Savannah State University Free Will and Determining Discussion

Purpose

This discussion will help us understand how determinism relates to moral responsibility, especially for actions that are morally wrong.

Task

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were two wealthy, privileged young men in Chicago who murdered someone. Clarence Darrow was their defense attorney. He claimed that they should not be given the death penalty, because there must be some cause and effect, some relationship between their childhood and environment, and the horrible thing they did.

How does this relate to the concept of free will and determinism?

Were their lives determined for them, by their circumstances, before they did the crime?

• Which philosopher from our unit would agree with their lawyer? Why?
• Making Connections
• In your responses, be sure to consider how Clarence Darrow is making an argument that relies on a premise that they could not have chosen to act otherwise. Is this premise acceptable in the argument, or would you argue they did have a choice? What kind of situation would mean someone “does not have a choice” or “cannot act otherwise”? If we do look at past life events as a cause of our future decisions, how should we understand the relationship between the sensory emotional input of those past events, and the use of reason and thinking to try to overcome and move past those past events (i.e. the empiricist and rationalist views of experiences in Unit 3)?