Philosophy Course Work William Lee

Philosophy Coursework: “To what extent human beings should be treated equally due to the deterministic nature of our life?”

In this modern world, we human beings are forced to survive through such complex and busy society. As well as getting more complex and busier, the size of the society and culture is growing tremendously due to globalization. International social interactions are now crucial factor in our life. However, despite the fact the technology and culture is exclusively expanding, fundamental questions are still not answered. Fundamental philosophical questions raised by human beings seem impossible to be answered. In addition, it is quite obvious that there are no ultimate answers for these questions. Thus, only opinions and ideas can be suggested to these questions. In this essay I would like to tackle this fundamental question and express my view on why and to what extent human beings should be treated equally due to the deterministic nature. Firstly, I would like to investigate our understanding of human beings in general. Secondly, discussion of deterministic nature of human beings will be continued. My view of human beings was stimulated from an advertisement of Benetton. In the advertisement there are three hearts of human beings and each of them are labeled as white, black and yellow. The message of the advertisement is apparent. The message from Benetton is that all human beings are equal and same. The hearts visually symbolizes the common factor of human beings. As we are well aware of the fact, the heart is the most important organ in our body. Without it, human beings can not survive a single day. Therefore, Benetton suggests that as all hearts are identical, all human beings are also identical. Human beings are multifaceted and mysterious beings that are difficult to deal with. Even with high technology we have these days can not fully understand human beings from both physical and psychological perception. For this reason being, we often face the difficulty explaining and understanding what human beings fundamentally is. “What are human beings?” is one of the most philosophical questions that have been touched upon numerous philosophers throughout the long history. However, none of those philosophers were able to explain clearly what human beings really are. Therefore, defining human beings strike us as a great struggle. However, explaining or describing what human beings is also an intricate problem. We all study and describe human beings from

biological perspective. We all surely can describe what human beings look like. However, does biological appearance of human beings define and symbolize who we really are? If so it should not be due to the fact all human beings have varying biological system. Different race, gender and age of people have distinguishing biological factors. Thus, biological perspective of human beings cannot define us. My question is, so what does human beings actually all have in common? Despite all those race, gender, age and religion is there one unifying factor that combines and unifies human beings as one? My answer is this; we all human beings are ‘determined’ to die one day. Human beings can be defined and symbolized as beings that will disappear and die one day. There are many doubts and questions on what human beings are. However, it is the absolute thus, undisputed that we all die. Death is the only unifying factor. All human beings are equal in front of death. Determinism is a theory that states that ‘every event has a cause’. In other words, everything is ‘determined’ to be what is supposed to be. However, ‘strictly speaking determinism is not a theory of normative ethics but the doctrine of universal causation.’ Determinism may not be or cannot be used to justify any unmoral ethical actions. The theory determinism is closely related to ‘whether human beings possess free will.’ Discussion of free will leads determinism to split into three different views, which are hard determinism, libertarianism and soft determinism. ‘Philosophers have reacted to this problem in a variety of ways.’ Firstly, ‘hard determinists accept determinism and therefore reject freedom and moral responsibility.’ Secondly, ‘there are the so-called libertarians, who accept freedom and moral responsibility and thus reject determinism. Lastly, ‘there are so-called soft determinists or compatibilists, who argue that determinism is essential to the notion of free action.’ ‘Hard determinists maintain that everything in the universe, including all human actions and choices, has a cause which precedes it; and that this is the same as saying that once they cause has occurred the thing itself (the effect) will occur. This argument, known as the theory of universal causation, carries with it the further proposition that all events are in principle predictable.’ In other words, hard determinists claim that all causation is determined thus, it is out of human being’s control. This can be viewed as very dangerous argument due to the fact all sorts of immoral actions can be justified. Therefore, hard determinism theory can be simply conveyed as excuse of immorality for those who do not believe in hard determinism.

Another important point raised by hard determinists is that human beings are not free at all. Thus, if ‘a man appears to have a moral choice, this appearance is an illusion. The philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) strongly suggested freedom of human beings is merely an illusion. In his classic case, ‘suppose that a sleeping man is placed in locked room. On awakening he decides to stay where he is, not knowing that the room is already locked. This is a real decision taken by him, it is freely made and he might have decided to leave; but in reality he has no choice and it is only his ignorance of his true condition which made him think otherwise.’ Libertarians stand at the very opposite side of hard determinists. Libertarians do not reject determinism entirely, however they do not agree with the principle of causation which claims human action and human behavior is predictable. ‘Libertarians distinguish between person’s formed character or personality and a person’s moral self.’ For libertarians, ‘personality is an empirical concept, governed by causal laws, thus capable of scientific explanation and prediction and known through observation of behavior and psychoanalysis.’ However, ‘the moral self is not an empirical but an ethical concept, operative when we decided what to do in situations or moral choice.’ Libertarians’ argument seems quite logical; as they assumed the existence of free will in situations of moral choices, but has provided no evidence for it. Both hard determinism and libertarianism seem to have their reasons, logic and ideas behind it, on the other hand I personally do not agree with both theories. Instead I agree with soft determinists who express similar idea of mine. Soft determinists simply claim that ‘human freedom and moral responsibility, far from being incompatible with determinism, is incomprehensible without it.’ In addition, soft determinists convey the ‘assumption of that determinism is inconsistent with free will’ comes from ‘the result of considerable confusion about what precisely we mean when we say we are free.’ The theory fatalism is closely related to soft determinism Fatalism is ‘the view that human beings are powerless to change the cause of events and that ‘what will be, will be.’ Simply saying, soft determinists support both views of free will (that we have choices to certain extent) and fatalism (that we are determined thus can not change the cause of events). If I apply this soft determinism theory to human beings, it seems very reasonable that human beings should be treated equally. As we are well aware of the fact, us human beings believe and realize that we have choices to some extent. This so called ‘freedom’ allows us to change the future if we desire. However, as well as we have ‘free will’ of some kind we are still determined. All human beings are determined to die one day.

For human beings, birth is a cause of death. Thus, as we are born, we are born with the fate to die one day. In addition, we are born equally. The birth of human beings is a foreshadowing of the death. Thus, death is not a tragic. It is the most fundamental truth that everyone can agree upon. It is the most logical and natural occurrence that can happen to human beings. However, the society we are living in exaggerates and presents death as something negative and distressing. Thus, human beings are internalized to fear death. As human beings fear death, we lose our meaning of life. We become obsessed with physical possession. This obsession and fear of death causes discrimination and desegregation between races, genders and religions. Human beings forget the fundamental reality that we are all equal. I personally think that this misconception of inequality is caused by the illusion of ‘free will’. As human beings can change accordingly through free will, people consider that one can be better than others, thus treated differently. However, this is not the case as all human beings are equal in front of death and determined to die. My conclusion is simple, that all human beings must be treated equally. As I have explained clearly above, from a soft determinists view, we have some ‘free will’ but we are also determined meanwhile. However, I am aware of the fact that this may not be possible due to lack of ignorance of people. It is clear that people will continuously evade seeing the ultimate truth called death. However, if my essay made the readers to think twice about human beings and its deterministic nature, I firmly believe that I have played the role of stimuli by raising the issue of human equality.