Slaughterhouse-five

 In the 1969, science-fiction novel Slaughter-House Five, Kurt Vonnegut also makes a compelling argument for hard-determinism. Told in an un-sequential manner the story follows Billy Pilgrim a pessimistic war-vet as he lives his life, and experiences an abduction from an extra-terrestrial race called the Tralfalmadorians. Being “unstuck from time” Billy knows every event that is going to happen to him and yet “Among the things that Billy cannot change are the past, present, and future” (Vonnegut 62). His time traveling capabilities allow Billy to see all the chains of cause and effect that he will experience in his life, and they allow him to understand that he has very little control over it. The Tralfalmadorians also experience the universe in a similar way to Billy. Instead of seeing the universe one moment at a time, the see every moment that has ever occupied that space. As one Tralfalmadorians puts it "I am a Tralfalmadorians, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber." (Vonnegut 65-66). Without a linear notion of time one cannot have the concept of free will. Although, they understand everything that will happen these Tralfalmadorians know that they cannot do anything to change the events that will happen. When Billy asks how the universe will end one of the aliens explains that a pilot will blow it up attempting to test a new engine for a space craft. Billy tells him that the pilot should just avoid pushing the button to which the Tralfalmadorians replied “He always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him, and always will. The moment is structured that way” (Vonnegut 117) The Tralfalmadorians can see the entire picture of the chains of cause and effect, they know that there is no way that they can change the events leading up to this event. When we view our lives and choices linearly, it is a lot easier to pretend that we have the capability to make choices. Looking at our lives moment by moment makes it seem that the choices we make are our own. But if we zoom out and look at the entirety of our lives we can see that each of these choices were just a consequence of things that happened earlier. Because our motivations, and therefore our choices are caught in this chain of cause and effect we cannot say that they are free. Hard-determinism is the most accurate philosophy regarding free-will because of it’s understanding of how the world works. Like Billy we are being thrown around, trying to experience our lives in a world that we cannot control.