Soft Determinism

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Drug addiction is a condition typically viewed by society as one of choice. However, emerging studies show that addiction may be beyond the control of an addict and instead due to outside forces or even chance. These contrasting views demonstrate the difference of opinion on the existence of causality and the role of free will in human decisions and actions. The idea of causality forms the basic principle of determinism, which states every event is caused and then acts in accordance with the physical laws of nature. There are varying degrees of rigidity with which determinism is argued, from hard determinism to soft determinism and all the way to the contradictory indeterminism. Using the example of addiction these views can be compared and …show more content…
This stance accepts the determinist principle of causality, but it does not limit the causes to be strictly of a physical nature. Soft determinism allows for a degree of predictability when it comes to human actions instead of the certainty of hard determinism or the randomness of indeterminism. The soft determinist argues that human character can be a cause of an event and, therefore, human actions can be predicted with relative certainty if enough information about the person is known. From the standpoint of soft determinism drug addiction is more complicated than the strict physical cause given by the hard determinist. The soft determinist would argue that drug addiction could stem from some kind of physical dependence, but it could also be a result of some kind of character deficiency. This argument seems to put some responsibility for human actions on the person themselves, instead of the other two, which remove this responsibility from people’s …show more content…
Unlike hard determinism and indeterminism soft determinism does allow a degree of responsibility for one’s actions. In soft determinism one is free to reason out an action and their reasoning stems from their character, which is within one’s control. This implies that humans can control their actions, yet soft determinism also agrees with the principle of causality like hard determinism. The soft determinist makes causality and free will compatible by arguing that both physical conditions and our character determines our actions. This implies that for drug addiction there are some physical causes, but there is also some responsibility on the addict himself or herself. This appears to nicely fix the issue of free will, however it is not a perfect solution. The problem of freedom for hard determinism and indeterminism comes from their strict stance on the notion of causality and while soft determinism appears to resolve this problem it creates the issue of the relationship between our free will and physical causes in determining our