I have often pondered the extent of determinism, not too heavily (avoiding an existential crisis) however I keep seeing it being brought up in the media and in everyday life. Recently, I’ve been watching the show Bojack Horseman, a show about a washed up 90’s sitcom star living in L.A. The character of Bojack (an anthropomorphic horse) is awlays searching for happiness and meaning, however is constantly self-sabotaging and destroying his own life and the life of others. He often blames his past and bad childhood for his current actions. In the season 3 finale, he quotes, “I can’t keep lying to myself saying that I’m gonna change, I’m poison. I come from poison, I have poison inside me, and I just destroy everything I touch, that is my legacy.” He uses his past and his parents as an excuse for his behavior and inability to change. And while I agree that your past can affect you, it doesn’t define you. And the show continues to prove that point using characters around him who are constantly changing and improving despite their past. After watching this episode, I started wondering, how much is pre-determined? Can we actually be blamed for our actions if we are just products of our environment? To what extent is Bojack Horseman at fault for his actions when he is just a product of his abusive childhood? These were the questions that were flowing through my head as I clicked on a CrashCourse Youtube video describing determinism vs freewill. This video presented me with the idea of “soft determinism” which is the idea that determinism is compatible with free will, meaning we do have moral responsibility for our actions. After further research and many conversations with family members during dinner, I was able to form my opinion on this subject.
To what degree are we responsible for outcomes we did not fully choose? Oedipus is a great example of fatalism, an older doctrine of determinism, where the future is determined and no action can change its outcome. The tragedy goes that when Oedipus was born, it was prophesied that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Trying to avoid that fate, his parents abandoned him on mount Cithaeron where he was found by another man and wife, who raised him as their own. Once Oedipus was grown, he learned of his prophecy and in trying to avoid it, fled from his home, not knowing the man and wife raising him weren’t his biological parents. In a fit of rage he kills a man, his father, and marries his widow, his mother, ultimately fulfilling the prophecy. The tragedy teaches us that there is no escaping fate. However, if we apply soft determinism to this tragedy, his future didn’t have to be inevitable. Between each event that happened to him, he had a number of decisions he could have made. While those decisions are largely predetermined by his past actions, experiences, temperament, and desires, they are still there, a constrained version of free will. What if he made the decision to communicate with his parents? What if he had his temper under control and didn’t kill his father? If we look at Oedipus’s story from a soft determinism lens, and not a fatalism one, his story could have ended differently. We cannot remove the blame of Oedipus’s actions in this tragedy, but we can look at the circumstances surrounding and guiding each one of his decisions. While we are morally responsible for our actions, the circumstances surrounding the decisions we make are inseparable from moral judgment.
While hard determinism argues that it is impossible to have free will, therefore moral responsibility is dissolved, soft determinism (compatibilism) argues that determinism is compatible with free will, meaning we do have moral responsibility for our actions. If you mapped out the life and decisions of one human being from the beginning of their life to the final outcome, and looked back, the line of events would be straightforward; cause and effect. However, if you start from the beginning, in between each event and circumstance, there are multiple decisions in front of you, multiple paths you can take. It might not be complete libertarian free will, however it is a constrained version of that, meaning you always have a choice. There are forces that are constantly and actively operating against our free will; there is never one choice laid out in front of us. Meaning, we can never fully be free from the moral responsibilities of our actions; however the circumstances surrounding those actions are important to note.
fleeting-thoughts 