Hard determinism

Hard determinism (or metaphysical determinism) is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, that it is incompatible with free will, and therefore that free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomological determinism, it can also be a position taken with respect to other forms of determinism that necessitate the future in its entirety. Hard determinism is contrasted with soft determinism, which is a compatibilist form of determinism, holding that free will may exist despite determinism. It is also contrasted with metaphysical libertarianism, the other major form of incompatibilism which holds that free will exists and determinism is false. In ancient Greece, Socrates initiated the rationalistic teaching that any agent is obliged to pursue the chief good conceived by his or her mind. Strato of Lampsacus speculated that an unconscious divine power acts in the world and causes the origin, growth, and breakdown of things. Diodorus Cronus asserted the identity of the possible and the necessary and inferred that future events are as determined as the past ones. Chrysippus of Soli refuted the "idle argument" invented to discredit determinism as if human efforts were futile in a preordained world; he explained that fated events occur with the engagement of conscious agents. The Bhagavad Gita, a classical Indian text composed around 4th century BCE, also mentions hard deterministic ideas. Krishna, the personification of Godhead, says to Arjuna in the verse 13.30: They alone truly see who understand that all actions (of the body) are performed by material nature, while the self actually does nothing. In the 17th century, both John Locke and Baruch Spinoza argued for strict causality of volitional acts. Men are deceived because they think themselves free...and the sole reason for thinking so is that they are conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the causes by which those actions are determined. In the Age of Enlightenment, Baron d’Holbach promulgated the naturalistic interpretation of mental events.

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In philosophy, moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission in accordance with one's moral obligations. Deciding what (if anything) counts as "morally obligatory" is a principal concern of ethics. Philosophers refer to people who have moral responsibility for an action as "moral agents". Agents have the capability to reflect upon their situation, to form intentions about how they will act, and then to carry out that action.

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