The philosophical term “Free Will” has been debated by philosophers for over two thousand years now. Defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2016), free will is a term used to sort the capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from various alternatives. There are three different positions one could chose to classify their stance on free will , hard determinism , soft determinism, and libertarianism . A hard determinist is a person who believes in causal determinism, however they do not believe in free will nor moral responsibility; a soft determinist is similar to the hard determinist, but the soft determinist believes in free will as well as moral responsibility. A libertarian is one that does not believe in causal determinism, but does believe in free will and moral responsibility. I consider myself as soft determinist because I believe in causal determinism, free will, and moral responsibility. Soft Determinism Causal determinism is the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions. To define causal determinism in simpler terms it is the belief of the cause and effect relationship. An example of causal determinism is from Richard Taylor’s Freedom and Determinism (year), “If, for instance, a man is beheaded, we can surely say that it is impossible for him to go on living, that his being beheaded necessitates his death.” This exemplifies causal determinism because the man’s death was caused by his beheading, thus being a cause and effect
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