Ted Honderich's Theory Of Determinism

“ It is commonly assumed that men are capable of acting freely, in the sense that is required to make them morally responsible, and that human behaviour is entirely goverened by casual laws; and it is the apparent conflict between these two assumptions that gives rise to the problem of the freedom of the will” The debate over free will and whether we can control of our destiny has been at the heart of philosophical debate for centuries. Philosopher such as Aristotle, Hume, William James, Ted Honderich. This essay will discuss that no one is the master of their own destiny according to the theory of hard determinism
Within Philosophical school of thought determinism describes that all events are completely determined by previously existing causes. According to this thinking, a person in a given situation may think that he is able to do this or that, but in every case the stars, the law of physics, his character, the conditioning he has received or something else makes him unable to do any but one thing. Ted Honderich says “If our theory of determinism is true, then all of each person’s future is predictable”. Based on the principle of causality, this is the belief that everything in the universe including all human actions and choices has a cause. Therefore all events are …show more content…
We cannot call that free will because we could not be held morally responsible for random actions. This theory states that everything is predetermined by events occurring previously, therefore we cannot be praised or blamed for anything as we did not make that decision. An example of this is that rain cannot be praised or blamed for falling, it cannot be blamed as this is already predetermined by the process of evaporation into the clouds that must go somewhere. Likewise an alcoholic cannot be blamed for being an alcoholic as he was already predetermined to be an