John Locke – Free will and Determinism By Lewis and Jay

Locke 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704 English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. Theory of mind He postulated that the mind was a blank slate. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.

Hard Determinism The theory of Universal Causation maintains that everything in the universe (including human action) has a cause which precedes it. We are neither free nor morally responsible for our actions e.g. A = friction, B = heat occurs or A = rubbing hands together, B = hands warmer This is the basis of science - if it wasn't the case that one event or set of circumstances lead to another, scientific observation, and the conclusions drawn, would be pointless and meaningless. If a doctor cannot explain the cause of a set of symptoms, he doesn't presume that they have no cause, but that the cause is unknown. Psychology, sociology and anthropology can account for human behaviour and emotions.

Locke’s ideas Locke gave the example of a man who wakes up in a room that, unknown to him, is locked from the outside. He chooses to stay in the room, believing he has chosen freely. In reality, he has no option. However, his ignorance of this gives him an illusion of freedom.

Conclusion Locke describes an Illusion of freedom of choice – we only think we choose freely because we do not know the causes that lie behind our choices Leads us to believe they have no cause. Locke denounced the existence of free will Does hard determinism mean there is a first cause? Hard determinism usually denounced due to science e.g. quantum physics proving there is random occurrences = no prior cause