Case Study #2: Free Will and the Opioid Crisis
Paraphrase: The Guardian article “Don't blame addicts for America's opioid crisis. Here are the real culprits” provides the argument that the opioid crisis was caused by big pharma companies, politicians, and regulators who all recklessly approved pills. The article argues this epidemic is caused the US health industry being run for profit; the system gives power to the …show more content…
However d’Holbach would blame everyone and everything as the cause of the opioid crisis instead of only the few mentioned by McGreal . As a hard determinist d’Holbach believes that freedom is only an illusion and that all acts are caused by immutable laws. There’s one main overlying point, d’Holbach states that “The object of all his institutions, all his reflections, all his knowledge, is only to procure that happiness toward which he is continually impelled by the peculiarity of his nature. All that he does, all that he thinks, all that he is, all that he will be, is nothing more than what Universal Nature has made him. His ideas, his actions, his will, are the necessary effects of those properties infused into him by Nature, and of those circumstances in which she has placed him. In short, art is nothing but Nature acting with the tools she has furnished. ”(2). The conditions that may motivate an addict are limited the conditions of his environment. Pharma companies and politicians with many other natural causes such as geographical location, socioeconomic class, family standards, wealth, etc... are the reason that people become addicted. d’Holbach clearly and simply states “The universe, that vast assemblage of everything that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation nothing but an …show more content…
If the world is causal how do you effect the change? d’Holbach would answer this question with the response that the effects warrant change. There is an extraordinary amount of causes that are all interconnected to create a specific effect. Once created these effects then become part of the new causes that will then create a new effect and so on… There is no possible way to change causality since it is always affecting our decisions, however our fate is not predetermined according to d’Holbach since the effects are constantly affecting new