Determinism and Free Will

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Determinism and free will are incompatible. The events in people’s lives are already chosen for us, or determined. The expected behaviors of people are explained by natural laws and by experiences that they were exposed to. But this viewpoint does not explain people’s intuition. Although, there is a chain of physical causes that lead into people’s intuition. The incompatibility of free will and determinism can be best described by the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction states that in the current time of selecting between two things, you can have either one or the other. It states that both options cannot be chosen. To further have a clear understanding of this, imagine having to choose between two paths. At the current time, you can only go down one path. You cannot be in two paths at the same time. This can also explain the incompatibility with free will and determinism. Having both beliefs of free will and determinism, they interfere with each other. A person cannot choose something, and at the same time, claim that it was already pre-determined or already chosen for them. Therefore free will and determinism are incompatible. To better get an understanding of why determinism is the only cause to people’s choices and not free will, we must first define what they mean. Determinism is the belief that events were made from past events and natural laws. An example of determinism is from your physical appearance. Your physical appearance was already determined by your parent’s genes, this later determines what events you are going to likely experience in the future. Being really tall, for instance, may later determine a person’s choice in going into a sport like basketball. Determinism has already chosen events fo... ... middle of paper ... ...ition occurs, determinism can explain intuition. Intuition is formed in our mind, and our mind is formed in our brain. Our brain is formed from past experiences and by natural laws so there must be some reason as to how our intuition is formed by determinism. The constraints society has for people were already determined, and with their influences it may also cause a person to have a determined future. Therefore leading me to believe determinism is the cause of people’s events. Although this argument doesn’t explain how intuition was created, natural laws from a chain of causes gave me a reason to believe how our intuition was formed in the first place. The importance of this topic is overlooked by the majority of society. Having a choice of determinism over free will can help our society in a number of ways like, deciding what punishments should be made for people.

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