Argumentative Essay On Free Will

861 Words2 Pages

What Is “Free Will”?
Since the foundation of philosophy, every philosopher has had some opinion on free will in some sense, from Aristotle to Kant. Free will is defined as the agent's action to do something unimpeded, with many other factors going into it Many philosophers ask the question: Do humans really have free will? Or is consciousness a myth and we have no real choice at all? Free will has many components and is fundamental in our day to day lives and it’s time to see if it is really there or not.
Free will is generally has two similar key points that revolve around it: moral responsibility and freedom of action. Free action is generally when an agent is exercising their free will. For example, let’s say a man named mark was deciding …show more content…

Moral responsibility is when an agent does something good or bad morally for a specific event. For example, Donating money would be something you would be praised for in a moral sense, where as stealing would be seen as immoral. Free will would be required in moral responsibility. Without Free will, People would not be accountable for their actions, such as stealing a car or vandalism.
Some Philosophers believe that free will is not required in moral responsibility. John Fischer states that “human agents do not have free will, but they are still morally responsible for their choices and actions.” Fischer is basically saying that moral responsibility is not as strong as free will (Timpe).
These two key components, free action and moral responsibility, help figure out exactly how free will works. These two important philosophical components let us know how to define free will. Models of free will also help us figure out what exactly free will is. There are three models are the biggest theories of free will. The three models are Faculties, Hierarchical, and Reason-responsive view. These three were created from major philosophers of their time and helped us pave way into what free will truly

Open Document