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What Is Hard Determinism? There are several viewpoints which consider whether we are free when making decisions and taking courses of action. One of these perspectives is hard determinism. J. Mackie described hard determinism as: 'The view that all actions are explicable in terms of their causes and are therefore inevitable' (J. Mackie) This outlines the basic idea that no action or decision is free. This is based upon the notion that for an action to happen there are a series of factors that ensure the occurrence of that action: '...all our choices, decisions, intentions, other mental events, and our actions are no more than effects of other necessitated events' (T. Honderich) Therefore we are not free to act as we wish due to our actions being determined previously by prior events. As Ekstrom suggested, apparent forking paths appear in life, which seem to give us our own choice, however we are...

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