Free-Will: Compatibilism, Libertarianism And Free Will

Megell Strayhorn

Period: 7

Goldberg/ Philosophy/ Free Will Essay/ Autumn 2014

11-17-14

To answer the question if human beings possess free will successfully, you have to understand what ‘free will’ actually means. Free will is having the the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate. The ability to act on one 's own desires. There are a couple different ways of answering the free will question that get broken down into three main beliefs; Compatibilism, Libertarianism, and Determinism. Libertarians believe that humans are capable of possessing free will. Determinists believe that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to will. They believe that human beings are not morally responsible

Hogan). If we are not free to do so then there is no point in our existence as a whole because sinning would be a concept outside of our control. The teachings of Jesus are based on the fact that we can freely choose at all times. For example, if we are asked to repent then we’re obviously free to choose whether to repent or not. If we apply the Libertarianism view to this question then it is simple to understand that human beings would be considered completely free. To say that humans are completely free is wrong because there’s no way that everything we do is one hundred percent up to us. There are many different background causes that we don’t even think about when we’re about to make a certain decision. For example, if someone is debating whether to run through the yellow light or slow down, you might not go through it if last time the light changed to red and you got a ticket. The decision was determined by previous decisions that you made. Even though you might think that you had a number of different options, they weren’t really options. You were bound to do exactly what you did in that

Hard determinists believe that all actions and decisions are determined by a number of different causes. Every single mental event, choice, intention, decision, and our actions are no more than an effect of other equally necessitated event (Hondereich). For example, when you choose what to wear in the morning it’s affected by many different factors like society and what’s in style, the weather, if you’re religiously affiliated, and other things as well. Scientific evidence for this claim is tied to Isaac Newton 's Theory of Relativity that mentions that for every action there are positive and or negative outcomes. In a sense this is similar to the hard determinist theory. Our actions vary from wants, wishes, and motivations, which basically are caused by specific conditions as mentioned earlier. Freud stated that the factors such as wants and wishes are the result of psychological conditioning and that our suppressed feelings produced by the human psyche (Id, Ego and Super ego) come together uncontrollably later in life effecting all actions and decisions you will