The Free Will Debate

     The debate between libertarianism and hard determinism, is much like the debate between rationalism and empiricism. Those supporting libertarianism believe that humans have the ability to control and change actions on their own. On the other hand, hard determinists say environment, upbringing, unconscious impulse, mechanisms of defense, and many other influences affect the choices they make and therefore they are not responsible for their actions.
     Libertarianism is much more plausible than hard determinism. Although some earlier events can influence the decisions one would make, humans still have the freedom to alter their lives (Ex: mechanical causation + spontaneity = libertarianism).
     Explanatory Breadth - There are many types of human behavior that the theories of both libertarianism and hard determinism support. Much like W.T Stace's free acts/unfree acts chart many human actions and behaviors prove to have very different kinds of causes. Even the same action carried out more than once can have both libertarianism and determinism concepts. One example would be Gandhi fasting to save India vs. a man fasting because there is no food (411) Gandhi had a choice to eat, the other man had none.
     Explanatory Depth - In the case of the detail of human behavior, morality and ethics play a big role in the decisions people make. Libertarianism is the best explanation for the causes of human behavior. If there is no free will morality is non-existent. "But if a man has no freedom to choose what he will do, if whatever he does is done under compulsion, then it does not make sense to tell him that he ought not have done what he did and that he ought to do something different"(408). Having the freedom to be bad and/or good represents the fact that the choice is available. Hard determinists could argue that we are either bad or good as our actions are pre-determined, which means we would fail to know what's right and wrong and it would not matter because humans could not change or ever be both "good" and "bad".
     Simplicity - The fact that spontaneity is said to be mysterious, makes libertarianism a lot more complex than hard determinism. Spontaneity is a short-cut because it cannot be explained. Hard determinism has fewer parts and not many extra assumptions other than the fact that humans act solely on how they were raised and things they have been exposed to throughout their life.
     Conservatism - Today, libertarianism is more consistent with common sense beliefs. Politics uses libertarianism as one of the biggest aspects of life and liberty. In addition, the fact that humans do not like to admit or consider their lives being in control by fate play a big role in the 21st century make libertarianism the more supported view.

     1. Libertarianism and Hard determinism are the best explanation of human actions.
     2. Libertarianism has much more explanatory depth and conservatism , whereas Hard determinism is much simpler. Libertarianism and Hard determinism possess similar explanatory breadth.
     3. Consequently, Libertarianism is the best explanation of human actions.