Title: Hard Determinism
Headings: Hard Determinism Explained
Hard Determinism Explained
Everything is predetermined and we have no free will
Arguments for hard determinism
What about quantum mechanics?
What about the feeling that we have free will?

Content: Einstein, for one, could not countenance it, and still today there are physicists who believe that the indeterminacy is only apparent, that eventually a new model will be developed which reinstates a thoroughly deterministic point of view. At present, though, quantum indeterminacy is generally accepted for much the same sort of reason that determinism is accepted outside quantum mechanics: the science that presupposes it is phenomenally successful. Quantum mechanics may have dented the prestige of determinism as a universal doctrine, but that doesn’t mean it has salvaged the idea of free will. There are still plenty of hard determinists around. This is because when it comes to macro objects like human beings and human brains, and with macro events such as human actions, the effects of quantum indeterminacy is thought to be negligible to non-existent. All that is needed to rule out free will in this realm is what is sometimes called “near determinism.” This is what it sounds like–the view that determinism holds throughout most of nature. Yes, there may be some subatomic indeterminacy. But what is merely probabilistic at the subatomic level still translates into deterministic necessity when we are talking about the behavior of larger objects.