my question. I will be interested to see if they have a different opinion than I do. I also know a lot of police officers and plan to speak with them.  

Hopefully my readers will find my research interesting and informative. Although I would like for my readers to agree with my opinion, I know that not everyone will. My main goal is to inform every one of the different opinions that are out there and let them make up their own minds. With a question that is so controversial, I don’t plan to find a specific answer. What I do plan to do is find and research information that both backs and contradicts my opinions to give my readers a better understanding of my question. 

I hope that when I finish this paper I will have a better understanding of why people do the things they do. I hope that writing this I-Search paper will help me be a better police officer in the future. If I can understand why people do the things they do, maybe I can figure out a better way to help them with there problems and help make them better people.  

So, please take the time to read over my research and see what you think. Do we do things because we choose to or is every move we make in life a predetermined move that we have no control over? You read the research and you make the choice.