Robert Blatchford: Hard Determinism
...hance but afterward he wouldn’t touch any of his equipment. It was the effect of his environment that dictated his decision to rule fishing as cruel and in turn, this controlled his will to fish. This is a good argument in that it shows how the environments we sometimes find ourselves in can dictate our actions, and reactions to situations in which we have no control. But where is the argument for heredity in this passage you may ask? From my point of view, there is no argument for heredity. However in the rest of the essay, I saw no statement where heredity and environment were required to exist with both elements present. I feel they can stand on their own. Heredity has support as well. For example the man practicing at shooting targets when a rabbit comes into his range of fire. To shoot or not to shoot? It’s not Shakespeare but it will do. To shoot has several different reasons for support like will he be a successful marksman or would he like to have rabbit for dinner. For him, it is preferable because of his instinct to kill. But what about the rabbit? Does he feel it would be wrong to kill a defenseless animal while in the process of target practice? Will he get in trouble for killing it because it may belong to someone else? How will he decide? Well, in comes heredity to save the day. An average hunter would kill the rabbit because he has been taught his whole life that killing animals is “sport”, where as someone who is just a shooting enthusiast won’t kill it because they have grown up believing that taking a life is wrong. Both have different sets of values instilled in them by different structures of belief. Now couldn’t...