Hard determinism
Prior conditions determine every event, and free will is therefore absent.
What it claims
Hard determinism combines determinism with incompatibilism: prior conditions and laws determine events, and this excludes the relevant kind of free will. It opposes both compatibilist freedom under determinism and libertarian accounts of undetermined free agency. The consequence argument is central: if an action follows from a remote past and laws beyond the agent's control, how can the action be under that agent's control?
Nearby positions
Goes together with
Key thinkers
Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach · Ted Honderich · Derk Pereboom · Galen Strawson