What is the moral principle of a determinist?
Determinism is usually understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do. The theory holds that the universe is utterly rational because complete knowledge of any given situation assures that unerring knowledge of its future is also possible.
How is free will related to moral responsibility?
If we do not have free will, then there is no such thing as moral responsibility. Therefore, if moral responsibility exists, someone has free will. Therefore, if no one has free will, moral responsibility does not exist.
What are the conditions of personhood?
According to philosopher Mary Anne Warren (1973), “the traits which are most central to the concept of personhood . . . are, very roughly, the following: 1. consciousness . . . and in particular the capacity to feel pain; 2. reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems); 3.
Who is not morally responsible if determinism is true?
Incompatibilists maintain that people are not fully morally responsible if determinism is true, i.e., if every event is an inevitable consequence of the prior conditions and the natural laws.
The question of free will leads to issues of moral responsibility. And these two issues are of direct interest to humanism. There are those who believe that determinism is incompatible with free will and moral responsibility.
What do incompatibilist philosophers believe about determinism?
Incompatibilist philosophers have traditionally claimed both that ordinary people believe that human decisions are not governed by deterministic laws and that ordinary people believe that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility (e.g., Kane 1999; Strawson 1986).
What did David Hume think about determinism and moral responsibility?
But David Hume, a leading proponent of the “compatibilist” position, held the view that freedom and moral responsibility can be reconciled with (causal) determinism. Bertrand Russell’s views on determinism and moral responsibility (from his Elements of Ethics) are worth quoting at length.